User:Bjelleklang/RfA

RfA revamp suggestions (adminship shouldn't be a big deal, remember). This will probably never go anywhere, but it seems that it comes a time in every enwiki editors life where something like this should be written. These are mainly thoughts, nothing more substantial than that for now.


 * The problems today appear to mainly be due to too much community involvement; editors on both sides start arguing, and derail the whole thing.
 * Solution: Remove much of the community input.
 * Create a machine-checkable standard for when an editor is eligible for adminship. Example:
 * Minimum 2500 meaningful article space edits, with more than 2/3 having an edit summary, and
 * Membership of at least 6 months, and
 * Minimum 6 months since last block, and
 * User can't have any active sanctions (subject-bans or other limitations).
 * A user who are within these basic criteria can opt-in to become an admin.

Opting in

 * Done by listing yourself or being nominated on WP:RFA, similar to todays process. A bot can easily process new applications and check the basic criteria.

Deciding
Todays process depends on a candidate receiving enough support and fairly light criticism. Although not fully a vote, enough oppose !votes is likely to kill an application. We need to figure out a way to let the community give some input, while at the same time avoiding the bad debates currently happening. The final decision should be taken by three admins; and confirmed (or overruled) by a bureaucrat. A list of basic questions for the candidate should be prepared through a community process, but I don't know how, how many or if the same questions should be used for everyone. For the reviewing admins (and bureaucrat) there should be a checklist with things to look out for, it could look something like this:
 * Has the candidate had any blocks, warnings or comments that indicates he/she doesn't understand basic policies? (N, V, OR, RS, BLP)?
 * Does the candidate have a history of being uncivil, hostile or aggressive towards others? (WP:CIVIL, WP:NPA)
 * Does the candidate appear to understand the deletion and blocking policies?
 * Is there any reason to think that the editor doesn't understand WP:COPYVIO and what to do with violations?
 * And so on. Basically this is just a checklist. If in doubt, the reviewing admins should be able to ask additional questions to help clarify any of the points here.

At the end of a reviewing period, the three admins should decide and address any concerns they might have

Who reviews the candidate
Ideally this would be three random admins, with a bureaucrat who can overrule if needed. I realize that picking three admins at random is unlikely to work, but an idea might be to form a WikiProject or taskforce for admins, where anyone listed can help with reviews. A review shouldn't officially start before three admins are assigned, and reviewers should make an announcement on their relationship (if any) to the candidate (just to avoid dramatic accusations of corruption or similar).

Goals
The goal is to make it easier to recruit new admins. So far around 50 admins have misused their tools and lost them as a result according to Former administrators. At the same time we also need to make desysopping easier than it is, if it's no big deal getting the tools it shouldn't be a big deal to loose them either. A temporary desysop could be done by eg. three admins to avoid misuse; and then a community discussion to either restore the tools or make the desysop permanent.