requests For Adminship/Archive 216

This RFA should never have had someone fix the transclusion. Someone with some people skills should have removed it and engaged the user on his talk page as to why this wasn't a good idea at this time.--Cube lurker (talk) 19:36, 14 May 2012 (UTC)

Sorry, I did not see the discussion, as I have only been active for 3 months, and on WP namespace pages for around 2. --Tomtomn00 (talk • contributions) 19:38, 14 May 2012 (UTC)

I agree. Getting egged in your early days of editing is not fun.--Jasper Deng (talk) 19:41, 14 May 2012 (UTC)

It still remains an enigma why so many new editors (especially the very young ones) start their Wiki career wanting to be admins or messing around in semi admin areas. Even more troubling is why they can't/won't read even some of the most basic policies, guidelines, and editing instructions. --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 02:23, 16 May 2012 (UTC)
I don't find it to be an enigma. When I started editing I wanted to be an administrator right away. It appears like a cool thing to a new editor. In addition, many new editors (well at least I did) believe that administration is a bigger deal than it really is. They view administrators as the important people of Wiki English. When you believe that one group of people is more important than another, it is common to want to be in that group. In addition, many new editors want to try out everything they can. They don't understand the multitude of things they can do without being an admin. Ryan Vesey Review me! 02:35, 16 May 2012 (UTC)
It's like sitting at the popular kid's table at lunch in high school. When I first started, I wanted to be an admin because they seemed like the "mods" of sorts on forums I frequent. People are just naturally drawn too power I guess.--SKATER ^{Is Back} 02:39, 16 May 2012 (UTC)
No, it's not really an enigma, we know all the reasons. First off however: RfA is not a popularity contest for kids on the Wiki High Table, even though some think it is. Secondly, does everyone who just passed his driving test at 16 (or 18) immediately want to be a traffic cop? Or does every kid who reaches the 6th form want to be a prefect or head boy/girl? Does every squaddie who never went to West Point or Sandhusrst want to be a general? I'm not so sure that the more mature new editors have a lust for power; I started editing when I was about 55 - the last thing I had in mind was wanting to interfere with the managemant/maintenance aspect of it. I became an admin by popular request rather than asking for it and contrary to what some mistakenly believe, I have nothing against younger editors and younger admins, but competency and maturity are a must.and adminship is no place for newbies. Incompetent attempts at RfA just waste everyone's time and harm the candidate's chances of becoming an admin in the future. No, I don't think it's so much the power they want, rather than to be able to show off to all the guys (or probably the girls) in the school canteen that they are an admin on Wikipedia, but they sure look silly when their attempt goes tits up. -Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 03:54, 16 May 2012 (UTC)
Kids are used to looking silly on a regular basis, it's part of growing up. Even if their reasons are not sound, I understand their desire. They are kids after all, and it is perfectly healthy and normal to take risks and push boundaries. They often lack the understanding of the scope of being an admin here is all. I thought about becoming an admin early on as well (although I was over 40 and aware of the responsibility), and still waited 5 years before attempting. I don't think it is such a large issue as kids are used to stumbling around, making mistakes, biting off more than they can chew. All part of the experience of being young. Fortunately, young egos heal quickly. Dennis Brown - 2¢ © 09:21, 16 May 2012 (UTC)
You're right Kudpung, but is it not inevitable that those newer/younger editors who are least suited for adminship are the most likely ones to request it in their first week? At RfA, we see skewed results - we only see those inexperienced new editors who think that requesting adminship straight away is a good idea and miss all the mature, clueful new editors who will make great future admins. ItsZippy ^{(talk • contributions)} 19:42, 16 May 2012 (UTC)
I agree with that Zippy, but like most work places, Wikipedia is basically a world of post 18-year-olds, and for those who lack maturity, Wikipedia is not the place to prepare one's self for adulthood. We have some brilliant child editors here, and some have even become admins and do an excellent job. But let's not fool ourselves: they are the rare exceptions just as clever kids are anywhere else. The others, to repeat Dennis, for whom it is perfectly healthy and normal to take risks and push boundaries are reckless, don't care for rules and regulations, don't listen to advice, and obviously won't be suitable for adminship until they have developed the level of responsibility and maturity that comes with growing up. FWIW, I've done my fair share here of mentoring new users for adminship and grooming a couple of keen, intelligent kids. Some wouldn't listen and ended up being blocked for WP:CIR, while the cool individuals finally did not run for office because they either realized that their schoolwork and personal development was more important, or that they were not ready to take on the stress that being an active admin often engenders. We have to be careful to differentiate between a) young users, b) new users, and c) young new users. As far as we have been able to ascertain, the vast majority of SWOW/NOTNOW are group C. Citing Dennis again: Fortunately, young egos heal quickly, or at least during the time it takes to progress from Grade 6 through Grade 12 - fast enough for those who really have or had serious intentions for Wikipedia (like me and Dennis. but time passes much quicker the older one gets and 5 years isn't a long time at all when you're in your 40s, 50s, or 60s). We don't really miss all the mature, clueful new editors who will make great future admins, we're quick enough to let them know off-Wiki that we think they might like to be admins, but their answers are invariably the same: not until the RfA process has been cleaned up of hostility, humiliation, and trolling. --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 23:38, 16 May 2012 (UTC)

Hi all. I'm going to be excruciatingly busy this summer in real life. I'm not going anywhere, but I won't be able to give the project the focus I've been able to do over the last year. I'm here because WP:CHUU and WP:CHUS are still regularly backed up and people keep turning up at my userpage because they see I'm the most active person doing renames and want to know why I haven't gotten to their rename yet. I'm asking if people who think they are ready for RFB could please consider getting around to it so that they're in place for the summer. I'm glad to see we have one RFB currently running, but really think we could use at least a couple more crats to spread the work around fairly. If people are interested and want me to look over their backgrounds, I'm going to not be insanely busy for the next two weeks. As always, my email inbox is also open. Thanks. MBisanz ^talk 15:21, 19 May 2012 (UTC)

Chirp? MBisanz ^talk 03:41, 20 May 2012 (UTC)
Wouldn't more administrators see this if you posted at WP:AN? Ryan Vesey Review me! 04:28, 20 May 2012 (UTC)
I guess. Asked there. MBisanz ^talk 10:27, 20 May 2012 (UTC)
Maybe a more proactive approach would yield better results. Perhaps some of the existing crats could speak with admins they feel are well suited for the role and nominate them. Just a thought. 64.40.57.41 (talk) 19:57, 20 May 2012 (UTC)

• I just got the mop, it might be fun to see the fire storm if I went RfB. But then again, I try to limit myself to stoning only once per year. Dennis Brown - 2¢ © 21:22, 20 May 2012 (UTC)
  Fortune favours the bold... QU ^TalkQu 21:34, 20 May 2012 (UTC)

You never struck me as a masochist.SKATER ^{Is Back} 21:46, 20 May 2012 (UTC)
I want to mention two users I am certain would exemplify the office. If we were lucky enough to have them serve, User:Fetchcomms is result oriented and exceptional is his normal output. And User:Tide rolls, is a one of a kind "must include" colleague; that's "must include"! My76Strat (talk) 21:50, 20 May 2012 (UTC)
Eventually I'll run for an RfB, but right now I'm still trying out new things as an admin. Maybe at the end of this year sometime, if you still need people. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 00:13, 21 May 2012 (UTC)
I have no doubt when that day comes.My76Strat (talk) 01:33, 21 May 2012 (UTC)
I respectfully suggest user:Wifione's name for cratship. He has closed some very tricky AFD discussions successfully and he will surely do the same to judge tricky RFAs. I understand that he has denied to run for RfB in the past, but I'm sure that he will be a great addition to this office. EngineerFromVega^★ 03:45, 21 May 2012 (UTC)

I received an email "out of the blue" from User:Wiki Raja wanting me to support him/her in seeking adminship. This is really strange as I have never before involved myself in RfA processes. The email text is:

{redacted per WP:EMAILABUSE}

I see Wiki Raja is not currently listed as being under consideration but I thought I'd notify you all just in case it becomes an issue. Roger (talk) 08:23, 20 May 2012 (UTC)

Thank you for alerting us. Maybe they see your on-wiki interests include South Africa, and they imagine that South Asia is a very similar topic.

Attempts to obtain administrator tools for the purpose of protecting topic areas from perceived "attacks" or "skewed"-ness never end well. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 09:29, 20 May 2012 (UTC)
Text redacted per copyright policy, but this should not discourage people from discussing the intent of the email. MBisanz ^talk 10:28, 20 May 2012 (UTC)

So recently, User:Hipocrite messaged me on my talk page and respectfully asked me to stop asking whether or not a candidate would be open to a recall process. I respectfully disagree that it is not helpful in deciding a vote, and wanted to see what the larger community thought and to see if I was in the wrong asking the question. Regards--SKATER ^{Is Back} 13:34, 21 May 2012 (UTC)

I don't see it as helpful. Asking the question puts the candidate in a no-win situation, as almost every answer will lead to opposes. It's your choice of course, and I've seen good answers to the question, but to me it looks like a difficult situation to put people in! Worm^TT · (talk) 13:38, 21 May 2012 (UTC)
I was more interested in seeing their reasoning for being open or not. It wasn't going to hold much weight either way to me imo, but I see your point.--SKATER ^{Is Back} 13:46, 21 May 2012 (UTC)
(e/c)As someone who has opposed recall-pledgers in the past... I'd prefer that the question not be asked. I do not and will never ask it. Voluntary recall is a meaningless promise that does nothing to address the problem of unfit admins. I consider it an empty campaign gesture, which the historical record of recalls confirms. Others will oppose because the candidate does not agree to recall because the current system of arbcom-desysopping does little to address the problem of unfit admins. So I agree it's a no-win situation. Skinwalker (talk) 13:52, 21 May 2012 (UTC)
Perhaps I was in the wrong then. My apologies. Surely not the first time and probably won't be the last.--SKATER ^{Is Back} 13:54, 21 May 2012 (UTC)
(edit conflict) It only puts candidates in a difficult situation when people oppose irrationally because of their answer to the question. Very few people oppose simply because they only want candidates who are or aren't open to recall, rather they oppose because the candidate didn't word their answer in such a way as to indicate that recall is a non-binding process (or "toothless", or "meaningless", or whatever the preferred synonym is nowadays). I think that the question is completely relevant and unproblematic on the surface, but unfortunately some of the more disruptive members of the community often turn it into a sideshow. Luckily for me, I dodged the bullet on both of my RfA's. -Scottywong| confer _ 13:57, 21 May 2012 (UTC)
I agree with Scottywong here. A recall question shouldn't be a big deal and editors who oppose as a result do so irrationally. That being said, asking a question about recall is not beneficial and puts the admin hopeful in an unfair situation. Ryan Vesey Review me! 15:13, 21 May 2012 (UTC)
• I was asked a somewhat similar question at my RfA and thought it was not particularly useful as a question ("How would you respond if somebody made a call for you to step down if you made a mistake using your tools?"). The entire recall process itself is rather farcical to begin with since it has no teeth and can be opted out of even after the recall. Since anyone can say "yes I will" regardless of intent, the answer is often no less empty than any other political promise, as Skinwalker points out. Still, anyone is welcome to ask it, I just don't see the utility in it. That said, I stand behind what I said at my RfA. Dennis Brown - 2¢ © 14:03, 21 May 2012 (UTC)

• Every admin is open to recall, whether they are asked about it or not at their RFA, and whether they say they are open to it or not. The community decides who should be awarded the mop, and the community decides who should have it taken away. GiantSnowman 15:24, 21 May 2012 (UTC)

That last part demonstrably untrue. The community has no way to remove admin rights once granted, though it has been a perennial proposal. Skinwalker (talk) 15:33, 21 May 2012 (UTC)
Not quite true - RFC/AN/ANi etc. GiantSnowman 15:35, 21 May 2012 (UTC)
Please cite one instance of desysopping via RFC, AN, or ANI. Skinwalker (talk) 15:38, 21 May 2012 (UTC)
Wiki: Bureaucrats only allows for desysopping if it is self-requested by the administrator, if the administrator is inactive, or following an arbcom decision. Ryan Vesey Review me! 15:39, 21 May 2012 (UTC)
Yeah, my bad, I was thinking of this and somehow thought it was an RFC, when it wasn't. Still, my point stands - the community could very easily take isue with an admin having the tools and then escalate it up to ArbCom, and just because it hasn't happened yet (through my limited Wikipedia knowledge) doesn't mean it won't. GiantSnowman 15:43, 21 May 2012 (UTC)
There was an admin who got desysopped at arbcom just last week. See Wiki: Arbitration/Requests/Case/Rich_Farmbrough#Rich_Farmbrough.27s_administrator_status_revoked. However, "recall" is generally used to refer to voluntary desysopping, per WP:RECALL. Asking an RfA candidate if they support the terms at WP:RECALL shouldn't be problematic. -Scottywong| chatter _ 16:00, 21 May 2012 (UTC)
I feel that if admin candidates think they'll definitely support or be opposed to WP:RECALL, it wouldn't hurt to say as much, but I think that should be each candidate's individual choice. Some people don't want to divulge it in the middle of an RfA, which I think is fine, and slike me) don't really have an opinion on it until after becoming admins, so shouldn't feel pressured to say something. I'll just speak for myself when I say that I'm glad I didn't commit one way or the other until I had some experience as an admin, because I think it's a decision that should be made when you come to fully understand the role from doing it (personally, I won't ever be open to recall because some of the admin work I specialize in invariably makes a lot of enemies, but I don't have any issue with people who feel they should adhere to recall standards; I'd never oppose an RfA based on that). The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 16:23, 21 May 2012 (UTC)

I've never really liked questions about recall at RfA. We have people who don't like candidates pledging recall, those who have it as a prerequisite, and those who don't care. It doesn't really say much about a candidate and just allows at least one group of people to oppose for no other reason. Additionally, it is of little value. An admin is not bound by what they answer at RfA - even if the pledge to be open to recall, they can refuse to do so once (if) they are successful; it tells us nothing useful. ItsZippy ^{(talk • contributions)} 20:12, 21 May 2012 (UTC)

It's an unhelpful question. As with Jc37's tedious boilerplate questions, I would like to see RfA candidates actively ignoring these questions. Axl ¤ [Talk] 22:32, 21 May 2012 (UTC)

I've been taking a browse over old RfAs. I've noticed that in around 2005/6, editors were passing with around 2500 edits. Current RfAs now pass with 7.5K+ edits, meaning there has been lots of change. Any specific reason? --Thine Antique Pen (talk • contributions) 15:31, 21 May 2012 (UTC)

If you go further back you'll find even less edits. Personally I'd say it is a reflection of the growth in size and complexity of Wiki English. I wouldn't be surprised to find at least three times as many policies, and three times as many areas of admin work, as there were back then - so three times as long to "learn the ropes" (not that number of edits is a direct measure of this, but it is a useful guide). QU ^TalkQu 15:34, 21 May 2012 (UTC)
(edit conflict)Wiki is, frankly, more important now that it was in 2006. The Main Page is one of the Top 5 most visited pages on the Internet, and giving someone the ability to mess around with that should not be taken lightly. There's also the simple fact that there are far more editors, so a user's cluefulness can only be evaluated by a track record of clueful actions, as opposed to direct interaction between many of the people !voting in an RFA. Achowat (talk) 15:35, 21 May 2012 (UTC)
I've assumed it was more volume of rules, rather than importance (although those two are not orthogonal). I'd like to see a timeline of rules and guidelines, both count and byte size over time. I wouldn't be surprised if it roughly correlated with the growing community hurdle of edit count.--SPhilbrick(Talk) 18:57, 21 May 2012 (UTC)

• What is the average number of edits for the unsuccessful candidates then and now? That would be useful to know to see if it was a pattern, and which pattern it is. ie: Is the number of edits the reason for the lack of success, or are only editors with more edits willing to run the gauntlet? Otherwise, the data isn't meaningful. Dennis Brown - 2¢ © 15:37, 21 May 2012 (UTC)

You'll find the answers to those questions in the tables that were created for research here. On the pass side,I seem to recall that the figure was an average of around 13,000 edits over the sample period - which of course was far more recent that 2005/6. Even more recently however, the number of RfA (both failed and passed) is now so low that there is not enough data to demonstrate anything really objective. The one extrapolation is that this year will probably close with around 18 new admins, and by the end of next year we will have hit negative equity. --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 19:53, 21 May 2012 (UTC)
On the other side it is really easy to get many edits really fast through the anti-vandalism tools like Huggle, gloo or Stiki. And still the big 'question' is why so many person are looking at these editcounters and not on the quality of the edits. mabdul 20:08, 23 May 2012 (UTC)
Obviously, since it is much easie tyo open a pie chart or to click through the links in the RfA template than to go and investigate edits one by one.--Ymblanter (talk) 20:27, 23 May 2012 (UTC)
I usually have it list 500 edits and go back at least 6 months, then sample, then go back a few more pages and sample. Read lots of the summaries, click if I'm interested. I tend to look at talk page edits more than article edits, to get a feel for their attitudes in general. Far from perfect, but at least it is random. Dennis Brown - 2¢ © 21:09, 23 May 2012 (UTC)
This is a good attitude but I am afraid not everybody shares it.--Ymblanter (talk) 05:27, 24 May 2012 (UTC)
Indeed this is how one should evaluate candidates (also looking at older edits and edits sorted by namespace; it is a bit more difficult to judge the edits if the candidate is a vandal-fighter). Neither the edit count nor the answers to the boring questions tell you much about a candidate, but their user talk page and contributions link tell you everything. (Sometimes I think RfA was actually better in the past, when the questions and discussion were at the bottom of the page, and the top just had the nomination statement and the all-important talk and contributions links). —Kusma (t·c) 07:05, 24 May 2012 (UTC)
• It is odd that you said that, as I didn't participate back then and didn't know that is the old way. Just the other day I was thinking that something like this might be a better "new" way to do RfA. Let the !vote section be only that, and all discussion take place at the bottom of the page. The majority of the time, the comments are meaningless unless the support ratio is between exactly 71% and 79%, no matter how much we claim it isn't a "vote". Dennis Brown - 2¢ © 11:26, 24 May 2012 (UTC)

How about not allowing RfA without at least 1000 edits? No editor, ever, has passed without at least a four-digit edit count, and many NOTNOWs are these. This is still far below the de facto requirement of 2500+edits, so I don't see how that would cause any problems.--Jasper Deng (talk) 02:44, 16 May 2012 (UTC)

Wiki: RfA reform 2011/Minimum requirement has been sitting around untouched since September. Perhaps when Worm gets back we can at least have a legitimate RFC on this. Ryan Vesey Review me! 02:48, 16 May 2012 (UTC)
(edit conflict)I wouldn't particularly mind, and I'm sure it would cut down on some of the NOTNOWS (Which from what I've seen, hasn't been as much in previous years). However I'm sure during the process of making the consensus someone would propose that the community would support someone with less then 1000 edits (Which I don't think has happened since the early days of the project), and that it's quality not quantity. I'd like to see this RFC.--SKATER ^{Is Back} 02:55, 16 May 2012 (UTC)
I agree strongly. People may disagree with this idea, but I really don't want to see this die here. The number of WP:NOTNOW and WP:SNOW closures is so high that something really has to be done. Even if an RFC on this failed, it is better than the occasional mentions the idea has been getting over the years. Ryan Vesey Review me! 03:01, 16 May 2012 (UTC)
And I am saying that a community wide binding RFC should be done, like the recent ones for pending changes and the abortion articles, not an informal request for comment that attracts a couple of editors. Ryan Vesey Review me! 03:05, 16 May 2012 (UTC)
(ECx2) It probably wouldn't cut down on the notnows. It would just change WP:NOTNOW to WP:DONTHAVEENOUGHEDITS. IMHO all we need to do is for editors that have been around long enough to know better to handle notnows correctly. (1) Don't transclude it for them. (2) If they do transclude, don't rush to be the first to jump into the oppose section and tell them that they're a fool for nominating them self. (3) Politely shut it down, explaining the gist of notnow, and give them the here's all the good things you can do as an eager new editor speech.--Cube lurker (talk) 03:12, 16 May 2012 (UTC)
This could be a technical restriction, using an edit filter with a custom warning like "You do not have at least 1000 edits. Are you sure you wish to proceed?" (followed by an explanation of NOTNOW). What I see is that NOTNOW RfAs with such low edit counts are a waste of time for the closer.--Jasper Deng (talk) 03:17, 16 May 2012 (UTC)
The opinions are certainly diverse in nature. I see no harm in an RFC to see what people think. All you hear is RFA is broken anyways.--SKATER ^{Is Back} 03:19, 16 May 2012 (UTC)
@Jasper 100% wrong on it being a waste of time. If done correctly it's an opportunity to set a new editor on the path to becoming a productive editor. But if all we can expect from experienced editors is to rough the noob up a bit and then give them a kick in the ass out the door, then maybe we do need a technical means to protect them from us.--Cube lurker (talk) 03:31, 16 May 2012 (UTC)
I disagree. Much of the time the new editor is not given an explanation better than a written policy page. If an experienced editor sees my proposed filter being triggered, he/she can offer advice directly, thus avoiding the time needed for the RfA. RfA is not exactly editor feedback.--Jasper Deng (talk) 03:41, 16 May 2012 (UTC)
I would be completely in support of such a policy, and would also support a minimum time of involvement parameter. bd2412 T 03:49, 16 May 2012 (UTC)
In response to your idea about WP:NOTNOW changing to WP:DONTHAVEENOUGHEDITS, if a technical means of halting a transclusion of an RfA for someone who did not meet the minimum requirement didn't work, any RfA could (by policy) be closed immediately with no oppose votes at all. It could then be highly encouraged that the person who closes the RfA write a message to the user explaining the process and set them on a productive path. Ryan Vesey Review me! 03:58, 16 May 2012 (UTC)

A huge amount of focussed work and discussion was done here last year, but the active participants just got pissed off by the group of editors who have been doing their best to wreck every reasonable RfA, and the project to reform the system. RfA candidature has now dropped to such an incredible low that it's easy to do whatever needs to be done to the SNOWS:NOTNOWS even if they waste their own and everyone else's time; what Wikipedia should be doing now is looking at ways to encourage mature, experienced editors of the right calibre to run for office. The process is indeed brocken, but among those bold enough to give it a try, it does have a knack of generally avoiding close calls - those who should get the bit usually get it; and those who shouldn't, get shown the door pretty smartish. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 04:08, 16 May 2012 (UTC)

I Agree, but you're forgetting the editors who aren't "quite" there yet, and in my opinion and slight experience turns into a bloodbath rather quickly and I think therein is where the problem lies.--SKATER ^{Is Back} 04:13, 16 May 2012 (UTC)
(edit conflict)I agree with your point, but I still think the minimum requirement would be a good idea. Perhaps, you should follow up on your idea by creating some sort of an RfA nominator task force. I'm not talking about WP:REQUESTNOM, I'm saying a group of editors who would actively search for candidates who have a shot. Of course, a project like that could backfire if several of the nominations fail. Ryan Vesey Review me! 04:14, 16 May 2012 (UTC)

I think we should have a minimum requirement that is pretty low, but set high enough to encapsulate an optimum number of the NOTNOWs. This would discourage editors who stand no chance of passing, and allow some of these NOTNOWs to be closed down right away, saving time and resources. --Rschen7754 06:03, 16 May 2012 (UTC)

The irony is that it's all been done or tried already. Over the last two or so years a group of us has trawled the database for likely candidates and canvassed them. They have all replied (with very few exceptions) that they are not prepared to go through the incivilities of the current humiliating system. We've already lost some very valuable and industrious editors who have left the project for good in disgust at the way they were treated in a process they didn't really need to go through - they would have been happy to continue as 'ordinary' users and great content editors or vandal fighters.
The idea of a minimum set of qualifications is not new, and has been discussed at great depth at here but not one single member of that task orce (did I say 'task force'?) was prepared to help launch a RfC. Others poured scorn on the efforts of the reform team and launched their own RfA reform projects, which unsurprisingly also failed. Anyway, it's not a big problem - people who don't nearly meet the basic criteria which are already set by the regular voters will SNOW and that's the end of their story. If they leave the project in disgust it's no big loss - most of them never made any worthwhile contributions or were dramamongers. (just review the most very recent of SNOWS and/or deleted transclusions, for example). Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 06:32, 16 May 2012 (UTC)
"If they leave the project in disgust it's no big loss - most of them never made any worthwhile contributions or were dramamongers. " - Wow. New users who want to be good users and dramamongers...yep, same group. Just lump them all in one big bunch. No big loss when new users who want to be good users and prematurely try for adminship get run off the project by the acid environment of RfA. Nope. No loss at all there. --Onorem♠Dil 06:54, 16 May 2012 (UTC)

Just as a passing comment, the editor with the least number of edits when he or she passed RfA that I'm aware of had 154 46 (sorry - forgot about Ilyanep). There may be one with fewer, but I don't have that data on hand. Clearly, that wouldn't have a hope now. :) - Bilby (talk) 07:14, 16 May 2012 (UTC)

I think I'd oppose any minimum higher than 1k. To vote for arbcom takes 150 edits. (I vaguely recall several discussions to raise the arbcom minimum to 400.) So with that in mind, I think 400 edits may be acceptable. - jc37 08:44, 16 May 2012 (UTC)

Nope, not all in the same group, you need to look at some of the past failed RfAs to understand before assuming every RfA candidate is experienced, mature, and really wants to help the project rather than impress their friends in the school canteen. They certainly won't impress any of us here at 'High Table'. Nobody, but nobody, can be serious about the encyclopedia if they steadfastly refuse to read any of the advice pages and get some experience and grow up before prematurely wanting to be an admin. That said, why does this discussion about minimum requirements continue? It's all been discussed to death for years. There are no written rules, the criteria are set by the voters, and they won't let anyone get the bit who is not ready for it. There will be scorn of course from the voters for those candidates who are too stupid to know what adminship is all about before they make utter fools of themselves. On the other hand, it is totally inadmissible to mock, taunt, and humiliate the genuine aspirants who have the right level of maturity and experience. All the stats, tables and tables and tables of research are here, what is really the point in speculating again without looking up the data that has been made available, and re-discussing the whole thing? What you'll find is that there is already a de facto minimum of 3,000 edits but that no one with less than a few thousand more is ever going to be given the key to the janitors' cupboard, so insisting on a written rule and wasting the community's time on an RfC to get it graven in stone is, well, wasting the community's time. Some of us already wasted a lot of enthusiasm for Wikipedia on the RfA reform project but only time will tell if the middle-aged children who ruined it for everyone will have got bored with it and run off to destroy other flowers in the park.-Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 09:21, 16 May 2012 (UTC)
I'll just add that much of the information was gathered, posted, and discussed here and here, so personally, Worm's proposal statement for an RfC proposal is a good as any - in fact it's excellent and I can't see how it needs to be improved. The problem is that it will never reach a measurable consensus - these things never do because those who want the right for themselves to present for adminship with fewer edits will vote it down, that's one of the reasons why RfA reform is a lost cause. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 09:34, 16 May 2012 (UTC)
Did anybody ever tried to put it on vote? The arguments that nobody with fewer than 1K edits passed an RFA since 2004? seem pretty much reasonable to me, and the new users who self-nominate for RFA two weeks after registering typically would not know that such an RfC exists.--Ymblanter (talk) 09:51, 16 May 2012 (UTC)

• Is closing a few WP:NOTNOWs a month really causing an undue burden on Wikipedia? Is there a chance that we might accidentally give the mop to someone with no clue and 50 edits? If you are going to impliment a hard limit that can't easily be undone by the policy WP:IAR, there is a burden to clearly demonstrate why it is the only option to protect Wikipedia as a whole. It would only add an unnecessary layer of bureaucracy to the process. A teenagers gets blown out with NOTNOWs and nothing is damaged, excepting a bruised ego which heals soon enough. As someone who has recently gone through the gauntlet I agree that the process needs improving, but raising the bar solves none of the real problems. It doesn't improve the quality of admins, nor the quantity, nor address the incivility found at RfAs. If anything, most WP:NOTNOW RfAs are more civil and constructive than average. At a minimum, it appears unnecessarily inconsistent with the 5th pillar. Dennis Brown - 2¢ © 09:58, 16 May 2012 (UTC)

• Hey Dennis, if you get a chance to mosey on over to the proposal Worm had created, he did include a workaround to the vote limit. In that case, people like User:Lustiger seth could still become admins. Ryan Vesey Review me! 12:40, 16 May 2012 (UTC)

• The minimum number of edits required is 42. Plus adminship on another wiki, of course. Or zero, if you are a bot. I support a minimum requirement of 42 edits. —Kusma (t·c) 10:17, 16 May 2012 (UTC)

Life, the Universe and Adminship? —MistyMorn (talk) 10:55, 16 May 2012 (UTC)

• Folks, I don't want to sound too negative here, but I don't like to see good people wasting their time. Yes, RfA is broken, but I've seen all attempts to improve it over the past 2 or 3 years crash and burn. It seems to me that RfA simply cannot be fixed by the Wikipedia consensus approach, because the group of editors who have been doing their best to wreck every reasonable RfA, and the project to reform the system (to use Kudpung's words) will not allow it. Consensus works surprisingly well for a lot of Wikipedia decisions, but when too many people are drawn in and there are too many contradictory and emotive opinions, every discussion collapses into an immovable mess. I'd like to be wrong, but I think the only way the admin selection process can possibly be improved now is by Foundation fiat. -- Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 11:15, 16 May 2012 (UTC)

• Maybe we need to only allow people with less than 3000 edits participate in the discussion on improving it....Dennis Brown - 2¢ © 11:30, 16 May 2012 (UTC)
• And also in the discussion which would restrict the participation of those who have less than 3000 edits in the discussion of improving RfA--Ymblanter (talk) 11:40, 16 May 2012 (UTC)
• This is missing the point. The most persistent disagreements on RfA-reform involve the most experienced editors. Therefore, we can only make further progress by excluding any editor with over 3000 edits. bobrayner (talk) 11:48, 16 May 2012 (UTC)
• Yes, excluding all the old hacks might actually work! (But of course, you'd have to get that exclusion decided by consensus first ;-) -- Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 12:13, 16 May 2012 (UTC)
• Haha, in that case the consensus would become to desysop everybody with new sysops granted to everyone between 10 and 3000 edits. Ryan Vesey Review me! 12:40, 16 May 2012 (UTC)
• And everyone under 16! -- Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 12:42, 16 May 2012 (UTC)

• Don't fix what's not broken. Serious. I went for RfA last month, and got Snow'd. It's not that big a deal if you can accept what has been said, work on what has been said, and don't take it personally. Serious. Leave it as it is, it's not broken. MrLittleIrish ^(talk) 申 11:55, 16 May 2012 (UTC)
  Well, I'd say that only 8 new admins in 5 months very much says "broken". Soon there genuinely will be too few active admins, and the Foundation will be forced to move. -- Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 12:15, 16 May 2012 (UTC)
  That is kind of my point, raising the bar to apply isn't going to increase the number of admins and is a waste of time. The fact that several admins have been subject to very public "trials" recently doesn't encourage others to make a go at the bit as well, regardless of the validity of said trials. Not everyone is ready or capable to deal with being put on display at RfA, even if they would make a great admin. It does make you feel like you are in the stocks, while others are encouraged to throw eggs at you. Dennis Brown - 2¢ © 12:51, 16 May 2012 (UTC)
  Yep, that is the "elephant in the room" problem. It would be nice to prevent newbies feeling bitten by actually stopping them running, but the real problem is getting new admins and not preventing the NOTNOWs. (And setting a minimum requirement has been !voted down every time it has been suggested.) -- Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 13:03, 16 May 2012 (UTC)
  (edit conflict)A part of me wonders if making RfA just a "support" or "oppose" vote with no rationales, and keep the Q&A portion for addressing issues. I know it isn't a vote, but the bureaucrat that closes it likely considers the credibility of the editor voting as serious as the rationale anyway. That fact may not be politically correct, but sometimes the truth isn't. Dennis Brown - 2¢ © 13:09, 16 May 2012 (UTC)

(edit conflict) To the OP, you've already wasted more of the community's collective time by making this preposterous proposal and would seek to waste even more collective time and effort by seeking to widen the debate into a full blown discussion. Think about it for one minute, hopeless newbie turns up at RFA, within a few minutes experienced editors politely point to existing RFA guidelines, usually after a short time the RFA is withdrawn. Just another stat. in the failed column, all done and dusted fairly quickly. Now, lets have a full discussion at RFC, hundreds if not thousands of opinions (as per previous RFA discussions), huge volumes of heat and very little light ending up in no change. My point is that it is far more efficient to leave well alone, deal with no-hopers quickly and effectively per now and not waste any more time discussing any suggestion of limits. If 999 is no good it is unlikely that 1001 will be. Leaky Caldron 13:05, 16 May 2012 (UTC)

I think the point is that a big number of NOTNOWS discourages application from serious candidates as well.--Ymblanter (talk) 13:11, 16 May 2012 (UTC)
Tough. If they are neither mature or sensible enough to read the wealth of existing guidelines and previous RFAs before submitting themselves they are time wasters. Please let us not waste any more of ours discussing their incompetence. Leaky Caldron 13:14, 16 May 2012 (UTC)
I have to agree with Leaky Caldron. I was promoted on January 2, 2008, when RFA was active, but still a madhouse. (This was admist ageism, Kurt Weber) I kind of feel the community has also brought this problem upon themselves and won't admit it. The fact that RFA became a madhouse of problems spiraled into less people wanting to throw their hat in the gauntlet, and now we lack nominations overall. Quality vs. Quantity sinks this proposal in my book, and if people can't read RFA guidelines then improve their editing, then they shouldn't run. However, the numerous reforms seems to be unattractive to the idea of going after the atmosphere that caused all this. You want to attract admin nominations, we need to be a bit less jumping the gun on one or two things and WP:AGF. Look towards that before going after the minimum edits. Mitch32^{(There is a destiny that makes us... family.)} 13:31, 16 May 2012 (UTC)
I agree, but I'm not sure how we can apply a WP:DICK test for those that want to !vote. Trying to get the editors voting to be civil and open minded is a bit like herding cats. Dennis Brown - 2¢ © 13:34, 16 May 2012 (UTC)
In general, a recommendation that people AGF maybe things like a comment that wasn't the wisest, decisions they may not agree with on a personal level. I think in general, overlooking things would be a nice help at times. Mitch32^{(There is a destiny that makes us... family.)} 13:38, 16 May 2012 (UTC)
It always seems to happen on this board. No matter what the topic is it always gets hijacked to the same old same old. Someone should split off this thread. There's no connection between the right way to deal with someone with 25 edits applying for admin and the usual topics of volume of candidates, how people should !vote etc.--Cube lurker (talk) 13:42, 16 May 2012 (UTC)

• I'm against a minimum requirement because everyone should be allowed to decide for themselves whether they are really willing to run. That said, I'd support - if technically possible - some kind of edit-filter based pre-check that displays a warning if an account is too new or has too few edits alongside an explanation and a link to NOTNOW - but with the possibility to start an RFA anyway. Regards SoWhy 15:31, 16 May 2012 (UTC)
  • It doesn't require automation to inform an unprepared time waster that they are an unprepared time waster. Leaky Caldron 15:35, 16 May 2012 (UTC)

It's hard enough for most people to take criticism, it makes it worse when your also met with hostility.--SKATER ^{Is Back} 16:01, 16 May 2012 (UTC)
If someone cannot accept criticism or hostility they will never make an admin. on En-Wiki. Like I said, let's not make an automated drama out of what is, essentially, a none event due to someone being ill-prepared. The amount of community time already spent discussing this nonsense is already the equivalent of dealing with 50 not now RFAs. Leaky Caldron 16:10, 16 May 2012 (UTC)

• The last time a request for adminship passed with the candidate having less than 1000 edits and didn't had any special circumstances that required the tools (developer, adminship in another major wiki project like seth RFA mentioned above, or worked for Wikimedia) was back in 2005. It's always been clear that editors having less than 1000 edits that doesn't meet these circumstances will not pass an adminship request.

The main issue here is that unfortunately new editors when they start contributing to the project are way too overeager and wants to help in good faith. They bumped into some crap or a vandal that took a while to delete or block, and they become curious on becoming an administrator, especially if it's empty so they don't know the reasons that other candidates is either passing or SNOW failing. They usually doesn't read the instructions, nor the proper policies/guidelines that adminship candidates should know if they want to get the tools, such as WP:V, WP:NOR, WP:N, and so forth and jump into it. Soon there's a bunch of editors massively oppose the RFA within a hour or two which is clearly biting and it becomes closed after a few hours, and it (almost always) ends up worse than if the editor would have never tried RFA in the first place because they become discouraged, feel unhelpful and leave the project.

I've only seen a few times in my eight years in this project (about 10 times maybe more but it isn't many) that the editor who failed RFA does not get discouraged, read and try to expertise some areas of this project, has the patience to wait and successfully pass RFA. It's clear that some type of edit count restriction is needed for this process, because of the extremely discouragement and bloodbaths of these NOTNOW requests. If these requests stop, I think gaining the tools will be much more editor friendly as once the candidate starts the process, we would have seen a good sample of the candidate edits to make a decision in the candidate, instead of 10 WP:NOTNOW opposes in 15 minutes without even bothering to look at the contributor edits. That's my two cents. Thanks Secret ^account 17:03, 16 May 2012 (UTC)
It's not clear to me and you've got a brass neck wanting to put the community through a 6 week RFC to discuss a subject that has been round the houses several times. Arbitrary thresholds have no place here. Nor have people who can't or won't read plentiful guidance. I will oppose anyone at RFA who condones this nonsense. That's my 2p. Leaky Caldron 17:31, 16 May 2012 (UTC)
Calling it nonsense might be a bit harsh. I understand the logic behind it, I just think it is counter to our founding principles. Dennis Brown - 2¢ © 17:35, 16 May 2012 (UTC)
@Leaky How is this being drama? Your combative arguments are making a good faith conversation that currently has sizeable support aren't helping this cause. Drama is letting these good faith candidates try and fail over and over again and leave the project for no reason. Secret ^account 17:44, 16 May 2012 (UTC)
If an inappropriate candidate does not immediately read WP:NOTNOW the first time it crops up in their RFA, understand, digest and immediately withdraw their RFA, they deserve whatever collateral damage they suffer for the remainder of their doomed RFA. It does not need automation, it simply requires better management of the process to reduce the time for which hopeless candidates are exposed due to their own folly in not (a) reading guidance before applying (b) not reading WP:NOTNOW as soon as it is reflected in their RFA. Leaky Caldron 17:53, 16 May 2012 (UTC)
I'm not a fan of the automation idea, but the only reason I'd even consider it it to protect new editors from established editors with the viewpoint you have. You seem to be eager to WP:BITE someone who may not have a WP:CLUE, but probably needs a polite nudge in the right direction, not a beating so they'll see their folly at trying to be a part of the encyclopedia anyone can edit.--Cube lurker (talk) 18:55, 16 May 2012 (UTC)
What you think I'm eager to do and what is a fact are 2 different things. Now bugger off with your snide and unsubstantiated personal attack on my motives. Leaky Caldron 19:57, 16 May 2012 (UTC)
You know what, you're damn right that took your comments a step too far. I appologize for that. I'm just having trouble with your tone toward these people (the notnows). Upon reflection though I'm sure that your tone toward an actual not now candidate would be different then how you're speaking here.--Cube lurker (talk) 20:12, 16 May 2012 (UTC)
Oppose me at RfA if I ever choose to run then (although I would find that to be just as arbitrary as a minimum edit count). I find you to be the one who is acting ridiculously. You complain that the communities time is being wasted here, yet you choose to "waste" your time acting like a bull in a china shop. As you have shown, there are reasons to disagree with this idea, but as many editors have shown, there are reasons to agree. If this goes to RfC and you don't want to waste your time, don't comment. Ryan Vesey Review me! 18:43, 16 May 2012 (UTC)
I will oppose you because you lack judgement and due to the paucity of you argument. You state "The number of WP:NOTNOW and WP:SNOW closures is so high that something really has to be done." Why? Not one word to justify you claim that something "must" be done. Not one scrap of factual evidence. Just a knee jerk response to an equally vacuous statement from the OP, "How about not allowing RfA without at least 1000 edits?" You either perceive a problem that doesn't really cause serious disruption or you are unable to articulate and provide evidence what and why there is a problem. Either inadequacy on you part is a reason to oppose you, here or at RFA. If you are going to try to change things try using facts. Leaky Caldron 18:54, 16 May 2012 (UTC)
So I went and gathered some data. In 2011 there were 39 snow closes 20 of those were for editors who had less than 1000 edits and 27 of those were for editors who had less than 2000 edits. 4 users were blocked as a result of their RfA 2 of those were blocked as sockpuppets. Of the 39, 3 left almost immediately after their RfA. I will agree that the number of snow closes I found here doesn't show that something has to be done as I stated; however, I do think a minimum requirement would cause more benefit than harm and already exists in a de facto manner. Beyond reducing the number of snow closures, the minimum requirement would serve another purpose. It would make it clear to new editors that adminship isn't dependent on a person's desire to do good work, but is instead dependent on experience. An analysis of user essays regarding their requirements for adminship show that the average active user who has made their requirements public has a minimum expectation of 3700 edits and 9 months of editing. (Note, the number of snow closes and edit count research was based on information found by Worm That Turned. I did the research on editors leaving and the research on user essays was done by either Kudpung or Worm That Turned.) Ryan Vesey Review me! 19:29, 16 May 2012 (UTC)
Good work. So 20 editors applied for RFA with less that 1000 edits and between 0 and 3 of them appear to have left for unspecified reasons. I think you've done an excellent job of proving that there is no enduring issues that require automation based RFA declines. Leaky Caldron 19:52, 16 May 2012 (UTC)

• Hmm. Maybe I should speak up at this point. 1,000 edits seems like a reasonable guideline, but I don't think it's worth the bother because it's too easily gamed - and we do want to discourage mechanised/trivial editing for the purpose of meeting threshholds, don't we? Also, there are always the weird edge cases. For a few laughs, read my RFA from a little over a month ago. I had absolutely no ambition to be a candidate and would have said nooooooo to being asked if I wanted to be nominated; but when I was surprised with a nomination I thought why not see whether they want me, laid my cards on the table, and it was quite a fun run, with people who are usually naysayers supporting me, socks flying out of the drawer to oppose me - and I got it and yesterday was able to act in an emergency and update the Did You Know? section on the Main Page. (Terrifying though that was.) In that RfA, there was a certain amount of engagement between those commenting, and I've also seen that in other recent RfAs, with people asking those who are being very hostile to tone it down. That derivative of our civility policy seems to me to be the key here, just as incivility is one of the things driving editors away in general. We will still have the problem of premature self-nominations, and yes, it's a pity. I noticed that one recent candidate said a number of times that he was using it as a form of editor review; I kind of wish that one had not been SNOW-closed, but that's the policy we've evolved. I hope he comes back to WP. I like the emphasis above on gently talking to such candidates on their own talkpages. Yngvadottir (talk) 18:24, 16 May 2012 (UTC)

• I got the mop 3 weeks after you. It's good to know I'm not the only who can get a bit terrified at using some of the tools for the first time. Dennis Brown - 2¢ © 18:48, 16 May 2012 (UTC)
• If the requirement was set at 1,000 article space edits, I think it would be a lot harder to game the system. We tend to pay little attention to editors who make dozens of edits to their own user space as they figure things out (or merely entertain themselves); but it is more difficult to make a large number of suspect edits in article space. bd2412 T 03:11, 17 May 2012 (UTC)
BD2412, I would definitely support that idea. But what about also requiring some minimum in other places where admins will have to work? Granted, a bucket list of four or five spaces wherein a prospective editor would have to have a minimum number of edits (say, 50 edits at AfD, for example) could be manipulated, but it would nonetheless require someone to develop minimum familiarity with procedures. And many of the over-eager newbees would then better understand what they were getting into, and would not jump in so quickly. HuskyHuskie (talk) 03:50, 17 May 2012 (UTC)
I agree with a spread in edits. I suggest a minimum of 1000 Article, and 500 Project. Probably a minimum "Unique pages edited" is worth offering. I don't think Gaming is an actual problem, because already gaming is easily discovered and used as a reason to oppose. What about categories, templates and files? --SmokeyJoe (talk) 04:59, 17 May 2012 (UTC)
Trying to specify x number of edits here, and y number seems unlikely to arrive at a consensus regarding which areas are important, and is a poor substitute for looking at what a candidate has actually done. 500 WP space edits to some obscure topical project is far different from 500 edits to AIV/RFPP/AFD/AN/etc. Second, 1000 edits is extremely easy to reach in certain areas, and could probably be done in 1-4 days of concerted activity without resorting to any sort of gaming. But remember the point here is not to set actual qualifications for RFA, but instead to deal with those who stand no chance at present of passing. Don't start trying to expand the qualification threshold to do more then that. Monty₈₄₅ 05:46, 17 May 2012 (UTC)
See no point in setting this. I think "I know it when I see it" suffices. Why should we bind the community when they can just get out of it for IAR for the right candidate anyway?--Wehwalt (talk) 12:38, 17 May 2012 (UTC)
Since, as has been pointed out, a candidate who knows their way around Wikipedia can make a thousand edits "in 1-4 days of concerted activity", I fail to see how "the right candidate" could be one who is unable to do this. bd2412 T 13:26, 17 May 2012 (UTC)

• If you want to prevent gaming of the system, it's not difficult. Make the requirement "more than 1000 edits, with your first edit being at least 1 year ago". You can't "game" the duration of 1 year. -Scottywong| babble _ 14:09, 17 May 2012 (UTC)

• Why are you trying to come up with rules that can't be gamed? One, you'll fail; it's impossible to come up with rules that can't be gamed. Two, you don't need to. If someone is a worm and tries to game the rules, then we don't need to worry about their feelings. Just oppose them like we usually do, and the RFA fails. What you're apparently trying to do is come up with a way not to scare off newbies who don't know they're not going to pass (and also to avoid "wasting the community's time", which is a fairly silly reason to add another level of bureaucracy). That doesn't require rules; that requires (a) people with sound judgment noticing the new RFA, closing it per NOTNOW, and leaving a friendly explanation and advice on their talk page, and (b) people with sound judgment who resist the temptation to say mean, stupid things in the oppose section of an obvious newbie. Rather than work on rules for submitting an RFA (which newbies won't look at), you should try to recruit actual people with sound judgment to RFA. --Floquenbeam (talk) 14:27, 17 May 2012 (UTC)
  • (edit conflict)At last, finally someone who gets it. Leaky Caldron 14:37, 17 May 2012 (UTC)
    • Concur with the very clueful comment by Floquenbeam.--Wehwalt (talk) 15:54, 17 May 2012 (UTC)
• Though it sound plausible, there really isn't any sold requirement. When I first started editing in 2007, an editor with 2 month and 2500 edits across the site was sufficient. –BuickCenturyDriver 14:35, 17 May 2012 (UTC)

The bureaucracy is expanding to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy

 

Why more rules? Why? Is WP:RFA overwhelmed with obvious snow/notnow cases that aren't being handled properly? I don't think so. Is this solution going to reduce the number of snow cases? Highly unlikely, as the snow/notnow cases are people who generally don't understand our standards anyway. There's a great big whopping edit notice with an animated graphic when you attempt to add a request for adminship (see left graphic), and it's already being ignored by these cases. There's no reason to believe that setting a bar of 1000 edits is going to cure this 'problem'. This is a solution in search of a problem. It's been proposed a bunch of times. Looking over the history of WP:RFA since the beginning of the year, I see precious few snow/notnow closures, and most of those are done in rather rapid fashion. I fail to see how this proposal would reduce any of that. We're doing just fine thank you, we don't need any more rules. --Hammersoft (talk) 15:56, 17 May 2012 (UTC)

There's a place I visit in Florida that has a big red sign that reads "Please do not enter the alligator area; you will be eaten." Yet, apparently a few people each year do in fact enter the alligator area.

If people are willing to ignore big red signs warning them about honest-to-God real-life alligators, I suppose it shouldn't surprise me that they ignore the big red sign warning them not to enter the metaphorical alligator tank of RfA.

My "solution" to the problem of WP:NOTNOW candidates being savaged is for the rest of us to not act like alligators when we come across such a candidate. People will continue to, for whatever reason, walk into the alligator pen, and no amount of begging, warning, edit filters or automation will stop them. 28bytes (talk) 16:23, 17 May 2012 (UTC)
I completely agree. The only reason that I supported the limit was because of the bloodbath RFA can become, maybe instead we should just remember not to Bite them. Assume that they are actually trying to help after all--SKATER ^{Is Back} 18:31, 17 May 2012 (UTC)
I respect the intent of that comment, but we live in an imperfect world. Unless we plan to impose standards of civility on RfA voters (which, by the way, would not be a bad idea), we must be prepared for the fact that some RfA participants will bite, and some will bite the newbies. As for the expansion of the bureaucracy, creating an all-volunteer advertising-free internet encyclopedia is not an organic thing. The ability to do so in any sort of coherent sense is contingent on adherence to some degree of internal regulation, and as the process goes forward we discover that specific rules are needed to address problems that were not foreseen when the original structure was set up. bd2412 T 15:35, 19 May 2012 (UTC)
• The point is, if a great whopping big animated red graphic isn't enough to get snow/notnows to read and stop what they are doing before posting their RfA, having a 1000 edit limit isn't going to "fix" it either. That graphic IS what appears when you try to edit WP:RFA. Go ahead. Try it. You'll see. I quote fix, because nobody has indicated any evidence that this "problem" is in fact a problem. --Hammersoft (talk) 20:43, 19 May 2012 (UTC)
• I'm opposed to any such "fix" as well. I agree with 28tara-bites that self-control is the greatest attribute in demand. Otherwise it is best letting the record reflect the day these new accounts were so ambitious. Especially if it fits a pattern of collecting hats that would never emerge if the overzealous requests were never transcluded. My76Strat (talk) 20:59, 19 May 2012 (UTC)
Any candidate who is clearly underqualified (edits/maturity/attitude, etc) who sees that big red STOP sign and does not follow its invitation to read some linked advice pages, has disqualified themselves immediately. Anyone who didn't/can't/won't read policy or guidelines before they act in any way on Wikipedia is not suitable admin material. Let them go ahead and make fools of themselves, which is what they will be doing, but as someone said (I think it was Ryan) damage to young egos heals fast. If they abandon Wikipedia after such an attempt, then they were obviously not here for the right reasons. There's still no need to be unpleasant to them. Plain, civil opposition or a SNOWclose is all that is needed, otherwise there is a risk that they will ;be back with a vengeance - as vandals. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 01:17, 20 May 2012 (UTC)
One comment on the big flashy sign is that by the time an editor gets to it, they've already created the RfA, written a statement and answered 3 questions. If you decided to jump from a plane, went to the jump site, got kitted up, put on the parachute, got in the plane, got to the required height and just as you were about to jump out the door saw a sign saying "are you sure you've read up on parachute safety", would you jump? I changed the group notice so that you'd get the message when creating the RfA, and NOTNOWs dropped significantly last year. Recent changes to the software mean that you don't get the message on creation again, so NOTNOWs have gone back up. Anyone bright enough to fix the message, please do. Worm^TT · (talk) 15:28, 21 May 2012 (UTC)
Ah, so that's why. Yes, It needs fixing again. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 19:28, 21 May 2012 (UTC)
How about moving the notice out of the editing sequence, and having it appear as part of WP:RFA#About RfA and its process? --Tryptofish (talk) 19:34, 21 May 2012 (UTC)
There's no way to fix it, as the developers disabled the use of REVISIONUSER to show the current username when used in editintros, and they seem uninterested in fixing it. If you want a notice, it might be best to rewrite it so it's not out of place for someone nominating someone else and then display it unconditionally on page creation. Anomie⚔ 01:43, 22 May 2012 (UTC)
I've removed the conditional on REVISIONUSER, and it works again. I've also made it slightly more generic. I expect the NOTNOWS will fall again now, so the need for a minimum requirement is probably going to be moot again. Worm^TT · (talk) 13:45, 25 May 2012 (UTC)

• For reference: the (now archived) previous version of my questions.

To be clear from the start:

1. While also taking into account the substantive discussion that was had recently, the following is mostly in relation to previous discussion here at WT:RfA (which, incidentally, was what several people (including myself) were referring to without actually linking to it).
2. Anyone can oppose/support an RfX for pretty much any personal reason. So if someone wishes to oppose because they oppose "boilerplating", they are entitled to. That said, back here in the rest of wikipedia, we OFTEN create set "boilerplates" (though we usually use the term templates unless we want to make usage of said template to seem semantically negative). Besides the policies and guidelines, we create essay pages to link to in a discussion, which summarise our thoughts and/or concerns in regards to specific concerns. So to edit a set of questions for use in a particular discussion (RfA in this case) is merely another application of that common practice. The benefit of creating a template of questions is simply to not have to remake the wheel for every RfA. Concerning something in every nom which doesn't change - the tools and the responsibilities that the candidate is requesting. So anyway, this is simply common practice throughout Wiki English. (And as such, while you are welcome to your opinion, I'm really disinterested in debating this practice at this time.)

So anyway, with that all out of the way. I spent some time considering my questions. And while I still assert there is value in each, I changed them for a few reasons:

1. The tools of adminship have continued to expand. So an attempt to try to be even semi- all-inclusive is starting to me to feel like a pointless exercise.
2. Fetchcomms, Wizardman, et all. do have a valid point about the cut-n-paste quality to the original first 3 questions (block/protect/csd). In looking them over, while I still assert there is value in them, I think that, in trying to hone neutrality in them, I think I may have perhaps neutralised or even somewhat neutered them to limited usefullness. At the very least, they needed to be refactored in some way.
3. While the IAR question may still be useful (as others have noted), I thought it also needed a bit more clarity and possibly a touch of specificity.

So with all that in mind, here's how I updated them. Note also that I added a link to my personal criteria as well. Enjoy:

I welcome your thoughts concerning the content of each of the questions. - jc37 12:12, 26 May 2012 (UTC)

Well, let me go on record as disliking copy-and-paste questions, especially multiple ones. I ask a fair amount of questions at RfAs myself, but I try to both limit the number of questions I ask and ensure that each question is directly relevant to the candidate. I think if additional boilerplate questions are going to be added to multiple RfAs (much less all RfAs), it would be wise to get consensus for that here first, rather than just copying and pasting them in and hoping for the best, so I'm glad you're bringing it up for discussion on this page. 28bytes (talk) 14:09, 26 May 2012 (UTC)
Actually, it's a subst'd template that I have as a subpage in my userspace.
As for the rest that's not what I'm asking about. I'm asking about the content of the questions. I respectfully ask that if you would like to have a discussion about whether editors should be able to pose certain types of questions, to please start a separate discussion. - jc37 14:27, 26 May 2012 (UTC)
I see. You'd rather just skip the "should I do this?" discussion and go straight to the "how should I do this?" discussion. I'll refrain from commenting further, then. 28bytes (talk) 16:19, 26 May 2012 (UTC)
I think the questions invite responses that recite policy without necessarily revealing whether the candidate really understands the reasons behind them. I think questions that ask a candidate to make a decision in a circumstance that they may face as an admin in a situation where policy has to be applied in a nuanced fashion, and then explain the policy behind it, are more inciteful as to the demeanor of the admin. Question 1 basically asks the candidate to recite the text you link them to, question 2 is problematic in that WP:IAR should be used sparingly and there aren't many situations you would want to regularly go IAR rather then just fixing the rule. Question 3 will most likely get a response about considering policy rationales and not counting !votes, but is unlikely to consider the tougher situation where the !votes are showing that actual consensus may be inconsistent with policy. Question 4 is pretty good. Question 5 invites some platitude about helping out, or having noticed some backlog that needs addressing. Monty₈₄₅ 15:50, 26 May 2012 (UTC)
Thanks for your comments. I appreciate you taking the time to look through them and comment.
(Guessing you meant insightful rather than inciteful?)
Every question now asks for personal responses (note the use of "you").
And while we would like to presume that we all interpret policy the same way, I have found from long watching WP:DR pages and various notice boards (not to mention arbcom cases) that we all clearly do not.
I agree that questions dealing with hypotheticals can be nice, but I find I learn more from these questions than I do from (most of) the various hypotheticals I've seen. (It really varies.)
We all hear people say that IAR should be used sparingly. And that's usually from those who (understandably) see IAR as means where someone tries to bypass consensus to do what they want. But in truth we all use IAR nearly every time we edit. Being bold and editing without seeking a consensus for every single edit is one example. It's part of why I framed the question as I did. Understanding the interdependency of BOLD and CON is something that can be tenuous. And as admins so often are called upon to be determiners of consensus, and to take actions for the betterment of the Wiki. It's important that they understand that nuance. and that's not something that they are going to be able to merely copy-paste from some guideline somewhere. That only comes through experience in editing.
And nod sometimes, but I like the last one : ) - While sometimes the candidate has already answered the question in one of the default RfA questions, that's often not the case. And platitudes or not, what they choose to say can be (though not always) just as enlightening as what is said. Though if the first default RfA question was slightly rephrased, I could drop the last one.
Thanks again for your thoughts. - jc37 04:43, 27 May 2012 (UTC)

You really don't see the merit of discussion of these kinds of questions being asked fruitful before this type of discussion? Someone should just make a boilerplate/template of the answers to save the candidate the time of clicking on the link of the prior RFA to copy/paste and modify the answers. Then it may become clearier. 71.209.176.227 (talk) 02:06, 27 May 2012 (UTC)
Oh please do. And please drop me a link to the page when you do. I'm sure I would find it interesting, and would be happy to discuss the answers with you. - jc37 04:15, 27 May 2012 (UTC)
To the best of my knowledge, no Wikipedian has definitive answers for questions 1-3; I'm not sure if I've seen answers to those questions that would even rise IMO to the level of "good answers". They may be questions that the voters would really like to have answers to, that we'd all like to have answers to, but I'm not sure if we could even mount a successful RFC to answer the questions, much less get them answered during an RFA. - Dank (push to talk) 17:02, 30 May 2012 (UTC)
Believe it or not, someone in the past, did just that. And even linked the answers to various RfAs. (With rather interesting results). - jc37 01:28, 2 June 2012 (UTC)
RfA is an open-book test, because Adminship is an open-book test. Very, very rarely does an administrative action have to take place in such a time frame that prohibits checking the appropriate policy and guideline. That being said, isn't there some benefit to being able to find a policy and that accurately interpret that? Achowat (talk) 17:30, 30 May 2012 (UTC)
I think the point that the 71.209.176.227 was trying to make is that one property of a good question is that it doesn't have a boilerplate answer that can be copied and pasted (or cleverly paraphrased) from a previous RfA or a policy page. A good question is personalized in some way to the candidate (see Q1 thru Q3), such that their answer provides information about their uniqueness, as opposed to a rote question (or 7) which simply proves that they have the rather fundamental ability to click on a link to a policy page, read it, and paraphrase it. -Scottywong| express _ 18:56, 30 May 2012 (UTC)
I couldn't agree more. Thank you for that, SW. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 02:03, 31 May 2012 (UTC)
Again, please feel free to create a set of answers. I'd be glad to discuss the answers with you. incidentally, I've mentioned several times in the past that (as Dank also seems to note above), as the answers are bound to vary, how each person answers is very likely to be just as, if not more, important as what they answer. - jc37 01:28, 2 June 2012 (UTC)

I have mentioned this before; I would like to see candidates ignoring these "optional" boilerplate questions, especially the ones asked by Jc37. Axl ¤ [Talk] 19:28, 31 May 2012 (UTC)
I agree, but candidates willfully ignoring questions often elicits opposes. Makes it seem like they're hiding something. I thought about ignoring the boilerplate questions at my RfA, but instead I decided to respond mostly with one-sentence answers. -Scottywong| confabulate _ 22:12, 31 May 2012 (UTC)
I have to endorse Scottywong, not answering any question is the worst thing a candidate can do. It doesn't matter if he/she takes a day or two days time, but it is not without a reason called the 'hell week': you have to be online for a week! mabdul 22:42, 31 May 2012 (UTC)
Until near the end, I think I slept maybe 12 hours total during the whole period of my recent RfB (some of my comments started to get a bit rambling - even for me, I note in retrospect : ) - jc37 01:28, 2 June 2012 (UTC)
As someone who has had to answer these questions, I'd like to voice my opinion that I generally dislike the notion of template questions. As observed above, all the answers are going to be broadly similar to previous RfA's and TBH I spent more time trying to make my answers sound original than anything else. I think it much more preferable to have memebrs of the community ask original questions. Pol430 talk to me 23:09, 31 May 2012 (UTC)
With full respect to the OP, I disagree with the idea of standard questions in each and every RFA which are not vetted by the community. Imagine if all the RFA !voters start asking 5 questions - there will be more than a thousand questions to be answered! Additional questions should be asked only if there is a doubt about a candidate's understanding of the policies. EngineerFromVega^★ 06:40, 1 June 2012 (UTC)
I don't greatly disagree. Part of the point of these is actually to reduce the nonsense questions. These are intentionally honed down to preempt the gotcha/pit-trap/nonsense kind of questions that we all too often have seen in the past. No one as yet has refuted that these are directly to do with adminship. And further, no one has refuted that they have to do with my personal criteria for adminship.
I've asked several times for feedback concerning the text, it seems so far, people find it easier to scoff and say IDONTLIKEIT, and click submit, rather than constructively joining a discussion. I wonder if anyone who has commented here has actually read through all the past RfAs these have been posted to, and seen the benefits. Prolly few to none. After all, why let fact get in the way of a good story... (Which I find the more ironic considering how many have said that looking through edit histories is the way to go.)
It's one of the problems we're facing in the greater Wikipedia: Personal asserted opinion boldly (even bullyingly) forced upon others, with no reason save IWANTIT/IDONTWANTIT. Collegiate discussion falling to the wayside. Perhaps I should give up on the hope of actual discussion on this talk page and let everyone go back to things like warring over whether dates should be linked, does information "deserve" to be on a separate page, or merged with another, and how should hyphens/dashes (en/em/etc) be used, and should there be spaces, and so on. All these things may be worthy of consensual discussion. But when we're blocking/banning each other over these things, maybe, just maybe, the problem may be the environment and expectations (and bureaucracy) we may be setting up.
And so maybe, we should see if candidates for trusted tools and responsibilities have the nous that we would like to hope represents the best of what we can be, and not more of the drek-worthy nonsense we all too often see at various noticeboards like AN and its subpages. Of course YMMV, but as we are all allowed to "vote" based upon our own criteria, and may ask questions in relation to that... - jc37 01:28, 2 June 2012 (UTC)

I think a couple of extra questions will be beneficial to RFA candidates, but the questions must related to the task they are planning to do. If the nominee is planning to close AFDs for example, a question about reading consensus or their view on notability can indicate if he/she is ready to participate in them. Questions about conflict the nominee was involved with that is serious enough to take to consideration should be acceptable as well. But if the nominee is planning to work in vandalism and not AFDs, and he/she was rarely (if ever) participating with them, I don't see the point in answering questions involving that subject and getting punished for it if the answer wasn't up to par though the nominee clearly has no interest in them. Secret ^account 23:47, 1 June 2012 (UTC)

I would agree with you, except: a.) once an admin, we often find we end up helping out in ways we didn't initially expect. People don't go back to your RfA to see what you're willing to help with. b.) I've yet to find an admin who has never closed a single discussion. So understanding the ins and outs of consensus would seem to be universally important. (That and I might argue that vandal patrollers too need to understand the interrelationships between Con and Bold.)
But otherwise, I'd agree. For example, many admins never get involved in account creation, editing mediawiki, dealing with files etc.
In my opinion, the most common things are: closing discussions/assessing consensus; dealing with edit warring; deletion (including speedy); protection; blocking; And since being bold with admin tools is a bit different than just boldly editing, IAR is a common question.
I don't think asking every potential admin about these things is beyond the pale. especially since: once they have the tools, with few exceptions, it's pretty much for life. - jc37 00:40, 2 June 2012 (UTC)
While I won't deny that most/all of what you ask candidates is relevant (they seem to cover the main areas of administration), I am not convinced that they're helpful. Answers these questions, in the main, simply requires one to look up the relevant policy and recite that (I've seen some candidates simply quote large tracts from policy pages). While I firmly believe that a potential admin needs to be well-versed in policy, that should not be the focus of our questions. The best way to judge how well a candidate understand policy is to have a look at their past behaviour - anyone can regurgitate relevant policy; past actions cannot be faked in the same way. We expect people to understand policy at RfA anyway - that should come across through their communication and when we look at their history (which we really should be doing). Questions are to establish whether or not we can really trust an editor, and to deal with specific problems - they should be specific to a candidate, based on what they have said and any potential concerns we have uncovered. In my opinion, boilerplate questions simply tell us that a candidate can read and interpret policy - it does not tell us that they can apply it, nor that they are trustworthy, have a good attitude and will work for the good of Wiki English. ItsZippy ^{(talk • contributions)} 17:23, 2 June 2012 (UTC)
I think your comments might apply more to the first three from my previous set of questions, which I have removed, as I noted above. (I don't know if you read the intro above, but if not, please do.)
If you think that the questions I posted above can be answered by merely copy/pasting unedited from policy, please do. I'd be very interested in the results. - jc37 20:16, 2 June 2012 (UTC)
Sorry, I did have your first set of questions in mind when I wrote that. I think the newer ones are much better - they cannot be answered simply be repeating policy, some interpretation is required. Having said that (and this is more of a personal opinion), I'd like to think that we could probably judge a candidate's answers from their own history and how they conduct themselves in the RfA. I think they would all be good questions if we were ever unsure about someone. I'm not sure that they would be necessary for all candidates to answer, however. ItsZippy ^{(talk • contributions)} 20:45, 2 June 2012 (UTC)
There have been more than a few candidates who may or may not be trustworthy, but the work they have done thus far on Wikipedia doesn't enlighten enough to assess. Or perhaps concerning edits are so far in the past, it would be nice to see where they stand now.
That aside, for me personally, I wouldn't be comfortable supporting a candidate without being comfortable with how they treat the topics/situations referred to in the questions. Maybe I've read too many arbcomm pages or AN and it's subpages or even my own experience with various editors, but from what I've seen, there's a clear difference between what we all may feel is appropriate common practice/policy/guidelines, and what all too often certain editors seem to want to self-assert is "true" or appropriate. Yes a candidate can try to "fake it" in answering questions in an RfA, but with only a couple exceptions i can think of, usually either you get it or you don't, and "faking it" usually shines out rather brightly to those who do understand.
I agree that it would be nice to try to minimise questions, and if there was another direct way to get the info I'm wanting without the questions, I'd be all for it. But user contribs (which I DO check) simply typically do not tell the whole tale. And in this as in most things: communication is the key" : )
When looking for more responsibilities out in the "real world" an interview is usually involved. A few questions shouldn't be beyond the pale - especially if they target the most common responsibilities of the position in question. As always YMMV, of course. - jc37 04:07, 5 June 2012 (UTC)
I think part of the problem here is that additional pre-scripted questions would be useful if there were a serious shortage of questions. However, at present, this seems not to be the case. The currently open RfA, for example, has seventeen questions. Some of them are multi-part questions, of which each part requires the candidate to go away and examine other pages before making a decision on each part and writing an answer on each part. Others include diffs or links to the candidate's past editing; again the candidate has to go away and examine these other pages, decide on a reply and write it. Others again, include followup questions (in one case multiple followup questions), so it's not even just seventeen actual questions, it's more than that.

None of these things are wrong in and of themselves, but they do add to the total burden of the RfA process. And not only for the candidate; for these questions to all be useful additions to the decision-making of a thoughtful !voter, then the !voter would also have to go through all the various links and diffs and questions and followups. I am a big believer in proper scrutiny of candidates, but sometimes I think a process has grown bloated enough. There would be far more benefit in performing additional scrutiny of the candidate's existing contributions, than adding these extra pre-scripted questions when it's already pretty certain the RfA will end up with more than a dozen substantial questions anyway.

As another idea, perhaps it would be a useful exercise to take the scripted questions (and indeed the old scripted questions as well), and ask them on the talk page of any currently active admin whose RfA passed with less than eight questions in total? They wouldn't be required to answer, of course, but it might provoke some thoughtful commentary or thoughtful introspection. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 21:14, 2 June 2012 (UTC)

I'm sure I've mentioned this before: many of the additional questions are posted by newbies with little experience who are trying to be clever by contributing to 'managerial' aspects of Wikipedia - just like they do at NPP and AfD. Some Wikis have minimum qualifications for voters. We don't, because en Wiki was the first and didn't preempt such problems; trying to improve anything at this late stage is well nigh impossible, so we are stuck in the dilemma that too few experienced editors of the right calibre are prepared to submit themselves to the ritual. Anything anyone wants to know about RfA questions but is too afraid to ask, is here. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 04:44, 4 June 2012 (UTC)

I think that the problem intrinsic to boilerplate questions at RfA is that RfA should not be seen as an "open book test" but rather as a careful evaluation of a Wikipedian's prior contributions in the community. While the boilerplate questions you propose, Jc37, are each applicable to some candidates, they do not as a group reflect the most insightful questions regarding any one particular candidate.

In contrast, some RfA !voters laboriously vet the contribution history of RfA candidates, informed by their own memory of the events those contributions touch. They ask questions to elicit any insights that candidates may have formed, through the lens of history, regarding their prior actions. Those questions, and the answers to them, are worth their weight in gold. The Uninvited Co., Inc. 21:18, 7 June 2012 (UTC)

An essential procedure and one which all voters should do. It has however happened unfortunately, that some voters with a personal grievance have laboriously vetted the contribution history of RfA candidates in order to find something they can take out of context and distort into an oppose rationale. Only laborious vetting of the voter will reveal the invalidity of such votes, which even worse, occasionally lead to pile on opposes from those who do not laboriously vet the candidate's history. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 02:25, 8 June 2012 (UTC)
I disagree strongly. Quite strongly, in fact. Admins aren't chosen for what they've done, but what they are expected to do in the future. Achowat (talk) 13:16, 8 June 2012 (UTC)
What you say is demonstrably untrue, Achowat. Many (most?) RfA discussions frequently spend time discussing what a candidate has done in the past (what other predictor of their future behaviour do we have?) It is the case however that more candidates are rejected because of some single mistake or misbehaviour in the past. It does seem as though the best way to become an admin is basically to have never done anything that anybody could possibly object to... On the main topic of boilerplate questions, I'm against them and rarely read them or the replies. I'd be much more interested in people's record in difficult areas such as contributing to AfD or AN/ANI discussions, their ability to collaborate on article-writing etc. Kim Dent-Brown ^(Talk) 14:31, 8 June 2012 (UTC)

I thought of a great idea to potentially increase the admin count and stop the downwards spiral. What if we gave candidates, a one week trial to prove themselves to potential candidates. If an RfA passes with 80% or more, they of course become full fledged admins however if they have more than 50%, they get a one week trial and during that trial the community can evaluate his or her performance as an admin where the closing decision is made by the bureaucrat. If this seems like an acceptable proposal, we can create an RfC for this to potentially change the system. This method may also invite more potential candidates who may end up on the lower side of the support end but are still capable of being an admin. Any thought?—cyberpower ^Chat_Online 00:16, 12 June 2012 (UTC)

Fifty percent? That's a bit low. Not to mention that virtually anyone can come across as fit to be an administrator in a single week. Frankly, there are so many checks and balances in place that I don't understand why people are so concerned with new administrators being perfect. None of the current ones are. -- tariqabjotu 00:25, 12 June 2012 (UTC)
Which is why I am proposing this. The community set the bar so high that it's scaring the real potential candidates away. If the community doesn't really believe in the candidate all that much but still reach over half of the community's support, why not give the candidate the chance to show the community what they can do as an admin during their trial as one?—cyberpower ^Chat_Online 00:36, 12 June 2012 (UTC)
Find this reasonable. We'll have to appease the "no bureaucracy" crowd, though.--Jasper Deng (talk) 00:37, 12 June 2012 (UTC)
Then you might as well just request that the minimum threshold for promotion be lowered. As I suggested, there is almost no situation in which a candidate would fail the trial, unless he or she intentionally does so -- in which case, why did they bother going through an RfA to begin with? -- tariqabjotu 01:19, 12 June 2012 (UTC)
The RfA is to determine where he stands with the community. If they get an 80% or higher, they obviously pass but if they get a 50% or higher they get the show the community how they would perform as an admin. the community would evaluate the candidate on trial and give a support or oppose based on that. Obviously, if the candidate demonstrates that they can be a fit admin in the eyes of the community, the support count will go up. If they fail to raise the support they receive, they will obviously fail the candidacy.—cyberpower ^Chat_Offline 01:36, 12 June 2012 (UTC)
Smiles @ "trial adminship" being considered a new idea : )
(Oh, I forgot, I'm supposedly not supposed to have a clue about what goes on at RfA... back to lurking : ) - jc37 01:05, 12 June 2012 (UTC)

• I don't know the history, but I am sure Jc37 is correct that this is not a new idea. I don't think it would have much of a chance. 50% is not "consensus" in a place that works by consensus, as difficult as that can be. The way to show you can be an admin is to act like an admin, i.e., certainly never being blocked, being able to debate civilly, being consistent and thoughtful, gaining respect of fellow editors. Doing some non-administrative closes at AfD. Show some creation skills by writing some decent articles and maybe some DYKs or a GA. And being willing to handle the drudgery and thanklessness of the job.--Milowent • ^hasspoken 01:35, 12 June 2012 (UTC)

Trial Adminship has already been debated at length earlier this year in a major RfC. The proposals and their numerous alternatives/ideas all failed to meet with community approval. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 01:39, 12 June 2012 (UTC)

I must've missed that RfC.—cyberpower ^Chat_Offline 01:53, 12 June 2012 (UTC)
For curiosity' sake, can you link to the RfC? Someguy1221 (talk) 01:55, 12 June 2012 (UTC)
Wiki: Tool apprenticeship - even like 60% did not make consensus.--Jasper Deng (talk) 02:19, 12 June 2012 (UTC)

• Wiki: Perennial_proposals#Hierarchical_structures. --Hammersoft (talk) 03:14, 12 June 2012 (UTC)
• Not sure that a one week trial is helpful, as it is too easy to simply avoid controversy in your first week, then become an admin with only 50% approval. I'm trying to actively recruit people who I think would be helpful to the admin corp, which might be more likely to get some results. The problem isn't that high quality candidates are getting refused, it is that few high quality candidates are willing to run the gauntlet to begin with, leaving us with slim pickings each month. The last few RfAs have been relatively uneventful, so perhaps the process is getting more "user friendly". Dennis Brown - 2¢ © 16:28, 12 June 2012 (UTC)

• The admin tool with the greatest possibility for creating drama is the block button. These trial candidates could do a bunch of speedy deletions, page protections, etc, pass the trial, and then demonstrate that they are idiots when it comes to when to block and when not to block. (This is also a serious problem with a small portion of the very old-school admins who got in when standards were much lower. Not going to name names, but a few of these folks are severely out of touch with current practice on when it is appropriate to block, but that's another issue.) Point is, this would be easy to game, easier than RFA actually. Beeblebrox (talk) 17:14, 12 June 2012 (UTC)
  • It has to be a requirement that they master all of the tools. If they don't prove themselves trustworthy with a tool for which blocking is very easily demonstrated for, they fail the trial (which I think should be at least 1 or 3 months instead of 1 week).--Jasper Deng (talk) 17:22, 12 June 2012 (UTC)
    • @beeblebrox - I've tried several times (and in different ways) to see how we could have a type of admin that didn't have thhe blocker tools (unless they wanted them) like having blocker as a separate package. It's just tough to get consensus on. - jc37 18:09, 12 June 2012 (UTC)

• Just as mad and bad as this idea which failed to gain more than passing acceptance as well as wasting much time and effort WT:Requests_for_adminship/Archive_216#Minimum_requirement. Leaky Caldron 17:28, 12 June 2012 (UTC)
• Perhaps and perhaps not. A week may be too short and Jasper makes good points. Perhaps this can be modified to a 1 month trial where an admin or beareaucrat monitors them and the candidate must demonstrate when to use each tool by using all of them during the trial.—cyberpower ^Chat_{Limited Access} 18:01, 12 June 2012 (UTC)
• For the avoidance of doubt, I meant that I believe the entire idea to be defective, not just the amended suggestion above. Leaky Caldron 18:03, 12 June 2012 (UTC)
  We can only know by trying it out. We have enough admins and bereaucrats to monitor those in trial.—cyberpower ^Chat_{Limited Access} 18:07, 12 June 2012 (UTC)
  Actually before trying we need to find out why we need this change? Has this RFA process completely failed? What are the problems with this process (if any)? And then find solutions for each problem. In my opinion this may be really destructive for the project looking at many previous RFAs where the editors got 50% or more support but failed. The current RFA process is good, though there may be some minor problems, which I guess can be addressed once RFA Reforms is resumed sometime in the future and there are many sensible people who participate at RFAs. So I don't find any need for that. --SMS ^Talk 18:19, 12 June 2012 (UTC)
  The RfA process is anything but good and we have a declining spiral of admins. It's only a matter of time when the admin is virtually nonexistent when held next to the size of the community. I'm pretty sure I don't speak for myself when I say that we need more admins and that we are losing more than we are gaining. This is an attempt to boost the numbers and give those that don't quite make it a chance to become one. If we look at our current admins out there, there are probably quite a few out there that wouldn't pass with our current standards. I potentially know one admin that if put through an RfA, would possibly fail given the standards we have here. The bar is way too high and the smallest mistake is exaggerated and made into a reason to oppose and that creates an unnecessary pile on. So in answers to your questions, why do we need this change? Because we are admin community is shrinking. Has this process completely failed? No, but it's on its way there. What are the problems of it? Every user can vote to oppose for the most fucked up reasons, word it in a way that it will cause others to agree with them and create a pile on of opposes to the point it will kill their RfA to the point where the bereaucrats will the low support count and fail the RfA in question all because of one ridiculous reason blown out of proportion on that RfA. That is what's wrong with the RfA.—cyberpower ^Chat_{Limited Access} 18:30, 12 June 2012 (UTC))
So can you provide examples in evidence to support the type of distortion you claim? Leaky Caldron 18:50, 12 June 2012 (UTC)

Did you have any particular editors in mind who might be good admins but unable to get more than 51% support for an RfA bid? 28bytes (talk) 18:33, 12 June 2012 (UTC)

So if the admin community is shrinking one possible solution can be that we find and nominate potential admins, I know many out there who can become good admins. --SMS ^Talk 18:47, 12 June 2012 (UTC)

All I can say is that RfA is getting harder, lots. You see times with 63 passing candidates in one December, now about one to three. Regards, ⇒TAP 18:34, 12 June 2012 (UTC)

• (edit conflict)Even if you required an admin candidate to use each tool during the trial, it wouldn't solve the problem. 1) Monitor WP:AIV until an incredibly obvious and more then fully warned vandal shows up, block them. 2) Find a clear CSD G7 candidate and delete it. 3) Head over to WP:PERM and answer a really obvious request. 4) Head to WP:RPP and find a page with extensive IP vandalism to semi-protect for a few days or week. I'm sure I'm missing a tool or two, but it would be simple to exceedingly black and white cases during your trial to use all the tools on, and it would provide no incite to a monitoring crat or the community as to how you would handle yourself when it comes time to make a tough call or controversial decision. And that is what everyone worries about, the block of the experienced editor with thousands of contributions, not the block of an obvious vandalism only account. Requiring the use of each tool really just creates some check boxes to check off, and would be no more useful, and potentially less so then giving someone the bit for a week and seeing what they do with it when left to their own devices. Monty₈₄₅ 18:35, 12 June 2012 (UTC)

Just a suggestion, but how i have always read the guide to be administrator is that you prove yourself one without the tools, so if you set this 50% target during the week trail the user is under the guardianship of a admin but the user does not have the admin powers meaning they dnt actually do the physical saying deleting a page, but they close a AFD or such and the admin under which there there guardian does the psychical deleting and they put a assessment of how they done with there judgement (obviously if the admin thinks the decision is wrong they dnt do it) but then the user has chance to prove themselves in real scenarios so showing if they would be a good admin without the powers. (apologise if this is meant only for admins to comment on delete if that the case)Andrewcrawford (talk - contrib) 19:43, 12 June 2012 (UTC)
One of the biggest issues in my mind is that when you're actually an admin, you find yourself resolving issues that looked like Gordian knots before. When I was thinking of adminship, I thought I'd be mostly deleting stuff (and I certainly do my share of that), but I've been doing a lot of AE and enforcing discretionary sanctions; before becoming an admin, I never remember getting involved in any discussions of that nature. The problem is, we tie the capacity for enforcement in with adminship, and there's no good way to separate them. Those are probably the most difficult jobs admins can possibly do, and there's no way to test that; imagine how a user would react if he was told he was indefinitely banned from an article by someone who was undergoing a trial adminship period! I'd be all for a trial adminship period if there was some way we could test every aspect of adminship; just testing how people can use the individual tools isn't sufficient for that. I'll put some thought into a way that could be done, because I'd like to see it happen. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 22:37, 12 June 2012 (UTC)
Well, the candidate would be assigned to a current admin, preferrably one that volunteers to do such a task. That admin monitors the candidate for time period and gives his evaluation. The closing bureaucrat will weigh in that admin's evaluation as well as those from the community during the trial and decides if the trialed should become a full fledged admin or not. If of course the trialed admin makes a sanction or any other admin action that it is inappropriate, the advising admin will of course be at liberty to undo that action and advise the candidate. In a way this method will allow admin mentoring.—cyberpower ^Chat_Online 23:28, 12 June 2012 (UTC)

• The concept of a trial for marginal candidates is sound. However, 1 week is way too short; anyone can keep their nose clean for that time. 50% is also a bit low. I suggest a 55% threshold and a 3 month trial. TerriersFan (talk) 22:42, 12 June 2012 (UTC)
• I'm very much not a fan of setting arbitrary number thresh holds. If this is really wanted, just give it to the bureaucrats as an option for those candidates which fall into the lower end of bureaucrat closer discretion. - jc37 22:45, 12 June 2012 (UTC)
  I appreciate all the input I am getting from everybody. This is starting to turn into a possibility. As we currently stand, marginal candidates will have the opportunity to prove themselves an admin by receiving 3 month trial period where the candidate is assigned to an experienced admin or crat. They will monitor the candidate and give input and their evaluation and the community can give input as well. The crat will make a final decision whether the candidate should be an admin or not. Any more thoughts?—cyberpower ^Chat_Online 23:28, 12 June 2012 (UTC)
  Setting the usergroup so that any "regular" admin could remove (but not assign) the tools at any time might ease some minds (many eyes making light work of the monitoring, etc.). --SB_Johnny | ^talk✌ 23:38, 12 June 2012 (UTC)
  Adding on to what you're saying, there can be a limited admin usergroup that can be add by a crat, but a sysop can modify what tools that trialed admin can access at the time. The limited admin usergroup automatically removes itself after 3 months.—cyberpower ^Chat_Online 23:48, 12 June 2012 (UTC)

In my mind, there are two classes of RFAs that might be above 50% but still fail: those that have a large subset of the opposes being "not enough MediaWiki talk edits", and those where the concerns relate to conduct. I wouldn't be averse to giving a trial adminship to those who fall into the first category. I would be very averse to giving a trial adminship to the second category. So then how are the two categories separated from each other? --(ʞɿɐʇ) ɐuɐʞsǝp 00:22, 13 June 2012 (UTC)

In our current RfA, the crat decides pass or fail. For these marginal cases, ultimately the crat should decide if the candidate should be trialed or not by weighing the comments. I'm sure that our crats won't give the trial if the candidate shows repeated misconduct. You don't need to be an admin to prove your conduct but you do need to be an admin to show how you handle the bit. This is one of the reasons of what this proposal is for. Ultimately in the long run, it would will make the RfA process seem less like a blood bath and will invite more candidates and potentially increase the admin count. The RfA process would essentially seem less broken as it gives the candidates more of a chance to prove themselves worthy of the bit.—cyberpower ^Chat_Online 00:31, 13 June 2012 (UTC)

Why not make everyone who has more than a certain number of edits and hasn't been blocked for, say, more than two years, an Admin? instead of the RFA procedure we would need to implement a de-Adminship procedure for people who the community no longer trusts with the tools. Count Iblis (talk) 01:57, 13 June 2012 (UTC)

As much as I like that idea, there is a flaw to it. With the amount of users we have several thousand editors will now become admins. There are users that have been here for awhile who haven't gotten blocked but have issues being an admin. We would get demands to de-syssop several thousand of those admins because they can't handle the bit.—cyberpower ^Chat_Offline 02:46, 13 June 2012 (UTC)

I think of all the variant suggestions concerning RfA, I like best the one where we eliminate the support (and neutral) section. And instead all opposes and the reasons thereof are discussed. And then the bureacrats assess the consensus of the discussion similar to how a discussion determines if a page should be kept or deleted. (In this case: confidence or no confidence). But it eliminates vote counting and the support pileons (and relies on the belief that the bureaucrats have clue : ) - So it's not likely to gain consensus. - jc37 02:31, 13 June 2012 (UTC)

It's a good idea but just having the oppose section isn't going to do much either. We don't see how much of the community supports and can potentially destroy the RfA process even more in ways we can't think of. We want to give the candidates the feeling that they've got a chance to become an admin and just having a section where the negatives are pointed may be deterring.—cyberpower ^Chat_Offline 02:46, 13 June 2012 (UTC)

• Suggestion - Make the trial period 30 days, with the expectation that if they "play it too safe", and avoid disputes, they will likely not pass. Which brings up another possible angle. How about a 30 day trial, a 60 day probation, then full-adminship at 90 days. Just a thought. — GabeMc (talk) 02:56, 13 June 2012 (UTC)

(edit conflict)(edit conflict)Also been discussed to exhaustion without any conclusion or consensus. As previously mentioned in this thread, the bureaucrats have also concluded that they are not prepared to accept any more involvement in the RfA process than they already have. Almost every possible and impossible solution to improving the current RfA procedure or examining entirely new suggestions was examined and discussed in depth here, so there seems to be little point in rehashing the same arguments here at WT:RFA - which ironically, RFA2011 was deliberately conceived to avoid! Also, to reiterate the main issue for the n'th time: RfA has not become harder, but as Wikipedia grows, the pool of candidates of the right calibre has grown and along with it , the number of their edits and actions that can demonstrate competency for the tools. Canvassing possible candidates has been tried many times over the past 2 years and the vast majority of responses were that users will not come forward until the process has been cleaned up. 'Cleaning up' does not necessarily mean the introduction of a new or alternative system - the system itself is not broken, but its process has been destroyed by the trolls, drama mongers, liars, fan clubs, and clueless newbies who are allowed to vote there. Crats rarely need to 'decide' on the outcome of a RfA - very few serious candidacies are actually marginal. Nothing will change until a long period of relative calm has demonstrated that such voters have either been blocked, topic banned, or retired, or simply moved on to other pastures where they can be disruptive. That said, there's nothing that can be done about the relatively good faith voters who simply do not do sufficient research and just sadly get it all very wrong. Fortunately I finally passed my RfA first time and with flying colors and at the first attempt, but if I had known what I had coming, I most certainly would not have bothered.
Those are some of the answer to this perennial discussion.Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 03:00, 13 June 2012 (UTC)
It appears that the way that this discussion is going, that rehashing of this doesn't seem to bother many. This proposal hardly adds to the bureaucrats load in RfAs.—cyberpower ^Chat_Offline 03:08, 13 June 2012 (UTC)
I agree Cyberpower678, and I find this attitude in general around wikipedia, "no, we tried that ... already discussed ... not gonna happen ... no solution possible ... the current system cannot be improved." Etcetera. — GabeMc (talk) 03:18, 13 June 2012 (UTC)
Thank you. I believe that this is a great way to reduce some of the damage the process already has. It still allows everyone to contribute and the candidate can actually have a chance to prove themselves. I think I'm going to create an RfC page in my userspace for the RfA process after a little more input.—cyberpower ^Chat_Offline 03:22, 13 June 2012 (UTC)
I wish you the very best of success, and if the RfC proposal sounds good and viable, I will not hesitate to support it as strongly as possible. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 07:47, 13 June 2012 (UTC)

Arbitrary break and some data

To give some credence to this concept, I thought I'd look at some of the people who got more than 55% support at RfA, but were not successful. Looking through my recent list (playing with a bot to get some statistics out), I was surprised to find so many editors who looked like they were going to pass but withdrew. So, I narrowed things down to the last 4 years, cases that were not withdrawn: We have 59.
26 who have gone on to become sysops:Connormah, Slon02,Tnxman307, Ceranthor, Enigmaman, GiantSnowman, WereSpielChequers, The ed17, UpstateNYer, Addshore, DeltaQuad, Everyking, 7, Ironholds, BigDom, Geni, Thumperward, Kww, Kingpin13, Efe, TParis, Richwales, J04n, Aitias, FlyingToaster, GB fan
And 33 who haven't: Ling.Nut, Mark t young, Logan, Itsmejudith, Timmeh, TenPoundHammer, Krm500, Mabdul, That Thing That Should Not Be, BQZip01, Headbomb, N5iln, Kingoomieiii, Biruitorul, Adolphus79, Dylan620, Jsfouche, Jeffrey Mall, Salavat, Glane23, Teratornis, Synergy, Jerem43, NickPenguin, JamieS93, Mvjs, Gtstricky, Pol430, Blanchardb, Undead warrior, Basket of Puppies, Markhurd, Jc3s5h
So, that make me wonder. What are we trying to acheive through this? There's clearly an argument that the editors who went on to be sysops could have been a sysop sooner if they could prove themselves to the community. However, they still did manage to become sysops - so all we benefit from is getting them sooner. I believe that some of our best sysops are in that list, and I wonder if they'd be as good if they didn't take on board the comments in those RfAs and become better editors because of them. On the other hand, those that haven't become admins... perhaps they shouldn't have? It also seems like a very small percentage of RfAs that we're worrying about - ~4%. There's a lot of unknown factors - editors who don't pile on to RfAs that are clearly not going to succeed may well do so, making the whole procedure more unpleasant - one of the biggest problems of RfA in the first place. Worm^TT(talk) 09:40, 13 June 2012 (UTC)

From personal experience, that principle absolutely holds, even for lower support levels. I had a SNOW closed RfA a few months before I passed, and I definitely don't think I'd be as good had I not gotten snowed under with excellent advice. Keilana|^{Parlez ici} 10:32, 13 June 2012 (UTC)
I understand where you are coming from with this but those other 36 could've demonstrated their abilities and also become admins. But the goal of this proposal is to make the RfA seem more friendly and not much like a blood bath. With this setup in place, it will invite more potential candidates and give everybody more of a chance. This ultimately add to admin which is much needed as the administrative department is undermanned at times.—cyberpower ^Chat_{Limited Access} 11:38, 13 June 2012 (UTC)
I know from memory that User:Aitias and User:FlyingToaster used to be an admin, so that list of 36 is not accurate. Didn't check the others.--Atlan (talk) 11:47, 13 June 2012 (UTC)
Oh, it's not exhaustive or perfectly accurate, it was me playing with some data. Was trying to give a useful impression so we had some data to talk about. Have updated though. Worm^TT(talk) 11:51, 13 June 2012 (UTC)
Cyberpower - I personally believe the only reason people are so afraid of RfA is that people keep calling it "a gauntlet" or "a bloodbath". Take the current RfA, there's some very useful feedback for the candidate, whether or not he succeeds. Even if he doesn't, I do not doubt he will succeed in the future. I know some people don't really bother to check a candidate over, just check a few stats and how they answer questions, then support. If a candidate can't get 2 supports for every oppose (66%), I'm not sure I'd want them to be using the tools, even provisionally. Worm^TT(talk) 11:58, 13 June 2012 (UTC)
It has earned the title of gauntlet or blood bath because of the way they see it. This name may go away if this process is implemented. Whether this process should be implemented is up to the community and the only way for that is through and RfC which I happen to be building.—cyberpower ^Chat_{Limited Access} 12:02, 13 June 2012 (UTC)
Which came first, the chicken or the egg - the general perception that it is a gauntlet, or the comments that it's a gauntlet. I agree, it's up to the community, but as a member of the community I've got a point of view there. Feel free to use any of the research I've done here, or at WP:RFA2011 - I know I will be if I were to comment on such an RfA. Also, be aware that the community turned down Wiki: Tool apprenticeship in November last year, a well thought out proposal. Worm^TT(talk) 12:19, 13 June 2012 (UTC)

Cyberpower, your intentions are noble and as I said, I may well support them, but the only way you'll ever understand what RfA is all about is to go through the process yourself... --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 13:48, 13 June 2012 (UTC)
I may in, due time, but, not now because I will just get snowed out.—cyberpower ^Chat_{Limited Access} 13:51, 13 June 2012 (UTC)

• Worm, thanks for digging through that data; it's actually quite enlightening. I see a few names on the second list that I think would be excellent candidates for another RfA, now that they've had a chance to work on the concerns brought up in the previous one. I also see a couple of names there that make me really glad that the threshold is as high as it is. 28bytes (talk) 18:48, 13 June 2012 (UTC)
  Indeed, as I said the first list has some of the best admins on it too. It hadn't occured to me that the second list might have editors who were ripe for a second RfA... might have a look at some of those names for a nomination! Worm^TT(talk) 09:33, 14 June 2012 (UTC)

The current RfA featured a question on age. Current policy consensus, at Perennial Issues, is that editors are free to oppose editors based on their being underage:

• Requiring that administrators be adults (a perennial proposal): "Editors are free to use age as a personal rationale for opposing adminship on RfA".

Kiefer.Wolfowitz 22:13, 11 June 2012 (UTC) 16:21, 12 June 2012 (UTC)

Well, I wouldn't describe WP:PEREN as "current policy", as it's neither a policy nor a guideline. However, I think it would be safe to say that the current consensus is that you can oppose an RfA candidate for just about whatever the hell you want, and anyone else can disagree with your opposition if they find it unreasonable. I don't see evidence that anyone's right to oppose for any reason is being questioned in this case, so I'm not sure why yet another discussion on this topic is warranted. -Scottywong| confabulate _ 22:48, 11 June 2012 (UTC)
I think Scottywong's got it completely correct. You can oppose for whatever reason you like, including age, and editors can disagree with it. I'm sure the 'crats can give due weight to the vote, based on current policy and opinion. Worm^TT(talk) 08:00, 12 June 2012 (UTC)
Updated to follow Scotty's improved wording. Kiefer.Wolfowitz 16:21, 12 June 2012 (UTC)
The reason I suggested we wait until after this candidate's RfA (unless it becomes an unavoidable issue in the RfA) is that this question is particularly likely to become a heated, irrelevant distraction in an RfA. I don't mind tackling it after the RfA though ... I hope and expect the community is capable of doing a better job with this than we have in the past. - Dank (push to talk) 17:45, 13 June 2012 (UTC)

Okay, the candidate has withdrawn. Yes, it's legal to say "Oppose, candidate too young". It's not recommended. Thoughts? - Dank (push to talk) 19:13, 14 June 2012 (UTC)

Okay, apparently we're done for now, which is good. I'm not happy about offhand remarks that demean any whole class of people ... especially when they're made in a context where you know people won't fight back because it would be a distraction. The only solution I have to offer is vigilance. - Dank (push to talk) 14:44, 15 June 2012 (UTC)

Maybe I'm just naïve, but . . . while I realize there are legal issues . . . it would be just about impossible to verify someone's age, which is as it should be. Editor anonymity is an important principle here. Unless a candidate has self-identified as under-18 (and I always take talkpage self-identifications with a cheerful grain of salt; there are a lot of people claiming to be Grand Tutnums or fluent in numerous languages) it's guesswork based on their editing demeanor. Insofar as they reveal themselves to be temperamentally unsuitable for adminship in my or anyone else's view, surely it's neither here nor there whether that's due to chronological age - except, as I say, in some remotely possible legal scenario? Which in any case is surely rendered moot by the fact it would be an inference. If it doesn't arise because they demonstrate adequate competence anyway, I consider it immaterial and a bit prying to wonder whether that is "chronological maturity" or just something I'm labeling maturity. Editors are probably hiding all sorts of other things too; in my view the advantages of not sleuthing around unnecessarily outweigh those of Klieg lights and documentation of ID. (You'll just have to trust that I have a PhD as I state on my userpage, if you care :-) ) Yngvadottir (talk) 22:20, 15 June 2012 (UTC)

Despite the general feeling that something is wrong with RfA, the discussions above and elsewhere often seem to lead in circles and always back to the same point of inertia. It's as if we have consensus that it's broke, but no consensus on how to fix it. But are we looking for a solution before there is an urgent problem? And without an urgent problem, is there the motivation to agree on a solution? We currently have about 1400 admins, of whom several hundred are still active. Despite occasional backlogs at RFPP, CSD or elsewhere the work seems to be getting done. I absolutely agree that if the decline in new blood continues, then down the road somewhere we will have a problem. But my sense is that only when we get to that point will there be sufficient urgent reason for us to agree on how we improve things. Maybe the community will accept a lower %. Maybe we'll go on a recruitment drive for well-established content-producers. Maybe we'll make everyone an admin after a year's block-free service. Maybe we'll establish a form training programme. When we really need to solve the problem, I guess we will. At present the Wikipedia ecosystem has a niche for admins, but they are dwindling in number. If they become extinct the niche will still be there and it will be filled somehow, either because the old species adapts or because a new one evolves to fill it. This isn't a call to stop discussing options; the better discussed they are, the quicker we can choose when the time comes. But I don't think we need to do something now, beyond continuing the discussions for the future. Kim Dent-Brown ^(Talk) 09:33, 13 June 2012 (UTC)

I agree. From my time in RfA reform, my biggest realisation is that no one can agree with what is broken about RfA, let alone why it's broken or how to fix it. People are suggesting solutions, but if we can't agree on the problem, then that's not going to help. It is true that the number of candidates has fallen, but so has the number of new editors. It's true that the standards have risen, but so has the average edit count. There are problems with some RfAs, snarky comments, unhelpful votes, too many questions - but they're not consistently problematic. Some editors would like to be admins, but don't believe they'd pass an RfA - does that mean we should be making RfA easier for them? I don't believe so. Overall, I think Kim Dent-Brown has it right, if we need a solution to a specific problem, we'll find one. Worm^TT(talk) 09:47, 13 June 2012 (UTC)
Exactly. I was about to post the exact same thing that Kim just did. Is the rate of admin promotion decreasing? Of course. Is that proving to be a problem right now? As far as I can tell, no. Admin backlogs are generally taken care of (with the occasional lapse, of course), and there are no signs that that's going to change in the near future. The standards at RfA are what they are. They've evolved organically, and they represent the accumulation of many experienced editors' opinions. Therefore, they're not going to change easily, and trying to enact policies that force those opinions to change is just not going to work. RfA standards will change when there is a need for them to change, and right now that need doesn't exist. -Scottywong| confabulate _ 14:04, 13 June 2012 (UTC)

What if it's not really working very well, it's making funny noises but just about managing to do the job, and fiddling with it will break it properly and you'll get told off by your partner? --Dweller (talk) 14:12, 13 June 2012 (UTC)

Okay, then try this as a specific problem just for brainstorming: the community has too diverse ana cataclysmically disparate opinion of what makes a candidate eligible. Some which can be factually and logically debunked. Take the current nomination for LR. LR's stated passion is dispute resolution. Do you need admin tools for DR? No. Moreover, why would we want such an excellent dispute mediator to drop that ball to take up the mop?
My opinion of RfA is that it has become voluntary rape. I have no desire to go through it. Nor is RfA the only problem either; Wikipedia is suffering from entropy, that all things in the universe eventually become disordered, so too is Wikipedia and RfA is just one symptom of it. Part of this is that only the toughest people go for or actually pass RfA. Being tough sometimes can be interchangeable with being a dick. Therefore what we are left with is a degradation of, among other things, civility because more and more administrators have less and less of a strong view that civility, for instance, is essential to demand in order to have an encyclopedia with a diversity of contributors. Or, sadly, they themselves are the dicks. And the reality is that a lot of potential editors just don't have room in their life, or like me have little left in their mental reservoir to tap into to participate with Wikipedia which, to them, may perceivably be running rampant with dicks.   Thorncrag  14:16, 13 June 2012 (UTC)
It's fantastic that you complain about lessening civility, yet somehow have no issue likening RFA opposers to rapists.--Cube lurker (talk) 14:25, 13 June 2012 (UTC)
That's not what I said at all and I'm quite sure you know that.   Thorncrag  14:27, 13 June 2012 (UTC)
Using the word rape to describe RFA is disgusting and I'm quite sure you know that.--Cube lurker (talk) 14:29, 13 June 2012 (UTC)
(edit conflict) But see you are most eloquently making my point. You are clearly being that which I described in my post by, with malice, asserting that I was using the word with your narrowly construed definition of it. You know I was not. But clearly trying to have a productive conversation is a waste of time.   Thorncrag  14:50, 13 June 2012 (UTC)
My point is that if RFA is keeping away people that think it's fine fo call RFA rape then it's working as intended.--Cube lurker (talk) 14:52, 13 June 2012 (UTC)
I understand Thorncrag's stance, but the rape comparison really isn't helpful. We need less drama around here; comparing RfA to rape is not a good way to calm people down. bobrayner (talk) 14:47, 13 June 2012 (UTC)
Thorncrag's comments imply that it's a bad thing that the community has a cataclysmically disparate opinion of what makes a candidate eligible. I actually think that's an asset, and it's the natural product of the organic, consensus-based process by which administrators are elected. You'd be surprised how much bullshit you have to put up with once you actually become an admin; an RfA is actually a great test for whether or not you can (or want to) handle it. If you're not willing to put yourself through RfA, that's fine, but perhaps you should ask yourself why. Is it because you know or suspect that you won't pass because of something in your past? Is it that you're worried that your ego might be damaged by the inevitable criticism you will have to endure? Or maybe you just have enough to do in non-admin areas already? Side note: I'm not suggesting that any of the above are accurate, as I don't know you from Adam. If you're interested in working in admin areas and think you're qualified, I think you should go for it. The worst that could happen is that a bunch of dicks dredge up a pile of crap from your past. As long as you're capable of shrugging that kind of stuff off and not letting it get to you, there's really no downside to trying. If you're not capable of shrugging it off, then adminship may not be for you. -Scottywong| confabulate _ 15:45, 13 June 2012 (UTC)
Scotty you raise some interesting thoughts but I just want iterate that I in no way intended to make this conversation about me (who?) but merely raise the possibility that I may represent a whole lot of editors who feel "it's just not worth it" referring to Wikipedia in general, not RfA. And that the perceived state of RfA feeds into that. Which is why I usually stay away from here.   Thorncrag  15:54, 13 June 2012 (UTC)
Scotty, I feel I have what it takes to be an admin. Should I run? No. Why? Because everyone will never ever trust me to be an admin all because of my indef block I received in November. I can shrug it off but if that gets piled on so many times, eventually my support count will be so low that the crat won't even bother looking at the votes. It doesn't matter if I run now or a year from now, I will always get snowed out because of it. I even received a hurtful comment from it too.—cyberpower ^Chat_{Limited Access} 17:09, 13 June 2012 (UTC)
You're right. Many editors will see that indef block and it will cause a lack of trust. And, in my opinion, it should cause a lack of trust. I don't know the circumstances behind it (and the block log comments don't help), but there are editors who have been blocked and came back to have a successful RfA. It just takes time for the block to fade away, and for your post-block actions to build up trust again. However, you may have more working against you than just the block. For instance, a quick look at your last 250 edits shows virtually no edits to article space, and a look at your user talk page seems to indicate that you are more interested in signatures and userspace templates than encyclopedic tasks. To me, this would indicate a possible age or maturity issue, which would take longer to resolve than a block. (Not trying to be a dick, just giving you an honest appraisal.) -Scottywong| talk _ 17:50, 13 June 2012 (UTC)
I have to agree with this. The two indefs aren't a big deal, IMO; I think the signature/maturity/impulsiveness issues are what would tank an RfA. Now, those are all things that can be fixed with some time and effort, but I'd much rather see that time and effort invested rather than a "back door" attempt at gaining adminship without the traditional consensus for it. Generally speaking, if 49% of the participants in an RfA think you shouldn't become an admin at that time, you probably shouldn't become an admin at that time, even temporarily. I think investing the time and effort to get that 49% (or whatever the real number is) down to the 10% to 20% that would allow for a successful RfA would be a much wiser course of action than trying to rig the system so that the 49% (or whatever) who have real, legitimate concerns about granting adminship are left without a voice. 28bytes (talk) 18:41, 13 June 2012 (UTC)

• I actually agree with Kim Dent-Brown. I think we are looking at the situation at a wrong angle. Instead of looking at one problematic element of the system and trying to fix it, we should accept that it is not fixable, at least in the short term, and see what are the problems which arise because of this. Well, we have a number of facts: (i) no editor with less than a year active participation, less that 5K edits, some demonstrated abilities etc etc is extremely unlikely to pass an RfA; (ii) Many editors who could pass are not willing to be nominated; (iii) once one passes an RfA it is very difficult to de-admin them. None of these is going to change anytime soon. The valid question is then: What are the areas where the lack of admin power is really critical? If these areas exist, may be there are other solutions, for instance, some of the work could be done by non-admins? I do not have a global overview of the project, but currently I do not see such areas to start with - well, I do see areas where help is welcome, but for instance I know that the AfD backlog in Russian Wikipedia went up to 6 months now whereas it was only 2 months 2 years ago - and they badly need more admins, which they can not elect since the whole community is deeply split. Here, I do not see anything close to six months backlog. Well, sure, we are going to have severe problems in the long term, but we do not even know how these problems will look like. I think we should really start with identifying the problems for the end users, not trying to fix smth which may be unfixable but which does not necessarily need to be fixed.--Ymblanter (talk) 14:57, 13 June 2012 (UTC)
• Slightly off topic perhaps, but I think there are far worse backlogs than the admin backlogs and getting experienced editors to work on those would be more beneficial. Where to start? There are more than 18,000 articles needing cleanup, 234,717 lacking sources, 19,912 needing to be wikified. If a problem needs fixing, it is in getting editors to work on improving the content. Clicking a button to delete a CSD takes a few seconds, cleaning up an abandoned article on an obscure topic can take hours and is thankless and unrecognised... QU ^TalkQu 22:21, 14 June 2012 (UTC)
  • That is entirely true, and an excellent point. At the end of the day, that is more important. Dennis Brown - 2¢ © 22:53, 14 June 2012 (UTC)
  • Hear, hear! I am appalled by the poor quality of many articles at Wikipedia, and, unfortunately, they can sit that way for years (tagged, of course) because poor quality isn't a justification for deletion. One way to fix this of course is to clean them up, but another way to fix the problem is to make it harder to create articles in the first instance (I'm sure that radical idea would generate far more controversy than how to fix the RfA process).--Bbb23 (talk) 01:04, 15 June 2012 (UTC)

QU strikes a chord. Cleaning up is done only by a dedicated few. There is very little motivation for cleaning up tagged articles and collecting hats and adminship are not a form of recognition for the lonely time spent repairing other contributors' lazy work. What people tend to forget however, is that every registered user already has vast powers they could only dream of getting on their favourite web forum . Perhaps that's why they come to Wiki English. Nevertheless, every little helps - if it's done properly.
@ Bbb23: Well, after a lot of research by volunteers, attempts were made to do that too, and in spite of a clear majority consensus on a major, well subscribed RfC, the Foundation quashed it. Well intentioned, and possibly pretty good alternatives proposed by the WMF to introduce something new to replace it have either stalled or are taking an unexplainable long time to develop (over a year now).
All these solutions would have reduced the burden on admins and paved the way to policing new articles in preemtion of the future when we finally do end up with too few sysops. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 02:30, 15 June 2012 (UTC).
I completely agree with QU, after all we are here to develop and improve an encyclopedia and content/article related backlogs are more important than admin backlogs. But I disagree with Bb23's idea of making it harder to create article, as some articles on notable subject start poorly but are improved only by time with multiple editors including anonymous editors working on it. We not only need to improve the the already present articles but also need to improve the coverage of the project by creating articles on topics which are still not covered by Wiki English. --SMS ^Talk 12:02, 15 June 2012 (UTC)
I don't think we've been talking about making it harder to create articles for those who have something genuine to contribute. Unfortunately around 80% of all new pages are totally unsuitable and will be deleted, thus creating an unnecessary burden on the admins who have to bear the brunt of the comments of those creators. Being an admin and just doing a correct job can be extremely unpleasant and needs guts - just like a doctor working in a war zone where innocent victims get hurt. Hardly surprising that many of those who get the bit drift into the sidelines of adminship after a while and become less active and avoid the conflict areas. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 14:02, 15 June 2012 (UTC)
Even this is not necessarily an admin job: For example, yesterday I spent about half an hour of my non-admin time to fix the article of Chupanga, which initially contained one line of info which in addition was completely false. Now it is a decent stub, or even a start-class article.--Ymblanter (talk) 14:11, 15 June 2012 (UTC)
I'm really not sure whom to agree with; everyone's made some really excellent points! I think part of the problem with being primarily a content contributor is that a big percentage of our community really do see non-admins as being some kind of second-class citizen. I find beefing-up articles to be really challenging and fun, and I'm sure I'd find AdminStuff stressful and boring. But I think there are a lot of people who'd agree that working on content gets very little recognition (and frequently very little respect). I have no idea how one could address the misconceptions that non-admins are somehow less important, or less worthy, but if one could then perhaps we'd get fewer recognition-hungry but unready admin candidates, and more people happy to work more on content. Doing the really tedious cleanup stuff on subjects in which one really isn't interested is just majorly unappealing work; improving stuff in which one is interested gives a lot of personal satisfaction ... but the real ongoing cleanup jobs are almost always in the articles on subjects which most people aren't really interested in. Ho hum. How does one increase the perceived respect for non-admin types? And how does one attract good potential-admin candidates into RfA? And how on Earth does one get rid of ill-informed pile-on opposes based on ancient sins that have gone way past their use-by date? Pesky (talk) 21:41, 15 June 2012 (UTC)

(... and do we also want to address the conceptions that admins are somehow less important, or less worthy? ) --Demiurge1000 (talk) 22:08, 15 June 2012 (UTC)

Admins are less important than content creators, but we are still a necessary evil. I'm not a great author, which is why after years of being gnomish, I became an admin. I have a deep respect for those who are more artistic with words than I am. I accept my role as janitor, as one whose job is to create and protect an environment for which article creators can thrive. And I enjoy my gnomish efforts, to be honest, and don't mind taking a back seat, adding sources and such. I've said it 100x, people come here for the great articles, not for the great admins. Admins aren't cops even if we have to play that role from time to time. Admins that see themselves primarily as cops are quite annoying, to be honest. Dennis Brown - 2¢ © 22:24, 15 June 2012 (UTC)

Very well put, but that means (to use Pesky's words) that in fact we do have "some kind of second-class citizen". In real life, I don't go around declaring that janitors are scumbags, just because one janitor once stole some money from my wallet. Thinking back a little further, as far as my school was concerned, what my headmaster endearingly termed "the servants of the school" (mentally, he was stuck in the 1950s) were to be treated with even more politeness than teachers, because teachers could give you a verbal lashing to more than match any insult you might throw at them, but mop-pushers were expected not to. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 23:08, 15 June 2012 (UTC)
Pardon me while I get US-centric: I don't think I'm a second class citizen, but I accept that I'm not the star quarterback or running back either. I don't mind being the lineman that makes it possible for others to make the big plays and actually score the points, as that is how our "team" wins. They NEED people like me to clear the path for them, but they are still the ones with the more unique talents. I do a lot of gnoming, regional stuff, and of course I put my admin bit to use taking out the trash, but I try to stay humble enough to realize that people really come here for the well written articles. It is a symbiotic relationship. Just because I have more "power" with my admin bit, that doesn't make me more important. I'm still here to first serve the reader, and next serve the content creator. What I have in "power", they more than make up for in writing skills. Too many admins think they are the boss. We admins aren't the leaders, we are just the bouncers, the janitors, the mentors and the mediators. Some admins would do good to remember that. Dennis Brown - 2¢ © 01:12, 16 June 2012 (UTC)

I think the point about teamwork is the really important part in what you said (the rest I can just about work out from the context.) There are too many people who really do have a "second class citizen" view of others, and those people need to take a really hard look at themselves. They may not be able to do that, though, because quite possibly, they don't see themselves as being part of any "team" with you or me or more than about half the people here. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 02:06, 16 June 2012 (UTC)

(out) Random waffle. It's a shame we don't have some way to let editors see their work is appreciated - the feedback tool not really cutting it. I'll take a personal example just to illustrate the way I sometimes feel; maybe others share it. I found Control self-assessment on requested articles and thought "I know about that, and someone wants to read about it." So I spent time writing it - and it is no GA but I was quite pleased with it and it took effort. I wanted an independent view of if it was any good, so I asked at a Wikiproject and did get a polite comment (which I appreciate) but what I really wanted was to know if anyone read it and found it informative or interesting. Without that feedback it is necessary to be totally self-motivated which is a rare thing. In comparison, and I've read this many times here, admin functions generate stacks of feedback (positive and negative) which at least makes you feel your work is noticed - if not appreciated! QU ^TalkQu 22:48, 15 June 2012 (UTC)

Actually, I think Wikipedia generally does a poor job of showing editors their work is appreciated. Other than barnstars, which are nice albeit a bit hokey, I see very little positive feedback. I think the project leans toward criticism more than it does toward pats on the back, and I think that applies to all editors (junior, senior, admin). In addition to the negative mindset, being virtual doesn't help.--Bbb23 (talk) 01:33, 16 June 2012 (UTC)
That was at some point discussed at the Strategy Wiki when the Foundation Strategic Plan was being prepared. The suggestion was to create an alternative route for content creators - whereas it would be sometimes unwise to give them the admin bit with blocks ets, they coule be extremely useful for other things currently nor well-handled: for instance, identifying which sources are reliable, or helping to review GA and FA nominations. Unfortunately, that was on the suggestions of one of the teams but did not go anywhere further.--Ymblanter (talk) 06:52, 16 June 2012 (UTC)
I'm totally in agreement with these thoughts on teamwork; Wikipedia just couldn't function if we were all the same. I've commented before on it being daft to insist that admins should be "content creators" in the way that most people view the term – writers. We need all sorts, in here, just the same as a highway system needs all sorts. We need mappers and planners, foundation-diggers, buyers-of-materials, road-building labourers, people who install traffic lights and paint lines, people who put up and maintain signposts, litter-pickers ... and, yes, we do need speed cameras and traffic cops, too. Wikipedia needs gnomes just as much as it needs writers. We need people who create tools and templates; they may not have as much perceived glamour, but we need them. And I think gnomes are possibly the most unrecognised of the lot, just quietly gnoming around tweaking, fixing, oiling the hinges, dusting under the bed, and all that. They guy sploshing around in the trench in the road installing the sewers is just as necessary to a new housing project as the glamourous architect, the project manager, or the brickies are. TEAM (ewky jargon from the PosiThink people) stands for Together Everyone Achieves More. It would just be very nice if everyone had a bit more tolerance for the individual glitches of others, when those glitches don't amount to wilful destructiveness. Of course we're all blinkin' different. That's part of what makes it all work. Pesky (talk) 19:45, 16 June 2012 (UTC)
The current RfA is a good example of that, an unusual but highly qualified candidate. We have become too narrow in our demands for admins. We do NOT want a monoculture of admins. Monocultures get big, then die out. Dennis Brown - 2¢ © 11:39, 17 June 2012 (UTC)
I don't believe 'we' have become to narrow. The corps of RfA voters is highly volatile with many voting only on one RfA because they like/dislike that particular candidate. The core of regular voters is very small and also changes over time - there are hardly any of the 'regulars' voting nowadays who were around when I first started voting on every RfA about three years or so ago. Thus, the criteria, or bar, or whatever one wants to call it, is practically set anew at each RfA depending entirely on who turns up to vote. (a complex, in-depth analysis of 100s of voters and their voting patterns was made at WP:RFA2011). The problem with RfA is one of: plain trolls, editors who use RfA as a platform to demonstrate against adminship as an institution, those who uphold and maintain the right to be as uncivil as possible with impunity, and those who are just so new they are completely clueless. Trolling and and incivility seem to have abated somewhat recently but RfA has become so infrequent that it is too soon to draw any conclusions as to whether a trend towards a clean up of it has really begun. And if it has, we need to convince the dozens of users we have canvassed over the past two years to come forward now and run for office. That's the only way we will ever know. -Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 19:42, 17 June 2012 (UTC)
A wonderful analysis of why it would be so hard to fix whatever it is that people think is broke. That said, in a discussion elsewhere, I mentioned something that could be "fixed". FWIW, here it is: A solution to the 70-80% business (assuming anything below 70% support rate is a fail) is for a bureaucrat to strike !votes before the RfA process is complete. Two possibilities: (1) require a rationale for every !vote, and if there isn't one, strike it; OR, even stronger, (2) require a rationale and allow the bureaucrat to strike a !vote even if there is a rationale if they deem the rationale to be frivolous (e.g., the sock puppet oppose in History's RfA is over the top and should NOT count). If we're going to accept the convention that when the percentage dips below 70%, the RfA is doomed (and often the candidate withdraws), then we have to make those percentages more meaningful.--Bbb23 (talk) 20:31, 17 June 2012 (UTC)
Requiring a rationale would only mean people would copy one from above. Too easy to bypass. I would rather let them not give one, which makes it easier to discount. And I don't foresee being able to force someone to provide a rationale, as that would be inconsistent with the rest of the pedia. Everyone is allowed to offer a weak argument of simple approval/disapproval everywhere. They are also usually panned everywhere. Dennis Brown - 2¢ © 20:39, 17 June 2012 (UTC)
The problem is with the 70% business coupled with the bad !votes. In other forums, like AfD, for instance, the closer can discount poorly reasoned !votes, but there is no magic percent that causes the AfD to implode before the close. By contrast, at RfA, the percentage can hurt the candidate before the closer can assess things. That's why pre-assessment would be helpful. An alternative would be to eliminate the percentage business completely so candidates would tough it out regardless of numbers.--Bbb23 (talk) 21:03, 17 June 2012 (UTC)
Technically, this is how the bureaucrat is supposed to calculate it anyway, but the decision is kind of like The Colonel's secret recipe, you have a rough idea but not all the details of how it gets made. I tend to think the problem isn't after the votes are cast, but during. Dennis Brown - 2¢ © 21:14, 17 June 2012 (UTC)

Has anyone noticed that the most recent RfA has a standard question (question 4) as "Recall?"? Can anyone please point out where this has been approved to be added the the standard 3 questions, or is someone "trying" to be cleaver? Maybe a mistake, but the first I have seen like this. 216.160.218.244 (talk) 16:27, 17 June 2012 (UTC)

Candidate added this question himself/herself. --SMS ^Talk 16:34, 17 June 2012 (UTC)
Oh. Thanks Smsarmad. 216.160.218.244 (talk) 16:38, 17 June 2012 (UTC)

I just thought I'd point the regulars to the recent well written signpost article. It's certainly made me think more about requests for adminship. 195.59.45.126 (talk) 07:57, 20 June 2012 (UTC)

Thanks, responded there. - Dank (push to talk) 15:30, 20 June 2012 (UTC)

Following up on the above-mentioned Signpost article I would like to ask the community if there should be a different process to select new admins and if so how should admins be selected instead of by the current process. Please comment below. Targaryen^{speak or forever remain silent} 18:27, 20 June 2012 (UTC)

• This was literally only just discussed and archived recently: Wiki_talk:Requests_for_adminship/Archive_216#Adminship_trial. Unless you have new ideas to suggest, I can't see how this thread is at all useful. We're just going to get the same WP:PEREN suggestions over again. —Strange Passerby (t × c) 18:32, 20 June 2012 (UTC)
• Just to mention, I think an RfC isn't necessary on this place. It is extremely highly trafficked. I really don't think this discussion will get us anywhere. The only way for change to occur on RfA if it is necessary at the present is for something similar to Wiki: RfA reform 2011. Discussion on it here, without structure, won't cause changes. Ryan Vesey Review me! 18:33, 20 June 2012 (UTC)

There is now some attention for the issue because there is a Signpost article about it. I think it's right to ask the question once more. Even if it's a perennial proposal, often those have last been raised half a decade ago and there is now a chance of a wider input. Targaryen^{speak or forever remain silent} 18:45, 20 June 2012 (UTC)
I just don't think an unstructured discussion will ever create the change needed. A project page should be created for structured discussion to create a proposal. Then an RfC could occur on the proposal. Ryan Vesey Review me! 18:51, 20 June 2012 (UTC)
Please just give it a chance and see what kind of suggestions are offered (if any). If this discussion doesn't lead to anything it can always be closed later on. Targaryen^{speak or forever remain silent} 19:06, 20 June 2012 (UTC)
I'm already developing an RfC for this as stated in the above discussions. I'm working on the layout.—cyberpower ^Chat_Online 20:52, 20 June 2012 (UTC)

• I see that several people have responded to this week's Signpost story with the suggestion of some sort of election. I'll help out, whether I'm elected or not, if there's an election of a board of around 11 to 15 people who are directed to gather and present data, to try to get more people involved, and to experiment with trial RFA formats for 3 months. The board would have no authority to promote admins themselves, but hopefully they will convince Wikipedians that their methods and recommendations on who should be promoted at the end of the 3 months are likely to be accepted at RFA; the more persuasive they are, the more likely they are to attract new voters and new candidates to participate. We don't need an RFC to approve this ... anyone can form a group and make recommendations ... but we probably won't be able to get wide "buy-in" unless a lot of people show up to vote in the election. Only a board will be flexible and agile enough to get the job done; RFC voters generally aren't interested in substantive discussions on even a few points, much less something as complicated as RFA reform, as demonstrated in every RFC we've tried. - Dank (push to talk) 22:14, 20 June 2012 (UTC)
• This is not an appropriate forum for such a general and open-ended discussion on a vast topic. See WT:RFA2011 to get an idea of the sheer quantity of ideas on this topic and the amount of discussion that has happened in the very recent past. If you'd like to start this discussion, please simply start a page (like WP:RFA2012 or a subpage of WP:RFC) for that purpose and announce it here. -Scottywong| converse _ 19:13, 20 June 2012 (UTC)

That's clear then, change is not desired by the people in charge. Targaryen^{speak or forever remain silent} 19:34, 20 June 2012 (UTC)

Not really. Just asking you to take the discussion to a more appropriate forum rather than clogging up this page with a gargantuan discussion. -Scottywong| spill the beans _ 23:50, 20 June 2012 (UTC)
Quite the contrary, actually. We ought to be more proactive in focusing our efforts on discussion of plausible proposals at a venue like WT:RFA2011 for presentation to the community, while outlining the specific issues the proposals intend to resolve and how they will resolve them. Repetitious open-ended discussion at a venue like this one, I would argue, is not the best way to go about doing so. Tyrol5 [Talk] 20:00, 20 June 2012 (UTC)

• Targaryen, most of the editors agree that the current RFA process has problems but they are mostly of minor nature and still has not affected the project much. Even if this process needs to be improved, we need to do everything systematically. We need to identify problems, how much a problem has affected the RFA, solutions. And I agree with others that this venue might not be the best place to get to a positive result, we need to revive the RFA Reforms 2011 (or probably start RFA Reforms 2012, but not like the following proposal, without exactly identifying what the problem is?). --SMS ^Talk 20:57, 20 June 2012 (UTC)

Simple proposal

See WP:RFA2012 Egg Centric 20:33, 20 June 2012 (UTC)

Another proposal

• Wiki: Village pump (technical)/Proposal by Jc37/1 Wiki: Village pump (technical)/Proposal by Jc37/2

Enjoy : ) - jc37 01:52, 21 June 2012 (UTC)

I did enjoy it, Jc, thank you. Someguy1221 (talk) 08:47, 21 June 2012 (UTC)
yw : )
I'll have a new proposal in a few days. my internet atm isn't what I'd wish it to be : ) - jc37 15:14, 22 June 2012 (UTC)

Please comment on Wiki: RfA reform 2012 concerning whether limiting voters to a randomly selected jury of uninvolved editors selected from a pool of volunteers eligible to vote for trustees would prevent potential inaccuracy from off-wiki canvassing and also prevent pile-ons, which I hope also makes the process more pleasant. The extent to which a jury would match the opinion of all community members bothering to vote would be in proportion to the size of the jury pool. About 20 jurors would be accurate to the width of the closer's discretionary gray area, while allowing for no-shows. The downsides to this process would be effort coordinating a call for volunteers and establishment of jury volunteer, selection, and selection without involved editor pools. I note that arbcom would similarly be able to make use of such a jury pool to prevent arbitrators who eventually come into contact with most disputants from having to cast votes after they have drafted a case, as an optional side benefit later on if it works out. 71.212.226.91 (talk) 07:25, 22 June 2012 (UTC)

• Wiki: Village pump (technical)/Proposal by Jc37

The new, updated proposal. Enjoy : ) - jc37 17:01, 23 June 2012 (UTC)

Could use some feedback to flesh out the proposal. - Mailer Diablo 08:02, 24 June 2012 (UTC)

It is something similar to my proposal. →TSU ^tp* 08:08, 24 June 2012 (UTC)
• I have a feeling that editors hate committees. If that is taken out of the equation, I think pre-RfAs might stand a decent chance like how PROD did. - Mailer Diablo 08:12, 24 June 2012 (UTC)

 

 

Been playing with RfA data lately and thought I'd share this graph. I should mention that this graph uses a running average of 3 because the graph of actual data is very squiggly and I was more interested in trends, so this graph is much more smooth than the actual data. It's interesting to note that before mid-2005 early 2006, most RfAs were successful and that after that point most were unsuccessful. 64.40.54.83 (talk) 01:03, 19 June 2012 (UTC) Corrected year. 64.40.54.83 (talk) 01:33, 19 June 2012 (UTC)

Are you sure that isn't some sort of hospital monitor?--Bbb23 (talk) 01:22, 19 June 2012 (UTC)
if it is, the patient is dying.—cyberpower ^Chat_Offline 01:27, 19 June 2012 (UTC)
Very interesting graph. Is there a way to add to that same chart a line for the number of active admins, such as those with 5 or more edits in a given month which is what WMF uses for its active editor criteria? Pine^✉ 02:06, 19 June 2012 (UTC)

This got me in the mood to update my long-running Active Admins graph at File:ActiveAdmins 18-06-2012.png. Enjoy. 02:11, 19 June 2012 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by MBisanz (talk • contribs)

Hm, does anyone see a problem here? Pine^✉ 02:30, 19 June 2012 (UTC)

More editors = more people running for adminship = larger number of fails. Why is the percentage higher? because we're getting a lot more "notnow" kind of RfAs, that's also come along with greater visibility of Wiki English. - jc37 02:39, 19 June 2012 (UTC)
Mmm, I'd have to disagree with you there. Used to be, there would be a bunch of RfAs going on at the same time, but now I get excited to see one, and the page is empty most of the time. That's a pretty palpable change. Keilana|^{Parlez ici} 03:00, 19 June 2012 (UTC)
We do not have more editors, in fact, the number of editors is roughly stable since I believe 2008.--Ymblanter (talk) 05:38, 19 June 2012 (UTC)

I'm not too worried by this. I think, as Jc suggests, we have more editors requesting adminship when they're really not ready. As Wikipedia grows, and has become on of the biggest, most popular websites, that is inevitable - not only are there more editors, but adminship seems like more 'power', and so more attractive to those editors who want power (and thus, more attractive to editors who shouldn't really be admins yet). ItsZippy ^{(talk • contributions)} 10:06, 19 June 2012 (UTC)

It is interesting looking at how people who are not ready for RfA have dropped off at a slower rate than those who are ready. Looking at NOTNOWs and SNOW closures as a percentage of Unsuccessful RfAs (in a style borrowed from WSC), you get the following table. It made the "Minimum requirements" suggestion a good one for a while, but it does seem the group notice is doing the job nicely. We generally get a blip of NOTNOWS during the summer months, so it'd be interesting to see how it goes this year. Worm^TT(talk) 11:06, 19 June 2012 (UTC)

I'm still concerned about the downwards trend of the active admins. This is basically confirming my fears in the above threads and that something needs to be done. I was holding off on creating an RfC because I realize my fears maybe weren't as bad as I thought, but, perhaps I may just create one.—cyberpower ^Chat_{Limited Access} 11:18, 19 June 2012 (UTC)

• Comment If anybody else wants to work with the actual RfA data, I have added it here. Kind regards. 64.40.54.119 (talk) 14:49, 19 June 2012 (UTC)

I don't believe there is much to be gained by looking at stats of failed RfAs. It's like looking at a lonely stretch of dangerous road - surprisingly few accidents, those who drive carefully get down it without incident, but because there is only one car a week that uses it, the rare accident is when a drunken driver goes down it for some unexplained reason and crashes on one of the hairpin bends. The data is unreliable because most of the failed RfA are from clueless individuals and/or hat seekers. It also fluctuates due to the effect of huge warnings that have been put on the transclusion page edit notice from time to time. There was a period while when it worked quite well and there were very few cranky applications for the tools. I'll say this again: While we all say that RfA is broken, generally those who should pass, do; while those who shouldn't, don't. Problem is getting enough to come forward who would almost certainly pass. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 15:38, 19 June 2012 (UTC)
I don't know that those statements don't contradict each other. If there are Adminable editors out there who never transclude at RfA, can we really say that "Those who should pass, do"? The way I see it is that we miss 100% of the shots we don't take. Every editor who would be a productive Admin that gets scared away from RfA is a failure for RfA. Achowat (talk) 15:44, 19 June 2012 (UTC)
I doubt there is much to gain from initiating an RFC. While it's an indubitably easier task to gain consensus on the premise that there is some sort of problem at RFA, I fear establishing consensus on a solution will be far more difficult. That being said, I'm inclined to agree with Achowat; editors otherwise qualified for the tools are not likely to pursue RFA if they've developed a negative opinion of the process, whether that be by first-hand past experiences or observing the experiences of other editors. I'd be curious to know how many of this sort of editors are out there, and I think the most plausible way of generating data and presenting the results to the community to provide tangible evidence of a problem is through a survey of editors who meet some predetermined set of criteria (and it doesn't have to be a complex set, just number of edits, length of tenure, participation at administrative venues, etc.). Tyrol5 [Talk] 15:57, 19 June 2012 (UTC)

Is it a problem?

Ok, so we've clearly identified a number of trends:

1. The number of users attempting RfA's has steadily decreased.
2. The success rate of RfA's has decreased (albeit not by much, since 2007 at least).
3. The number of active admins has steadily decreased.

The next question we need to ask is: Is it a problem? Because if it's just an unproblematic trend, then it's not worth worrying about. An analysis that I'd like to see is whether or not admin backlogs are being taken care of, and whether or not the response time to requests for admin tasks has increased (like closing AfD's, responding to CSD's, AIV, RFPP, CHU, etc). If none of these things has significantly changed during the decline in adminship, then we've clearly figured out a way to cope and/or we don't need as many admins as we think we do.

My point is that we're rabidly pointing at data and saying, "Look, things are changing!" without analyzing whether or not those changes are making a tangible difference in the way this site runs. Don't get me wrong, I think it's important to keep an eye on these types of statistics, but I don't necessarily think that any action should be taken to artificially increase the active admin rate until further analysis shows that it is actually necessary. -Scottywong| speak _ 15:51, 19 June 2012 (UTC)

I do have a bit of data on article deletions. The total number of article deletions has fallen from about 617,000 in 2007 to 263,000 in 2011, a decline by a factor of about 2.3. On the other hand the number of successful RfAs fell from 408 to 52 in the same period, a decline by a factor of nearly 8, and if current trends continue it's going to halve again this year. Although the workload of this particular admin task has gone down the promotion rate has gone down much faster. Hut 8.5 21:52, 19 June 2012 (UTC)
Hut, is this AfD deletions, or total deletions including prod and speedy? DGG ( talk ) 19:48, 20 June 2012 (UTC)
All deletions of mainspace pages (including speedy deletion, AfD, PROD, and any out-of-process deletions). Hut 8.5 19:55, 20 June 2012 (UTC)
Ok, active admin count has decreased faster than deletion workload. But still, the important question is whether or not the deletion backlogs are being attended to, and/or if they are being attended to with a slower response rate than desired. If the work is being done, then there is no immediate problem. Will there eventually be a problem when the active admin count drops to x? Probably, but much more detailed analysis would need to be done to even make an educated guess as to what x is, and how close we currently are to x. -Scottywong| confess _ 23:58, 19 June 2012 (UTC)
Ironically, I was going to come to you Scottywong when I was thinking in exactly that way. What would be interesting is if we could find out how long it takes for admin action to happen in general. Questions like average time for an XfD to close, average time for an AIV to be removed etc. I'm not sure how we could we could get that information - but I'd be interested in ideas of how to find it out. Worm^TT(talk) 08:09, 20 June 2012 (UTC)
I feel obliged to correct a misunderstanding here. Hut is talking about the rate of decline in RFA's, not the rate of decline in active admins. Reading in the graph above that declined from roughly 950 to 750 in 2007-2011, a decrease of 21%, while the number of RFA's decreased by 57%. Of course this is not a good measure of admin workload. I think the total number of edits/day divided by the number of active admins might be a reasonable indicator for this which is also easy to determine. A separate issue is of course the current group of admins are becoming more and more the patricians of the pedia, which is gonna end up causing some major upheaval somewhere down the road. Yoenit (talk) 08:33, 20 June 2012 (UTC)
First, we need a list of admin actions which can be backlogged (for instance, summarizing complicated discussions or making three-admin summaries of RFC is strictly speaking an admin action, but I would not know how to determine the backlog).--Ymblanter (talk) 11:07, 20 June 2012 (UTC)
Well, determining AfD backlog wouldn't be that hard. You could just compare the closing date on the AfD (date on the closer's sig) with the creation date of the article (or date of last relist) and see how much longer over 7 days each AfD was closed. In my experience in the last few months, only the "tough" AfD's linger significantly longer than 7 days. As for determining the length of other backlogs, I'd have to think about it some more. -Scottywong| gab _ 14:24, 20 June 2012 (UTC)
• I have a different question that I haven't seen but I think applies since we are talking numbers: I'm not saying that an admin should be judged by how often they use the tools, but of the 700+ "active" admins, how many are only active as editors, and seldom use the tools? I'm not worried about comparing as much as figuring out how may admins are actually working the boards, doing the technical moves, closing the processes etc, at least several times per month. Dennis Brown - 2¢ © 15:14, 20 June 2012 (UTC)
• This is an important question. I've grabbed the recent logs of 70 (10%) of the active admins and am analysing them. Results to follow, but as a taster, out of the 24 checked so far, 4 appear to have performed no admin actions in the last 12 months.  —SMALLJIM  10:07, 23 June 2012 (UTC)
• Thanks, I need to learn to do this myself, I do similar at work but still new to the mop here. I would expect at least 25% of admins never work the boards at all, and would bet that half rarely use the tools, and only for what they edit on or when something falls in their laps. Might be burn out or just avoiding controversy (we get chewed on without justification from time to time), but I am interested in seeing how much "admining" the average admin actually does. Of the 1500 admins, if the 700 "active" were really "active admins" in any significant way, we would be bumping into each other in the halls, you would think. Dennis Brown - 2¢ © 11:40, 23 June 2012 (UTC)
There is almost never an AfD backlog of more than a half-day, Some individual AfDs take a few extra days to close, sometimes because of the extreme difficulty in closing them objectively & fairly in a particularly contentious subject. I don't think this is wrong. Similarly Prods and CSDs are never more than a day behind, and usually much less. I don't think this is is a problem at all, either. Where there is a problem is in getting them closed properly. I typically decline about 1/3 of the Speedy deletions I see, but some admins close essentially everything, Either I or they must be doing it wrong. DGG ( talk ) 19:53, 20 June 2012 (UTC)
I think that's because those areas are well-trafficked. Backlogs have been present in niche areas, for instance MediaWiki talk:Spam-whitelist, for the last year or so. The question is, are they getting worse? MER-C 10:44, 21 June 2012 (UTC)
I do not have any statistics supporting this, but I (subjectively) noticed that re-listing is being used more often. For instance, when I started checking AFDs, finding an article relisted three times was extremely rare if not unheard of. Articles relisted twice were more like an exception. Now relisting an article twice is a routine, and I stumble almost every day at one or two articles relisted three times.--Ymblanter (talk) 11:05, 21 June 2012 (UTC)
That's not indicative of a lack of admin participation, that's indicative of a lack of editor participation. -Scottywong| chatter _ 14:06, 21 June 2012 (UTC)

At the beginning of this year there had been 7,938,248 deletions done by admins since records began (Dec 2004 I believe).

At the beginning of 2011 there had only been 7,068,071 deletions. So I make that 870,177 deletions last year, rather below the average for the last 7 years. But our "active" admins have dwindled by more than three hundred since they peaked at 1,022.

But the critical issue for admin cover is the blocking of vandals, and that will be the first area where we fail. As the number of active admins declines so we will more frequently have gaps when no-one is available. We might still have Admins around for over 23 hours that day and more than sufficient to catch up with deletions, but that won't be much comfort to the recent changes patroller who spends twenty minutes reverting edits from a vandal who has already been reported to AIV. There is a huge difference between staffing up to always have someone available 24/7 365.25 days of the year and having enough people to do the most urgent stuff within 24 hours.

We need better stats - we need to know how the number of very active admins is going. But we also need to unbundle the block button and give it to our most active hugglers (OK a modified block button that doesn't work on registered accounts that have made >100 edits.) ϢereSpielChequers 22:30, 21 June 2012 (UTC)

• Apart from increasing backlogs, we'll know for sure that we need more admins when there's an increase in the number of upheld complaints about admin-only actions. Most admin work involves a degree of consideration, so such an increase would be indicative of work being cleared without giving it the time it deserves. Historical analysis of WP:DRV cases or WP:RFU's might be ways of monitoring this.  —SMALLJIM  15:46, 22 June 2012 (UTC)

• That's an interesting suggestion, but I think there's too much potential for confounding variables. it would be hard to separate out the "overworked admins" effect from other changes in the admin and non-admin communities which would also affect complaints. bobrayner (talk) 17:10, 22 June 2012 (UTC)
Ah - that's why I specified upheld complaints, not all complaints. But perhaps I should have stipulated "a sustained increase in the number of upheld complaints", as that would be a pretty clear sign that something was wrong, even if it actually meant that the majority of admins were getting bored with the job and not doing it as conscientiously as they might. An injection of fresh blood every so often is probably a good thing in any case; I suspect that the peak of an average admin's activity occurs soon (months to a few years) after they get the bit. Anyway, just throwing in another idea, maybe we should aim for a fixed [active admin] to [active editor] ratio and organise recruitment drives if that ratio starts to drop. 750/37,500 = 2%.  —SMALLJIM  22:09, 22 June 2012 (UTC)

Admin retention

I've compiled some data on retention of admins. The table below breaks down admins by year of promotion by their current status. The columns show, respectively, the number of promotions in the given year, the percentage of those promoted who are still admins, the percentage of those promoted who are still active admins (using the definition at Wiki: List of administrators), and the percentage of the active admin corps who were promoted in this year. Note that the definition of "active" depends only on frequency of edits, so this says nothing about how frequently these admins use their tools. Not included in this table are 39 current admins (10 of them active) who were not promoted through RfA (in most cases this is because they were promoted before the current RfA process was established, because they were promoted as a result of their work for the Foundation, or because they are a bot).

One obvious inference from the table is that the declining promotion rate means most admins have been here for some time. 75% of active admins were promoted more than 3.5 years ago, and 60% were promoted more than 4.5 years ago. We have more active admins promoted in 2004 than in 2011. The good news is that it looks as though people largely stop leaving after a certain length of time, as the percentage of promotions who are still here is about the same for the years 2003-6. If it's true that people do stop leaving after this point, or at least that the number of leavers from these cohorts drops below the current promotion rate, then the decline in the number of active admins will eventually stop. However that's not going to happen for at least another 3-4 years, and using the above data I estimate we'll have about 525 admins at that point. That's quite a bit less than the current figure of 700. Hut 8.5 18:41, 22 June 2012 (UTC)

• Good work. It is an odd and small sample to draw too direct of a conclusion, but it does show some trends as you point out. I wish there was a way to (perhaps there is) to match up admin actions from the last 12 months logs, according to the year they became admin. I'm still curious how many of the 700 "active" admins are really active AS admins as well. Dennis Brown - 2¢ © 20:07, 22 June 2012 (UTC)
  • I had an idea, and I was actually able to do this. The table below breaks down admin actions in the previous 12 months by the promotion date of the admin who did them.

Columns represent, respectively: year of promotion, total number of admin actions performed in the previous 12 months by admins promoted in this year, the percentage of admin actions in the previous 12 months performed by admins promoted in this year, the mean number of admin actions performed in the previous 12 months by an admin promoted in this year and a breakdown of admins promoted in this year by the number of actions they performed in the previous 12 months. Data from User:JamesR/AdminStats, not included in the above (including the percentages of all admin actions) are admins who were desysopped in the previous 12 months and admins not promoted through RfA. Note that admins promoted in 2012 and the second half of 2011 will have had less opportunity to use their tools.

As you might expect, admins promoted a long time ago are less likely to use their tools than recent promotions, though admins promoted some time ago are still doing a fair fraction of the work. Interestingly we have 6 current admins with no logged admin actions at all, which means they haven't used their tools since 2004. Hut 8.5 14:59, 23 June 2012 (UTC)

• Excellent work! That does show a trend and is useful, indicating the long one has the tools, the less likely they are to use them, and that after 2 or 3 years, most admins that were "very active" as admins drop off dramatically, which could be burn out. This also tells us that as the number of admins goes down, even less actions will be taken as the older, larger "classes" of admins age out. There are a number of interesting sub-trends as well. Dennis Brown - 2¢ © 15:12, 23 June 2012 (UTC)

Hut, how did you conclude that there are 6 current admins with no admin actions? I looked at the stats (raw data at JamesR), All Totals, rightmost column, and couldn't find a 0. What'd you base that on?--Bbb23 (talk) 15:23, 23 June 2012 (UTC)
I based it on the fact they're the only admins not on the list. The bot which generates the list doesn't go through a list of admins and add up the number of admin actions performed, it goes through a list of admin actions performed and notes down who performed them. If you don't have any admin actions you won't end up on the list, even if you happen to be an admin. In fact if you look closely you can see there are some non-admins on the list who did things like moving protected pages. If you're interested the 6 5 people with no logged admin actions are: User:Ffirehorse, User:Dwheeler, User:ww, User:Cprompt (a bureaucrat) and User:Lustiger seth. Hut 8.5 15:37, 23 June 2012 (UTC) Actually there's only 5, I miscounted
Three of the five admins have almost no contributions of any kind to Wikipedia in 2012, and Ffirehorse, of his total of 1751 edits to the account (wow, that's small), has almost no edits from 2009-2011. This kind of dovetails with the subsection below, but what is the point of having admins who don't administrate? I realize that conventionally we don't desysop admins who aren't active, but by not doing so, all sorts of superficial numbers are distorted without further analysis.--Bbb23 (talk) 16:04, 23 June 2012 (UTC)

Rough analysis of active admins

Here's some more stats! Following on from my reply to Dennis Brown above, I chose, at random, 70 of the 703 active admins listed at Wiki: List_of_administrators/Active on 22 June 2012, and pulled the last 50 entries in their logs (I was not included). I recorded the date of the latest entry and the 50th entry. 26 (37%) have no entries in the last month; of those, 17 (24%) have no entries in the last two months; 9 (13%) have no entries this year; 6 (9%) for over a year; and one nothing since 2009. (all percentages rounded to nearest integer)

Of the 44 admins (63%) with at least one logged action in the last month (since 22 May), 14 (20%) have more than 50 actions logged in that period, but 21 (30%) have fewer than 10 (ignoring deletions made solely for page moves, and actions taken in the admin's own user space).

Interestingly, 33 (47%) of the admins have logged fewer than 50 actions this year so far; and of those, 17 (24%) have taken since some time in 2010; and 9 (13%) since 2008, to reach that number.

This is a very rough-and-ready analysis - it doesn't take account of the 500-odd semi-active admins, and I've not considered non-logged actions like closing AfDs, or refused RFUs or RPPs, etc. I'm sure there are a number of other factors I've omitted to take into account too, but it does give an indication that probably fewer than 200 of the 700 supposedly "active" admins have been particularly active admin-wise in the last month, and up to half of the "active" admins probably perform fewer than 100 admin actions in a year.  —SMALLJIM  15:26, 23 June 2012 (UTC)

• Obviously, there are some admins who are very active creating content, providing guidance to others, settling disputes and simply do not need the bit very often, so they are technically "administrating" but in ways that don't require the extra tools every day. But on the whole, half of the long time admins aren't using the tools regularly, if at all. This answer raises more questions, such as why? Burnout is one likely reason. Admins do get an extra ration of heat from editors often, even when doing the right thing, and certainly when they make a mistake. I can see this reducing a person's interest in using the admin bit over time. The next obvious question is is this reversible? Can we get admins who are active as editors but seldom use the admin bit, to help out more often, even if only a couple hours per week in pure administrative functions? How do we easily identify them to ask? Dennis Brown - 2¢ © 11:39, 24 June 2012 (UTC)
  • It is pretty easy to find such people using the work I did to create those tables, here's a list. Hut 8.5 12:52, 24 June 2012 (UTC)

• Dennis, if an editor is performing "administrative" functions without using administrative tools, why do they need to be an admin? The only answer I can come up with is that they have the administrative badge and are perhaps more likely to be respected. But, as I understand it, we don't necessarily want to "admit" that admins are entitled to additional respect. Thus, for example, when I resolve a dispute on ANI, I don't do so as an admin, and I don't need to be an admin to do so (although sometimes the editors involved mistakenly think I'm an admin). So, again, why does an editor need to be an admin if xe isn't going to use the tools?--Bbb23 (talk) 14:15, 24 June 2012 (UTC)
• @Bbb23, doing dispute resolution as an admin means seldom using the tools. Sometimes, editors knowing you have the ability is enough to keep you from having to use the tools. Being an admin IS more than using the tools, it usually means the editor is experienced as well. DGG is a good example: he uses the tools much less often than many but is obviously doing admin functions such as providing a neutral opinion, dealing with disputes, closing AFDs and other things that don't require using the tools a lot. Granted, he uses them more than 50 times a year, but not as much as I use them working at SPI and ANI, even though he is as engaged as I am. An Arbitrator might not use them very often either, as that just isn't how they spend most of their day. You can't judge how "busy" an admin is only by comparing the number of log entries, that is my point. Dennis Brown - 2¢ © 15:39, 24 June 2012 (UTC)
• Don't overlook the fact that these inactive, or not very active, admin-tool-users provide a reserve resource that could be called on at short notice if necessary - I think we could safely assume that if things started to become unmanageable some of them would notice and jump in to help, and if that wasn't enough, I'm sure that a good proportion would respond to an actual call for assistance, at least for long enough to get a new batch of admins appointed and effective.  —SMALLJIM  14:58, 24 June 2012 (UTC)
• Have you seen that happen? Every once in a while I see a notice of a backlog somewhere posted at AN or ANI, and then I see admins pitch in to help alleviate the backlog, wherever it is, but the admins that pitch in seem to be the active admins, not these. I'm not saying you're wrong - you have more experience with this than I do. Just wondering.--Bbb23 (talk) 15:03, 24 June 2012 (UTC)
• Part of the problem is that when there is a backlog, say at RFPP, you are rushed at fixing the backlog, so there is a higher chance of making mistakes. It is much better "quality" to never have a backlog to begin with. Dennis Brown - 2¢ © 15:39, 24 June 2012 (UTC)
• Well I said "if things started to become unmanageable", which is intentionally a few steps worse than a simple backlog, but to answer your question somewhat obliquely, I must admit that AN and ANI are not on my watchlist - I dropped them early on because I knew I wouldn't get anything else done if I followed those pages assiduously. However, if I knew of a low-traffic "extra admin help required" page, I'd watch that, and would recommend that all admins should.  —SMALLJIM  16:16, 24 June 2012 (UTC)
• That's very amusing and no doubt wise. The key to watching AN and ANI, if you want to watch them at all, is not to do so assiduously but very selectively.   Because I don't have the tools, it's one admin-like thing I can do.--Bbb23 (talk) 16:50, 24 June 2012 (UTC)

(edit conflict) I'm probably the poster child for semi-active admin, though who knows what my profile will look like in a year's time - it keeps changing. I notice that the stats don't include editing a protected page or template. I've been doing a lot of that since I got the tools - far more than I expected to. I've also userfied a deleted article on request (after helping the editor find sources); I am not sure whether that showed up in the logs or not, but being able to see the deleted article definitely didn't. Rather a lot of useful things are bundled up in adminship; not all of them show up in the logs; so I think this argument is proceeding from a bit of a narrow basis. You could equally well say that things that editors like me are using tools to do should be opened up to a broader range of editors. (But again, by this time next year I may be blocking people. I hope not, but you never know.) Yngvadottir (talk) 15:09, 24 June 2012 (UTC)
I don't know that I would call an editor who became an admin in April this year "semi-active" simply because they haven't used the tools much so far. Some might say it shows commendable restraint. :-) Your comments about what you've done since becoming an admin is interesting. How do we capture such things? Hut?--Bbb23 (talk) 15:27, 24 June 2012 (UTC)
Things like viewing deleted pages don't show up in any public log I am aware of, it won't be possible to use that to determine admin activity. Restoring a page for userfication would show up as an admin action in the logs though. It might theoretically be possible to count the number of protected pages edited by an admin, but it would be very difficult and certainly not something I would attempt. Hut 8.5 15:53, 24 June 2012 (UTC)