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This page contains discussions that have been archived from Village pump (proposals). Please do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to revive any of these discussions, either start a new thread or use the talk page associated with that topic.

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Unbundling the tools

Having read BD2412's comment above about unbundling, it got me thinking: which of the tools should be unbundled? Deletion and blocking, I think, are the two most sensitive tools in the toolkit, as blocking can easily drive off good contributors and deletion, as brought up by somebody (I think it was Dennis Brown) on the RfA talk page, must come with viewing deleted content, which is incredibly sensitive.

Other than those two, though, I fail to see a good reason why the tools should be kept bundled. Stuff like protection (WP:RPP, where there is a perennial backlog), changing userrights of others (WP:PERM), and overriding the title blacklist could easily be placed into the hands of a trusted user, I think, through a less rigorous process than RfA. Thoughts on potentially unbundling these tools, or others? StringTheory11 (t • c) 00:52, 31 October 2014 (UTC)

I think that unbundling page protection would be a good idea. --Tryptofish (talk) 01:00, 31 October 2014 (UTC)
(edit conflict × 2) You complain about backlogs. Unbundling the tools would just create more backlogs. - NickGibson3900 Talk 01:03, 31 October 2014 (UTC)
@NickGibson3900:One thing though, one could work their way up to admin. Maybe that way users would be more confident to run for RfA. You act as if users that would apply for this unbundled right would just be satisfied with what they're doing and wouldn't run for RfA just to help out with the big stuff. Well, admins aren't required to work everywhere. --AmaryllisGardener talk 01:13, 31 October 2014 (UTC)
(edit conflict) If this came up just a week ago I would have responded with a sarcastic reply, but, now I'm thinking, this might work. I doubt it would pass an RfC, but we could try. :) Don't forget about viewing deleted content, that's looked at as the most sensitive admin tool. One place you can see this is here. We could have a right that can deal with issues number 1 to 5, then "administrators" could deal with all of them. --AmaryllisGardener talk 01:08, 31 October 2014 (UTC)
If implemented, this would allow users to gain trust with the "lesser" toolset before applying for the more advanced one. Using the "lesser" bundle responsibly would probably be looked upon favorably by the community when the user decides to apply for the more advanced tools. --Biblioworm 01:15, 31 October 2014 (UTC)
Took the words right out of my mouth. --AmaryllisGardener talk 01:20, 31 October 2014 (UTC)
Issues with the ability to see deleted content could be ameliorated to a great degree if there were levels of deletion, with sensitive deleted content being distinguished from run-of-the mill maintenance-type deleted content. bd2412 T 01:51, 31 October 2014 (UTC)
We already have two levels, Deleted and Oversighted. The Devs, WMF and the community would all have to agree on a 3rd. I wouldn't bet my lunch money on that, particularly since it really complicates stuff for admin. Dennis - 2¢ 02:03, 31 October 2014 (UTC)
Keep in mind, the WMF says you MUST pass RFA or very similar to get any of the tools, so that wouldn't change, although the drama might be less because the "risk" is lower when they get fewer tools. That said, I've always thought that everything but the block button would be good for many users who are purely content creator types, the ones that have no interest in fighting vandals. They become "content moderators" or "mods". Then they could protect, delete, undelete, revedel, so they could close any XfD. These are areas we could use the extra help and they likely would excel in. It isn't a stepping stone to admin, even if some choose to use it that way.
Their authority would be limited to content only. For example, when it comes to general sanctions, they wouldn't be able to block or issue any sanction (ie: treated like a regular editor). However, WP:INVOLVED would have to apply to them, they can't protect an article they have worked on, etc. WP:ADMINACCT would also apply, as would behavioral expectations in general. While this isn't a giant breaking of tools, it really is a big breaking up of duties. And lets be honest, some people are great when dealing with policy and notability, but not so much at mediating or handing brawls. Their special tools and authority would be purely on content, where they would be considered equal to admin in authority in those areas. When it came to behavior and editors, their authority would be on par with non-admin. I know for a fact that many editors would like this as they are content centered and don't want the hassle of playing "wiki-cop", so you would get more interest. Unfortunately, this might change the view of admin to be more as wiki-cops, although I have no hard evidence to back this. Dennis - 2¢ 01:18, 31 October 2014 (UTC)
That's the first time I can recall the WMF using the language in your first sentence in relation to the question of unbundling. Assuming in good faith that it's an accurate snapshot of the WMF's position, the only reason that "must" has never been challenged is because the community has never reached a consensus which would call it into question. If it did, I'd bet my mortgage that the WMF would bend over backwards to find a way of implementing that consensus without compromising any legitimate concerns they might have over rogue use of the tools. Ironically, if they truly had those concerns they would undoubtedly enforce more rigid mechanisms in relation to inactive admins. —WFC— FL wishlist 17:27, 31 October 2014 (UTC)
The protection "backlog" is mainly because people almost forget it exists. In practice, protection is the least used of the 3 main tools. For every page we protect, we delete ~20. User rights changes are even less common. Having 1000 people with the ability to protect pages just means that the average "page protector" is going to use the tool twice a month. Or, in cases where it would make more sense to block the offending user(s), they'll just protect the page instead - when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Mr.Z-man 01:36, 31 October 2014 (UTC)
A very valid point that made me think Mr.Z-man. However it does not need be like that. As an example, if all you have is roll back, then everything does not look like it needs to be reverted. People will call an admin instead of starting an edit war. I have faith that people will use the protect right correctly. - Sincerely, Taketa (talk) 08:44, 31 October 2014 (UTC)
Regardless, it doesn't change my main point, which is that there isn't much demand for page protection in the first place. Mr.Z-man 11:32, 31 October 2014 (UTC)
You make a good point here. However, I can't see what it would hurt if other users had the right to protect, and it doesn't really matter if people only use it twice a month, as long as they can be trusted to not abuse it (FYI, I don't believe in the "too many" argument for userrights here; I believe that anybody who is qualified for something should get it, regardless of how many there already are). StringTheory11 (t • c) 22:02, 1 November 2014 (UTC)
But at that point it basically just becomes a "feel-good" proposal that doesn't actually accomplish anything of substance. We spend a few months debating and polling, some people get to collect an extra hat and maybe actually use their tool once a month or so, but we haven't solved any problems or actually improved the encyclopedia. Every other user group has had some practical use case behind it, but I can't see one for page protection. I think we need a slightly higher standard for creating new user groups, policies, and processes than "doesn't make things worse." Mr.Z-man 18:13, 2 November 2014 (UTC)
Issuing some sort of "protector" type rights would likely need to bundle: protect, stablesettings, editprotected, editsemiprotected, templateeditor --So the question at hand is: is this worth being a non-admin if you can change things like : Main Page, and/or fully protected templates used by the interface? — xaosflux Talk 02:38, 31 October 2014 (UTC)
It would make more sense to pass admins based on a curve than it would to unbundle the tools in my opinion. That way we could pass the amount of admins needed to stop attrition. Chillum 02:57, 31 October 2014 (UTC)
@Xaosflux: - Yes this is important to discuss. In my opinion people can be fully trusted AND be deemed not qualified to judge deletion of articles. Some of the main oppose reasons I see at WP:RFA is that people do not have enough experience in creating content themselves and voters do not want them to be deleting content, and that people do not have enough experience at WP:AFD and the voter cannot judge their ability to judge article deletions. Both of these concerns do not influence the protect right in the examples you supplied. People can be fully trusted and at the same time not be deemed qualified to do certain things or have certain rights. Sincerely, Taketa (talk) 09:02, 31 October 2014 (UTC)

I actually think WP:RFPP is the most contentious Wikipedia process. Allegations of admin abuse tend to be "someone is using admin powers to win an edit war". Deletion can't really do that, most of the time. Blocking can, but blocking someone you're in an edit war with is really obvious and people tend not to be accused of it unless it actually happened. Protection, and editing through protection, are a lot more of a gray area (especially because unlike routine CSDs and routine vandalism blocks, protection often implies there's an actual edit war going on, frequently where both sides are in good faith or at least not obviously in bad faith. --ais523 08:51, 31 October 2014 (UTC)

Page protection is a big deal tool, and anyone who can be trusted with it can also be trusted with blocking and deletion. If the problem is that RfA is too harsh, pushing people through TWO RFAs is not a solution. Title blacklist is unimportant, and can be handed out freely. Changing userrights is less clear. WilyD 09:58, 31 October 2014 (UTC)
See, I wasn't focusing on "trust", as I think that if you can't be trusted for one, you can't be trusted for any. When I talked about breaking off "block", it was because the "block" button is one reason why some people don't want to be an admin. They don't want to block, or have the tools, they want editing tools, not to be responsible for banhammering someone. My thinking was that is how you get MORE people to run in the first place. There isn't a lack of people who are qualified, there is a lack of people willing to accept the tools. Dennis - 2¢ 13:26, 31 October 2014 (UTC)
Is there a single person who's declined to stand for adminship because they'd have access to the block button? Having access doesn't mean they'd have to use it. But otherwise, the decline in new admins is almost entirely a decline in qualified candidates; not that none exist, but there are far less than there were in 2006, because there are far less new editors than there were in 2006. You get more people to stand by having a bigger pool to pick from. WilyD 14:19, 31 October 2014 (UTC)
Well, all evidence is always anecdotal, but I've talked to a lot of people who are qualified, and again, it is the "hassle of being an admin" that stops them from running. There really is NOT a shortage of qualified people, not in the least. They just don't want the job. I have heard more than a few that would like the edit tools but aren't wanting to block anyone, and the idea of having a "block" button is unappealing to them. They don't want to be asked to block someone, so not having the tool solves that problem. Also, the bar to pass would be easier without the block button, as being "blockhappy" is one common fear at RFA. The other common complaint is "not enough editing experience", and only those with lots of editing experience would be interested in this reduced set of tools, as it is all about articles, not behavior. Not everyone is good at mediating and dealing with behavior, but they might be exceptional at delete/undelete/protect because all they normally do is content. Honestly, I know many editors that would be better at this than the vast majority of admin, as half the admin (including myself) tend to be generalists. More importantly, this is simple, easy to understand, easy to implement and test, and easy to undo if it doesn't work out. Simple is always the best way to test. I would also note that simple has a better chance of actually passing consensus, and I know the content creation groups would like this. It doesn't have to be perfect, just better than what we have, and I think this would be. Dennis - 2¢ 15:11, 31 October 2014 (UTC)
Will any of this help reduce the viciousness of the RfA Grand Inquisition? RfA is the only place on WP where NPA is not enforced, in fact violating NPA is actually encouraged by the lynch-mob atmosphere. Just take a look at how much my work rate reduced after my RfA - it's taken me a few months to get back to feeling like really participating fully again. If my commitment to a few WikiProjects wasn't so strong en.WP might have permanently lost another 40,000+ edits seven-year veteran contributor - entirely due to the assault on my Wiki-reputation at RfA. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 17:19, 31 October 2014 (UTC)
Hello Roger! I think your view of RfA as a vicious Grand Inquisition is a bit harsh, although I really think that bashing you in that manner was utterly unwarranted. Violating NPA is not actually encouraged, voters are supposed to evaluate your actions, not your person. Well, at least in theory. In fact, your current AfD stats are even slightly better than Jackmcbarn's (79.5% correct vs. 75%). I suggest you run again very soon, even most of the opposers expected you to come back later. I'd like to see all these people who think we are in dire need of more admins to support you... Cheers Kraxler (talk) 21:01, 1 November 2014 (UTC)
Indirectly it would. It would reduce the number of people who stand to RfA, who would be limited to those who actively intend to do things which are so controversial as to justify putting the candidate under intense scrutiny and pressure. It would spare those who for one reason or another do not want to get involved in deciding consensus on contentious issues (where either decision, once made, could not easily be reversed even if the alternative decision could have been made) or making difficult blocks in which again multiple courses of action could be taken. —WFC— FL wishlist 17:43, 31 October 2014 (UTC)
  • Possible unbundle: This will probably be contentious (of course), but maybe adding the stablesettings right to the existing Pending changes reviewers group, COUPLED with acceptance of using PC2 as a protection mechanism, would be useful? — xaosflux Talk 22:19, 31 October 2014 (UTC)

I like unbundling of Block/Delete/Protection. Let people show they can be trusted in one step at a time will make it easier to move into adminship. RevDel and viewing RevDel materal would be included in block (because usually you have to block someone and then revdel the stupid thing they just did). Protection is really about stopping large scale edit-wars (but gets a lot of flak as admins trying to win the edit war). And Delete has quite a different skill set then the others. And you could probably make it easier to get/remove those (I think blocking would still need a full RfA, but delete/protection may not need quite as much). --Obsidi (talk) 19:21, 1 November 2014 (UTC)

From this discussion, it looks as though there is a rough consensus to unbundle something, but no consensus on what to unbundle. That presents a problem, but a formal RfC may be able to solve that. I would not be a good initiator though, as unfortunately I predict my November activity levels here to be quite low. StringTheory11 (t • c) 22:02, 1 November 2014 (UTC)

  • That is why I talked about unbundling block. It is about the only tool you can, where you have "everything except block" and "everything". You can protect, move, delete, revdel and such without needing the block button, and many hard core content people would love those tools, they just don't want to be wikicops and block anyone. It isn't about "steps" to me, either you can be trusted or you can't. It is about bundles that people would actually WANT to have. That is really what matters most if you are trying to get more people with advanced tools, give them what they want, and not everyone wants to block. And an RFA for "all but block" would be calmer in tone than a full RFA because only content focused people would be asking for that. If they want "block" next year, they go through RFA again, which shouldn't be a biggie. It is the block button that gets you the most haters. And you really can't unbundle "protect" from "delete/undelete", as you need access to see histories to protect sometimes. Dennis - 2¢ 18:41, 2 November 2014 (UTC)
  • While I agree with Dennis' comment above regarding either being trusted or not, I continue to believe that unbundlung is not a good idea. If you have actually done admin work you know that the tools form a kit. Imagine it as an electrician's toolkit. Suppose you needed a switch replaced. One of you has the screwdriver, one has the pliers, one has the appropriate knowledge to shut the power off to the switch so nobody gets electrocuted. It may take a few hours to rewire that switch. Or, one guy has the whole kit on his belt and does the job completely done in a matter of minutes without having to ask for help. It really is the same with the admin tools.
Take protection as an example. Let's say a request comes in to protect a certain page, and a "partial admin" who has the ability to protect but not to block reviews the request. Upon examining the situation they see that one specific user is responsible. They can protect the page to stop that one user (currently considered the worst option as we should always maximize access to editing for as many users as possible) or they can go find a real admin and ask them to look at it, thus making their participation in the affair a waste of time and effort, and requiring two users to do a job that one admin can currently do just fine by themselves. It's simply inefficient to do things this way.
What tools it makes sense to unbundle, editing protected templates, rollback, etc, have already been unbundled. The others work as part of a kit, where an admin chooses which is the right tool for the job and uses it, or maybe they need two or three, often the case when deleting improper articles and blocking those responsible for creating them. If you only have one tool, you will only use one tool. Beeblebrox (talk) 19:58, 2 November 2014 (UTC)
I completely understand where you're coming from, and for administrators who are active in enforcing policies you would be absolutely right. The problem is that not everyone who wants the ability to view deleted pages or restore improperly attributed images with a more permissible rationale is necessarily going to be interested in frequenting AIV/UAA/RFPP/AN3/ANI/AE. Many of these people are content contributors first and foremost. For example, I would like the ability to view deleted pages or revisions as a means of gathering a greater perspective on why they were taken down in the first place — it would help me determine whether any of it can be salvaged, or even if it'd be a good idea to restart the article from scratch to better conform with Wikipedia's criteria for inclusion. I'd like to be able to edit fully protected pages for the purpose of correcting spelling and grammar mistakes, fixing inaccuracies, repairing broken links, and other WikiGnomish work (as opposed to overhauls or pushing an agenda). Those are just examples. Granted, I may one day want to become a full-fledged administrator, but the tools I'm most interested in are the ones that would help me in regular editing without needing to ask a sysop for assistance. Kurtis (talk) 15:38, 7 November 2014 (UTC)
  • I agree with the above commentators that unbundling protection or block is risky, as I've mentioned here, this would create a situation where a lack of alternative means a restricted choice, which biases decision making. It may be more appropriate to use SP than PCP or to block users, or the other way around, so we'll likely have sub-optimal decisions being taken. But it still seems very important to me to decrease the admin workload, which is part of the reason why I'm working on pending changes blocks, see User:Cenarium/PCB. Cenarium (talk) 18:08, 3 November 2014 (UTC)

Unbeknownst that this discussion was taking place, I proposed a limited rights extension to non-Admin users. Similar is scope to Rollback rights, a User could be granted the right to apply Semi-Protection to an article for a limited amount of time to address sudden and short term vandalism by IPs and non-auto accepted accounts. I am not commenting on how this would affect the RfA process, but it would seem that it would lessen the burden on active Admins for Requests for Protection and allow Edit Patrollers to address things like vandalism immediately. --SCalhotrod (Talk) ☮ღ☺ 18:57, 3 November 2014 (UTC)

Trust: the case against unbundling

I've noticed in the discussion above nobody's really stated the case against unbundling. I'm against unbundling, so perhaps I should explain why. Dennis Brown's proposal above gives an excellent example of the problem we face. The primary argument in favour of unbundling goes something like this:

  1. RfA requires too high a standard
  2. but to use (admin tool X) you shouldn't need to meet that standard, you only need to be a trusted user
  3. therefore let's put in place a procedure to work out whether users are sufficiently trusted to use (admin tool X).

My problem with this is simple:

  1. There are no official prerequisites for adminship, other than having an account and being trusted by other editors.
  2. If a user can be trusted with blocking, or deleting, or protecting, they can be trusted with the other tools too; they're either trustworthy or not. Having to establish that trustworthiness over and over again for each admin tool seems to be a way of creating even more work.
  3. If you can find a better, slicker, way of determine whether someone is trusted to use any one admin tool, then you've found a better, slicker way of doing RfA, and we should use it for that.

For me the problem with RfA is simply that we don't use it the way we're meant to. The "bar" for being an admin should be set no higher than it would be for having access to any one of the admin tools individually - indeed, that's how RfA was originally set up. My worry is that if we set up RfDeletor, RfProtector, RfBlocker etc we're just duplicating an existing process where the only question being asked is "is this user trustworthy?" - and over time they'll all balloon into the same mess we've made of RfA. WaggersTALK 14:15, 3 November 2014 (UTC)

Spun-off permissions would be available through WP:RFPERM (cf. rollback, template editor) rather than mini-RfAs. benmoore 14:26, 3 November 2014 (UTC)
Let me offer a counter-argument to this "trust" argument. Some people are denied adminship by the community because their activities on Wikipedia are focused on specific areas. For someone who does a lot of gnoming, the ability to delete and restore pages in the process of cleaning up attribution messes or move images to commons might be very useful, but the ability to block might be superfluous. Such editors may find themselves denied the tools because they don't engage in dispute resolution and can't say how they would handle a dispute. This may not be fair or what was intended when RfA was devised, but it happens. Now, why would we not give the ability to delete and restore pages to an editor who will gnome away with those powers, but for whom tools relating to blocks and protects are outside their interest, and outside their demonstrable area of activity? bd2412 T 21:18, 3 November 2014 (UTC)

I would support unbundling small tools, such as reviewer, rollbacker, pending changes protection, and maybe semi protection into a "semi-admin" position, as a sort of "training wheels" for editors who would consider becoming admin, but need experience in having a position of authority before they jump in headfirst. I would oppose unbundling block, full protect, revdel, etc. as those are "big deal" tools and per Beeblebrox, admins often need all at once to solve a problem. KonveyorBelt 18:19, 4 November 2014 (UTC)

Blocking and article protection are basically just shortcuts for things that could be done manually, but with much greater effort. If I had no power to block a vandal or protect a heavily vandalized article, I could sit and watch the vandal and revert every vandalizing edit they made - which would have the same net effect on the content of the encyclopedia as blocking them; I could sit and watch the vandalized article and revert every vandalizing edit made to it - which would have the same net effect on the content of the encyclopedia as protecting the article. All that the powers do is make it easy to have this effect. The concern about these tools is with their potential for misuse, but any editor could "misuse" the existing editing tools to revert edits as if they had them. From this point of view, the power to delete and undelete is much more significant, since their is no workaround to achieve these effects. bd2412 T 21:18, 5 November 2014 (UTC)
Which is why adminship should be "no big deal" All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 23:54, 11 November 2014 (UTC).

RfC notice: Expressing coordinates as decimal vs. DMS

There is an RfC proposing that we favor decimal format over degrees-minutes-seconds format for coordinates. Your input is welcome. ‑‑Mandruss ☎ 23:23, 7 November 2014 (UTC)

"Autocollapse" state (for templates) is not pretty good

There is currently a discussion as to if and how templates should autocollapse - see Template talk:Navbox#"Autocollapse" state is not pretty good Oiyarbepsy (talk) 02:45, 4 November 2014 (UTC)

Accidentally duplicated discussion that degrades into personal attacks

Why the default behavior is "autocollapse"? There are many articles with one template. Then is a problem: the expanded template takes more place on the page, attracts a lot of attention. Is not better "collapsed" or ""? Who want, can expand it for himself, and default it would be seen collapsed on the page--Unikalinho (talk) 02:01, 4 November 2014 (UTC)

You already opened a thread about this at Template talk:Navbox#"Autocollapse" state is not pretty good. There's no need to have a second one. Jackmcbarn (talk) 02:05, 4 November 2014 (UTC)
But I was sent here to discuss this theme!--Unikalinho (talk) 02:11, 4 November 2014 (UTC)
Give a brief summary of exactly what you're proposing here, with a link back to there to actually have the discussion. Otherwise, we'll end up having it in both places. Jackmcbarn (talk) 02:24, 4 November 2014 (UTC)
Hm... AS to the link, I don't understand, you self indicated it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template_talk:Navbox#.22Autocollapse.22_state_is_not_pretty_good
As to my theme: When a template has state "autocollapse", on the pages, which have one template, is this template expanded. I think, it's better to have it instead of this collapsed. So would the page have the compact form, and the template wouldn't attract a lot of attention... Example - here. The template, think I, would better to have collapsed.--Unikalinho (talk) 03:10, 4 November 2014 (UTC)
  • (edit conflict) I didn't send you here to duplicate your original question... I told you that if you wanted to globally change the navbox policy so that the default state for navboxes was collapse, you would need to get consensus here for that change. That is not what you have attempted to do here... — {{U|Technical 13}} (e • t • c) 02:26, 4 November 2014 (UTC)
Why not? I attempt to begin the discussion here... Must I select necessary the other speech?
When a consensus was reached, I would like to see it. When no -- why can I not discuss this theme?--Unikalinho (talk) 02:43, 4 November 2014 (UTC)

Only one man has expressed. I am allowing me to cite him:
I do not see a reason why it should be changed. When there is only one template, i think it's good that it is expanded right away..
All the users really think the same?--Unikalinho (talk) 09:13, 5 November 2014 (UTC)

Sadly. Allmost nobody want to discuss, so I summarize. In 30-50 years the temblates will be such massive youselves will collapse it :)--Unikalinho (talk) 19:34, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

I was under the impression there was some kind of CSS that meant navboxes only autocollapsed if there was more than one. That I think is a good thing. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 23:59, 11 November 2014 (UTC).

Default headline font change

SNOW close as this is the wrong forum for the proposed change. Additionally, there are technical and practical issues that make this proposal a non starter. Imzadi 1979 → 06:16, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

I propose that the default headline font be changed from Georgia to Minion Pro (or even Times New Roman) because it's visually much better option. Alex discussion ★ 14:35, 8 November 2014 (UTC)

Here you go:
Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals) (section)
Alex discussion ★ 20:47, 8 November 2014 (UTC)
You mean Minion Web Pro? That is a commercial Adobe font, and apart from a version (Minion Web) that was distributed as part of Internet Explorer 4(!), virtually no one has that font installed. The above example shows in the default (serif) font. A change to the header font is better discussed at the software level on MediaWiki.org anyway. -- [[User:Edokter]] {{talk}} 21:21, 8 November 2014 (UTC)
What you typed is displaying for me in Times, not in Minion Pro, because that's the default setting for my browser and I don't have Minion on this computer. Have you looked into your browser settings to see what its default serif setting is? WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:30, 11 November 2014 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Talk:Croatian War of Independence

Those who are interested, may have their say there. Alex discussion ★ 22:43, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

Template:Village pump

I propose that this become the current incarnation of the Village pump template. Sardanaphalus (talk) 01:16, 7 November 2014 (UTC)

  • While I love the initiative and the more modern look, it is too tall and bulky in it's current form. It's the image and the block next to it that make it a poor replacement in my eye. Dump the image and the saying, condense the block into a more readable form, and I'd support it. — {{U|Technical 13}} (e • t • c) 01:26, 7 November 2014 (UTC)
  • The top half is great, I like it a lot. The bottom half is, for lack of a better term, butt ugly. It needs formatting fixes, and I'd say to completely ax the picture of the pump. Oiyarbepsy (talk) 05:10, 7 November 2014 (UTC)
  • I note the image is already there in the current template. But why was the formatting screwed around with to reduce the space available to the decision table? Anomie⚔ 11:18, 7 November 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for the prompt feedback. The main aim was to try to redistribute/reduce the whitespace left by the template's various elements rather than remove/replace any of them. As that doesn't seem to've worked too well so far – e.g. there was no intention to reduce the space available to the table – and the picture doesn't seem to have many fans, it looks like something more radical is desired. Sardanaphalus (talk) 18:18, 7 November 2014 (UTC)

I've made some changes to the bottom content. Specifically:

  • The caption for the pump picture is now inside the regular image code.
  • The pump now floats left, and the "other" table is aligned right.
  • The shortcuts are moved to the top.
  • The table is no longer nowrap so zooming in doesn't cause problems.

Anon126 (notify me of responses! / talk / contribs) 22:48, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

  • What do you think of my changes? Relocates all of the stuff at the bottom into the header section neatly, which there is agreement that it looks more modern and professional. — {{U|Technical 13}} (e • t • c) 23:19, 14 November 2014 (UTC)
I like it! Why didn't I think of that? But I have two somewhat minor comments:
  • You took out the pump image
  • I notice that the reference to RfCU ("or to make a user conduct dispute complaint") was removed. I am aware that it is rarely used and there is even an RfC here to get rid of it, but I just want to point this out for anyone who's interested.
Anon126 (notify me of responses! / talk / contribs) 05:05, 15 November 2014 (UTC)

RfC on Template:Infobox person

This message is to notify you that there is an RfC ongoing on whether to add pronunciation info to {{Infobox person}}. Because this has the potential to affect a very large number of pages, I have attempted to advertise it widely. Your comments on the matter are appreciated. The discussion can be found here. Thanks! 0x0077BE (talk · contrib) 17:30, 16 November 2014 (UTC)

A while back, a software change caused "external" links that actually go back to Wikipedia (like this one) to not be findable in Special:LinkSearch. We can fix that easily, but it's a config change and thus requires community consensus. Are there any objections to this? Jackmcbarn (talk) 16:23, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

RfC (opinion) to devolve admin disciplinary matters to a Bureaucrat/Community centred process

Interested users are invited to comment at Wikipedia:Administrators/RfC for an Admin Review Board. --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 04:42, 19 November 2014 (UTC)

Wikimedia and Right to Information

There is an act in India called Right to Information Act, where any Indian citizen may go ahead and ask the central government for information related to government (like government expenditure. minister's salary, budgets.).
Recently I found a real-life process of Wikimedia Foundation "unclear". I experienced it when I attended a Wiki-conference. (I'll give details later (if needed)). I don't have membership of Wikipediocracy nor I like their site.
I'll better go and ask WMF or our community if I have questions. As of now a) how do we accept Wikipedians' "right to information"? b) what are the channels and procedure? --Tito☸Dutta 23:17, 16 November 2014 (UTC) 17:06, 17 November 2014 (UTC)

Governments can take money from you (tax and fines), and can imprison you, and make laws that restrict what you can and cannot do. Therefore some governments try to level the playing field by providing some transparency. The WMF runs a few websites and cannot affect you in real life. Accordingly, there is no requirement for the WMF to be more transparent than required by relevant law. However, the WMF is in fact extremely transparent and does almost everything in public. Therefore, just ask your question at a suitable noticeboard. I removed the "Please read" from the heading because that is only going to encourage others to put similar messages; no one is going to put "Please do not read". Johnuniq (talk) 00:11, 17 November 2014 (UTC)
As a pragmatic matter, WMF relies on donations, and so it needs to be sensitive to its perception in the community of potential donors. A reputation for sound management is important to charities. However "can't affect you" IRL is something of an overstatement. Trusted information affects people IRL every day in a wide variety of ways. If it didn't we would not need policies on BLP, outing, etc. LeadSongDog come howl! 14:34, 17 November 2014 (UTC)
You have no "right to information" on Wikipedia or from the Wikimedia Foundation. Please see Foundation:Terms of Use for what rights you do have. --Hammersoft (talk) 19:57, 17 November 2014 (UTC)
For questions about Foundation activities, unrelated to site content, press inquiries, or pending litigation, a likely approach is to ask via answers @ wikimedia.org as described at [1]. Questions sent to answers are referred to either WMF staff or community volunteers depending on the nature of the question, and take anywhere from a few days to a few weeks to answer depending on the complexity of the request. Not all inquiries will receive an answer since privacy policies or other restrictions may apply, but they should at least tell you why they won't answer if that is the result. Submissions to answers @ wikimedia is considered public information and may be seen by volunteers and reproduced in public FAQs or other forums. If you need to discuss confidential or personal information, we can discuss other approaches. Dragons flight (talk) 20:33, 17 November 2014 (UTC)
As a follow-up, I would note that some wiki conferences and events are organized through Wikimedia Chapters (usually organizations serving a particular geographic region, such as a particular country). If your inquiry relates to an event organized by one of the Chapters, it may be more appropriate to request information from the Chapter directly. The current Chapter list is at Wikimedia chapters. Dragons flight (talk) 20:43, 17 November 2014 (UTC)
  • I think it would be prudent to understand the difference between a corporation and a government. Nobody, regardless of how much time we spend here, is a citizen of Wikimedia. We do not have rights, only privileges. --Hammersoft (talk) 14:41, 19 November 2014 (UTC)
India is not the only country with a Right to Information act. Many countries throughout the world have similar laws. The way they work, in practice, is that a person requests information, some politician decides it will hurt their reelection campaign and denies the information under "privacy concerns" and if the requester can afford it, it goes to court, where the judge calls BS on the gov't for not releasing it, but of course, only big news organizations can afford to take this to court. WMF does nearly everything on web pages visible to everyone on Earth, and the only barrier is finding it (Wikipedia:Help desk can help with that). In short, a written right to information means nothing in the real world. Oiyarbepsy (talk) 15:38, 19 November 2014 (UTC)
Before this gets dragged too far into a philosophical (or polemic) discussion of political openness, perhaps we could just note that the WMF (Wikimedia Foundation) is a private organization, and therefore not subject to the same laws regarding 'right to information', 'access to information', or 'freedom of information' that may apply to government bodies and agencies (in some jurisdictions). However, the WMF is a registered charitable organization (and enjoys certain tax and other benefits on that basis), and therefore subject to certain public disclosure requirements. The WMF also, generally speaking, supports openness as an operating principle. Consequently, there is a lot of information provided, much of it voluntarily, about what the Foundation is doing and how it spends its money.
TenOfAllTrades(talk) 16:54, 19 November 2014 (UTC)

Non-administrator arbitrators

I've proposed a modification to WP:ADMIN related to arbitrators getting administrative rights if they don't already have them. Please participate in the WT:ADMIN section of the same name as this one. Nyttend (talk) 18:01, 20 November 2014 (UTC)

RfC United States same-sex marriage map

I opened up an RfC for the U.S. same-sex marriage map due to the complicated situation of Kansas: RfC: How should we color Kansas? Prcc27 (talk) 09:27, 21 November 2014 (UTC)

Enable content translation

Please enable Content translation on opt-in basis in the beta tab. This is a configuration change and we may have to gain consencus in order to do it. Gryllida (talk) 22:23, 18 November 2014 (UTC)

Reviving the Weekly contests

I am proposing to revive the Weekly contests. I am most active on the Swedish Wikipedia where we have these contests almost every week. I think it is a fun way of collaborating more. I have held in a few contests there and would like to do the same here. There are many different ways of making a contest with many different goals. I have made a example contest in my sandbox (here) with the "simple" goal of making more articles and I am prepared to start it next week (or some other week). Do anyone have any objections or some other comments that I need to consider? The Weekly contest page does of course also need to be updated and that I can do as soon as I start with the contest(s). - Averater (talk) 09:46, 22 November 2014 (UTC)

Time to replace RfA

Consensus is against the original proposal to close RfA without first agreeing on a replacement. A majority seem to agree that RfA does need significant reform, perhaps by agreeing on a new promotion process that could be trialed in parallel with the existing mechanism. But this RfC is not structured to produce consensus for such an outcome. FeydHuxtable (talk) 12:04, 22 November 2014 (UTC)

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.


Additional closers notes: Anyone is welcome to revert this close if they feel that would be helpful. Im only closing as have been asked to do so on my talk, as the lack of consensus for the original proposal is so obvious we don't need a crat or even an admin to make the call, and as at this point leaving the discussion open is only likely to increase reform fatigue.

While this reform proposal has failed, it's otherwise been a quality discussion conducted in good spirits, so thanks very much to all participants. There have been 3 useful side results.

1) It's been clarified that WMF would not stand in the way of the community is we tried to make the RfA process less brutal, as long as we retain an element of reasonable vetting. Philippe has said he would personally support us even if we decided upon Pgallert's suggestion to relax the level of scrutiny to the extent that candidates could obtain adminship by request at WP:RFPERM see diff for the whole story.

2) Several promising new ideas for alternative RfA mechanisms have emerged, albeit as rough outlines.

3) There's evidence to support Noyster's suggestion that perhaps RfA can be changed after all. Of the 50 oppose votes, only about 15 seem to want to keep the existing process (with possible minor tweaks), about 20 are neutral to the idea of substantial change, and about 15 support a replacement or parallel process. If we add to those 15 the 10 who voted for Topguns's proposal and the 24 who supported the original proposal, we get about 77% support for substantial change to RfA. Not too much weight can be put on that figure due to the structure of the discussion, but it does suggest that if we wait a few months for RfA activity to return to trend, and then launch a new RfC to agree and implement a replacement, there may be a chance of success.

Several have suggested conducting a study may improve the chances for the next reform attempt. I would not say that is essential, but if anyone wants to pursue this I hope they approach the WMF for possible funding ASAP, as it would likely take many months before results became available. Thanks again to all participants, and good luck to whoever takes the lede in trying to promote the next reform attempt!

It's not to be tolerated!
RfA, the "ritual center of the English Wikipedia", has been allowed to remain a failed process for too long. For many years, new admins have been promoted far too slowly to replace those lost to desysoping or inactivity. Various discussions, charts and graphs showing this can be seen over at RfA_talk. Highlights include:

  • Back in the growth years of 2005 - 2007, we promoted on average over 30 admins per month. So far this year, we are averaging barely over a single promotion per month.
  • During the past two months there have been no promotions at all.
  • As per this recruitment thread several skilled veteran editors refused to consider running, blaming RfA's "vicious character assassinations" and "toxic atmosphere".
2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 (projected)
Active admins 943 870 766 744 674 633 570
Admin promotions 201 121 78 52 28 34 21
Admin attrition (actual, not net) 263 194 182 74 98 75 85

It's been suggested that the plummeting number of active admins tracks the general decline in active regular editors. This is not true. Numbers of active admins has been falling at a far faster rate than the decline of active editors. According to these wikimedia stats, there has been an increase in the number of active editors this past year ( 31,616 in Aug 2014 , compared with 30,403 back in Aug 2013). There is no good reason to expect further declines in active editorship providing there are sufficient admins to help maintain a collegial environment. The world is generating new notable topics faster than ever. By some measures, since 2008 the world's total knowledge has increased more than tenfold. In 2008 there were only 1.5 Billion internet users. Now there is almost twice that number. The world depends on Wikipedia for information more than ever.

A more convincing reason for RfA's failure is the way the process allows a minority of users with unrealistic quality expectations to block promotions. A too high quality threshold for individual promotions is a sure fire way to lower the quality of the admin corps as a whole. This paradox is explained on RfA talk with a comparison to what would happen if New York city insisted on not allowing new hires to its police force unless they're good enough to be an inspector Morse or Colombo.

There has been over 7 years of failed RfA reform efforts, even after cases where a clear majority of editors agreed the process was in need of change. Editor Townlake has therefore suggested the essential first step is to close the current process.

Once the current RfA process is closed, design of the replacement process can commence. Goals for the new process might include:

  • Facilitating a greater rate of promotions so the admin corps can replenish its ranks.
  • Ensuring any rejected candidates are not subject to character assassination.
  • Restore the editor > admin progression path, which Sue Gardner and others have said is important for editor retention and for good morale.
  • Perhaps design the process so a mix of different candidates can be promoted, for example specialist content writers, specialist vandal fighters, perhaps even editors who most prominent attributes are friendliness and helpfulness.

It may be that a new batch of RfA runs will soon begin. Due to recruitment efforts by multiple editors, possibly the existing process could see as many as half a dozen promotions in November and December. Recruitment efforts have been attempted many times in the last 5 years and are demonstrably not an effective alternative to radical reform. At best, they produce a brief blip in activity.

Trying to solve the RfA problem with recruitment efforts alone is like refusing to send a man with a gaping chest wound to hospital so you can apply some sticky plasters.

A possible model for the new RfA might be elections based on the arbitration model where votes are not public, and a fixed number of candidates are promoted each quarter. Or perhaps a form of promotion that does not need voting at all. These and other new designs for RfA can be proposed and discussed in detail once the current process is marked as historical.

Timeline for RfA reform

Milestone Date Notes
Open proposal to close RfA for voting 30 October A brief delay before the initial vote allows time for any editors who favor maintaining the current process to make their arguments.
Close the vote, with a crat to announce the result 05 November Regardless of the result, any open RfAs can continue as normal.
Open discussion for designing RfA's replacement 05 November Any editor will be welcome to propose desirable qualities for the replacement, suggest new processes , or to discuss the existing proposals. At this stage, we should also seek one of the best RfC designers such as Beeblebrox, to help ensure that once we are ready to narrow down the field, we get the best decision possible for the new RfA.
Open an RfC to determine which proposed new RfA process is best 12 November It should be understood that going back to a modified form of the existing RfA process is not an option, if the initial consensus is to close RfA, then this is also a decision for a whole new process.
Close the RfC and open the new RfA process 19 November Based on the outcome and the role crats are to play, we could also open a new discussion about replacing RfB, or possibly restoring the original process, as RfB is perhaps less obviously a failed process. Alternatively, discussions about restoring RfB could wait until the new year.
Achieve the first wave of promotions with the new process 14 December Let's give the whole word a Christmas present by taking this important step to restore our community to full health!

— Preceding unsigned comment added by FeydHuxtable (talk • contribs) 09:20, 28 October 2014 (UTC)

Discussion

So, what if the first vote decides to abolish RFA and RFB (no idea why RFB is added, we have enough Burocrats since they have very little left to do in general)? IF you then don't find a consensus on any new proposal, you are left without any RFA process. How would this help with the declining number of admins? First decide on a new process, then replace the old one with a new one. Fram (talk) 09:39, 28 October 2014 (UTC)

I totally agree there is no need to change RfB - I included this per editor Townlake's original proposal to end both RfA & RfB. Also, another editor didn't agree with ending RfA, but said just RfB could be ended! Funny how some see things so differently. If you want to modify the above proposal to remove mentions of changing RfB, that's fine by me.
The risk of not finding consensus for any one new replacement can be avoided by skillful design of the final decision making RfC. I can do this myself if need be, per my edits to Deliberative democracy, Im quite familiar with the science of voting and consensus. Much better though if someone like arbitrator Beeblebrox took the lead in designing the RfC, as they have a good track record in doing that sort of thing on Wikipedia before. FeydHuxtable (talk) 09:54, 28 October 2014 (UTC)
Just to add, a big part of the problem with reforming RfA is the 7+ years history of failed reform efforts. If we don't end the current process first, there would likely not be sufficient impetus to decide on any one replacement, and therefore we'd revert to the status quo by default, as has happened time and time again in the past. If it takes a little longer to decide on the replacement than predicted, it's not like having no RfA process for a few weeks will make things worse, considering the current rate of promotions. FeydHuxtable (talk) 10:02, 28 October 2014 (UTC)
I don't think you really understand "deliberative democracy" if you believe that using that system will avoid a situation where you end with no proposal getting a majority (or consensus). Only if you present two alternatives and force the people to support either the one or the other can you be sure that you end up with a consensus (barring a perfect 50-50 vote of course). But such a thing will not be acceptable to many people here. While a well-crafted RfC can increase the chance of getting some consensus on one proposal, there is no guarantee at all that this will happen. Any proposal to abolish RfA without having a new or improved process agreed on already is doomed IMO. Fram (talk) 10:11, 28 October 2014 (UTC)
Indeed - this proposal is completely back-to-front. Establish a new process first, then get consensus to replace the old one. The idea that "turning off" RFA is the first step is simply ridiculous. In addition, the timeframe above is hilariously over-optimistic in its assumption that a new process can be developed before the end of the year; RFA alternatives have been debate at Talk:RFA for years now, with no perceptible movement towards agreement.
While I'm ambivalent about whether or not we need a new process to replace RFA, I'm pretty sure that removing the only method we have for promoting admins and then blindly hoping that an alternative will present itself is not the way to go about it. Yunshui 雲水 10:54, 28 October 2014 (UTC)
Some strong adjectives there Yunshui. It precisely because we've had years of reform attempts with "no perceptible movement towards agreement" that we should first end the existing process before starting detailed discussions of the alternatives. Im surprised even someone like Fram doesnt seem to see that ending RfA as we know it would supply far greater impetus to design a new one. Its not like a few weeks with no live process would make much different to the current rate of promotions. Granted there will be no way to ensure everyone is happy with the replacement, but surely only a tiny fraction of editors would prefer to have no RfA process at all if they can't have their first choice? FeydHuxtable (talk) 11:21, 28 October 2014 (UTC)
If this proposal is approved, I see the almost inevitable consequence being a prolonged debate for about six months over what should replace the RFA process, with no guarantee that any consensus will develop, and no functional way of promoting admins during that time. Call me a cynic, but I expect that after about six months, the need for a process would be sufficiently great that we'd end up setting RFA back up again in pretty much its current form. I'm sorry if I come across as harsh, Feyd (it's not my intent), but I feel this is a very badly designed proposal - to offer a parallel, if I'm not happy with the service I get from my gas provider, am I better off using them while I find a better service, or turning off the heating in the hopes that the onset of hypothermia will spur me to spend more time on uswitch.com? Yunshui 雲水 12:41, 28 October 2014 (UTC)
Thanks for using more gentle wording, which is appreciated. All other things being equal, it certainly makes sense to decide on a replacement before terminating an existing gas supplier. However, what if for whatever reason you and your partner had been arguing about the best replacement for years, making no progress even though the existing supplier is now only providing gas for one hour per day. In such a case, would some not eventually consider cancelling the existing contract to force a decision for a better one?
Having seen how folk like Beelbebrox can structure a RfC, (e.g. for Pending changes) I think it could be set up so the new RfA process would be decided on in a finite amount of time. FeydHuxtable (talk) 13:54, 28 October 2014 (UTC)

The problems with RFA are threefold and interrelated. First, it doesn't address our real need, which is editors with admin tools willing to deal with other editors having problems with each other. Admins don't want to make controversial decisions or wade into volatile situations. For example, I've had to wait so long to get an admin to pull the trigger on a topic ban appeal that I actually had to unarchive it. Yes, we get backlogs behind the scenes from time to time but we have no critical shortage of mop and bucket type admins. Second, the community (or at least a very large minority of it) clearly disagrees with the idea that adminship is no big deal; as long as the RfA process doesn't reflect that reality then we're setting people up to fail. Lastly, most people take deletion related tools and the ability to fairly and competently render decisions on dispute very seriously, especially in the context of imposing restrictions on other editors, but most people aren't seeking the tools in order to engage in that work. We should retain RfA for all tools not involving deletion and placing restrictions on other editors ability to contribute (banning/blocking/etc). This will get RfA back to a "no big deal" environment. The "new process" should be one for tools involving deletion/deleted material and the ability to place restrictions as RfA works when it's truly no big deal. GraniteSand (talk) 10:02, 28 October 2014 (UTC)

The "real need" isn't dealing with inter-editor relations. In general, no admin tools are needed for that, just people willing to spend time at AN, ANI and the like. Admins may be needed to implement the solution (e.g. a block), but you don't need admin tools (or the admin "title") to discuss things. What admins are most needed for is deletion/undeletion, protection/unprotection, and blocking/unblocking. Other things, like editing through protection, are relatively minor. Wikipedia:ADMINSTATS gives you an idea of what admins do with the tools (although editing through protection isn't included). Fram (talk) 10:16, 28 October 2014 (UTC)
I wasn't clear. It's not dispute resolution I'm talking about, we have options for that all over the place; it's being willing to be the admin that takes up a problem, renders a meaningful and competent decision, and then acts upon it in a tangible and appropriate way. Never mind, I'm getting off topic. My basic point is that only RfA works for 80% of the tools it grants. Let's keep it for that 80% and reassess for the other 20%. GraniteSand (talk) 10:23, 28 October 2014 (UTC)
I like GraniteSand's proposal and analyses, though I think the time to discuss it in detail is once the existing RfA is marked as historical. If however you guys want to change the timeline so that we try to get consensus for this (or another) proposal before marking RfA as historical, I would not object. However, it's my strong opinion that doing could quite likely doom this discussion to follow the precedent of all other reform attempts, and fail completely. Huh, even the massive amount of work that went into WP:RFA2011 , led by Kudpung himself, did not achieve a single tangible change. I guess the bright side of this reform attempt failing, even in the face of the overwhelming evidence that RfA is broken, is that it might encourage Jimbo or the Foundation to step in and implement reform by force majeur, setting a useful precedent. (Jimbo did suggest he was thinking this might be needed a few years back.) Not all would see abandoning the hope of community led reform as a bright side of course. FeydHuxtable (talk) 10:47, 28 October 2014 (UTC)
Jimbo can propose anything he wants, and it will be judged on its merits. Stepping in and imposing anything is a very good way to piss off even more people than he has alreday achieved though. His last attempts at imposing anything by force (his attempts to make Commons "better" by repeatedly deleting old works of art) backfired badly. I don't think that hoping (or threatening, depending on your point of view) that anything will come from that direction is useful or realistic.Fram (talk) 11:04, 28 October 2014 (UTC)
Can't argue with that Fram. In that case I guess we should pray that some sort of community led reform finally takes place. FeydHuxtable (talk) 11:21, 28 October 2014 (UTC)

Has WP:NOTVOTE been revoked, then? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 11:30, 28 October 2014 (UTC)

Nothing here is intended to violate NotVote. It's suggested the initial decision process include an element of voting as per common practice. We'd put a request for a crat to close on their notice board once the discussions end is approaching, and they would very likely close based on strength on argument, not purely a vote count.FeydHuxtable (talk) 13:54, 28 October 2014 (UTC)

Just wanted to note that I'm changing the header of the whole section, so that it can be linked properly from {{Cent}}. For whatever reason, headers with question marks don't seem to work properly. Nyttend (talk) 12:39, 28 October 2014 (UTC)

I'm beginning to take a good deal of interest in the RfX processes, and you can guarantee my participation in the discussions and the RfC pertaining to these proposals. I have a few comments, though.

  • Like Yunshui, I at least suggest that you come with some proposals as to what might replace RfA. It doesn't have to be a rock-solid plan just yet, but at least an idea. If you want, I might be able to present an idea or two.
  • If this proposal succeeds, RfA will be abolished. If the new system results in more admins being promoted, we'll start needing more 'crats. RfB is especially selective in the ones it promotes, and with some of our older 'crats retiring and going inactive, we'll need more. Have you thought about RfB reform, as well?
  • In any new system, one thing I'm really hoping for is that all candidates will be appreciated for their area of specialty. In the current RfA system, the fact of the matter is that it's near impossible to please the !voters unless you perfectly balance everything (with no mistakes). If you specialize in content, they'll say you don't have enough experience in "backstage" work. If you specialize in "backstage" work (like anti-vandalism, which is what my specialty is), they'll say you don't have enough content creation. Do have any ideas as to how this could be avoided in a future system? (Assuming, of course, that this proposal succeeds.)

Best regards, --Biblioworm 15:47, 28 October 2014 (UTC)

Couldn't agree more that it would be good to promote more specialist admins, and did hint at this above. There's almost no chance the community will settle on my ideal RfA, but to outline for you, it would be a quarterly Arbcom style election with non public votes, and a briefer period of questions before hand. There would be 3 or more tranches, say 15 places for generalists, 15 for veteran content writers, and 20 for backstage Gnomes & Vandal fighers, who would not have to have experience in content creation or XfD. I like GraniteSand's idea too.
It might be preferable to postpone detailed discussion of RfB reform until after the new RfA process is decided upon. Possibly RfB would not need to be changed. It could be crats would play a somewhat different role in the new RfA. Thanks Biblioworm for your thoughts, and if you wanted to outline your ideas for possible new RfA processes that would be great. FeydHuxtable (talk) 16:15, 28 October 2014 (UTC)
Thanks for your reply. I was just thinking about the election system you suggested, and I have a question. If a person were elected under a specific section, would they be forced to stay in that one area of work for the entirety of their adminship, or would they be permitted to branch out into other areas as they gain experience? (For example, let's say that a vandal fighter wanted to get involved with XfDs.) --Biblioworm 17:02, 28 October 2014 (UTC)
You're welcome. IMO, it would be fine as long as they branched out cautiously. I don't think this would need to be formalized, but if they rushed into a new area making bold decisions left right and center, they'd be signing a warrant for their own desysop. FeydHuxtable (talk) 18:11, 28 October 2014 (UTC)
After asking my questions, I've pretty much formulated my opinion. While I'm completely on board with the overall idea of a new system, I think it's quite realistic to say that this RfC will fail unless you present a good idea of what might replace the current system. So, I'd recommend postponing this RfC and opening a separate thread to discuss alternative methods for promoting new admins. Thanks, --Biblioworm 20:47, 28 October 2014 (UTC)
Thanks Biblioworm. That's probably good advise. Im not going to make that change, as I agree with SMarshal and others that there's been too many such attempts in the past. Literally thousands of editor hours have been lost in the time sync of trying to agree on a new RfA process, only for us to default back to the increasingly broken existing system. As I keep saying though, if someone else wants to change the initial vote motion so that we simply vote to agree the current systems needs replacing and then move on discussing a new system, Id not object. FeydHuxtable (talk) 22:04, 28 October 2014 (UTC)
  • People have been complaining about RFA since 2006 when I started, so the idea that people are still complaining the in face of a few failed RFAs isn't shocking. As Fram said, replace it with what, exactly? This looks like a vote against RFA, not a vote for anything. And I haven't seen real proof that the lack of people running at RFA is due to the RFA process itself. I've made a number of nominations for admin, and have talked to many, many editors about a possible run. No one loves the process, but it isn't the only or main reason they don't run. There simply isn't any convincing evidence that the RFA process is the reason we have so few running for admin. I don't care what process we use to promote admin as long as it is consensus based, but I don't see an actual proposal here. What I see is a proposal to end a system that at least works, for something that hasn't been determined, because it is the problem, even though that hasn't been proven, or even substantiated. Dennis - 2¢ 17:25, 28 October 2014 (UTC)
I think there is proof that people are not running because of the process itself. At the recent discussion at AN, many veteran editors stated that they would not run because of the "character assassinations" and "the toxic atmosphere". Even more, some good editors who have gone through RfA and failed have said that they will never go through another RfA again, for the same reasons mentioned above. --Biblioworm 17:56, 28 October 2014 (UTC)
Have to agree with Biblioworm here. Dennis, maybe for whatever reason you have a bias to talk to folk who don't want further responsibility, and that's why you get the answers you do. For the vast majority of prospective admins, the hostility and randomness of the process is the sole reason they don't want to run. Non anecdotal evidence of this has been posted several times. If you don't want to be convinced you won't be convinced. But in the words of Henry Kissenger "Only very strong [or insensitive] personalities are able to resist the digitally aggregated and magnified unfavorable judgments of their peers." And when someone like Kissenger says 'very strong' , he's talking about a very exceptional person indeed. Huh, many of those declining to run for RfA may be strong enough to have a DGAF attitude, but still decline as they see the current process as a waste of time. FeydHuxtable (talk) 18:11, 28 October 2014 (UTC)
FWIW I agree with Dennis and came here to say as much. The process itself has remained essentially unchanged for a long time yet the number of successes decrease year-on-year… It's hard to reconcile those two facts with the idea that the RfA process is the one key we should focus on for healthier admin recruitment. benmoore 20:41, 28 October 2014 (UTC)
Plus the excuse "I don't want to go through RFA" is easy to throw out, even if it is only part of the reason someone is afraid. That could also mean "I'm afraid I wouldn't pass at RFA", and isn't always a damning statement on the process itself. The process isn't perfect, I'm not here to defend it, I'm just saying you have to understand human psychology a bit when looking at what is being said. Plus, being afraid of a process doesn't mean it is broken. So before we throw this baby out with the bathwater, tell us what BETTER idea you have to replace it. If you don't have something better, then this is academic and a waste of time to discuss. Dennis - 2¢ 21:27, 28 October 2014 (UTC)
I strongly object to the ultrashort period for voting on such an important proposal. The process as proposed lacks consensus. Maybe it is this proposal which should be marked as "Failed" and "Historical." If it is to go forward, then at least run it for 30 days, so that all who might be interested in the issue have an opportunity to learn about it and register their views. If the proposer of some such radical change on his own initiative can specify 5 days, then what would would prevent him from specifying 1 day or 1 hour, so that a few like-minded individuals could rush in and endorse the desired outcome, when in fact it represented a view held by only a very small portion of the community of editors? I agree that RFA is too often an abusive process of character assassination, wherein a few cranky editors seek to settle old scores by dragging up the candidate's worst couple of edits, and argue that we mustn't give the tools to such a horrible editor, while ignoring the other 99.99% of their excellent work on the project. I also strongly disagree with ending the old process and banning anything like it ever being reinstated. Perhaps after due deliberation, nothing better is found, so the community will decide on some improved version of the present RFA, such as a term limit with a renewal vote after a year or two, making it less of a big deal. Instead, propose a better process, and make a smooth transition. We could be stuck in limbo indefinitely with no way of authorizing new admins. This proposal is like burning the bridges behind our army so that they will win a victory rather than retreating. This has sometimes ended badly. It is like feeling that one should get a better paying job than his present crummy one, so he up and quits, in the belief that only thus will he be motivated to apply for and get a better job. This also could end badly. What about Wikipedias in other language communities? What about other online communities? Have any of them come up with a better process for creating admins? Edison (talk) 17:33, 28 October 2014 (UTC)
I thought the suggestion to end the current process first was a stroke of visionary genius. But many others feel as you do; perhaps it's just too innovative. The other language Wikipedias mostly follow our lead in these matters, AFAIK. I think we have to seek our own salvation. If you wanted to amend the above timeline, (or even mark the whole thing as failed as long as you present an alternative reform approach) then no objection from me. FeydHuxtable (talk) 18:11, 28 October 2014 (UTC)
The OP has it right, RfA serves no useful purpose beyond promoting those who should have become admin long ago. And the replacement is quite obvious to me, it is WP:RFPERM. That's exactly the venue where I would request permissions that might come handy and are no big deal. All we need is a The Lord giveth, the Lord taketh away procedure which would mean gathering stewards to watchlist RFPERM. --Pgallert (talk) 19:49, 28 October 2014 (UTC)
Added after User:S Marshall's +1: Not sure how RFPERM rights are generally removed, all I remember is AN/I threads. What I meant was, we would need bureaucrats to watch RFPERM to actually grant admin rights, and stewards to watch whatever forum of admin misconduct to take the bits off if necessary. What we would also need is a rule like 'Don't take away a right that has never been abused, and do take it away if it was.' --Pgallert (talk) 20:13, 28 October 2014 (UTC)
If by an RFPERM process you mean that someone (presumably a bureaucrat) checks length of service, block log and edit count against some checklist, I don't think that is nearly adequate. We all know people with a long editing history who would be temperamentally quite unsuitable to be admins. If you mean approval after the sort of investigation of the candidate's editing history, interactions with others, and contributions to discussions like AfD and ANI which RFA voters undertake, that is a heavy responsibility for a single bureaucrat to take. Also, RFA allows non-admins a voice: there are already some who complain that existing admins make promotion difficult so as to maintain their grip on power, and selection by bureaucrat would only add to suspicions of a self-perpetuating elite. JohnCD (talk) 16:58, 29 October 2014 (UTC)
Well, the details could still be worked out (e.g. min 2 crats per proposal). I didn't have a checklist in mind, rather that the crat working on the request would do what today RfA !voters do: Look through what the particular crat finds important, make a decision, and briefly document it. Still think this would eliminate the drama completely and entirely, for instance because it would not be a statement like "the community (=all of us) said". --Pgallert (talk) 12:17, 1 November 2014 (UTC)
  • I agree with Pgallert. If we intend to fix RfA we have to kill the current process first. Trying to find a solution without killing the current process first has failed many times before, and it's certain to fail again. We should start with the thing that most editors will agree on: that RfA is broken. Once we've marked it historical, a new method or combination of methods will appear. If we don't mark it historical then there will be no change.—S Marshall T/C 19:54, 28 October 2014 (UTC)
It Seems to me that most people who don't want to run for RFA don't want to run because of how ugly they can turn and how fast it can happen. To be honest, and maybe I'm just short sighted here, I don't see a new system that would prevent that. Even if the consensus is to shut down RFA, which I personally am on the fence about. What would the replacement be? What would happen to current admins who went through RFA? Would that system still be honored even after the death of the thing that gave them their mop? Forgive me for rambling, I just have a lot of thoughts on this and I'm not sure how to formulate them out.--Church Talk 20:27, 28 October 2014 (UTC)
You're probably right there would always be some potential for an unpleasant experience. But we should be able to make that much less likely, for example by replacing the current process with an Arb style election. Nothing at all would happen to existing admins. If anything, a few might see old school admins as having a slightly higher status than those who pass with the new and easier process, but the distinction would fade in time. FeydHuxtable (talk) 20:57, 28 October 2014 (UTC)
Just out of curiosity: why do you think an ArbCom style election would be better than the one we have right now? --Biblioworm 21:08, 28 October 2014 (UTC)
Three reasons. 1) in past RfAs most hurtful remarks seem to have been made in the oppose vote comments. If we had non public votes or at least comment-less votes, that would cut of that form of attack. (There would still be a risk of attacks in the question phase, which btw would probably be more light weight than an existing arb election. As it would be a new process, we could maybe introduce more effective clerking to prevent loaded questions etc.) 2) The much lower pass threshold would help increase the promotion rate, and also any flak the candidates take would be easier to shrug off it it's not coupled with formal rejection. 3) We could have tranches for specialist admins. FeydHuxtable (talk) 22:04, 28 October 2014 (UTC)
The answer is going to depend one exactly what you mean by "ArbCom-style elections". If you mean "secret votes", then eliminating the ability to post comments about why you vote against someone would reduce some of the nastiness that keeps candidates away. Alternatively, if by "ArbCom-style" you mean getting a bunch of candidates and taking the top 10 vote-getters (where "10" is however many we think we need to elect during the next X months), then it's possible that more people would be willing to run because losing wouldn't be so personal. You wouldn't lose because you personally were horrible; you would only lose because you happened to run when 10 even better people did. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:17, 28 October 2014 (UTC)
At the same time though, most people would probably also be curious of what they could do better. I know during my RFA's many years ago I got a lot of good advice from my opposes that I took to heart. I agree that some of the nastiness needs to be kept away, but I think a new system should also allow the "candidate" (so to speak if that's how it happens) to know how they can improve and give them something to work forward if they don't happen to get the bid. Reading more of the discussion I'm starting to lean towards maybe splitting some of the tools.--Church Talk 22:42, 28 October 2014 (UTC)
While not a bad idea, proposals to unbundle the admin tools have always failed. I think one major issue is that the WMF has made it clear that any person with access to deleted material (and admins, of course, can access deleted material), must have gone through thorough community scrutiny. Really, I don't think any unbundling proposals will ever succeed (just my opinion, of course).
Church does make a good point. It can be good to see why people !voted against you, so that you can work on those issues and improve next time around. As of now, however, the ability to freely (and publicly) voice your opinion on a candidate is being abused, as a person can make an editor look terrible by picking out a diff or two and saying, "Look! He made a mistake/got angry/etc.! He'll surely misuse the admin tools, so I oppose." (Of course, any human occasionally makes mistakes and gets angry.) I think a good solution (assuming that we adopt the ArbCom style election) would be to give !voters a place to make an optional comment when casting their !vote (while making it very clear that the comment should be reasonable and professional), and when the elections are all said and done, the comments could be sent to the candidate so they would have a chance to look over them. --Biblioworm 23:24, 28 October 2014 (UTC)
Proposals to unbundle admin tools have not always failed. Rollback used to be admin-only. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:02, 29 October 2014 (UTC)
That is true, but I'm talking more about the "bigger" tools like blocking, protection, deletion, etc. --Biblioworm 02:34, 29 October 2014 (UTC)
The question is what would be unbundled and what would be the deciding factor for who gets what tool? Some people may request the ability to block others to help out at AIV or one of the other boards but may not be trusted to delete articles. The problem is that all of these tools would require significant trust from the community which is what RFA was supposed to determine if there was. --Church Talk 02:22, 29 October 2014 (UTC)
  • Let's get this right: to solve the problem of not having enough admins you want to prevent any more admins from being created? And this on the very uncertain assumption that the community will agree on a replacement? I could spend time to argue the wider points others have mentioned, but I don't have it right now. If you have a good idea for RfA reform, propose it and see what we think. Otherwise, we need some process for this, faulty as it may or may not be. BethNaught (talk) 23:16, 28 October 2014 (UTC)

I am highly sympathetic to the theory that nothing new will arise, nothing will get better, until we kill the existing process. --j⚛e deckertalk 02:21, 29 October 2014 (UTC)

What happens if we do decide to kill RFA and then no consensus can be reached in it's replacement? What would we do then?--Church Talk 02:23, 29 October 2014 (UTC)
I suppose that would mean we would be forced to re-institute the old process. --Biblioworm 02:34, 29 October 2014 (UTC)
I do not believe the community will long tolerate a process that does not allow for new admins, and I would hope consensus in the new process would be developed in a process that started from "We have to do something, which is better, something like X, or something like Y, or something like Z", and recurse into specifics. It'll take a little time, but I'm confident we'll have a lot of motivation to settle on a mechanism. --j⚛e deckertalk 02:42, 29 October 2014 (UTC)
I think you over prescribe the community's sense of urgency. That same community, myself included, is far more concerned about limiting the active damage of bad admins than it is about the procedural decay of being understaffed. GraniteSand (talk) 09:28, 29 October 2014 (UTC)
It's clear to me that not only is the current system not working, but it's driving away users and people are refusing to even run because it is so broken. We need to get rid of this system driving users away... Simple. — {{U|Technical 13}} (e • t • c) 14:18, 30 October 2014 (UTC)
Active administrators on May 12: 592.
Active administrators on July 2: 590.
Active administrators on October 30: 591. Dekimasuよ! 21:03, 30 October 2014 (UTC)
The graphs above are misleading and linear regression was not a good choice of model. It looks like a robust regression or non-linear model would show that actually the percent of passing RfAs, rather than being in monotonic decline, has remained essentially the same since 2007. benmoore 07:38, 1 November 2014 (UTC)

Opinion

This is no small deal, people. There's a systematic problem with our community. We've seen a number of superb admins like Fastily, WilliamH and others retire from enwiki (some of them left enwiki, but continued to work at Commons, meta and other wikis). I'm going to make this long, so just grab some popcorn (due to the current crisis of server kittens, free distribution of e-popcorn has stopped, visit your nearest Walmart ASAP), or something. First of all, we've understood one thing for sure, the RfA process is broken. But trust me, it's not that, it's US. Everything that happens here is because of us. We are the ones that cause problem and we're the ones that must find out the solution. RfA, now can be attributed to a slaughterhouse, a source of constant badgering to be received for the tiniest error. There's a concept that admins are super-users who control the well-being of everyone by using their almighty mop. But, trust me they're not. Just some users with more experience. With more knowledge. And most importantly, more wisdom. I've seen users getting opposed on criteria like:

  • Edits through IPs. Which when disclosed upon request to a few trusted users, cause more opposition.
  • Sense of humor. I mean......
  • Less article count.
  • And more...

I, am quoting a relevant comment from above:

In any new system, one thing I'm really hoping for is that all candidates will be appreciated for their area of specialty. In the current RfA system, the fact of the matter is that it's near impossible to please the !voters unless you perfectly balance everything (with no mistakes). If you specialize in content, they'll say you don't have enough experience in "backstage" work. If you specialize in "backstage" work (like anti-vandalism, which is what my specialty is), they'll say you don't have enough content creation.

The fact that someone from the community has noticed is amazing enough. Trust me, before fixing the process, let's fix ourselves. Personal attacks, jeering at people, proposal to fish with CU to just to list a few of the various relatively good things we've done at RfAs. Before fixing the policies, let's just try a bit of self-reflection. And all will be well. Just my two cents. --Ankit Maity «T § C» 08:42, 6 November 2014 (UTC)

  • General comment - I have not read this entire thread; I am not sure if this is even the right venue to post a comment on the process as a whole, but am going to nonetheless. I found my RfA to be an inherently non-toxic experience ... while I did pass without any opposition, that is not to say that editors did not express disagreement with my positions, ask probing questions, etc. Administrators need to be able to tolerate good faith criticism/interrogation, and the current RfA system is a good barometer of that, insofar as at least lately (let's say the past year), I have rarely seen much bad faith participation at RfA, and when there is, it is quickly quashed by a team of de facto clerks, who appropriately maintain decorum. Does our current process inhibit some from being elected? Sure. But does that mean we should rush to change it for the sake of having more administrators? Not necessarily. Rather than fix RfA, I think the community ought to focus its attention on a desysopping process (perhaps something like the administrative standards board mentioned below), which ultimately might make RfA "fix itself", as voters would have a willingness to "take a chance" on a candidate. Just my opinion. Thanks. Go Phightins! 03:37, 10 November 2014 (UTC)
  • Comments or, more accurately, personal observations.
  1. I have considered a few times to go for admin in the past, when I was more active, but every once in a while I'd run into a conflict with another editor, so I was sure I would meet opposition. It is my personal opinion, that admins don't have to be ideal. The process is much too demanding. The only thing that should really be forbidden is misuse of admin privileges. Simply put, I agree that the acceptance process should be simpler and friendlier.
  2. On the other hand, as long as we don't have a process for demoting admins, it makes sense to be overly careful before we accept an admin. In other words, these two issues are related, and point in opposite directions. Nevertheless and taking all into account, I'd prefer to tip the scales in the direction of leniency with acceptance.
  3. In general, and not directly related to the above, I have noted on my watchlist that the number of straightforward reverts is raising. This, in my humble opinion, indicates that more and more articles have reach a point where the average change is not necessarily an improvement. I think it is important to take note of this fact. Perhaps this means we need more admins now, perhaps less, I am not sure, and both arguments could be made. Debresser (talk) 23:19, 17 November 2014 (UTC)

The case for retention

OK, let's try to assemble a case for retaining the current RfA system. (1) It's what we're all used to, (2) we know WMF are OK with it, (3) any shortcomings could be addressed by reforms, not wholesale abolition: Noyster (talk), 10:18, 28 October 2014 (UTC)

It is (4) based on consensus, which is how most potentially controversial decisions are made around here. (5) It gives everyone a chance to express their opinion. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 11:25, 28 October 2014 (UTC)
  • It isn't based on consensus. It's a popularity vote, with there only being a small margin within which bureaucrats exercise some decision making. Any stretch beyond that becomes instantly controversial. --Hammersoft (talk) 13:34, 28 October 2014 (UTC)
I disagree; it is based on consensus; the fact that, in this one case, well over two thirds of participants need to agree on a course of action for it to be taken does not deny that it is still a consensual issue. As for calling it a popularity vote, i'm inclined to assume that the majority of !voters at RfA have given some thought to the candidate and are not simply voting based on whether they like him or not. I may be naïve and forgetful, but i do not remember seeing a lot of comments/!votes i'm not willing to make that assumption about. Cheers, LindsayHello 14:46, 28 October 2014 (UTC)
And (6) it has proven in practice to be more or less effective in eliminating bad candidates for Administrator. That is, potential bad actors are not gaining tools, they are being weeded out. Carrite (talk) 11:03, 29 October 2014 (UTC)
Until the replacement is agreed to and has the blessing of WMF I do not endorse any process that closes down the current regime for promoting Admins. Closing down the current shop and then holding us hostage to come up with a new process is dangerous and only going to cause more stress for the already stressed admin corps. Hasteur (talk) 16:31, 28 October 2014 (UTC)
  • Personal hat on: yes, they do. RfA is a process LCA are likely to care about, given the implications it has for accessing deleted content. There have been discussions around granting OS permissions to non-admins in the past that made this clear. Ironholds (talk) 20:36, 28 October 2014 (UTC)
@Ironholds From remembering what Sue had to say on deletion matters when we met her at the Pendell arms back in 2010, and from Phillipe's post ...any permission which includes the ability to view deleted content must be identical in style and substance to the RFA process of the time. As long as that requirement is met, we're unlikely to object... I'd have agreed with Hammersoft that there would be no risk of WMF vetoing a community led change as long as the new process retains at least some element of vetting. As staff you'd know better than me. If you're saying it would be advisable to seek pre approval from WMF for any replacement before proceeding, I think we ought to close this thread right now, so as to avoid wasting community time. FeydHuxtable (talk) 20:57, 28 October 2014 (UTC)
I'm a research-monkey, not a lawyer ;p. I think you should certainly throw the idea off Maggie or James or Philippe just to ascertain what vetting they'd require, as due dilligence. I'm not qualified to say if it'd be pre-approval or post-approval or..what. Ironholds (talk) 21:09, 28 October 2014 (UTC)
Ta. I have some experience with lawyer speak, and Im not going to ask at this stage as it wouldn't feel respectful of their time. If we pass the initial motion to mark current RfA as historical, that would be the point when I'd ask Philippe. I've a feeling they might unfortunately rule out Pgallert's suggestion of WP:RFPERM due to insufficient vetting, but I'd eat my hat if they vetoed most other alternatives. FeydHuxtable (talk) 22:04, 28 October 2014 (UTC)
Even on RFPERM any particular thing to look for in future admins could be documented and implemented. After all, only the 'crats can hand out this permission. They are so few they could be informed by personal messages ;) Pgallert (talk) 05:35, 29 October 2014 (UTC)
Noyster and Graeme Bartlett have it right. Adminship will continue to be a big deal until desysopping gets easier. Only the draconian RfA process currently in place gives me a reasonable belief that the candidates can be minimally trusted. Chris Troutman (talk) 00:35, 29 October 2014 (UTC)
I can't really argue with that logic either. I'd give up half the active admins we have from the promiscuous days of '05-'07 for a quarter of their number in contemporary peers. Bad, entrenched admins have left such a nasty taste in people's mouths that RfAs have become something resembling a security clearance investigation. GraniteSand (talk) 09:25, 29 October 2014 (UTC)
I agree that part of the reason the present system is draconian is that we are creating a life tenure for the new admin, unless his behavior is so egregious that there must be a de-sysopping. One solution is to have an easy-peasy process for desysopping, but that would allow some abusive group who were dedicated fans of some fringe theory, some proud nation, some walled-garden subject, some hobby or some religion to eliminate any admin who follows Wikipedia guidelines and policies and gets in their way of creating vanispamcruftisements or of slanting articles to suit them. We would just have to make sure that a broad enough portion of the community participated in any recall election to keep in place good admins who had stepped on the toes of bullying publicists, nationalists, partisans or loons. I've also suggested having the election to adminship be for a set term such as one or 2 years. That said having 500 or 1000 discussions and votes a year would be tedious and it would be hard to get enough eyes on each one to prevent some entrenched group from block-voting out those those get in their way, or to prevent machine politics from backing offline a slate of amenable admins. The present system does seem to get a number of editors to look at each candidate. Unfortunately some cranky editors seem overrepresented and spend too much time opposing RFA candidates than contributing otherwise to the project. In summary, I suggest keep something like the present RFA, but somehow improve the level of discourse, as well as making it easier to desysop those who turn out not to be good admins. There are probably cases where an editor walks on eggs to avoid controversy and build up unobjectionable edits until get gets the bit, then lets his true feelings become clear and acts harshly toward others. Edison (talk)

The "system" is fine, we're just using it wrong. Take a look at how other projects do it - this Wikinews "requests for permissions" archive is a great example. The system they have is the same as ours, they just don't go in for the full scale interrogation of every candidate. That's what we need to change. When there's an RfA the question we have to answer is simple: can/do I trust this editor? We should do so on an WP:AGF basis; not assume there's some dirt to dig up on them and bombard them with questions until it comes out. Frankly it's the attitude of the community of editors that frequent RfA that needs to change, not the methodology itself. WaggersTALK 12:09, 29 October 2014 (UTC)

Cast a wider net

One thing that might help is to cast a wider net. Some people watch RfAs, some just coincidentally notice an editor they know is running, and apparently there are allegations of off-wiki canvassing, which only brings in the negatives. With the current load, we could put a notice on people's watchlist, which would bring in more editors who have had positive relations with the candidate, and increase the amount of qualified admins passing. Oiyarbepsy (talk) 21:02, 28 October 2014 (UTC)

Not a bad thought, although notification fatigue could set in, especially with the NOTNOWs gumming up serious candidacies. As it stands, participation isn't broad and is prone to serious selection bias. Alternately, but along the same vein, we could accept and list nominations all month long and then have a set period of every month when active questions with the candidate and !voting is accepted. This would expand exposure, allow for persistent banner notifications (it's RfA time!) as well as allow for people to assemble their thoughts on candidates and perform coaching in the Talk space without votes dragging out. Something like the last five days of every month? The last ten days of every quarter? GraniteSand (talk) 21:58, 28 October 2014 (UTC)
Alternatively, add the notice only if 24 hours have passed since the beginning of the RfA. This weeds out most NOTNOWs. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 00:36, 29 October 2014 (UTC)
Participation isn't broad, but I don't remember the last time I saw someone post a note saying "So-and-so is at RFA now" (e.g., at a WikiProject or project page) without promptly being accused of canvassing. I eventually concluded that only people who had no idea who the candidate was were welcome to respond. If you want to bring in more voters, then you have to find ways of letting them find out about it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:07, 29 October 2014 (UTC)
I think a yellow top banner used by the WMF for project-wide announcements would be perfect. GraniteSand (talk) 02:53, 29 October 2014 (UTC)
Wouldn't that be seen by EVERYONE on Wikipedia? Including the readers who don't care at all who admins this site or not? To me, if I didn't know or care anything about Wikipedia I wouldn't want to see a notification about it.--Church Talk 03:19, 29 October 2014 (UTC)
Yes. We're talking about a "crisis" here, right? Staffing the project with an adequate number of competent administrators is essential to the functioning of the project. Furthermore, admins affect everyone who edits here, one way or another. Much like fundraising or ArbCom elections or meetups, if editors choose not to acknowledge the broad call to participation then so be it, that's up to them. The imposition of passive notification is not arduous or unreasonable if conducted five out of every 30 days or 10 out of every 90. GraniteSand (talk) 03:28, 29 October 2014 (UTC)

Since I started this...

I'm the editor Feyd cited as proposing to close RFA. I stand behind the idea. The current RFA system is laugh-out-loud stupid -- the population of potential admins has voted with its feet to verify that -- and there are many potential alternatives. But those alternatives will only be seriously considered by this shortsighted community if the current system closes. As long as the current system exists, our resident process wonks will insist everything is fine because the project hasn't exploded yet. Keep defending RFA, and it may well be the hill this project dies on. Townlake (talk) 02:38, 29 October 2014 (UTC)

Why not? I say it's worth a shot. If things don't go so well, we can always revive what we currently have until another solution can be found.

Yes, the reason RfA is so difficult to pass is the fact that editors are held to an unrealistically high standard; they are expected to be well-rounded and have a breadth of experience in their professed areas of interest, as opposed to a demonstrated knowledge of how processes work and a willingness to think things through before acting. In my book, qualifications are far more important than credentials when assessing potential administrators. I also think that we should try to distance ourselves from this trend towards rejecting specialist administrators, or those that only wish to use the tools on a limited basis.

So how would an altogether different community process produce different results? In theory, it wouldn't. And in theory, a light object in free fall would descend at a slower pace than a heavier object. It wasn't until someone (often believed to be Galileo, but it probably wasn't) tested this hypothesis by dropping two objects of different masses in a controlled setting that this long-held belief was ultimately disproved; barring other factors (such as air resistance), acceleration due to gravity on Earth remains pretty much the same. It is always going to be roughly 9.81 m/s2. This person's experiment meant that we had to change the way we looked at gravity. These observations were made from a different perspective, and the results deviated from conventional thought. Perhaps an alternative to the current RfA process will actually bring about a change in community perspective; then again, it may not. But unless it is tried, we'll never know for sure. Kurtis (talk) 04:45, 29 October 2014 (UTC)

  • The problem I keep pointing out is simple: you can't get rid of the existing system until you have a replacement, or you make the problem worse. If you ditch the existing system, NO ONE can run for admin until a new system is put in place. That could take weeks or months, and if the Foundation comes in and says the new system is inadequate (and they do have a vested interest in whether or not the system properly vets or not), then you start over. You effectively prevent anyone from becoming an admin for a while. Resorting to ad hominem and calling people wonks and such isn't helpful or persuasive. Many of us are already on the record being critical of the system, and here with open minds about a replacement, but if there is a better way to do RFA, show us before you kill off the only avenue we have for appointing new admin. Saying "kill it and we will figure out a better system later" is a very weak argument, particularly since people have been barking up that tree for years and no one has come up with a better way that the community agrees on. And if the current RFA system is the silver bullet that kills this project, then it needed to be put out of its misery anyway. That whole statement is nothing but hyperbole, which really doesn't add to the discussion. Dennis - 2¢ 13:49, 29 October 2014 (UTC)
    "You effectively prevent anyone from becoming an admin for a while" - That would only be marginally worse than the current system, which has promoted only 2 admins in the last 4 months. Mr.Z-man 14:56, 29 October 2014 (UTC)
    Dennis cheerfully ignores the reality that years of efforts to fix the current system have yielded absolutely nothing. I'm trying to address the real problem; whether he realizes it or not, Dennis is falling back on the tired old defenses of the current system that are preventing this community from actually addressing the problem.
    Folks, if NO RFA system is in place, or an unpalatable system is used in the interim (e.g. let the bureaucrats handle all RFA permissions), then the community will feel a sense of urgency to rebuild the RFA permissions system in a better way. Townlake (talk) 15:44, 29 October 2014 (UTC)
    That is a bit rude, and you are reading things into my statements that aren't there. I've spent years trying to get changes in the RFA (easy to find the diffs if you check the RFA talk page). I've actually been through a particularly nasty and drama filled RFA (134/31/2) that had blocks, bad math, and bad faith, so its safe to say I actually know what it feels like, so the problems aren't just theoretical perceptions for me, they are actual experience. All I've said is "what do you have?" I've offered my ideas over the last few years, and even down below. You haven't offered an alternative, I have. So the phrase "put up or shut up" comes to mind, what do you have that is BETTER than what we have? Seriously, unless you have a replacement in mind or some basic idea, talking about removing the current system is just silly. Dennis - 2¢ 18:46, 29 October 2014 (UTC)
    Two years ago I was indefinitely topic banned by Arbcom from "making edits concerning the RFA process anywhere on the English Wikipedia." That tells me all I need to know about the viability of this proposal. Eric Corbett 19:08, 29 October 2014 (UTC)
    Dennis, what you call "silly" seems to be getting some serious traction here. I can offer you a hug if that will spare your feelings; otherwise you should stand aside. Your. Way. Failed. Townlake (talk) 19:58, 29 October 2014 (UTC)
His way may have failed, but I haven't seen anything from this discussion that points to any other method of appointing administrators gaining steam. Tone it down a little bit, we don't need tempers getting heated before the vote starts. Hell, we don't need it at all.--Church Talk 20:04, 29 October 2014 (UTC)
Thanks for the reminder Church. Dennis is a longtime contributor to this project and I respect him. I think he's a grownup and can understand that we're just speaking frankly here. He clearly has a particular point of view on this, mine is a polar opposite, and we both are taking this seriously. Townlake (talk) 20:14, 29 October 2014 (UTC)
@ Dennis. We're not offering a specific solution as we don't have one we know would be broadly acceptable. What we are offering is what we consider to be a close to infallible method to agree on something better. (Possibly the first new method we decide on would not be better in practice, but then we just need to use this same method again to replace it.) We're saying have faith in the community's ability for positive change. I've gave it my best shot at explaining this in the 'No safe option' section below.
@ Eric. I'd not normally take the liberty, but as you're here, my opinion is that it's bizarre to the point of perversity that an editor who's done as much for the project as you - in article writing, helping others to write, and (mostly) being friendly - hasn't been given adminship. Maybe you'd unblock a few friends, but you'd not be the sort to use tools to block an opponent or delete their article. On the other hand, I also think anyone using the C word should trigger an automatic desysop and 4 week block. FeydHuxtable (talk) 20:26, 29 October 2014 (UTC)
Perhaps you're an American? For myself, I don't see this C word as being any worse than many others, but if you feel like agitating for a change in the rules about what words can and can't be used on WP then feel free to do so. I'm much more enraged by being accused of being married to another editor I've never met simply because we both belong to the same WikiProject, as that has real-life implications. But this is of course an unnecessary digression. Eric Corbett 20:48, 29 October 2014 (UTC)
Im English 'till I die! Myself and the Colonel (also very British) tried to push for a change back in the great civ case of 2012. Probably a lost cause. I agree accusations that might afffect real life relationships are worse. FeydHuxtable (talk) 21:08, 29 October 2014 (UTC)
But you don't get blocked for them, you get blocked for using the C word. Anyway, I'm probably already stretching my ArbCom topic ban to the limit so I'll say no more. Eric Corbett 21:28, 29 October 2014 (UTC)
Speaking in general and not just this RFA concept, my experience has been that nothing ever gets done because there is always a group that wants EVERYTHING changed, and when someone supports an incremental change towards their goal, they flip out. "All or nothing" is their mantra, and they get exactly that: nothing. I'm an incrementalist, willing to accept small steps in the right direction to test out ideas, where the risk is lower and the rewards are delayed but more likely. You might think you are getting traction, but wait til the voting starts. Even if the community voted RFA out, WMF wouldn't allow that. I would rather try to find common ground and a partial solution that will do some good, than talk in circles and a month later, not a damn thing is different. This IS a perennial proposal because people try to do too much at once and are usually ill prepared to answer the tough questions. RFA has problems, yet I've still managed to push 6 candidates through as nom or conom and about to nom at least one more this year. But I do a lot of homework and vet them myself. [2] Not all the problems are the RFA system, which is why I say come minor tweaks might be a good place to start. If that doesn't work, try something bigger. Dennis - 2¢ 21:49, 29 October 2014 (UTC)
I like gradual changes too, but again this has been tried before. Dozens of minor changes are on offer at this page alone , some as minor as ending the use of 'weak' and 'strong' support. AFAIK only one of these ideas got consensus (albeit informal) on RfA talk itself. This was for clerking. MBizance himself tried to put this into practice, redacting overly harsh votes. Despite the previous apparent consensus, he soon got push back, including from a fellow crat, and the system went back to character assassination as normal. The existing RfA is like something out of a horror film. It can't be changed. Kill it! FeydHuxtable (talk) 22:32, 29 October 2014 (UTC)
seems to me that the idea of ending character assassination could get consensus. Eiler7 (talk) 18:15, 31 October 2014 (UTC)

How about tweaking the current system?

I doubt abolition with no replacement is going to pass, nor should it. It seems to me that tweaks to the current system have a better probability of success. For example: (1) Reducing the super-majority needed for approval from 70% to 60%; (2) Changing the basic questions asked from 3 bland ones to a dozen better ones and segregating unique questions to a lower visibility area of the page; (3) Making Adminiship a 2 step process with a 12 month probationary period followed by a reconfirmation vote rather than instant granting of a lifetime term; (4) Creation of a process making recall of bad Admins easier. Make no mistake, WMF is going to meddle with this process and even in the unlikely scenario in which RFA is abolished with no replacement, coming up with a new system which not only meets community muster but WMF's legal concerns is unlikely. Carrite (talk) 11:13, 29 October 2014 (UTC)

  • Rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.—S Marshall T/C 12:08, 29 October 2014 (UTC)
    • "Destroy RFA and then something better will be devised" is like scuttling all the lifeboats on the Titanic so that the crew and passengers will be motivated to devise a way to keep the ship from sinking. I agree with Carrite on a 12 month probie adminship with a review/confirmation. Edison (talk) 15:09, 29 October 2014 (UTC)
I agree with Carrite. We should ask the WMF now what their requirements are, rather than work something out and then have a battle with them. I like the 12-month reconfirmation idea for new admins; or, in default of an easier desysop process, three-year reconfirmation RFAs for all could become feasible as the number of admins falls. There would be several per week, but with a lighter-touch process that would be manageable.
My suggestion for improvement would be to disallow threaded exchanges, where most of the venom turns up. At least one person is already banned from threaded exchanges at RFA, while still allowed to vote, for this reason. Each opposer (or supporter) gives their reason; the candidate may reply if s/he chooses; that's it.
It would be possible to show only the totals, hide the comments and communicate them to the candidate privately. That could help to avoid pile-ons, but I don't like the loss of openness. While I don't say hostile comment during RFA is a good thing, anyone unwilling to face it is unlikely to be an effective admin, which can bring much worse abuse. JohnCD (talk) 12:46, 29 October 2014 (UTC)
Sorry if Im reading this wrong, but it's almost like some think our relationship with WMF is adversarial. I can see there is some reason for this, but IMO at least, WMF absolutely want to have a friendly and collaborative relationship with the community. In specific cases where their objectives are opposed by a significant portion of the editors, there is always a risk of friction. But as long as our objectives are aligned, as Im sure they would be in terms of having a functional RfA, there's no reason to think they'll make things difficult for us. However, as several much more experienced editors seem to think differently, I've asked Philippe, and if he responds just on his talk page, I'll cross post here. FeydHuxtable (talk) 14:37, 29 October 2014 (UTC)
Perhaps I phrased that badly, but RFC result versus what WMF will allow has been a sensitive issue lately. What I meant was, we know that WMF Legal have concerns about the selection/vetting process for people able to see deleted content which may include BLP violations; therefore we should understand their concerns and take them into account when devising a new system, rather than agree on something and then find it is unacceptable and have to go back to the drawing board. It will be hard enough to reach agreement once. JohnCD (talk) 16:11, 29 October 2014 (UTC)
Understood. Hopefully Phillip will clarify for us soon. FeydHuxtable (talk) 20:26, 29 October 2014 (UTC)
  • I've always thought you limit the support/oppose/neutral vote to around 50 words (or a different number, and diffs count at 0 words), no threads, and move the threaded discussion to the bottom below Neutral. This lets each !voter give a reason for their vote, allows passersby to view the rationales, you still have the discussion about being fit on the front page, but it prevents the threads from drowning out the big picture. Crats should consider the entire front page, including threads at the bottom. This is a tiny tweak, but I think it is a safe tweak to start with and might reduce a little drama, as the reward for the drama is less, the impact is less. We need to do small things first. The basic layout isn't the problem, but allowing threads up top gives drama mongers a perfect stage to beat their drum. Currently, we don't even USE the "discussion" area very often (which is currently above the voting), except for procedural notes, it all gets jammed into the polling, which is the problem. Dennis - 2¢ 13:57, 29 October 2014 (UTC)
  • "tweaks to the current system have a better probability of success" - As Feyd pointed out at the beginning, people have been proposing reform and tweaks for years and nothing significant has come of it. If we're considering that approach to be the most likely to succeed, we might as well just give up. Mr.Z-man 15:02, 29 October 2014 (UTC)
    If we can't agree on tweaks, what makes you think we can agree on a completely new system? Dennis - 2¢ 15:04, 29 October 2014 (UTC)

Debating how to fix the current system is in the "perennial proposals" section for a reason. Suggesting modifications to the failed system already in place is a waste of time. Townlake (talk) 15:40, 29 October 2014 (UTC)

  • A 12 month "probation" would, at least for me, result in more "support" !votes than currently is the case. I'm hesitant in the current RFA for example, but would not have been in case of a probation. Making de-sysopping easier would also be a good idea, although the process would have to be designed carefully (admins tend to make enemies, no matter how careful and friendly they are...). As for the current RFA process being toxic, I disagree. This may have been the case some years ago, but in the 12 months or so that I have been following them, I find most comments constructive (there's always the odd exception, but those are generally ignored by everybody). --Randykitty (talk) 12:30, 30 October 2014 (UTC)

Alternate RfA

What about having a new process coinciding with the existing one, and allowing candidates to choose? That would allow us to close the old one if it works, or close the alternate one if it fails. Oiyarbepsy (talk) 18:19, 29 October 2014 (UTC)

To me it seems that consensus is that the old system doesn't work, which is why we're here.--Church Talk 18:31, 29 October 2014 (UTC)
On paper an excellent idea Oiyarbepsy. Jimbo Wales himself championed a possible parallel alternate RfA back in 2011. Unfortunately, is seems to have failed for the same reason all other reform attempts have. As long as the old system remains in place, there's just not sufficient impetus for consensus to cohere on any one possible alternative. FeydHuxtable (talk) 18:38, 29 October 2014 (UTC)
It looks like the !votes below that give rationale for maintaining the current one point out that they would have gone for another system if it would first exist and then removing the existing one should be debated - which is a good argument in itself. Creating a parallel process first with option to choose any would pave way for taking that out of the equation (or maybe not and the wiki can have two permanent ways). --lTopGunl (talk) 17:38, 30 October 2014 (UTC)
This is the approach I support. Create the alternate process and let it run concurrent with RFA as we have it now. The candidates can choose for themselves which process they prefer.—John Cline (talk) 14:05, 1 November 2014 (UTC)

No Safe option

There's three broad options to the RfA problem.

Do nothing
This is essentially a choice to embark on a dangerous social experiment. There will be further concentration of power and responsibility on admins who chose to remain. The unwavering decline in active admins over the past 7 years leave no doubt this is where 'Existing RfA road' leads. To a place that seems unfair both to admins and the community. At best, conscientious and dedicated admins will put an increasingly amount time and effort into Wikipedia, neglecting their own best interests, but perhaps keeping things ticking over for another 5 years. At worse, the perceived gap between regular editors and admins will widen to a chasm. Increasingly powerful admins will be more prone to abuse and harder to desysop. Admins will have less time to make considerate decisions, and the resulting distress caused by a more hostile editing environment could take years to heal.

Attempt to agree on a replacement RfA process while leaving the existing process in place
On paper this is the obvious choice. The only problem is its been tried hundreds of times before, to no effect. Thousands of editor hours have been expended on this cause, including from some of our very brightest editors. To see evidence of this, click WP:RFA2011.

Each new attempt to decide on a new process seems not only to waste time, cause frustration, and increase reform fatigue, thus making successful reform even less likely. Einstein had a word to describe the practice of repeatedly trying the same approach and exspecting to get a different result. That word was insanity.

End the existing disused RfA process, then agree on a replacment

Cortés scuttling his own fleet so there is no going back to how things were before. He then proceeded to conquer the smallpox-crippled Aztec empire with only a few hundred men.

Several editors understandably feel ending RfA without first agreeing on its replacement is reckless. To clarify, Townlake, myself, SMarshal, Mr Z and others are not lunatics. We're trying to be realistic about the fact that historical failure to reform RfA means we're dealing with something close to mission impossible. Burning ones bridges or ships is not something one does lightly, but it does have a track record of being used to pull of close to impossible feats. The tactic's been used by the ancient Chinese and Romans even before Christ, and perhaps most famously by Cortés.

In our case, we have all the advantages this method conferred upon the Spaniard, but almost none of the risks. This is how easy it was to create an RfA process from a clean slate

It's not going to be quite as simple as it was for Camembert back in 2003. So we're proposing a more structured method. After we agree to mark the current RfA as historical, we can have a week long creative period where we build up new and existing ideas for replacement, such as a modified version of RFPERM, or Arbcom light style elections with tranches for specialists. Then a further week where we eliminate the less well supported options, until we settle on our final choice. With a well structured RfC to ensure we get a result, and with no option to return to the harmful status quo, how can this fail? FeydHuxtable (talk) 20:26, 29 October 2014 (UTC)

Proposal: administrators must be civil servants, not politicians

Main page: Wikipedia:Administrative Standards Commission

Moved to Wikipedia talk:Administrative standards commission Oiyarbepsy (talk) 23:13, 30 October 2014 (UTC)

The problem with RfA, as it is presently structured, is that it is based on what are essentially democratic principles. Being a Wikipedia administrator is a technocratic job. It is a job of maintenance. It is not a position of leadership, nor is it a legislative position. Democratic principles stymie and obfuscate the purpose of adminiship, and turn it into a populist post. Civil servants are properly appointed, not elected. That's the way it works in most governments, and that's how it should work here. We need to remove the democratic element, and stop this mob rule nonsense. Therefore, I'd propose the following. This is just a basic idea, sans details. A search committee is created with the sole purpose of appointing administrators. The committee is elected by the community, similarly to the present Arb Com elections. The committee would accept applications for adminship, and evaluate them based on merit. A simple majority of committee members in favour of a candidate would lead to that candidate being granted adminship. The committee would not just accept applications, but would also seek out potential candidates. This strikes me as the best way forward. Democracy is not the answer to every question. RGloucester — ☎ 04:21, 30 October 2014 (UTC)
Now that I like - the first major change proposal here that I could support, though success should require more than a simple majority. Suggestions to flesh it out: number on the committee at least six, maybe ten. Once it's established, two-year terms with half retiring (but re-electable) each year, to maintain continuity. Committee's deliberations are private, but where they decline a candidate the reasons are stated publicly. JohnCD (talk) 09:19, 30 October 2014 (UTC)
I've suggested this before, in the labyrinthine by-ways of Wikipedia RFA discussions. This culture directly elects its enforcers and you don't have to be Sherlock Holmes to see why that's a problem. What we should do is elect a supervisory body ("commissioners"?) who will run our admin corps: they'll select, promote, coach, support, discipline, encourage, demote where necessary. Arbcom lose their "emergency desysop" function in this proposal, which I think is a good thing: they're already overempowered and overloaded.—S Marshall T/C 09:52, 30 October 2014 (UTC)
A system like that would have my preference, too. It saves time for the community (no need for dozens of editors going through candidate's histories) and be easier on the candidates themselves (I certainly would have gone for admin earlier under such a system). --Randykitty (talk) 12:34, 30 October 2014 (UTC)
I've proposed a variation of that idea more than once, but it hasn't received any traction. While it doesn't address all issues, I think it does address some of the important issues. My most recent post was written as a response to someone else,, I've edited slightly to write it as an essay: User:Sphilbrick/RfA reform. It short, we should start with an organized selection committee.--S Philbrick(Talk) 13:13, 30 October 2014 (UTC)
Yeah, I knew I had already seen this idea. And the problem is also that the Foundation requires vetting by the community to see deleted stuff, as it contains copyvio and other bad things. The other problem is that being on that committee to select admins, that is a LOT OF POWER, so you've made that a political position. One corrupt person there, or someone that is forcing their ideology in secret (no Christians allowed / No Republicans /No whatever) and you have a worse situation. That method is vulnerable to corruption, which would be far reaching before it was noticed. Dennis - 2¢ 13:26, 30 October 2014 (UTC)
The committee members would be held to account by elections, just as arbitrators are. As suggested above, they'd be required to release a report on why a candidate was granted adminship. To be frank, I feel the fear of corruption is unwarranted. The present populist system is much more prone to "corruption by mob", than this system will be prone to "corruption by individual". Also note that there are enough members on the committee to override any one corrupt individual. RGloucester — ☎ 13:32, 30 October 2014 (UTC)
Just to be clear, I accept that the community need to have an up-or-down vote, partly because the community ought to have that role, and partly because the WMF requires a vetting process. I see a two-stage process, where a committee reviews candidates in an organized way, presents the candidate to the community with a summary report and recommendation, then the community gets to do an up-or-down vote. Some "voters" will not trust the committee report, and do their own review, which is fine, some will trust the committee completely, and vote accordingly, some, like myself, will review the report, and do my own review based upon areas of weakness identified by the committee. Obviously, there are details to be worked out. The use of the word "committee" implies a fixed set of editors chosen for the task, while I envision that anyone could sign up to do the review of some aspect of the candidate and contribute to the summary report. A hybrid is also an option, with a small elected committee whose job is mainly coordination and organization of the summary write-up.--S Philbrick(Talk) 16:08, 3 November 2014 (UTC)
I strongly disagree. Democracy is crap system. It doesn't choose the best possible candidates, just those that haven't rubbed certain people the wrong way. The point of this committee is to take the failure that is direct democracy out of the equation, and allow the community to elect a Commission that will grant administrative tools on merit. Your proposed system doesn't solve any of the current problems with RfA, and continues to rely on the bunk system that is democracy. RGloucester — ☎ 16:16, 3 November 2014 (UTC)
This is an interesting idea and in theory I think would be better. The biggest practical problem I can foresee is in selecting the committee, in particular the risk of a shortage of good candidates. There's also the risk of giving the appearance of adminship being a "private club" if the majority (or all) of the committee members are admins. Mr.Z-man 15:58, 30 October 2014 (UTC)
I would suggest that the committee should have an equal number of seats for administrators and non-administrators, so that both sides of the coin are included. RGloucester — ☎ 16:04, 30 October 2014 (UTC)
Admittedly, this is not a bad idea, and something to think about if all other alternatives fail to work. However, I'm concerned about the lack of outside participation and the extra level of bureaucracy that this would add to our already bureaucratic system. I have an idea or two concerning a new election process, but I'm not going to post them until the RfC is finished. --Biblioworm 16:27, 30 October 2014 (UTC)
Our system is one of mob rule, and it isn't working. Sysop candidates should not ever be subjected to a public humiliation, a popularity contest, or indeed any kind of mass vote. They need to be selected on merit. We need administrators with skills. We do not need political leaders who can figure out how to wheel-and-deal people into "voting" for them. There would be outside participation, that is, the committee would be elected by the community. We need a way to check the mob, and this is it. RGloucester — ☎ 16:41, 30 October 2014 (UTC)
What would the requirements be to get elected into this committee? Would there be terms for committee members? How could a committee member be stripped of his membership if he started to behave unacceptably? --Biblioworm 16:53, 30 October 2014 (UTC)
  • Personally, I'd want to offer Eric Corbett one of the seats on the first commission.  :) Yes, I think there'd have to be terms for commissioners: they'd be re-elected every year or so. Unacceptable behaviour by a commissioner strikes me as an unlikely circumstance, but part of their charter might be that a commissioner could be de-appointed by simple majority vote among the other commissioners (which action would trigger a by-election for a new commissioner). Or something. The details can be sorted.—S Marshall T/C 17:14, 30 October 2014 (UTC)
I'd propose that the body we create be termed the Administrative Standards Commission. This body would consist of eight commissioners, each elected by the community for a term of one year. Election procedure would mimic the Arbitration Committee's election procedure. I would propose that four commissioners be non-administrators, whilst the other four would be administrators. As stated above, a commissioner could be removed from office by a simple majority vote amongst the other commissioners, triggering a new election. The duty of the commissioners would be as follows: to search for potential candidates for adminship, to accept applications for adminship, evaluate those applications, to appoint administrators, and to serve as a forum for the review of administrative actions. I'm not opposed to the idea of maintaining the existing RfA process as a parallel option in the interim period. RGloucester — ☎ 18:41, 30 October 2014 (UTC)
This is definitely an interesting system that I would be willing to try out. My only concern would be what to do in case of ties? Say the four administrators vote for a candidate and the four non-admins don't? Is it just marked no consensus? My suggestion would be to forget the whole admin, non-admin thing and just let the entire community elect who they feel is right and have an ODD number of people (Say, 7) there to prevent that from happening. --Church Talk 18:45, 30 October 2014 (UTC)
I think it is good to ensure representation for non-administrators. We must remember that "adminship is no big deal". It has become inflated in importance in recent years, but that's not how it should be. Having non-administrator representatives will entrench the idea that adminship is no big deal, and that administrators are not "ranked" higher than anyone else. They are technocrats employed by the community to take on tasks important to the maintenance of the encyclopaedia. I wouldn't be opposed to an odd number, say the seven you proposed. In that case, I'd recommend three non-administrators and three administrators, with one slot open to anyone. RGloucester — ☎ 18:52, 30 October 2014 (UTC)
I like this idea, but there should be a limit on how long anyone can serve, so that we do not get an entrenched oligarchy. I suggest a three year term, with zero or one repeat (community choice when it is set up). There would be three classes with initial elections for one, two and three year terms. If we wanted an odd number there could be 9 positions, with three new ones elected per year. There could be 5 designated nonadmin seats and 4 designated admin seats. To avoid a buddy system, nonadmins leaving the body could be excluded from running for admin for one year. Edison (talk) 19:53, 30 October 2014 (UTC)
I would not mind if all members would be non-admins, in the spirit of "no big deal". I would not even object a system where admins would be excluded, given that this committee would also deal with desysopping. The elections would ensure that non-qualified people (e.g. somebody who just joined with 300 edits and such) would not get a seat. --Randykitty (talk) 19:57, 30 October 2014 (UTC)
I don't think excluding admins entirely would be a good idea. The main job of the board is choosing people to be admins, desysopping will hopefully be a much smaller task (if not, then they're probably doing their first job poorly). It makes sense to have some people who actually know what being an admin entails. Not having any admins would be like having a medical board with no doctors on it. Mr.Z-man 20:18, 30 October 2014 (UTC)
  • Why 4/4 or 3/3/powercard? Administrators make up about 4% to 6% of the population of active editors on wiki, so why give them so much power in this process? I'd much rather see a 1 crat, 2 admin, and 4 non-crat/non-admin editors who would not be eligible for the admin tools during their term. I'd see this as a much closer representation of the population of editors (although still skewed in favor of crats and admins). — {{U|Technical 13}} (e • t • c) 20:07, 30 October 2014 (UTC)
  • It would be extremely hard for commissioners to do their admin-supervising job unless they could view deleted contributions, so I think that for reasons of practicality they'd have to receive the admin tools on being elected.—S Marshall T/C 20:37, 30 October 2014 (UTC)
Perhaps it would be possible to grant them the ability to see deleted contributions without giving them other administrator powers? Given that these candidates will have been vetted by the community in the elections, I see no reason for the Foundation to object. RGloucester — ☎ 20:42, 30 October 2014 (UTC)
  • This is getting out of hand. The key to proposals like this is that they cannot be overly complicated. I stick by my suggestion that we should have one-year terms. I'm strongly opposed to complicated distributions of power based on population representation. As said above, administrators are the ones that deal with administrative matters on a daily basis, and hence are important to a balanced Administrative Standards Commission. I think that a 3/3/1 allocation is the best we can hope for. Three administrators, three non-administrators, one open seat. I see no necessity for bureaucrats to be allocated a seat. RGloucester — ☎ 20:29, 30 October 2014 (UTC)
With that said though, I don't think we should prohibit a crat from holding the seat if the community decides that. Crats are admins after all.--Church Talk 21:29, 30 October 2014 (UTC)
Of course. They merely would not be allocated a special seat. RGloucester — ☎ 22:06, 30 October 2014 (UTC)

Moved to Wikipedia talk:Administrative standards commission Oiyarbepsy (talk) 23:13, 30 October 2014 (UTC)

  • I support this change, as it removes the popularity contest element and the issue of previously begrudged editors derailing nominations. I actually think a majority of long-term regular editors would be suitable for adminship. The raw goods are there and allowing a small group of appointed people would also reduce the overheads in the process (as the appointees would gain the skills to review more candidates more quickly and no more than seven people would need to go through the editor's past edits etc). SFB 20:42, 2 November 2014 (UTC)

@RGloucester: You wrote above: "Sysop candidates should not ever be subjected to a public humiliation". Why not? Sysops are subjected to public humiliation when they take a controversial action. Why not be prepared? — Arthur Rubin (talk) 22:15, 6 November 2014 (UTC)

I don't think public humiliation is ever appropriate. We have a pillar that's supposed to address that issue, don't we? RGloucester — ☎ 22:16, 6 November 2014 (UTC)
Saying that it's fine to humiliate RfA candidates because they "...are subjected to public humiliation when they take a controversial action" is a convenient excuse for ignoring the WP:CIVIL policy. Candidates' ability to perform under pressure should be evaluated based on earlier behavior, such as conduct on noticeboards, their response to criticism, etc. --Biblioworm 22:30, 6 November 2014 (UTC)

List of incremental improvements to RFA over the last five years

There's been tons of time and typing spilled on the RFA issue in various wikifora over the last 5+ years, attempting to achieve incremental improvements to the process. Can someone provide a list of the actual improvements to RFA that have come from all this effort in the last five years? Townlake (talk) 15:08, 30 October 2014 (UTC)

Are we limiting the list to reforms that lasted, rather than something that was tried a couple of times and given up on? If so, then I believe that the complete list of lasting reforms is in this box:
  
  
But perhaps someone else knows more than I do, because I don't usually follow RFA reform discussions. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:22, 30 October 2014 (UTC)

List of RFA Alternatives Proposed

Regardless of the vote calls for I see no harm in getting all of our ideas in one place for convenience and this is my attempt to do that, please feel free to add your idea if I forgot to add it.

  1. unbundling the admin tools and having them be open in a process like Requests for Permission.
  2. Arb-Com Style Elections for Administrators
  3. The creation of a committee that would actively "search for potential candidates for adminship, accept applications for adminship, evaluate those applications, to appoint administrators, and to serve as a forum for the review of administrative actions." - see WP:Administrative Standards Commission
  4. Tweaks to RFA to limit commenting, appoint clerks, and other suggestions that would keep the basic RFA process we've come to know. See also User:Application Drafter/Sysop applications draft. (Sorry for inserting this in someone else's comment, but I don't know how else to do this.) Application Drafter (talk) 03:09, 31 October 2014 (UTC)
  5. User:WereSpielChequers/RFA reform#Upbundling, especially of the block button.
Feel free to update this list as you see fit. Regardless of if we close RFA or not I think we should not give up until we can hammer something out. This multi-year long debate dies here if we make it die here. I'm not for RFA, I just think it should stay until we can actively set up an alternative.--Church Talk 19:30, 30 October 2014 (UTC)
I added the upbundling one (#5), since the block button is the one that most makes one want to look at demeanour issues, and these are where the criticisms can get personal. --Stfg (talk) 21:01, 30 October 2014 (UTC)
See item number 6, above. Application Drafter (talk) 03:09, 31 October 2014 (UTC)
I moved item 6 as a subsection of tweaking RFA. This proposal basically keeps RFA the same, it just changes the questions. Oiyarbepsy (talk) 02:44, 2 November 2014 (UTC)
I am against the first two. #1 is too less scrutiny. We need consensus. #2 is too much drama. As we've seen before. --Ankit Maity «T § C» 14:52, 6 November 2014 (UTC)

Proposal: Admins should serve terms

Main page: Wikipedia:Administrative Standards Commission

As most people probably know, if you are elected as an admin in the current system, you hold the position for life unless you voluntarily resign or ArbCom takes it away. This fact may play a part in the restrictiveness of RfA, because as of now, there is no easy way to remove adminship, so the candidates that you elect must be really good.
However, this problem could be solved by having admins serve "terms". How long your "term" is depends upon the amount of support you get. For example, if you get 50%-75% support, you're only elected for a one year term. If you get 75%-100% support, you get elected for a two year term. At the end of this "term", the admin would go through a reconfirmation, where it would be confirmed that they haven't done anything to warrant a desysopping. A predefined list of things deserving a desysopping would exist as a guideline, so that we could ensure that an admin couldn't be desysopped merely for making a couple of mistakes, which would not be out of the question if it was up to the mob. If no outstanding issues arise during the reconfirmation, a 'crat would close it as successful, and the admin would serve for another term. As long as the admin remains trustworthy and does not violate the desysopping criteria, there would be no limit to the amount of terms that an admin could serve.
I feel that, if implemented, this would loosen the requirements in electing new admins, because an admin could always be desysopped if he acted unacceptably during his term. I'm looking forward to everyone's input. Thanks, --Biblioworm 23:41, 30 October 2014 (UTC)

Strongly oppose – As I said above, adminship is not a political position, nor a leadership position, nor a legislative position. Admins should continue to serve on merit, in line with their duty as technical servants of the Wikipedia community. Forcing them to run for "election" will politicise the post even further, resulting in administrators who are good at wheeling-and-dealing, not dealing with the maintenance of the encyclopaedia. RGloucester — ☎ 23:55, 30 October 2014 (UTC)
I'm not trying to turn this into a political position (besides, being a member of a committee is also a political position). I'm just saying that the notion of "admin for life" is probably a main reason why the admin position is thought to be a big deal. Once you have it, you cannot lose it unless ArbCom revokes it, which can be difficult to do. In my opinion, we'll never fully get rid of the "power", "authority", and "mystery" surrounding admins until we have a more convenient way to desysop. In fact, this proposal is not completely incompatible with the proposed ASC, as the committee could review admins at the end of their term. --Biblioworm 00:11, 31 October 2014 (UTC)
This is a good and thoughtful proposal. I especially like the protection you've built in against mobs. I don't fully agree with RGloucester on admins being purely servants. In practice their role does contain an element of executive function and leadership , even if some of the more maintenance orientated admins chose not to get involved in that side of things. IMO opinion you wouldn't get rid of the "power" element even with an easier desysop (which I probably wouldn't support due to the risk of anti admin witch hunts) There's two reasons I like RGloucester's ASC idea even more. It wouldn't feel right to retrospectively apply terms to existing admins, and so this would risk making all new admins second class. And compared to the selection board, this proposal would still allow scope for the same sort character assassination that happens with existing RfA. (Im skeptical that even bolting on clerking would not prevent this.) FeydHuxtable (talk) 00:26, 31 October 2014 (UTC)
As I mentioned above, this proposal can easily be adapted to fit the ASC. I suppose, though, that the advantage of the ASC is that desysoppings can be done on a rolling basis rather than at set intervals. Even if my proposal isn't accepted in its current state, I do strongly believe that we should have some sort of convenient desysopping procedure. I really don't care if the ASC or the community handles it, so long as it's something. (However, I am beginning to increasingly support the concept of the ASC, but it does still need some work.) Whatever desysopping procedure we adopt, it has to have some sort of "mob protection". --Biblioworm 00:41, 31 October 2014 (UTC)
I do strongly agree that administrators should be able to carry out their duties without being hanged on a whim, which is one of the reasons I like the idea of the WP:ASC (the proposal now has its own page). RGloucester — ☎ 01:01, 31 October 2014 (UTC)
I must say, this could work. It would mean a lot of "re-adminships", but what do we have to lose? --AmaryllisGardener talk 01:31, 31 October 2014 (UTC)
We have plenty to lose. Such a proposal further entrenches the wrong idea that adminship is a "big deal". We need to be curtailing this notion, not furthering it. RGloucester — ☎ 01:33, 31 October 2014 (UTC)
Off the top of my head, and from the last 30 times this has been proposed: you stand to lose a lot of admins. If we already have trouble finding enough candidates willing to run the gauntlet that is RFA, forcing everyone to run it again and again will only exacerbate attrition. Not to mention a significant additional bureaucratic burden that takes everyone away from what we are supposed to be here for: building an encyclopedia. You also risk massively reducing the number of admins willing to take on controversial tasks because of the very same predilection for "character assassination" as FeydHuxtable so aptly terms it above. Why would anyone take on a tough job if the only they they can expect as a result is reams of abuse? Resolute 13:51, 31 October 2014 (UTC)
Ultimately, adminship is a bigger deal than it was in 2003 because Wikipedia is a bigger deal than it was in 2003; there's probably no going back on this. Standards are a bit higher, because the seriousness of our fuckups is higher. In the interim "I'm concerned there aren't enough administrators, so let's start removing admin status from the existing admins" makes no sense. WilyD 13:38, 31 October 2014 (UTC)
I could not agree more with this comment. This would insure fewer admins. Term limits make perfect sense for arbcom, or for real-world politicians, but I have never heard of a scenario where low-level unpaid volunteers need to run for re-election n order to do thankless drudge work. I have always felt that such proposals are based on the very, very wrong assumption that being admin fills one with a godlike sense of power and authority. It isn't like that at all. For good admins, having the tools is an obligation, to help out the community to the best of their ability wherever they can. There are not so many bad admins that we should subject every last one to a reconfirmation. The only form of this I would support would be for very long terms, like ten years or so. Beeblebrox (talk) 20:17, 2 November 2014 (UTC)
COMPROMISE IDEA. How about keeping the RFA system. But also allow people to apply for interim administratorship. These positions would be for a year with reconfirmation into a regular administrator after that. So that everyone wouldn't be forced to apply for this (and face being discriminated against compared to what the current administrators have to go through), have it so you could apply for interim administrator only if your qualifications were a little short (someone could come up with the criteria but maybe a user with 5,000 edits, not 20,000). See if the interim administrators are a success. If they are, they could encourage people who don't live on wikipedia to apply. Disclaimer: I am not interested in interim adminship. EatingGlassIsBad (talk) 00:13, 5 November 2014 (UTC)

It's already hard enough to find admins who are wiling to make controversial decisions, or even decisions that will make a minority of people angry. "Term limits" will only exacerbate this problem at their future RfAs. GraniteSand (talk)

Oppose The hassle of adminship and re-adminship with the help of community consensus will cause way too many problems. De-adminship is waste of time. If the community believes that the admin is useless, we'll force them to run for a second RfA, do a RfC/A or ask them for a recall. --Ankit Maity «T § C» 14:59, 6 November 2014 (UTC)

I agree with Beeblebrox. Let me be frank. I've been an administrator now for nearly three years. I'm not a very controversial admin: I've had the occasional moment where I've said something dumb or made a silly mistake, but I mostly seem to get things about right, I hope. I don't block many people. I don't use my admin tools much, but when I do, I mostly get it right. I've not had decisions taken to deletion review or really made any controversial blocks. I mostly steer clear of WP:ANI and so on these days and just plod away with what I want to work on. I edit, and I have some extra buttons I can push when I feel the need to. I close some deletion discussions occasionally, hand out some user rights at WP:RFPERM when I feel like it, and occasionally WP:RFPP requests when there's a bit of a backlog. There are lots of admins like this: they keep themselves to themselves. Sometimes they are even less public-facing than I am, just merrily working away in some quiet backlog—the file namespace or the category tree or closing MfDs or enforcing some bit of bureaucracy that the community decided admins should work on.

I'm perfectly happy to be accountable to the community: if I make mistakes or make bad judgments, I like to think I'd handle that in a mature and responsible way. The RfA process is stressful even if it is a shoe-in—there's always a risk some grudge-bearing sock or weirdo is going to turn up out of the blue and turn it into a circus. Would the reconfirmation RfAs happen every year at the same time? What if you are busy at work or you've got a family holiday or some personal crisis and don't exactly want to participate in another blasted RfA? After the first or second reconfirmation, I'd almost be tempted to pack it in. Wikipedia is something I participate in because it is fun and I try not to participate in the bits that aren't fun—there are other far more important things in life to care about. RfA was a chore once, let alone doing it again and again forever more. Indeed, if I were contemplating running for adminship and annual reconfirmation were in place, I'd probably consider whether I'd bother running in the first place.

Most admins I think are trying to do their best. Let us do the job that we're (not) paid to do. —Tom Morris (talk) 00:57, 18 November 2014 (UTC)

(Responding to proposal) An administrator hoping to be re-elected, might be tempted towards favouritism. GoodDay (talk) 01:02, 18 November 2014 (UTC)
  • Oppose. I concur entirely with Beeblebrox and Tom Morris. Furthermore, a term system would simply introduce tons more bureaucracy and increase the number of venues and opportunities where people can be nasty - exactly which has been putting off users of the right calibre from running for adminship in the first place. And as per Tom, the very thought that they would have to run again in a year or two would discourage even more candidates. There is also the fact that some admins might work towards re-election/reconfirmation and thus be less bold in dealing with contentious issues. There will always be some admins that need to be desysoped - even arbs have been thrown out - but there is no proof whatsoever that 'admin for life' spawns an intolerably high number of badmins. What we need is a faster (and efficient) system for addressing poor admin behaviour, one that is far less bogged down in its own bureaucracy than Arbcom and which unlike Arbcom, ANI, or RFC/U, will take a formal look at patterns of long term inappropriate behaviour and/or reckless use of the tools rather than just isolated ussues. --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 01:55, 18 November 2014 (UTC)

Voting

If you support the proposal but advise any changes to the suggested timeline above , please mention in your vote.

The proposal to vote on is:
The community supports marking the existing RfA / RfB process as historical, thus providing a clean slate on which to design a suitable replacement.

Please vote Abolish (Support) to abolish our current RfA system or Maintain (Oppose) to maintain it (for now).

[[#ref_{{{1}}}|^]] I just felt this was required. Forgive me, WikiKnights. --Ankit Maity «T § C» 15:28, 6 November 2014 (UTC)

Abolish current RfA system

  1. Strong Support. (I'm the first one here. ) The more I'm thinking about this, the more I'm becoming convinced that we're not going to get anywhere unless we just blow it up and start over again. For years, the community has wasted time and effort trying to reform RfA, but none of them have yielded results. Unless the current system is shut down, there will be no motivation to come up with a new one. (By the way, I do think this RfC should be extended to last about 30 days, since this is such a major proposal.) Thanks, --Biblioworm 00:09, 30 October 2014 (UTC)
    While I'm not opposed to the idea of blowing it up and starting it over, I think we should do it in the other order - first construct the new process, then demolish the old one and start using the new one. If this proposal passes, then how will a user try to become an adin the day after we close down RFA? עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 19:40, 30 October 2014 (UTC)
  2. Strong Support per Biblioworm. FeydHuxtable (talk) 00:21, 30 October 2014 (UTC)
  3. Me too. In order to address some of the opposers' concerns, I suggest that if this process succeeds and RfA is marked historical, then the RfA process should be suspended with effect from, say, 1 January 2015, so we've got a known end date but we also maintain some process for promotion (even if it's dysfunctional) for a month or so until the end of December.—S Marshall T/C 00:51, 30 October 2014 (UTC)
  4. The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. Years (7 according to Feyd) of incremental reform efforts have led nowhere. It's time to try something different. In the past, RFA was functional enough that this plan would be too extreme. But at this point, the promotion rate is so low, not having a process for a couple months will barely make a difference. Mr.Z-man 03:11, 30 October 2014 (UTC)
  5. This is the only way to fix RFA, but I expect this effort to not achieve "consensus". It's a shining example of the failure of the consensus model to govern a community that has clearly outgrown it. With no adults in charge, clearly-broken processes can't be changed. Good luck making those "incremental changes," folks. Townlake (talk) 03:37, 30 October 2014 (UTC)
  6. Support. Essentially agree with Biblioworm and Mr.Z-man, above. Cheers, — Cirt (talk) 04:30, 30 October 2014 (UTC)
  7. Support. Let's dispense with the notion that it's radical or irresponsible to deconstruct a system (and what is permissible within it) that is gradually failing to do its job, particularly with the understanding that we are dedicated to work together to build something better. Editors arguing that there are other factors besides the system are probably right, but there is sufficient evidence that the system is a major factor and is something malleable that can be improved. I encourage editors who do not consider the system to be a significant problem to read over WereSpielChequers observations, comments in this recent invitation for candidates on AN, some of the feedback at User:Juliancolton/Why I hate RfA, and User:Dayewalker#My RfA, and good faith advice on yours. I, JethroBT drop me a line 08:05, 30 October 2014 (UTC)
  8. Unbundle the tools, unbundle the tools, unbundle the tools. Come up with weak and strong versions of the tools, so that some users can demonstrate their facility with the weak version before getting the strong version. For example get a permission to block only anons, and only for a short time, with progressively more authority needed to block registered editors, and to impose longer/indefinite blocks. bd2412 T 19:39, 30 October 2014 (UTC)
    You realize some people would go completely nuts over that proposal, calling you an elitist, IP hater, via WP:IPs are people too, as that makes IP sound less human than registered editors? Dennis - 2¢ 20:14, 30 October 2014 (UTC)
  9. Support For those who are opposing because it would disrupt the adminship process: What has RfA done for you in the past two months? Nothing? Then I don't see why suspending the process would be disruptive. KonveyorBelt 20:12, 30 October 2014 (UTC)
  10. Support, the current system comes from another time and another place. It has served us well, but it's time to let it go, because it's clearly not serving us well anymore. It's clear after years that 'reforms' aren't going to stick, so I think the first step to a better way to fill the admin corps is to abolish the current system, and force us to design a better one. Lankiveil (speak to me) 22:49, 30 October 2014 (UTC).
  11. Abolish which is a support !vote for those who didn't read the directions above :) - this process is clearly broken, otherwise why would RfA reform be one of our most well-known perennial proposals? Nuke it, it's the only way. I'll not be opposed to maintaining the existing RfA until the RfC closes, to placate those worried that being without a system with such a pathetically low turnover rate would be disastrous (it clearly wouldn't), but when the RfC closes, the existing RfA must close with it. Ivanvector (talk) 23:07, 30 October 2014 (UTC)
  12. Support. It doesn't work anymore; almost nobody is getting through. Everyking (talk) 01:08, 31 October 2014 (UTC)
  13. Support and see my proposed template at User:Application Drafter/Sysop applications draft. Application Drafter (talk) 03:10, 31 October 2014 (UTC)
  14. Strong Support There must be better ways of doing this, getting rid of Rfas would be a start. ♫ SqueakBox talk contribs 20:52, 2 November 2014 (UTC)
  15. Strong Support I don't understand all the hand-wringing about how this would temporarily leave us with no promotion process. We wouldn't be having this discussion if the current process was being regularly used. What's the difference? Mellowed Fillmore (talk) 16:17, 3 November 2014 (UTC)
  16. Let's give it a shot and see what happens. It's not like it can't be undone later. Kurtis (talk) 03:54, 4 November 2014 (UTC)
  17. Support - Changing anything on this project is like pulling teeth, but sometimes change is necessary, and clearly the RFA process needs to be changed. If abolishing the current system must be the way to motivate such change, then so be it. It's not as if the current sytem can't be brought right back to life later on, if need be.. –Prototime (talk · contribs) 04:37, 4 November 2014 (UTC)
  18. Support, in my view RfA is broken beyond repair. --Pgallert (talk) 06:47, 4 November 2014 (UTC)
  19. Support - I totally support the idea of specialist admins, not everyone is a content writer (which still remains the most absurd requirement) or wants to go vandal hunting and overhauling the system so you can at least be judged on your ability and the fact you'll use the tools, not if you've gotten enough articles to FA standard. tutterMouse (talk) 19:46, 5 November 2014 (UTC)
  20. Comment -- Speaking from my experience on Wikipedia, I like the idea of unbundling the Admin tools. One of the chief barriers to being an effective Admin is lack of experience using the tools, & being allowed to get accustomed to them gradually would allow a new Admin gain the necessary skills & experience to use them. Further, when a given Wikipedian has a majority of these Admin tools, it becomes more difficult for nay-sayers to claim that person is *not* qualified, thus hounding qualified people away from being Admins. And it appears this is the method the English Wikipedia is moving towards: we already have unbundled many of the Admin tools; & this process can be followed in parallel with the current -- but barely functioning -- process. -- llywrch (talk) 17:22, 6 November 2014 (UTC)
  21. Strong Support/Abolish. I completely agree with Biblioworm and Mr.Z-man (above). It is time for change, and unless the current process is abolished, change is not possible (as seen in the past). --Tony Tan98 · talk 21:19, 12 November 2014 (UTC)
  22. Support. Agree with Biblioworm and Mr.Z-man, above. As Gough Whitlam would say, it's time. Luxure Σ 08:32, 15 November 2014 (UTC)
  23. Support Even though it's "punishing the poor admins". LOL my god is Wikipedia stupid. Nothing will ever change because the gang of clowns who benefit from the current system control everything. 69.210.241.175 (talk) 04:30, 19 November 2014 (UTC)
  24. Support. The shortage of admins can be felt all over the project; admin backlogs are getting absurd. I support RGloucester and the Wikipedia:Administrative Standards Commission proposal. —Swpbtalk 13:18, 21 November 2014 (UTC)
  25. Oppose I am not convinced of the extent of the problem as described or the benefits promised for abolishing the current system. Abolishing the current system would not make way for other systems to be tested. Blue Rasberry (talk) 15:18, 21 November 2014 (UTC)

Maintain current RfA system

  1. Oppose I'm afraid that I can't get behind this idea. I'm not comfortable removing RFA with at least a general idea of what the replacement would be. With that said, I'm not opposed to moving to support and I plan to think this over in the coming days but for right now I just have too many questions and concerns and too little answers. We can go gun-ho all we want about this, but I can't help but think incremental changes would be better then destroying RFA completely. The big argument is that it's been done and it didn't work numerous times. I don't have an answer for that right now, but I'm extremely uneasy removing the one way we have to promote administrators for any amount of time.--Church Talk 00:27, 30 October 2014 (UTC)
    I believe one idea is an ArbCom-style election, but there hasn't been extensive discussion about that. If this RfC does fail, I suppose we can open yet another discussion to collect some ideas for a new election system. --Biblioworm 00:35, 30 October 2014 (UTC)
    Looking at the data, not enough people are using the RfA process to make it worth keeping. Why not just blow it up and build something new and useful? — {{U|Technical 13}} (e • t • c) 00:58, 30 October 2014 (UTC)
    I'd rather have it and not need it, then need it and not have it.--Church Talk 01:02, 30 October 2014 (UTC)
    • What you are saying is you'd rather have something that won't be used and is apparently harmful to the wiki instead of build something new that will be useful in increasing our core of editors and producing new and improved content for our readers. I entirely understand. Why does Wikipedia need administrators anyways? Let's just do away with all of them! Nevermind, my sarcasm would simply be wasted in this forum...  ;) — {{U|Technical 13}} (e • t • c) 01:10, 30 October 2014 (UTC)
    • (edit conflict) I never said that I was against change or removing RFA. I simply said that I'm not willing to take a leap of faith with the only option we have right now. RFA has apparently been detrimental to the community for a long time, I don't see how it could hurt to have it awhile longer to at least have a good list of alternatives before we decide to retire it.--Church Talk 01:27, 30 October 2014 (UTC)
  2. Maintain I oppose abolishing as reckless. Where is the study that says the RfA system is the problem? Better may be: 1) Conduct a study that explains the low numbers. 2) If the study shows that the system itself is the reason for the low numbers, design a new system. 3) Post here proposing switch. Anna Frodesiak (talk) 01:23, 30 October 2014 (UTC)
  3. Maintain What Anna said. Well meaning, but this isn't going to make things better, it will just divide the community even more. We should look at tweaking what we have instead. Dennis - 2¢ 01:32, 30 October 2014 (UTC)
  4. Oppose any proposal in which RfA is disbanded without an immediate replacement by something else. This is being done backward; first get consensus for a new process, then either modify or disband the old one. StringTheory11 (t • c) 02:30, 30 October 2014 (UTC)
  5. Oppose a specific transition plan should be ready to take over, perhaps even with an overlap (during "beta" of the new process) prior to discontinuance of the existing process. — xaosflux Talk 03:20, 30 October 2014 (UTC)
  6. Maintain Not a single person has suggested a replacement system, and some proposed fixes have been suggested here that I don't think have been tried. If someone had some good replacement, I'd reconsider, but I don't see that happening. Oiyarbepsy (talk) 03:43, 30 October 2014 (UTC)
  7. Maintain per Anna and Dennis. INeverCry 04:01, 30 October 2014 (UTC)
  8. Maintain, what Anna said. I'm not convinced RfA is the problem (my personal opinion is that it lies closer to the lack of its opposite process); whatever the problem, i believe it would be foolish, at best, to dump a process with no replacement in place. Yeah, Cortés burned his ships, as is mentioned above; he also was unbelievably brutal, benefited from disease, and inaugurated several hundred years of exploitation. Not sure i'm comfortable following his example.... Cheers, LindsayHello 05:15, 30 October 2014 (UTC)
  9. Maintain, at least until something better is worked out. The work still needs to be done. As I have remarked elsewhere, any process can be made ineffective by complaining, belittling and pointing out problems until no one wants to be a part of it, and then pointing to the resulting lack of participation as further evidence against it.—Anne Delong (talk) 06:05, 30 October 2014 (UTC)
  10. Maintain, but experiment - I have no problem with the proposal to appoint a board for a limited term as an experiment (maybe limit their chosen admins to needing an RfA after a year), I just think it is highly premature to eliminate RfA. If the board can act with good judgment and find competent and thoughtful admins who would not have pursued RfA, then I think it would just become the de facto adminship process. But eliminating RfA without any experience with a new system is madness. VanIsaacWScont 06:11, 30 October 2014 (UTC)
  11. Oppose I don't think the problem is with RfA, but with attitudes towards adminship generally. If people don't want the job, they're not going to apply, regardless of what the application process is. --ais523 06:13, 30 October 2014 (UTC)
  12. Oppose. RfA is not too great a hassle or an insurmountable obstacle. Rather, the performance of admin work is a stick with no carrot. Most editors who would be good candidates for the job are not interested in having it, and that's not a problem with RfA. Dekimasuよ! 07:00, 30 October 2014 (UTC)
  13. Oppose as ill-thought out and quite possibly misguided. We need to find more editors who want to stand and who have a chance; the current process does promote people who are qualified. BethNaught (talk) 07:44, 30 October 2014 (UTC)
  14. Oppose RfA related RfCs/proposals won't pass when it's just one or two editors dreaming up a wacky "solution" and then opening it to a vote. It should have been obvious from the short thread at WT:RfA that Townlake's suggestion was not widely supported. For actual change you need to take part in existing discussions, feel the way the wind is blowing, reach out to people and look for something likely to be accepted by the community. benmoore 08:17, 30 October 2014 (UTC)
  15. Oppose. Maintain current system, but experiment. Full marks to Feyd and Townlake for a BOLD proposal, but I don't accept either of the propositions behind it: (a) RFA is so uniquely bad that anything cobbled together under pressure against a short deadline must be better, and (b) the unique badness of RFA is the reason why so few are applying. As regards (a), I don't see much evidence that RFA is passing people who shouldn't be admins or failing people who should; as regards (b) this year's numbers are about one third of those for 2011 - has RFA got so much more terrifying? We should look elsewhere for the reasons why the numbers of people who want to do this fairly thankless task are falling. JohnCD (talk) 08:49, 30 October 2014 (UTC)
  16. Oppose/Maintain. The whole thing seems to hinge on the idea that once RFA is abolished, it would only take a week or so to put together an acceptable alternative. That is hopelessly naive. Neatsfoot (talk) 08:50, 30 October 2014 (UTC)
  17. Maintain Marking it historical is a sure way to ensure failure. But I do like the idea of adding additional mechanisms. I have proposed the idea of a selection board in the past as mentioned above by Vanisaac. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 10:13, 30 October 2014 (UTC)
  18. Maintain I'd love to see improvements in the RFA process. Those who say it's the people that's broken, not the process, overlook that processes are there to be operated by people. So I agree that RFA needs improvement to remove, or at least reduce, the nastiness and arbitrariness. But this is rushed; the idea that we can come up with consensus so quickly just because we've marked the current one historical is wildly optimistic; and the prescription that "going back to a modified form of the existing RfA process is not an option" prejudices consensus and is a showstopper for me. Instead, we should be trying out ideas like some of those suggested in User:WereSpielChequers/RFA reform, piecemeal and with the option to reverse them. --Stfg (talk) 10:31, 30 October 2014 (UTC)
  19. Maintain but move straight on to agree a reform package. Credit to the proposers for kickstarting this debate. Don't agree "it can't be reformed without scrapping it": when previous credible attempts were launched, the recruitment rate had not been so low for so long: Noyster (talk), 10:56, 30 October 2014 (UTC)
  20. Oppose, though I find myself extremely sympathetic to the other side as well. I think the proposers might well be right that the best way forward from our current format might be "blow it up and start again from the ground up," but I find the notion that if we do blow it up, the people will magically come together, quickly and neatly, into consensus to be naive. Historical efforts to change RFA have failed largely because while everyone agrees it's broken and needs to change, everyone's fix is different; if we want any hope of fixing RFA, we're going to have to first find a way to route around the tendency to agree in a cacophony of disagreement. I think we may have reached a point now where people are going to be willing to compromise on RFA/proposal format in exchange for a discussion that ends actually-truly-actionably, and I think floating that sort of proposal should be our first step, not just blowing up RFA and hoping the rest fixes itself. A fluffernutter is a sandwich! (talk) 13:37, 30 October 2014 (UTC)
    Thanks fluff. In fact our thinking wasn't quite as naive as it might seem. We did anticipate some of the difficulty you foresee (the Abilene paradox ) but we felt if we could first kill the beast , it would open the way for a well structured RfC (perhaps a recursive version of the pending changes RfC) to narrow down the available alternatives. Beeblebrox was mentioned above as the first choice to lead that had the first stage of this reform attempt found consensus, and had he declined, I had your good self in mind as the second choice. In hindsight it might had been better to have planned this out better, I was perhaps too concious of the too much prep/ not enough action issue that has sunk so many previous attempts. FeydHuxtable (talk) 15:14, 30 October 2014 (UTC)
    As a former Abilenian, I will grant you +1 point for linking to that relevant article. Dennis - 2¢ 15:25, 30 October 2014 (UTC)
  21. Maintain - There's nothing wrong with RfA as it is. Good candidates are approved without much fuss (apparently we have right now a good example ongoing at Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Jackmcbarn), bad candidates ared snowed under, and controversial candidates will have to answer a lot of questions. Those who complain are mostly the candidates who are either ambitious or egocentric and were voted down for evident failure to comply with the minimum requirements. Please give me some examples when a real good candidate was voted down by vicious antis for no good reason. Kraxler (talk) 13:57, 30 October 2014 (UTC)
    Three good candidates have passed in the last four months, counting Jackmcbarn. I don't mean to pick on you, but your rationale doesn't address the underlying problem. I completely agree with you that the current system rejects bad candidates, and that's desirable. But it also repels good candidates who aren't interested in subjecting themselves to the scrutiny of hundreds of self selected evaluators who all get to use their own criteria. Look at how many candidates sign up for an RFA nowadays; something is quite obviously wrong with RFA as it is. Townlake (talk) 15:22, 30 October 2014 (UTC)
    We also have to think about what is truly "bad". The problem is that many !voters sometimes have unreasonable expectations of candidates, and when they (understandably) don't meet them, we call them "bad" candidates. If we loosened the expectations a bit, I think we would find that some candidates who would normally be called "bad" would actually make pretty good admins. --Biblioworm 15:33, 30 October 2014 (UTC)
    Very good point Biblioworm. A few seem to have such a strong belief in the infallibility of the current system, they think the very fact someone failed is proof they were a bad candidate. There are several failed candidates who would have been top tier admins IMO, but pointless to point out who they are. The problem is there's no comparable alternate way to assess someones quality that would be widely accepted. And no point pitting one's personal opinion against aggregate community judgement as expressed by the RfA monster! FeydHuxtable (talk) 15:44, 30 October 2014 (UTC)
    I also want to add here that a single nomination that appears to successful (so far) is not sufficient evidence to claim that this downward trend is changing. I, JethroBT drop me a line 01:22, 31 October 2014 (UTC)
    Ok. So, no examples are coming forth, just theoretical diffuse criticism, because someone you supported was voted down. I've not always voted the same as the eventual result, but I've never been on the verge of abandoning Wikipedia because of it. Strange/unconvincing/nonsensical oppose rationales can amount to 30% of the votes without prejudice. I doubt that more than 30% "trolls" (many rationales are judged unconvincing and nonsensical by some, but heartily endorsed by others, but for argument's sake let's say "trolls") would appear at any RfA. Overall, explanations for the declining number of successful candidatures might be: A)) Editors who create mainspace-content don't want to lose time with janitorial tasks. B)) A general decline of the number of editors leads to a general decline of numbers of admins/RfAs. C)) Many, including otherwise "good", long-time editors have been involved in unsavoury controversies and scandals in the past. If they run, they are voted down despite their expertise, because the community wants to avoid more trouble. If they don't run, the number of RfAs declines, but at least the editors show common sense. Etc. et al. Kraxler (talk) 13:29, 31 October 2014 (UTC)
  22. Oppose - we should either reform RFA, or draft a new one and replace the current one with that. We shouldn't shut down RFA until we have a new process to replace it. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 16:05, 30 October 2014 (UTC)
  23. Maintain - By all means experiment by limiting comments as suggested above but I am not convinced there is a better way of doing it. I get the impression that almost anyone could get to be an admin in the early years. We are now getting the best.Charles (talk) 18:48, 30 October 2014 (UTC)
  24. Maintain - Blowing it up solves nothing other than more arguments and nothing getting done, There's no doubt about it RFA one way or another needs to change but personally I have no idea how!.... –Davey2010 • (talk) 19:44, 30 October 2014 (UTC)
  25. Expecting a polarized, dysfunctional group of people to behave less dysfunctionally when put under additional pressure seems unwise. See Budget sequestration in 2013. --Floquenbeam (talk) 23:07, 30 October 2014 (UTC)
  26. Maintain RfA works for most tools. We should remove the two sets of privileges which people have real trust issues with (deletion and restriction oriented tools) and then move forward from there. GraniteSand (talk) 23:18, 30 October 2014 (UTC)
  27. Simmer down, folks. – Juliancolton | Talk 00:44, 31 October 2014 (UTC)
  28. Read WP:RFA2011 - apart from the fact that NOTNOW applications happen, RFA is about where the community wants. Although a lot of people agree that it's "broken", their perceptions of the brokenness go in various directions, and it's the sensible compromise. If I think the thermostat is five degrees too hot, and my wife thinks it's five degrees too cold, we both agree that it's at the wrong temperature, and yet, that doesn't mean there's a better temperature for us to set it at. Parallel process proposals don't fail because the existing process exists, they fail because other potential processes all have less community support than the process we have. If you want to increase the number of successful RfAs, there's only one course of action. Go do new page patrol, and assist and mentor new editors, rather than chasing them away and deleting their work. In the interim ... well "We want more new admins to be created; therefor, we want to eliminate the only method of creating new admins" is a sow's ear. WilyD 13:31, 31 October 2014 (UTC)
  29. Oppose. Counterproductive and reckless to hold a vote on abolishing RfA when you haven't come up with a community-approved replacement beforehand. Resolute 13:52, 31 October 2014 (UTC)
    I keep seeing this argument and I consider it bizarre. The current system is virtually unused, and has been for a long time. It isn't reckless to bulldoze an abandoned house. Townlake (talk) 15:17, 31 October 2014 (UTC)
    Alternately Townlake it isn't "doing" anything or "impeding" anything and there are candidates who could pass that are not running. One or more might decide to run soon. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 23:34, 31 October 2014 (UTC)
  30. Oppose until consensus reached on alternative. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 23:34, 31 October 2014 (UTC)
  31. Maintain. RfA generally works (maybe needs a few tweaks) but we need more editors to want to take on the admin tools, and there are factors unrelated to RfA that put people off. The constant complaining about how terrible the RfA process is is probably as off-putting as the process itself. Make adminship a more pleasant experience and encourage good editors with sufficient experience who we can trust with the tools to apply and the rest will take care of itself. --Michig (talk) 10:38, 1 November 2014 (UTC)
  32. Maintain - much good has come of this discussion. Its Achilles heel is the notion that RFA must be dismantled before a new process is developed. It may be best to recognize this flaw, and withdraw this proposal now; refocusing on an alternative process while there is still a surplus of positive energy.—John Cline (talk) 14:25, 1 November 2014 (UTC)
    Thanks for the suggestion John. As the original thread starter, I don't plan on having further involvement here unless by some miracle this !vote gets close enough so it's worth calling in a crat to determine the result. But if anyone wants to close this vote and re-purpose the discussion to seek consensus for a parallel or replacement RfA process, that would be fine by me. Pinging I, JethroBT , Church and Oiyarbepsy as they seemed especially interested in a new process or were the first to propose running one in parallel, but yourself or any other editor would be most welcome to step in too. FeydHuxtable (talk) 07:40, 4 November 2014 (UTC)
    Thank you FeydHuxtable, for acknowledging my dissent in such a kind manner! You can expect my participation in any discussion that ensues from here. I do have some information, not yet shown by a link, that I believe could be helpful and will gladly share. But I could not muster the strength, participation requires, unless I was following your lead; a beneficiary of the therapeutic recharge you exude – in optimism, sincerity of purpose, and tireless zeal. These infectious qualities are more essential to success than any other tangible thing and they manifest in abundance by your thoughtful endeavors. I do hope you've the strength to forge on! Sincerely.—John Cline (talk) 15:28, 4 November 2014 (UTC)
  33. Secret account 02:02, 2 November 2014 (UTC)
  34. Maintain/Oppose. If it ain't broke don't fix it.  Philg88 ♦talk 06:03, 3 November 2014 (UTC)
    It ain't broken, eh? [3]. --Biblioworm 19:46, 3 November 2014 (UTC)
  35. Maintain/Oppose An imperfect system is better than none at all, and per my comment in the discussion above. WaggersTALK 13:45, 3 November 2014 (UTC)
  36. Maintain the current — This is a conflation of correlation and causation. Speaking as an admin myself, I simply have less time in real life, and I feel a similar sentiment from others society-wide. We're volunteers, and the current political and economic landscape is not conducive (even hostile) to volunteering, because the time spent volunteering is instead being spent trying to stay alive. There's a political rant to be made, but I'll refrain. Of course, wiki-side, the simple problem with RFA is that !votes aren't ignored by patrolling bureaucrats when they aren't in line with current admin policy. For example, when people "oppose" based on "not enough article improvement edits" or "I don't like this edit they made" or "this edit made a mistake" (an extremely common occurrence) when someone's clearly almost exclusively an anti-vandal patroller or something, it's not at all an argument that's in line with the admin policy (there's precisely zero requirement for admins to make article improvement edits or be generally well-rounded wiki citizens); therefore, they should probably summarily be ignored but in actuality aren't. I, myself, probably haven't made substantial mainspace edits for years—doesn't mean I don't try my best to clear out backlogs—the place where admins are most needed—when and if I have free time. Similarly, RFA questions that are divisive, contentious, or loaded to select for an ideology, much like those posed to political candidates, could also be screened for and removed by bureaucrats or other editors. Regardless, nuke-and-rebuild is contrary to the way things typically work in this community, and I think simple changes—diffs—should be the method of first resort when possible, and, for RfA, it's obviously possible. --slakr\ talk / 15:19, 3 November 2014 (UTC)
  37. Oppose When we come up with something better then our current system will become moot. Until then we should not dismantle what we have in the hopes that we come up with something better later. Chillum 15:23, 3 November 2014 (UTC)
  38. Maintain It is an unwarranted assumption that some new admin process will gain consensus soon after we scuttle the present process. There will be just as many naysayers, power-mad demagogues or just-plain stubborn people insisting on having things their way with RFA dead as there have been in the past. Burning bridges is not always a winning proposition. Let's see a replacement process. I for one would welcome an improvement. Many of the brainstorms suggested above were very unworkable. Wikipedia editors have the ability to craft a really good process for choosing and supervising sysops. Edison (talk) 20:31, 3 November 2014 (UTC)
  39. Maintain. Unless having no new admins is an acceptable outcome, removing the current process is not the first step in approving a new process; it's the first step toward anarchy. (Some say we are already there.) — Arthur Rubin (talk) 21:49, 6 November 2014 (UTC)
  40. If you have a broken arm (minor injury), you just don't replace it. You need to find a way to repair it. Many months ago, a proposal by Anna Frodesiak wanted a pre-RFA page where possible candidates get to have a feel and understanding on what they may expect in an RFA and if they are qualified for it (or something like that, I forgot where the discussion page is). A process like that is ideal for an RFA as it gives possible candidates confidence and most of all a good feedback on your standpoint. RFA may be a difficult process for some, rather than replace a process which have been on Wikipedia for years, there is no need to replace it at this time. If there is need for more candidates, just look around, it isn't complicated. ///EuroCarGT 19:40, 9 November 2014 (UTC)
    The thread is here. The best argument against it was that one can create it in their own userspace. However, I reject claims that it would be another hoop to jump through because it would be optional. (I was out of town during the discussion and was unable to state my views.) I think it may produce admins, and being optional, would at the very least do no harm. Plus, it may inspire watchers to consider themselves as candidates. I really wish it could be created and tested for a month. If it doesn't work out, MfD it. What do we have to lose? Anna Frodesiak (talk) 22:00, 9 November 2014 (UTC)
  41. Maintain After much thought, I've come to this: RfA is very broken, but the process isn't the problem. RfA has community problems. The community wouldn't agree on any new system even if RfA was abolished. --AmaryllisGardener talk 19:49, 9 November 2014 (UTC)
  42. Andrevan@ 05:15, 10 November 2014 (UTC)
  43. Oppose – The system certainly has its flaws to an extent and requires community input to adequately consider what specifically needs change. With that said, I don't believe scrapping the system in its entirety is appropriate, in response to aspects which can be worked on should we get a common understanding on where it's failing. —MelbourneStar☆talk 13:33, 10 November 2014 (UTC)
  44. Oppose Until a replacement is in place that is accepted by the community, the burecrats, and WMF I will not close the route for promoting new admins. Hasteur (talk) 15:23, 10 November 2014 (UTC)
  45. Oppose, not because RfA works as it is (it's flawed at the moment and right now not enough people are being promoted), but because there hasn't been consensus for a replacement yet. Theoretically, if consensus dictates that RfA be abolished, but a replacement system is not implemented until later, we could go for quite a while without any new admins. I'd rather have only a handful of editors becoming admins than none at all. Narutolovehinata5 tccsdnew 23:15, 11 November 2014 (UTC)
  46. Oppose My comment is pretty much the same as most other people's ones here; we need to have a proper solid framework for a new process before abolishing the current one. RfA is seriously flawed, and can be derailed by trolls very quickly... but it IS better than nothing, albeit marginally. Lukeno94 (tell Luke off here) 11:32, 16 November 2014 (UTC)
  47. Maintain . There was a time when I was one of the loudest proponents for change or replacement. If WP:RFA2011 didn't bring about any physical changes, it nevertheless provided masses of useful data, most of which is still relevant today, and demonstrated that the problems were largely due to the behaviour of the !voters. It sent a clear message to the community and if the proponents of this RfC had done their homework, they would not have ignored the fact that for a year or two now RfA has become far less of the venue where editors and trolls could post their drivel with impunity. The issues with the voters can be fixed as recent RfA have shown and in doing so reinforces the message to the community that excessive drama on RfA is no longer going to be passively tolerated. --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 01:25, 18 November 2014 (UTC)
  48. 'maintain In practice, it has worked. We have sufficient admins for the necessary work. There are no critical lags: AfDs are closed soon enough, CsD are closed very quickly. We do not need more admins , as such, we need more good admins; or, more exactly, a higher proportion of admins being competent, active, willing to enforce policy, and not going off on their own personal interpretations and hoping to get away with it. In all these respects, the situation is improving (primarily through attrition) Those RfAs that closed negative did so for good reason, in general. If we open the role to those without community confidence, the main consequence is that we will need a better procedure for removing them. DGG ( talk ) 11:09, 20 November 2014 (UTC)
  49. Support I am content with the present system. It needs improvement but is not a net harm. Blue Rasberry (talk) 15:20, 21 November 2014 (UTC)
  50. Maintain. It can be improved upon, but I see no convincing arguments here for abolishing it. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:41, 21 November 2014 (UTC)

Draft and implement a parallel (or replacement) system first

I have added a third option here as I think the whole discussion, suffers from impromptu structuring and is missing to target something that is being supported but not asked for in the RFC section itself. Many 'maintain' / 'oppose' !votes state (including mine) they would rather support a replacement or parallel but not outright abolishing; effectively supporting the #list of parallel options in a section above but not taking it into consideration here in objective consensus building. With that in mind, I have added this and moved my own comment here to establish consensus for clearing out atleast one thing that a parallel process is okay if there is no abolishing or abolishing is done on its own merit if at all at a later stage (or not; that can still be counted if no one moves their !vote here). Hopefully achieving a clear cut consensus on going for a parallel or replacement (either or both) process will perhaps result in a fresh discussion such as hashing out Wikipedia talk:Administrative standards commission on basis "now that consensus for trying without abolishing is established". If this section gets a wide consensus, this debate is less likely to die out as community would have made clear that they want to start a structured discussion on proposals and not WP:SNOW any attempt for new proposals and that would automatically start a discussion about just proposals (as per consensus even if it includes sorting of all possible proposals in the list). --lTopGunl (talk) 10:36, 8 November 2014 (UTC)

  1. Support parallel as nom. Maintain for now, while I propose another section right below this which defines and establishes consensus on one or more experimental proposals. Such a proposal can run as an alternate route to RFA in parallel and we'll have A/B testing results soon enough while at the same time there will be iterations on the experimental system to near the refinement of RFA. While the experimental system remains (and ofcourse after some basic refinement), it can be optional for candidates to choose either. --lTopGunl (talk) 13:48, 30 October 2014 (UTC)Moved here from oppose. --lTopGunl (talk) 10:38, 8 November 2014 (UTC)
  2. Support - I have no doubt that the current system is problematic, but we need some system in place continuously. Once a new systewm is prepared, we can discuss replacing the current system with it, or having both in parallel. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 12:15, 9 November 2014 (UTC)
  3. Support yes we need a replacement, but RFA does let some people through and should be kept until we have a replacement ready. ϢereSpielChequers 14:33, 10 November 2014 (UTC)
  4. Support - I proposed a weaker consensus requirement for admins open to recall, and there was not much opposition. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 23:52, 11 November 2014 (UTC).
  5. Support - As per Od Mishehu. -Fimatic (talk | contribs) 06:23, 14 November 2014 (UTC)
  6. Support - This discussion is unlikely to give birth to any clear, sane alternative to the current RfA process, which is what we'd need in order to facilitate a swift and orderly transition. Blowing something away before you've even built the replacement is almost certain to cause a meltdown. Reticulated Spline (t • c) 00:09, 15 November 2014 (UTC)
  7. Obviously we should first have something ready to replace the existing process. Or, even simpler, just make the existing process simpler. Debresser (talk) 23:34, 17 November 2014 (UTC)
  8. Support while I agree the existing system is very flawed, I would feel a lot more comfortable if with ditching it if we had some other way of creating admins available, as not having any coherent system available is the most certain way of ensuring we get fewer admins. John Carter (talk) 02:08, 18 November 2014 (UTC)
  9. Support in principle - but any parallel beta test should not under any circumstances make the tools easier to obtain. To do so would play into the hands of those who are simply hoping that reform will increase their likelihood of getting the bit; also to do so would play into the hands of those who maintain that it is already too easy, who believe that too many badmins abound, and who generally tar all admins with the same brush. An alternative scheme must have a clear consensus for testing only by a large turnout of the community , with a firm promise that implementation would only follow after a further RfC following proven, positive results of the test. Let it be noted however that for any test to be realistic, we need to get back to having a sufficient number of candidates every month for at least a year for such testing to be conclusive. --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 02:23, 18 November 2014 (UTC)
    Personally, I think it might be useful if we created something like "yeoman" or "-in-training" admins. Giving the people who seek adminship some of the lesser tools first, particularly any that they might have some interest in using, and seeing how well they do with them for maybe up to a year before seeking the more controversial admin tools, might be one way to ferret out some people with perhaps less than optimum judgment. And, maybe, having some more people active in an editor review process for wannabe admins might be useful to, although we would know that a lot of those seeking such review will be editing very carefully in preparation to their candidacy. John Carter (talk) 02:31, 18 November 2014 (UTC)
    John, not wishing to deflate your idea, but similar suggestions are WP:PEREN and have never reached consensus. --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 07:07, 18 November 2014 (UTC)
  10. Support Not only would I support the development of modifications to the current system, but also I would support Wikimedia Foundation grant funding to the person or team who proposed to work on infrastructure or tools to improve it. There are years of good ideas which cannot easily be created by volunteers, but might be created by someone supported with funding. Blue Rasberry (talk) 15:22, 21 November 2014 (UTC)

What problem are we trying to solve?

I think more important than the number of admins or the process for making admins is: what problem are we trying to solve here? Are we trying to reduce backlogs? Close more discussions? Deal with AN/I reports in a different manner? We only have about 3,000 users making more than 100 edits a month, yet we have 500 admins (1/6). I think a better way forward for this discussion would be for concerned users to identify and discuss what areas they'd actually like to see improved (eg. backlogs, etc.), as I don't believe simply having more admins will resolve some of the underlying problems which many users discuss above (eg dealing with difficult, contentious or stressful issues). So my question is: if we have more admins, what problems will be solved? --Tom (LT) (talk) 21:48, 6 November 2014 (UTC)

We don't need 500 admins. We need 500 active ones. And the fact that the number of them is appalling and the fact that the current RfA has been described as a "toxic atmosphere" and "character assassination" (just to state the relatively good ones) by our most veteran editors makes me ashamed, if not all of us. --Ankit Maity «T § C» 13:06, 7 November 2014 (UTC)
I see. But why do we need 500 'active' admins? If there is some particular problem or backlog that requires this amount of admins? I think a more fruitful discussion may be to see what can be done there. --Tom (LT) (talk) 05:20, 19 November 2014 (UTC)
Yes we have circa 3,000 editors who make over 100 edits a month and 500, rather 580 "active" admins, but the "active" admins are those doing over 30 edits in the last two months, I don't know if anyone measures how many editors we have who have done over 30 edits in the last two months, but I'd bet it is far more than 3,000. However those aren't the numbers I would compare. Our need for admins is more closely related to article creation and new editors than it is to the number of active editors. Apart from edit warring and occasionally incivility the regulars don't generate much work for the admins, or not much compared to newbies and IPs. A high proportion of new articles by newbies get deleted, and the vast majority of blocks are of IP editors or newbies. We need admin cover 24 hours a day, seven days a week in order to delete attack pages and block vandals as fast as we do. Doing that with volunteers, many of whom put little time into doing admin work, requires a lot of volunteers. If 500 of our 3,000 most active editors were admins then I could see people getting complacent and thinking we have plenty of time to solve the admin problem, but that depends on your definition of the admin problem. To me one of our admin problems is that we have a wikigeneration of editors who are almost unrepresented in the admin cadre, with only 18 admins whose first edit was this decade, and some of those will have had earlier accounts we have a gulf between a large part of the community and the admins. My solution to that would be to encourage candidates who started editing in 2012 or before and meet the de facto criteria. As long as have added referenced content, have had no recent blocks and any deletion tagging you have done recently is accurate, then an active editor can have an easy ride at RFA. If anything the increased emphasis on the question section and the lack of people who actually spend hours looking through your edits means that RFA is easier than it has been at some times in the past. ϢereSpielChequers 12:35, 10 November 2014 (UTC)
I passed RFA in April of 2012, and yes, it is easier to pass now. I had 1800 AFDs with a 80+% success rate, and over 90% CSD correct ratio, and 31 opposed. You see people complain (me) if they have ZERO experience in deletions (which is a fair reason), but the bar and drama is noticeably lower than it was 2-4 years ago. Dennis - 2¢ 15:54, 10 November 2014 (UTC)
I am not sure where you get the figure of 18 from, WereSpielChequers, but if it's true that's quite interesting. --Tom (LT) (talk) 05:20, 19 November 2014 (UTC)
  • Admins aren't necessarily needed to police the 3000 active, known, good-faith editors at Wikipedia, but the tens of thousands of drive-by, random, vandalous, ax-grinding, sock-puppet accounts we have. The idea that admins should be some fraction of the "active" editorship, and that over (or less than) that fraction is bad is fallacious, and a bullshit stat. Indeed, there was a time when "active editors" were basically all admins; the bit was given to anyone who hung around long enough to prove they weren't going to screw it up. Perhaps we should formally go back to those days. The admin bit has become far to precious, and if we gave it away more freely, we could take it away freely too, and people wouldn't make such a big deal about it. --Jayron32 23:50, 12 November 2014 (UTC)
  • Wikipedia moves very fast when there's a real problem that needs a real solution. As things stand now, de-sysopping is easily done by presenting evidence of actual abuse. When there's been real abuse, community pressure is intense, and the admin usually resigns right away. If not, the case is brought to ArbCom and rectified. I've come around to the view that this process works well enough. If it didn't people would jump aboard some of these other proposals. Jehochman Talk 15:58, 17 November 2014 (UTC)
  • There's a case before ArbCom that will likely be accepted very shortly. At the crux of that case is an administrator who has been uncivil for many years. It's taken that long for something to be done about it. If that's working "well enough", then I agree it's working as well as RFA is at vetting candidates. --Hammersoft (talk) 16:12, 17 November 2014 (UTC)
  • You are right, but the problem with that case is Wikipedia has never found a good way to define incivility or deal with it on any level. I don't think RFC would help. On balance I think it's good to minimize the venues where people can talk about each other, and instead get them to talk with each other (via user talk pages) or to go edit an article. Jehochman Talk 13:56, 18 November 2014 (UTC)
  • We are not really trying to solve anything. What this recent flurry of discussion is doing is simply to propose solutions/measures that will just create even more bureaucrcy on a Wikipedia that is totally bureaucratic already, and based on a very loose theory that RfA is still as toxic as it was when I started WP:RFA2011.
Jehochman, you might move very fast sometimes, especially in areas where you feel passionately concerned, but Arbcom is a very sluggish engine, one which even needs to calculate the quantity and quality of its fuel before it will accept a charter for each journey. It is also in fact quite rare that it will entertain the taking of patterns of behaviour into consideration. If it would, a lot more admins, paid editors, agents of incivility, and self-proclaimed prolific content editors who consider themselves immune to sanctions would have been subjected to restrictions by now. It's interesting to see how many admins have been desysopeed 'for cause' over the last 4 years (and Arbs thrown out), and in each and every case I saw the writing on the wall for them long before formal complaints were made. Even WMF staff are not exempt from being desysoped, but by and large, IMO, desysoping does not take place as often as it should. That's what the community should be looking at and not a reform of the RfA process right now; but of course without starting witch hunts or tarring all admins with the same brush as some are wont to do. --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 03:06, 18 November 2014 (UTC)
I agree with what you are saying, Kudpung. Much like the decline in editors, I think we need to identify what are actually worried about -- eg quality of edits, backlogs, etc., and then see what can be done specifically for those. It is my personal opinion that we should consider unbundling some tools and consider some sort of desysopping process to decrease the heat associated with the admin process. There are a number of small changes that can be made as have been suggested by some above. Some things that might increase the actual activity level on some forums may be making it much more difficult for admins to revert each other (which I think contributes to a general level of 'fear' of acting in many instances), and considering increasing the role of bureaucrats / admins, so that admins have a role to direct a course of action (conclude discussion, etc.) and bureaucrats the role of implementing it. --Tom (LT) (talk) 05:20, 19 November 2014 (UTC)
I think unbundling the tools has gone as far as it will ever go, (with the recent exception Template Editor), and on all the other discussions the community has clearly voiced its opinion that the tools should stay in the hands of those who were elected to use them. Of course, there's no harm in trying, but check out WP:PEREN first. I'm all in favour of giving the Bureaucrats more to do, Wikipedia:Administrators/RfC for an Admin Review Board for example. If their mandate were to be expanded perhaps we would see more candidates for 'cratship. --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 06:20, 19 November 2014 (UTC)
The problem is that a number of regulars take due care of messing up and mobbing RfAs, and introducing more drama, yet we have no mechanism to prevent them from doing so. We only block people for vandalism and insults, but not for being a mildly polite good-looking nuisance, bordering trolling without actually crossing some important lines (often not even close to crossing them, but still being a nuisance). Gryllida (talk) 00:56, 20 November 2014 (UTC)
Another problem is that adminship and technical helper roles are getting more and more apart. I know sysops who don't know what a gadget or mediawiki namespace is. Now, we have technical editor as a separate user right. In my view these people should all just be piped to sysops group (surely they know how not to touch the bits they don't know?). Sysop role is becoming more and more political, thanks to that. Gryllida (talk) 01:01, 20 November 2014 (UTC)
And a third problem is that we have an inhumane blocking workflow, involving talk page templates. This means blocking backfires and is a boring activity with relatively severe political load. Think I'm done talking here for a bit. Gryllida (talk) 01:03, 20 November 2014 (UTC)
The last couple of RfA have demonstrated that we are no longer going to tolerate that kind of thing. The only problem is, that to remain impartial, whoever decides to strike or indent an inappropriate vote will have to abstain from voting. 'Clerking' RfA is not reserved for the 'crats alone, though I would like to see them getting bolder and more involved with policing the process.
Being an IT geek does not automatically infer that one has excellent social skills or even a sufficiently profound knowledge of Wikipedia policy - we see this every day within the walls of the Foundation office and one employee was recently desysoped. Conversely, it would be a fallacy to assume that all admins should be computer freaks. All an admin should be required to have is a reasonably thorough knowledge of Wiki markup (no more difficult than posting on a web forum or using the built-in satnav and bluetooth in your car) and the basic use of the templates that go with the admin toolset. Most of the regular users are so young they grew up using computers since Grade 2. I had to teach myself from scratch at the age of 38 when the first consumer accessible PCs arrived in the shops. --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 14:44, 21 November 2014 (UTC)
I hesitate to believe that blocking goes wrong often enough fo us to consider it has reached crisis proportions. I've blocked 503 users to date and no backfires and I fail to see how it can be 'political'. Of it being boring is a sweeping statement - we are all volunteers whether admins or not; nobody forces us to do anything. Admittedly some tasks are more exciting than others, but by and large we don't do the things we don't like doing (for me that would hist merges, for example). Only admins actually know how dreary or inhumane their work is. Non-admins can only speculate.
We must keep such ideas in perspective. --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 14:44, 21 November 2014 (UTC)
  • I think you missed the keyword of "workflow" on the last part Kudpung. What I read that last statement to say is that the blocking workflow doesn't work well because of the people blocked, not enough of them really understand why they were blocked which results in them "just saying whatever it takes to appease an admin to unblock them", which ultimately results in a reblock for the same mistake. Can you give a ball-park estimate of how many of the editors you've blocked that were first time blocks, never reblocked, not IP/CU/SOCK blocks, and not just changes to block settings? I've looked through a number of the 546 entries in your blocking log, and while I didn't look at every single one of them I couldn't find any. I think a "reblock" would be considered a backfire in the sense that the blocking workflow did not work as intended. — {{U|Technical 13}} (e • t • c) 15:24, 21 November 2014 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Mahatma?

Discussion moved to article talk page

I took much time to go through these records but none of the reasons could convince me why M.K. Gandhi is still called Mahatma in an encyclopedia. [Oxford database] calls him Gandhi, Mohandas Karamchand [known as Mahatma Gandhi], Britannica calls him Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, byname Mahatma (“Great-Souled”) Gandhi, Encyclopaedia.com have Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (no mention of byname) and not even half a dozen of Internet encyclopedias have an article with name Mahatma Gandhi. Then why in Wikipedia? Is WP:Naming conventions an excuse or is it the respect to that great soul? Then why not Akbar the Great or Ashoka the great or even Jesus Christ? We don't have Sir Issac Newton or such..Now please don't take this my hated, I respect and adore him and he's my idol, but in that case, others must have the same privilege. So I am proposing a move Mahatma Gandhi -> Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi. Thank you..--The herald 15:57, 23 November 2014 (UTC)

I don't think that this should be discussed here. Per WP:RM/CM, the discussion belongs at the talk page of the article you want moved, i.e. at Talk:Mahatma Gandhi. --Redrose64 (talk) 16:47, 24 November 2014 (UTC)
Well..I am quite sure about that. But may be this may do more good than that. Anyway, I'll have to go for an RfC there. The herald 16:51, 24 November 2014 (UTC)

"Today's Featured Article" coordinator - change proposed

See WT:TFAR#Notice of intention to stand to down as TFA coordinator and the discussion that follows it. BencherliteTalk 15:28, 25 November 2014 (UTC)

A new kind of gadget

Hi all. I'm a persistent contributor since 2008, but mainly to the Spanish Wikipedia and MediaWiki. Some time ago I thought that many articles would benefit a lot if we could embed simple programs, widgets, to illustrate the concepts within them. More recently I realised that this may be accomplished through gadgets, so today I turned an app I made some time ago into a gadget that could serve to illustrate the article Langton's ant (I make this proposal in the English Wikipedia because that article doesn't exist in the Spanish Wikipedia, and I don't feel like translating it yet). The code of the gadget can be found here and here. Basically, what it does is insert a small widget with a Langton's ant cellular automata inside any div with id "LangtonsAnt". I've put one of those divs in the Langton's ant article, so you can see it in action (after you copy the gadgets code to your own common.js and common.css, of course).

The widget/gadget is very simple, almost disappointing, but I didn't want to devote much time to it before knowing your opinion. If your response is a positive one, I'll enhance the widget/gadget and internationalise it for other Wikipedias to follow. I also want to do one for Elementary cellular automaton and maybe another for Conway's game of life. Other users may create widgets/gadgets for completely different articles of course. For example for ilustrating the movement of planets around the Sun, or old astronomical theories, or whatever, the field is huge.

If you visit the gadgets section in your preferences you'll notice that gadgets are divided in sections (Browsing, Watchlist, Editing, etc). What I propose is to start a new section, titled Articles or whatever, where would go gadgets that insert widgets into articles, to illustrate the concepts within them. I'm presenting the first of these widgets/gadgets to help convey the idea and start a healthy debate (if you criticise the gadget itself, you didn't understand the proposal). Any support? Any objections? Any comments? Thanks! --Felipe (talk) 20:59, 1 November 2014 (UTC)

  • If I understand it correctly, I am vehemently opposed to this proposal. Gadgets are only usable by logged-in editors, which represent a miniscule proportion (I believe well below 1%) of en-wiki page views. If I'm understanding your proposal right in meaning that pages will contain certain content which is only visible by people who've registered, this creates a hierarchical structure among readers to go with the existing anti-IP prejudice among editors, and goes against everything Wikipedia stands for. 80.43.178.28 (talk) 21:27, 1 November 2014 (UTC)
    • "Gadgets are only usable by logged-in editors" No they're not. Jackmcbarn (talk) 02:14, 2 November 2014 (UTC)
      • How can anons use gadgets? I've been looking for a while but couldn't find a way. Anons can't even create a common.js page under their own user page. However, even if anons can't view the widgets right now, it doesn't mean that they will never be able to do so. For example, if we follow Technical 13's suggestion below and create a gadget that checks for widgets for each page, that gadget may eventually be moved to MediaWiki:Common.js, where it would run for every user, anon or not. --Felipe (talk) 15:23, 2 November 2014 (UTC)
  • I think what's confusing about this is the terminology. Basically what you're asking for here is a way to attach JavaScript to particular pages (that would run for anyone, user or not, visiting the page), the same way it's possible to attach editnotices to particular pages; this would be quite different from a gadget (other than with respect to programming languages). (It would certainly be a bad idea to have scripts intended for one page to work site-wide, for performance reasons). One thing that worries me is security, but that would likely be fixable (e.g. by only allowing admins, or perhaps template editors, to update the pages; this is the same restriction as exists for editnotices). With respect to the proposal as I see it, I'm reasonably neutral; technically it could be made to work, but I'm unclear as to whether it's a good idea. --ais523 22:19, 1 November 2014 (UTC)
  • This could be done reasonably, but not in the way that the proposer has suggested. It would be done as a single gadget in the "Browsing" section. This gadget would check and see if a page existed called "MediaWiki:{{PAGENAME}}", and if such a page existed, it would import the script and reload the page. In order to get a script for a specific page, you would have to put in an edit request for an administrator to review your script (might be slow, not a lot of *.js reading admins atm) and post it to the appropriate page. Keep in mind, anything that would be done by a script for a specific page would need to be additional content for readability (generated table or content pulled from someplace else) and not required for the topic to exist as the topic would have to show it's own notability without the "extra". There are a couple places that such a feature might be useful, and I would support it if put together properly. — {{U|Technical 13}} (e • t • c) 00:14, 2 November 2014 (UTC)
  • I'm glad to read that the objections are mainly to the implementation and not with the general idea of including widgets into the articles. I now see that making one gadget per article would be very inefficient, as it would load every gadget in every page, so I agree with Technical 13's suggestion of making one gadget that checks if there is a widget available for the current page and loads it. However, one correction: the gadget shouldn't check on MediaWiki:{{PAGENAME}}, but on MediaWiki:{{PAGENAME}}.js, MediaWiki:{{PAGENAME}}.css and MediaWiki:{{PAGENAME}}.i18n.json as I expect many of the widgets to have JavaScript, CSS and possibly internationalisation code. But that's a technical issue. The important thing is that I could code such a gadget. Should I? What other objections or problems are there? Also, one advantage of this gadget is that if the initiative works, its code could eventually be moved to MediaWiki:Common.js, where it would run for anons as well as for logged-in users. --Felipe (talk) 15:23, 2 November 2014 (UTC)
  • This could be accomplished with Brion VIBBER's mw:Extension:EmbedScript. (The page says it's a work in progress.) --Yair rand (talk) 16:26, 2 November 2014 (UTC)
    • There's also the mw:Extension:Widgets, but the problem with these extensions is that in order to use them we would first need the Foundation to approve them and deploy them, which is a slow and uncertain process. I think it would be more efficient to first develop some widgets as gadgets, and if we see that the idea catches on, then request the Foundation to support it by deploying some extension more fit to the task. --Felipe (talk) 16:00, 3 November 2014 (UTC)
  • I support this kind of initiative – many of the best science museums are taking advantage of hands-on small-scale models to demonstrate concepts. Web applications can deliver something similar online. It is completely different from anything we have on Wikipedia at the moment, but I think this is a very valid expansion for a website like ours. Games can be amazing learning tools and such applications could help users engage more easily with complex topics, like Monte Carlo method for instance. SFB 20:18, 2 November 2014 (UTC)
  • If we're discussing technical suggestions, I'd suggest causing page-specific scripts (I hate the term "gadget" for this, it clearly isn't) to replace images. Users with JavaScript disabled would just get an image (perhaps an animated one). With JavaScript enabled, they'd get an interactive image in the same place/size on the page. --ais523 12:11, 5 November 2014 (UTC)
    • Sounds like a good caveat. SFB 18:01, 6 November 2014 (UTC)
    • That sounds fine for scripts that are intended to change an image, but not all scripts would do that. There might be a table on a page that has static information that is relatively up-to-date, and a script that pulls information from some source on the most up to the minute information. This might be a table in a category of images for example (not likely in article space as that would be OR) that gives the most recent information about it's members (page size, last updated, last editor, image size, etc). I remember someone asking me for such a script for a wikiproject a while back (which I had all but forgotten about until now). — {{U|Technical 13}} (e • t • c) 18:39, 6 November 2014 (UTC)
    • I agree that having alternative content for users without JavaScript is a good idea, but there is no need for it to be an image. The widgets can enter the DOM by replacing the content of a span or div appropriately named (for example with id "HandsOn", see my comment below). If the div contains an image, then that image will be displayed for users without JavaScript. But the div could also contain a table, a gallery, a simple message, or nothing, whatever fits best. --Felipe (talk) 21:14, 14 November 2014 (UTC)
  • Considering what has been said, all that may need to be done to kickstart the project is to add the following to MediaWiki:Common.js:
if ( mw.config.get( 'wgNamespaceNumber' ) === 0 && mw.config.get( 'wgAction' ) === 'view' ) {
	importScript( 'MediaWiki:HandsOn-' + mw.config.get( 'wgPageName' ) + '.js' );
}
The code checks if the page is in the main namespace and if the user is viewing (as opposed to editing) the page. If yes, then it loads the script at MediaWiki:HandsOn-{{PAGENAME}}.js The "HandsOn" prefix is to avoid confusion until this project gets its own protected namespace. I chose "HandsOn" because of the comment by ais523 above, but if anyone has a better suggestion for naming the project and/or the prefix, please bring it forth. I mentioned earlier that many of the widgets will probably include CSS and i18n code, but the calls to import such resources should be done from within the widgets main JavaScript file, to avoid unnecessary calls when they don't exist. So what do you all think? Is this approach appropriate? --Felipe (talk) 21:14, 14 November 2014 (UTC)
  • Close, except it would need to check that there was page specific code to run before trying to import it. Also, do we want to limit this to article namespace, or could this be useful for portals, wikiprojects, categories, etc? The test for being in view mode is good. — {{U|Technical 13}} (e • t • c) 22:24, 14 November 2014 (UTC)
I thought about it, but to check if the title exists requires an API call, and then another call to include the script, whereas if we just import it, we would do only one call, and if the page doesn't exist then we would just include an empty document (I've checked). The console outputs no error. It's kind of ugly, but it's harmless and saving one call per page load may be worth it. What do you think? Regarding the other namespaces, I can't think of many uses yet, but I'm sure the community will eventually find them, so I'm in favor. --Felipe (talk) 00:30, 15 November 2014 (UTC)
I've found a solution: to check the DOM for the existence of the #HandsOn div. If it exists, we can safely assume there is a corresponding page-specific script. If it doesn't, then we don't. This way we do one call max, and in the rare case in which there is a #HandsOn div and no page-specific script, we do the harmless import I was talking about above. --Felipe (talk) 18:24, 15 November 2014 (UTC)
if ( mw.config.get( 'wgNamespaceNumber' ) === 0 && mw.config.get( 'wgAction' ) === 'view' && $( '#HandsOn').length ) {
	importScript( 'MediaWiki:HandsOn-' + mw.config.get( 'wgPageName' ) + '.js' );
}

Thinking again, it is probably better to get rid of the first two conditions, and leave only the check for the existence of the #HandsOn div. This way the script can run in any namespace in which the div is found, and it can also be viewed in the preview of the edit form! --Felipe (talk) 13:11, 16 November 2014 (UTC) 

if ( $( '#HandsOn').length ) {
	importScript( 'MediaWiki:HandsOn-' + mw.config.get( 'wgPageName' ) + '.js' );
}

I've translated Langton's ant to Spanish so I'm also proposing this in the Spanish Wikipedia, my home project. While doing so I realised that "WikiWidget" would probably be a better name and prefix than "HandsOn", for being clearer and more understandable in other languages. --Felipe (talk) 20:08, 17 November 2014 (UTC)

Jackmcbarn, ais523, Technical 13, Anomie, SFB, what's the next step? Should we start a voting? --Felipe (talk) 01:32, 22 November 2014 (UTC)
I've activated the widget in a test wiki of mine, so that everyone can see without having to do all that common.js stuff. Here is the link. --Felipe (talk) 21:34, 25 November 2014 (UTC)

Admins should serve 3-year terms

WP:PEREN from blocked sock. I am so naïve. Johnuniq (talk) 23:03, 25 November 2014 (UTC)
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.

I'm proposing there be a 3-year term for admins, and at the end of it they need to go through the RFA process again if they want to keep being admins. The term would be from the date of promotion, in 3 year cycles. So if you became an admin in 2005, for example, your term would expire in 2014; if you became one in 2006, it expires in 2015, etc. On the RFA page, the admin renewals would be listed separately from first time RFAs, and further divided into active, semi-active, and inactive categories.

This would result in about 7 RFAs every week, not including new RFAs, for at least 3 years. After that, the number will likely drop because it is anticipated many of the ~700 inactive and semi-active admins would not have their terms renewed due to their chronic absenteeism. Wikipedia operates now with a core of ~650 active admins now so there wouldn't be much change. The RFA page would become much more active on a daily basis, and probably evolve into a clearinghouse for issues arising in the community. WhenJoeSue (talk) 22:00, 25 November 2014 (UTC)

It would also have two extremely unhelpful results: good admins would drop out rather than take more crap from the people they have sanctioned in the last three years, and no admins would work at the pointy end of Wikipedia which is inhabited by dozens of POV warriors and hard-to-detect socks of banned users. Admins who enforce community norms at the pointy end are hated by almost everyone they encounter because good editors never see them—they are visible only to disruptive warriors. Also see WP:PEREN#Reconfirm administrators. Johnuniq (talk) 22:10, 25 November 2014 (UTC)
  • Oppose per Johnuniq. He gets it just right. Jehochman Talk 22:11, 25 November 2014 (UTC)
  • I too would have to oppose this. Such a system would shift adminship to what looks like a more political status, and would seriously harm the ability (or willingness) of administrators to attempt to resolve disputes. For example, I close a fair number of requested moves; in some cases, the outcome is clear based on the overwhelming policy-based support for one position or another, but those on the other side still find such a close to be so disagreeable that they can only chalk it up to administrator bias and incompetence. Unfortunately, a renewal process would quickly turn into an ax-grinding affair where admins who actually performed administrative functions would be hounded and displaced for having done so. Conversely, administrators who did not engage in administrative functions would also be targets for demotion because it might seem that they don't need the tools. We should have means in place to demote administrators who misuse the tools, but this should require a consensus for demotion if we don't want to discourage people from doing the dirty work with which we task administrators in the first place. bd2412 T 22:12, 25 November 2014 (UTC)
  • Strong oppose – As I said above, administrators should be civil servants, not politicians. The problem is mob rule. We shan't solve it with even more mob rule. RGloucester — ☎ 22:15, 25 November 2014 (UTC)
In a democratic system "Mob rule" is a feature not a bug.User:Maunus ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 22:51, 25 November 2014 (UTC)
  • I was just about to hat it, but it occurred to me that it would be better if a non-admin did it. Because, you know, I might be afraid of the consequences to myself of this brilliant suggestion. Anybody? Johnuniq? Bishonen | talk 22:59, 25 November 2014 (UTC).

RfC: Should ArbCom be broken up into smaller boards

Proposal: Should ArbCom be broken up into several smaller, independent boards, each of which would be tasked with one part of the current ArbCom's responsibilities? --Floquenbeam (talk) 12:48, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

Extended comments by proposer

Being on ArbCom kind of sucks, and as a result, the number of quality candidates has (IMHO) decreased steadily (so much so that last time *I* got elected!?!). I note that with 4 days to go this year, for example, we have a grand total of 2 declared candidate.

I've been sort of thinking about a different way we could go about organizing ArbCom, but it's in its early stages.

To the extent that I'm allowed to specify the scope of the discussion, I really hope we could avoid discussing specifics like exact # of boards, # of people per board, how they're elected, whether people could serve on more than one board, the exact process we'd follow to establish it, whether this should be for the 2015 election or the 2016 election, etc. First step is really just to gauge the interest, and uncover any disadvantages with the general idea that I haven't thought of.

So, the examples I give below are examples, not part of a specific proposal.

What I had in mind is, each board would have a fairly limited scope, and thus a smaller workload. I think if the workload was more reasonable, more good potential Arbitrators board members might be interested, and the damage that bad potential board members could do would be reduced. More people means an even smaller workload which would mean even more people: a virtuous cycle. A single 30-member ArbCom would become paralyzed, but (say) six 5-member boards might work much more efficiently.

Not too many boards, but enough so there is work to do on each, but not too much. Maybe something like (and this is off the top of my head, with about 3 minutes of thought):

  • Final block/ban/AE appeals
  • Icky child protection issues/accusations (which should be a WMF thing, but isn't)
  • Admin conduct review (I'm kind of burying the lede here, I think this might have a lot of interest) Note: This idea is currently under discussion and I added the link Oiyarbepsy (talk) 21:28, 14 November 2014 (UTC)
  • Intractable user behavioral issues not solved by the community
  • Intractable content issues not solved by the community
  • Intractable policy interpretation issues
  • Some kind of group to liaison with WMF?

I hope this can either gain some traction, or the obvious problems with this that I haven't seen can be pointed out. I fear that inertia will kill an otherwise good idea. --Floquenbeam (talk) 12:50, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

Discussion (Break up ArbCom)

  • Not trying to be difficult, but what is the current workload of ARBCOM? How many cases do they hear at any one time? How much time do ARBCOM members need to devote, on average, to be successful at their job? It would help to have some reference to know what is currently expected of ARBCOM members before we can know if splitting it up is needed. Also, it would be good to hear from more people on the inside of ARBCOM if they also think they are overburdened with their workload. --Jayron32 12:53, 14 November 2014 (UTC)
That's not being difficult at all; good questions. I've used up my allotted Wikipedia time this morning, but I'll give some info on my experience, at least, later today. Sneak preview: hearing cases is not the majority of an Arb's time; For a while I was spending maybe 1 hour per day on it, and I was definitely not pulling my weight. --Floquenbeam (talk) 12:59, 14 November 2014 (UTC)
  • Jayron, the workload varies. Right now I'd say we have a "high" load, that is - 2 recently closed, 3 open, 3 pending requests (of which only one is at decline, and two have more accepts than decline), 6 (or 11 depending on how you look at it) clarifications/amendments. We've also handled about 20 BASC appeals in the past month. There are two reviews of procedures currently running or stalled, a rules review and a BASC review. There are other areas where we have work, which should not be discussed publicly. Additionally, there are Arbcom elections happening, meaning an intake to the committee who will need to be brought up to speed along with all the natural housekeeping of a turnover. I would DEFINITELY recommend splitting up the areas. NB, part of the reason I'm not planning to run again is that I need a break. WormTT(talk) 13:49, 14 November 2014 (UTC)
    Further - have a look at edit counts of arbitrators. The years they are on Arbcom generally have edit counts of between 1/4 and 1/2 of that which they have otherwise. It eats your time (and possibly your soul!) WormTT(talk) 14:06, 14 November 2014 (UTC)
@Jayron32: About responsibilities: You're not just dealing with reading evidence and workshops and deciding actual cases, you're dealing with case requests, clarifications and amendments, ban and block appeals (this is a big one), dealing with people emailing information on suspected pedophiles and other malefactors, dealing with people emailing random complaints about other editors that you have to point to the proper on-wiki channels, wading through a truly massive amount of spam on the mailing list (the spam filter can't be trusted to not lose something important, so I believe every single piece of spam gets filtered out by one of the arbs who have volunteered to do so), helping coordinate the clerks. Not every arb does all of these things. To be clear/honest, when I was there I helped out very little or not at all on many of these tasks. Arbs kind of self-select for things they're interested in/have a skill for/have time for.
About the amount of time spent being an Arb: it varies wildly from one arb to another. Some have found a way to spend a relatively small amount of time, chiming in usefully now and then, and are happy to handle it that way; they aren't likely to burn out, but they aren't really reducing the workload. Others get burned out with too much work, and others (ahem, cough) get burned out worrying about the fact that they aren't doing too much work, but should be doing more. There are currently, I'd say, a couple of arbs I'd guess spending 20 hours or more on arb stuff; maybe another 4-5 that spend 1-2 hrs per day. But these are just guesses; all I can really say for sure is that I spent around 1 hr per day, which doesn't sound like too much, but really prevents the vast majority of people with real life complications from participating. At the risk of annoying them, I'll ping the current arbs @All of them: so they can describe their own workload if they wish. --Floquenbeam (talk) 20:35, 14 November 2014 (UTC)
Sigh; I should proofread more. replacing the placeholder ping above with an actual ping: @AGK, Beeblebrox, Carcharoth, David Fuchs, GorillaWarfare, and LFaraone: @NativeForeigner, Newyorkbrad, Salvio giuliano, Seraphimblade, and Timotheus Canens: --Floquenbeam (talk) 20:44, 14 November 2014 (UTC)
You forgot about Worm, @Floquenbeam. --Biblioworm 20:57, 14 November 2014 (UTC)
@Biblioworm: He already commented above... --Floquenbeam (talk) 21:08, 14 November 2014 (UTC)
I have no objection in principle to this. I am concerned that it would lead to massive instruction creep. I would also point out that (just as on WP generally) there is no need for anyone to be involved in every decision/discussion. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 13:42, 14 November 2014 (UTC).
  • I think ArbCom should be split, but more than 3 or 4 committees would be overkill. I suggested this a few times and most recently here at Wikipedia:Requests for comment/BASC reform 2014. Since this is very much to the point and I would only paraphrase myself, I'll cite and append if necessary :
    (...) I would go further in the mandate afforded to this new committee [Appeals Committee], extending it to cover all community sanctions (such as topic bans) [and maybe indeed AE too]. Now, the matter of its composition ? The structure proposed by Beeblebrox seems adequate for the time being, although in the long run I would prefer that all members be community elected. If the concern is that the pool of candidates is too small, this is already mitigated by the fact that users may stand in both ArbCom and 'AppCom', and if necessary we can have arbs filling missing seats. This would not be an issue in the long term though, see infra.
    Something similar should be done with AUSC, there must be a dedicated committee [Audit Committee] separate from ArbCom with final say on CU/OS matters. I had suggested this in the past but arbs were reluctant to the idea, arguing that this was the 'fiduciary duty' of ArbCom as mandated by the wmf privacy policy. In fact this is not at all the case, the policy makes possible for local arbitration committees matching certain conditions to take upon this duty, but this is in no way a requirement, and indeed several wikis have arbitration committees matching these conditions but without any of those responsibilities. Here again, I would extend the mandate of this 'AudCom', specifically to misconduct by administrators outside formal arbitration cases. Any case overlapping between the three different committees [ArbCom, AppCom, AudCom] would be resolved by a joint subcommittee.
    All in all, I think it is a step in the good direction to 'decentralize' ArbCom, and in fact return it to its more basic role. It is true that there has been lots of progress in the recent years and the threat of an 'all powerful' [...] arbcom has diminished, but it did not disappear altogether and introducing concurrent committees affected to different duties would make this threat much more remote. In addition, these committees would have a more focused role, so would be more efficient, the members wouldn't have to be proficient in so many areas and would have less work, meaning a less demanding job, so more attractive, and the pool of candidates would increase as a result.
    I'm going to resume my thoughts in a condensed manner. A large committee with a vast number of responsibilities is bound to be inefficient, the solution is to divide it in several committees with more focused responsibilities. Of course, I'm not advocating the extreme opposite which is just as inefficient, but a middle ground such as described above seems like the most efficient solution, not only for Wikipedia but for the committee members.
  • End citation. This isn't particularly refined, but you got the idea. Cenarium (talk) 14:07, 14 November 2014 (UTC)
This is an interesting idea, but I would be worried about splitting it up into too many groups. If you have one committee that needs to elect 6-7 people every year and you want 3x as many candidates to give people a good choice, then you only need 18-21 candidates. If you have 7 committees with same number of people, you might need over 100 candidates (depending on how many people decide to run for more than one committee). There's also the issue with managing such a large election, as well as voter turnout and information. For a major role like ArbCom, there's a lot of people willing to vote and hopefully most of them are doing some research before voting. But are enough people going to care about the smaller roles of smaller committees to research more candidates and vote? Mr.Z-man 14:33, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

I've long stated my opposition to proposed ideas for improving the project where there is a solution looking for a problem. It is all too common here that people have fantastic new ideas for how we can further the project. Indeed, our very ethos strongly encourages this. However, such methods catastrophically fail when they are implemented without an understanding of their place within problem solving. Here we have a demonstration of this; we have an idea for how to improve the situation with ArbCom, without scoping out what the situation is with ArbCom. There's general reference to a decline in candidates for ArbCom, and that's it. Where's the research to support this simple statement? Understand; if there is a decline, the decline isn't the problem. It's the symptom. The question is the symptom of what? The proposer says it's a symptom of ArbCom sucking. But, there's no research to support (or oppose) this. RfA is in decline too, but is it because RfA sucks? We don't know. General editing is trending down too, but is that because Wikipedia editing sucks? See the problem here with solutions looking for problems? With all respect to the proposer, this is a very unprofessional approach to "solving" the problem with ArbCom, and will lead to disaster. --Hammersoft (talk) 15:04, 14 November 2014 (UTC) (ps: for what it's worth, the average number of nominees at 4 days out from the deadline over the last 4 years was 8, and the final average number of nominees 22. Clearly there is a big increase of nominations in the days leading up to the deadline. One year does not a statistical trend make)

I definitely think some sort of admin conduct review venue is needed. Others not sure about. My worry would be shortage of applicants for multiple boards.....and not sure that it need to be split up. But will see after the nomination period has ended.Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 09:32, 16 November 2014 (UTC)
  • Efficiency - well a smaller Arbcom would likely be more efficient - less votes needed to pass or decline - less waiting on the others, etc. Alanscottwalker (talk) 11:06, 16 November 2014 (UTC)
  • I like the idea of an ArbCom that is split so that cases can be undertaken more expeditiously. Seven people working on one thing and seven others working on another should help make our plodding school bus of a system more agile and zippy taking and disposing of cases in less than eight weeks... Carrite (talk) 17:59, 16 November 2014 (UTC)
  • Just an idea here: Could we just expand the number of ARBCOM members, and then allow them to self-segregate into subcommittees based on interest/skills/needs? We could have one subcommittee dedicated to cases, one to BASC, one to ombudsman-type activities, etc. We could even have the members rotate through the subcommittees every few months to prevent burnout in any one segment. Just an idea. --Jayron32 20:35, 16 November 2014 (UTC)
    • It's likely that additional members will just make it harder to achieve compromise, which I assume is essential in the commottee's work. Perhaps it might make sense to reduce the number of members, and simultaneously give the new body the poser to decide certain kinds of cases with less of the bells and whistles a full case requires now - a streamlines procedure for a streamlines committee. BMK (talk) 08:10, 17 November 2014 (UTC)
  • I see this proposal as complementary to the on on the BASC. This will increase the workload at arb com; the other will reduce it. DGG ( talk ) 04:22, 17 November 2014 (UTC)
  • The primary problem I see with this proposal is that ArbCom interprets policy. Multiple mini-ArbComs are likely to interpret policy in slightly different ways, which gives rise to the need for a way to settle the differences between them, much as the US Supreme Court settles the differences in interpretations of US law made by the circuit courts. With such a Supreme ArbCom, we're back to having the ArbCom the proposal attempted to get rid of, with the unwanted addition of a bureaucratic level below it. I'm afraid that we're just going to have to continue sacrificing editors to the maw of a single, over-worked ArbCom. BMK (talk) 08:05, 17 November 2014 (UTC)
  • To mostly repeat something I said in another section above: personally, I think most users are dissatisfied with the system as it exists after having had some experience with it, and there seems to be a significant push in recent months for changing procedures and processes. The fact is though that this is all happening a bit late, and should have occurred some years ago - but alas, it was rashness which led to procedures being enacted back then, and it's rashness which is dominating the proposals being actively floated at the moment. I agree with Hammersoft's comment above in respect of this proposal. To address one part of the proposal, I would add that it is sad that each group of users elected each year tend to be shocked by the "icky child protection issues/accusations" that they are stuck dealing with, but well, unless WMF do take those issues, I can't see why any decent number of ordinary volunteer editors/admins would actively want to have to deal with those issues, alone anyway. Ncmvocalist (talk) 15:08, 17 November 2014 (UTC)
  • I like the idea of maybe breaking up the ArbCom into multiple functions, or, alternately, adding more members to the ArbCom to functionally decrease the load on each individual member of the ArbCom. I recently suggested to someone some of us are trying to talk into running for ArbCom that I think we would get more good candidates for ArbCom if the potential candidates knew they were not likely to be forced to review interminable reams of paper or the electronic equivalent on a regular basis, and maybe have some sort of month-on/month-off shifts on ArbCom. If separate entities with different purposes were to be created, which would presumably have different individuals, and hopefully more individuals, willing to take on those responsibilities, I think that would be a net plus for the community. John Carter (talk) 19:15, 17 November 2014 (UTC)
  • Agreed, I think a split committee would be effective. Having them would split their responsibilities into different segments.Sam.gov (talk) 21:24, 17 November 2014 (UTC)
  • I agree that simply splitting arbcom so that cases can be heard by a 7, and appeals/queries by even fewer (say 3-4) would go a long way to increasing the efficiency and decreasing the workload of Arbcom. Such a change is easy to implement and doesn't require any extra bureaucratic overhead. --Tom (LT) (talk) 05:23, 19 November 2014 (UTC)
  • The original idea, of six different committees rather than one, is not one I think I can support. Right now, members select into their preferred tasks, but if we're getting an absolute flood of one thing or another, we can ask that a few extra eyes work over there for a while. The idea of active arbitrators on a per-case basis is interesting, but I don't want to get down to so few that case management is affected, nor to the point that a couple of individuals might be making major decisions about whether and how an individual may continue editing here. I'd also echo concerns raised above by BMK and Mr. Z-man. Right now, and with apologies to Churchill, I'm afraid the case might be "ArbCom is the worst way to do this, aside from any other way that's been tried." Seraphimblade Talk to me 20:09, 19 November 2014 (UTC)
  • FWIW, if you are speaking of my proposal of a month-on/month-off system as a "per-case" basis, I should indicate that I also in the original proposal said that I thought it would work best if we actually increased, or basically doubled, the number of arbitrators. I tend to think that there would be more individuals willing to take on the duties of ArbCom if they knew they were not going to commit themselves to handling every case presented over the next year or so, and think that we probably could get roughly double the number of arbitrator candidates if they knew that it wouldn't be a "full-time" position. John Carter (talk) 20:14, 20 November 2014 (UTC)
  • If we could start the process by doing one thing right, it would be to spin off BASC to the community. Sanctions created by ArbCom can still be appealed to an ArbCom subcommittee; sanctions created by the community will be appealed to the community. This single change will simplify ArbCom's tasks and allow it to hear more disputes in the absence of RFC/U (see above) before they become intractable. Ignocrates (talk) 20:43, 19 November 2014 (UTC)
  • I think the most important thing is for ArbCom to deal only with arbitration of cases brought to it, and not with all the other "private" things that have fallen to it by default. I like the idea of rotating subgroups of members deciding individual cases, instead of having to herd all of the cats for every decision. --Tryptofish (talk) 00:44, 21 November 2014 (UTC)
  • I would more propose that ARBCOM remain the same. These other groups be created to take some of the workload off and ARBCOM to exist to provide final oversight.-Serialjoepsycho- (talk) 03:37, 26 November 2014 (UTC)

The sky isn't falling

In the original posting of this RfC a claim was made that being on ArbCom sucks, and this has negatively influenced the pool of candidates. The 'proof' of this was that there were only 2 candidates declared with 4 days to go. In 2009 there were 22 candidates, 2010 there were 21 candidates , 2011 there were 17 candidates, 2012 there were 21 candidates, 2013 there were 22 candidates. In fact, the average number of candidates from 2009 to 2013 was 20.6. We now have 20 candidates, a decrease of 0.6 candidates. It would seem ArbCom sucks 3% more than it did on average the last five years :) --Hammersoft (talk) 14:38, 19 November 2014 (UTC)

Comments

First, this Request for Comments appears to be really a Request for comments rather than a Request for Consensus, and therefore will not necessarily be closed with a community recommendation.

I strongly support the concept of doing something to permit the ArbCom to decide cases more quickly. In 2005 and 2006, the ArbCom was able to decide a hundred cases a year. (Most of them had to do with banning of flamers, trolls, and vandals, who are now banned by the community. However, the community cannot deal with polarizing editors.) It now deals with at most two cases a month. It is my understanding that a major part of the problem has to do with ban and block appeals, and that something should be done so that the ArbCom is not burdened with them. However, in general, there is a need for some sort of enforcement reform in the English Wikipedia, which is too large to rely only on the ArbCom, "the community", and single-admin blocks that can be overturned by any other admin.

I would support the idea of having the ArbCom hear cases in panels of three, with some provision (rarely) for en banc rehearings.

I don't think that splitting different types of cases into different ArbComs is a good solution. Having the ArbCom hear cases in panels of three is a better idea.

The original poster mentioned intractable content issues that cannot be resolved by the community. That is an editorial board, and English Wikipedia has never had an editorial board, and that is not an ArbCom reform, but an idea that, in my opinion, would have to go to the WMF. For the time being, I oppose an editorial board, until it is better explained.

I agree that icky child protection issues should be handled by the WMF. If they can't take legal responsibility, what do they do other than get paid?

This is beyond the scope of this RFC, but I would support some sort of jury system of panels of three below the ArbCom to decide on blocks for user misconduct.

Robert McClenon (talk) 18:00, 18 November 2014 (UTC)

  • There is a lot going on at the moment - I've rarely seen the VP 'Proposals' section populated with so many serious topics at the same time. This RfC is indeed not like one about about VE, MediaViewer, or Article Feedback Tools, or a MoS or notability issue, its about a handful of community-internal management issues that are inseparably interlinked and which need a holistic approach in order to resolve. This would take a while, maybe a year, but perhaps a management consultancy drawn from the community could officially be designated to look into all these issues, come up with unarguable facts, and present a proper bundle of solutions for approval. --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 00:37, 23 November 2014 (UTC)

Proposal for countering systematic bias

There is consensus against adopting this proposal. --ThaddeusB (talk) 19:39, 9 December 2014 (UTC)

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

I propose to add a short subsection or atleast a bullet point forbidding editors to request help at country Wikiprojects (doesn't count for generic wikiprojects) for the purpose of content disputes (and more specifically inter-country / international disputes). This is synonymous to introducing deliberate systematic bias by inviting editors from a wikiproject with a very high probability of shared nationality and ofcourse as it is done at the posting editor's choice, it's almost always when they need an opinion where most from that nationality will share their POV. In my opinion and experience, this is never 'countered' by informing at the counter part wiki projects which are not as active or have a few editors or not as active WP:WikiProject Countering systemic bias. It only takes only a few editors from the informed Wikiproject to come and tilt the balance of discussion due to POV and bias even if a majority of the editors know better so AGF for the majority Wikiproject members is moot. Same is the case with the less active counter part that may have editors who know better and do not get canvassed to the discussion and hence the few of the few is much less than few from the many (if that makes some sense). It shouldn't count as canvassing when an obscure article needs editing without a content dispute, it should be only considered during a content dispute or to game the system by doing the same later etc. I will also note that this act is not always intentional by the editors but has almost always the same result and informing them of WP:CANVASSING that specifically clarifies this will counter systematic bias. --lTopGunl (talk) 07:31, 27 November 2014 (UTC)

  • Support as nom as I have seen this happen alot and I have felt that I can not (always) clearly suggest WP:CANVASSING to them though it does already apply in blatant conditions. This type of posting is unhealthy in such situations even if it is clearly not canvassing and promotes WP:BATTLE. --lTopGunl (talk) 07:31, 27 November 2014 (UTC)

}}

  • Oppose This idea seems to be oriented at limiting input, confining it to people who are NOT necessarily informed about a subject. It is equivalent to politicians who try to choose their electorate. That is the consistent problem with most AfDs, its always a very small group of very opinionated editors who may be or most likely are not experts in the subject under discussion. If it is possible to invite people potentially knowledgeable about a subject into a debate, thats a good thing. Yes that may sway the decision away from the trend. Remember, wikipedia is here to inform people. We are here to present accurate information. So the more informed voices we bring into the conversation, the more voices we bring into the conversation in general, the more likely we are to come to a proper consensus. Trackinfo (talk) 18:46, 27 November 2014 (UTC)
  • Oppose This seems overly draconian to me. While some bias may exist in country WikiProjects, a lot of useful knowledge also exists there. Jackmcbarn (talk) 23:19, 27 November 2014 (UTC)
  • Oppose. I totally agree with Trackinfo; this is a perfect illustration of why this policy is one of the biggest hurdles dragging this project down (together with COI). NPOV already states that nobody is neutral. Sure, people related to a given country may be a bit more partisan - but also more knowledgeable. We need as much input as possible; the correct solution would be to make such canvassing mandatory for all and any parties; word should be spread wide - the more people who participate, the fewer partisants there will be, and the more reasonable ones will join. On another note: why single out countries? Why not forbid to canvass on religion-wikiprojects for religion article disputes? Etc., etc. A bad, bad idea that needs to be shot down now, buried and salted. PS. A question to the nominator: since you are proposing a rule that would affect a large group of WikiProjects, did you leave a note about your proposal at their pages? Or are you trying to, in essence, pass a law about a group without telling said group they are even being discussed? --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 03:36, 28 November 2014 (UTC)
I don't mind this for religion projects either.. it would probably apply in a similar way... I only dealt with country disputes so probably that's why I used that example. While I recognize that more input is useful, I have seen the noticeboards being used as canvassing tactics to overwhelm the less represented projects or areas. Wikipedia is already trying hard to counter the systematic bias that comes in inherently due to no internet access to a majority of the world population and whose POV is often not balanced in. The ones that do give input from those regions should not be reverted out by multiple editors once a more active wikiproject is informed. While it is true that consensus counts the weight of arguments and not just the numbers, reverts don't and this unhealthy process refers to editors joining in to revert and then leaving one line arguments without further discussion. I don't think it is draconian as the suggestion is only limited to disputes and not for general improvement of articles. --lTopGunl (talk) 10:28, 28 November 2014 (UTC)
Just to add, since I missed to answer the last part of your question, I've transcluded this discussion right from the point I proposed it to the much wider audience of WP:VPR, so please assume good faith. --lTopGunl (talk) 17:33, 29 November 2014 (UTC)
It actually assumes good faith on the majority of the project memebers. However, WP:SPADE applies; what's been happening (or has the chances to happen) should be considered logically. --lTopGunl (talk) 16:11, 28 November 2014 (UTC)
Except that you propose to deny that good faith majority the opportunity to comment because of a few bad actors. Resolute 16:33, 28 November 2014 (UTC)
No, I don't want that and I am open to suggestions that would be able to achieve this without preventing the good faith editors... perhaps general guideline for them to not participate in reverts or something like that. --lTopGunl (talk) 16:37, 28 November 2014 (UTC)
  • Weak oppose although I am not necessarily opposed to the idea in general. I guess the problems I see are that it is in at least some of these cases the people who are involved in national projects, or projects related to specific religions, who will be among the most knowledgeable about a topic. While those groups can and often do include some of the most partisan POV pushers, they also include some of the best informed editors, and I don't see it as beneficial to make efforts which might exclude the latter for the purposes of trying to keep the former from having too much input, much of which can often be seen by the closing admin as problematic anyway. John Carter (talk) 16:05, 28 November 2014 (UTC)
I'd like to point out all discussions are not closed by an admin.. the proposal is hoping to target disputes between 2-3 editors that don't go as far as an RFC, rather simple talkpage discussion. --lTopGunl (talk) 16:19, 28 November 2014 (UTC)
You're right. I was thinking more about formal RfCs than about discussions per se. I would suppose though that in the event that the non-RfC discussion does seem to be perhaps too one-sided, calling for RfCs would still be in both instances the apparent reasonable next step in such instances. John Carter (talk) 16:25, 28 November 2014 (UTC)
That does appear to be the case more than often.. which is why I called unhealthy to do so in the first place. I do agree that it also excludes editors with more knowledge on the topic and assuming good faith most of them will not react in a nationalistic way (or may not respond at all which is even more the reason for this to go forward), but the few who do risk to introduce animosity between the original editors disputing by fueling it... perhaps some other way could be proposed by another editor to do this without preventing that. --lTopGunl (talk) 16:32, 28 November 2014 (UTC)
Yup, pretty much.. You've beat me to saying that. I've removed the RFC template... but not closed as withdrawn because some one might just come along and drop an out of the box suggestion that doesn't involve implementing this proposal per se or any stopping at project noticeboards and yet helps in some way. Some one may NAC it if they feel that's not likely too. --lTopGunl (talk) 03:36, 2 December 2014 (UTC)
I see why this proposal can't be implemented (and as I said, I wouldn't continue to ask for it with even an apparent consensus against it), but it is often a disappointing thing to see happening in content disputes and it is not a fair deal. I think for now this will have to be independently judged towards tendentious editing and current canvassing guidelines and if an editor has a pattern of gaming this way, it can still be dealt with. The proposal was to stop the ones who just do it some times so as not to surpass the community tolerance, though there's a lot of collateral there and wont be a feasible option as you and a lot of editors above said. --lTopGunl (talk) 15:48, 2 December 2014 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Note: this is a transcluded copy, please respond at Wikipedia talk:Canvassing to comment; it will reflect here. I have also transcluded this discussion to Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Countering systemic bias. --lTopGunl (talk) 07:44, 27 November 2014 (UTC)

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