User:Bibliomaniac15/On closing RFA

This is primarily a series of thoughts on closing RFA and RFBs, perhaps the most glorified job of the bureaucrat. God help the person who runs for RFB, because they run through a gauntlet disproportionately tougher than the tools themselves. Well, no matter.

What the crat does
Above all, the role of the bureaucrat is a purely objective one. You know, the type of objective that would refer to "10 million murdered" as "a major loss of life." The type that would call the extinction of thousands of species a year "an undesirable outcome." Although the crat may have their own knowledge of a candidate or even their own stance on them (which should preferably be expressed as a !vote), that isn't the purpose of the crat. The role of the crat is to examine the arguments being presented by both sides: Examine their strengths, their weaknesses, their fallacies, their volume, and their general sentiments. By doing this, the crat must answer two questions:


 * 1) Does the community trust the candidate with the tools?
 * 2) Is there a reasonable doubt based on previous experience that such trust may be compromised?

By using these observations, the crat must determine the consensus. Consensus is not the type where we tally the votes and find the percentage. Percentage can tell us some unique trends, but ultimately IT CANNOT FIND THE CONSENSUS. Consensus is the the amount of trust the community places in a candidate and the general conception of the candidate in terms of trust.

Now because the nature of the support is generally just an affirmation of the candidate's ability, steadfastness, temperament, etc., and because we assume good faith, much of this logical examination focuses on the opposition. It is the onus of the opposition to demonstrate that a candidate is not fit or not ready for adminship. By determining how well it demonstrates this, the crat decides how much and what type of trust and doubt the community holds with the candidate.

I personally don't like the term "giving weight." While it is correct in its implication that some !votes are simply worth more than others (i.e. more sound), it is incorrect in suggesting that we might be able to put some quantitative value, regardless of whether this value is concrete or calibrated relative to some other value. Consensus is a qualitative field, and subject to change. But, because it is catchier than anything my uncreative mind can come up with, I'm stuck with it.

On drama
Remember that drama and the actual sentiment of opposition are NOT the same thing. It's a common misconception, but one that needs to be recognized, because of all things, drama is an obfuscating factor. It might tell you something about the types of people perpetrating it, which is important to analyze, or it might point at issues that the community feels very strongly about, but it does not provide useful material when it comes to consensus.

What weight means
"Weight" gets thrown around so often that its meaning gets lost. What we call weight actually consists of two concepts: Numerical weight and argument strength. "As per" !votes fall within the former. I'm sure all of us can agree that numerical majority is a part of consensus. Sometimes, someone gives an explanation that is clear and rational (in other words, it has a valid argument), and so "as per" !votes really mean a concurrence or an emphasis that this point is important in the eyes of the community. The most important point to finding consensus is finding areas of commonality in rational lines of reasoning.

If five people supply detailed !votes that mean essentially the same thing, it's really no different than 1 detailed argument and 4 "as per" !votes. In both cases, all of them follow the same strand of evidence/argument, and all of them carry the same numerical weight. Now granted, most of the time when 5 detailed rationales that follow the same argument appear, they point at different facets and aspects of the evidence, which is why we may perceive a "weight" differential. We must consider these facets, but at the same time we must realize that they are parts of the whole argument and not separate arguments in themselves.