User:Tazerdadog/Bureaucrat Granted Adminship

Background
The current system by which editors are made admins is currently untenable. We have been losing administrators since July 2011, and have seen a sharp decrease in new promotions through RFA. Up until now, it could be argued that the remaining administrators were sufficient to run the project, but recently backlogs have been accruing in the most basic and necessary administrator tasks. It is clear that the status quo is no longer an option, and a course correction is required. This proposal is one such course correction, and I hope the community will find it acceptable.

Declining number of administrators
Rate of promotion has decreased to an unsustainable level. The raw numbers are available here. Promotions have slowed down to barely one a month, from a high of over one a day. The number of administrators has steadily dropped since then. User:NoSeptember/admincount.

Increasing backlogs
Despite the reducing numbers of admin candidates, admins have been keeping up admirably with their tasks until recently. However, several backlogs have sprung up recently in critical areas.

Proposal:Bureaucrats select administrators
Timeline: Each bureaucrat may appoint one new administrator every six months. While the community is given the opportunity to provide feedback on the candidates before they are given the mop, each appointment is confirmed with a crat chat with no specific numerical boundary.

For clarity, assume the first cycle begins on January 1st.

December: The bureaucrats confer amongst themselves to prevent duplicate nominations. They then contact prospective appointees either on or off wiki to ensure that they will accept a nomination.

January 1: The list of appointments is published in a well-publicized location for community feedback. Each bureaucrat may nominate one candidate.

January 1-14: The community is given an opportunity to comment on the nominees. Unlike a RFA, there is no voting, or need for pile-on voting. Decide on questions policy. Because there are 22 bureaucrats, it is expected that there will be many candidates running at the same time. This may reduce the meatgrinder feeling common at RFA somewhat.

January 15: The bureaucrats consider the feedback given by the community, and then decide whether the candidate would be a net positive as an administrator. If in their judgement he would be, they promote. These administrators have the same status as any other administrator.

April 1 - er, maybe picking January 1 was not the best starting date.

April 2-8

As a check on bureaucrats by the community, each candidate is reviewed at this point. The admins will have had the opportunity to use the tools for 10 weeks, so a sufficient sample of their work is likely to be available. The initial discussion lasts 24 hours. If at the end of the 24 hours, 10 extendedconfirmed users, and a majority of all users support removing the right, the discussion is extended to a full week. Otherwise the discussion is closed to minimize process. At the end of the week, if a majority of users support removing the right, then the right is removed.

An admin is free to withdraw from the process at any time by returning the tools. The nominating bureaucrat is permitted to close the discussion as tools returned if the admin has lost his confidence. Bureaucrats are not given a discretionary range in this discussion. Experienced admins are expected to monitor the discussion and strike clearly inappropriate votes.

June 24-30

The above check is repeated one more time to ensure that no systemic problems are observed with any admins. This serves less as a check on the bureaucrats, and more as a check on the candidates themselves, who should have an easily judged body of work at this point. This is the last discussion the admin candidates will go through.

July 1

A new list of candidates is posted.