User talk:Linuxbeak/RFA Reform

"Going About it the Wrong Way" now has a subpage. The majority of this discussion relates to a proposed committee. The draft of said committee can be found here

Answering to User:Splash
In order:
 * Agreed. Depends on the situation; if in doubt, provide a diff. It should be strongly encouraged.-ZeroTalk 18:40, 17 January 2006 (UTC)


 * I agree. Increase it to 2000+ edits then. -ZeroTalk 18:40, 17 January 2006 (UTC)
 * That's ridiculous. Remove a couple of zeros, and we might be able to talk about it. -Splash talk 18:31, 17 January 2006 (UTC)
 * What's ridiculous about it..? You cite that we can't always gauge the quality of edits, so making an increase seemed logical. Just kidding. :) I think around 700 should be fair.-ZeroTalk 18:37, 17 January 2006 (UTC)


 * I am speaking of peope who are currently having a rfar filled agaist them.
 * I see. Hmmmm. We'd have to be careful that RfAr were not used as a troll-toll to disrupt RfA from outside. Many RsfAr are pretty frivolous and are rejected, but even that process can take weeks at times. -Splash talk 18:31, 17 January 2006 (UTC)


 * Indeed. I'm saying if they neglected to elaborate in the first place, and others are unsure of their reasoning, they should be civil enough to explain it. -ZeroTalk 18:12, 17 January 2006 (UTC)
 * I see. We should retain the right of refusal-to-reply, however. Sometimes that can be as telling in its own way, a bit like the 'new' police caution in the UK. (Are you from the UK? It allows a court to take a dim view of evidence only presented in court which the defendant should have presented when questioned by police but deliberately did not do so. Previously [before about 1990], that provision was absent.) -Splash talk 18:31, 17 January 2006 (UTC)
 * Normally, this shouldn't be a problem, but users like User:Masssiveego have shown me that clearly, good faith is not a requirement when voting. So let's make it one. -ZeroTalk 18:37, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

I disagree with the above. In my opinion blind people vote for blind people. What you call a good faith requirement I call a bunch of messed up trash talking, lazy voters who can't do their jobs right trying to promote a bunch of unqualifed zero IQ, and zero EQ admin. That treat people like numbers, and can't seem to get it through that Wikipedia is about getting to the truth nicely. Hey if I think there are too many admin that should be my right to oppose any more admin. If I think that admin is not qualified, again I can use whatever standard I feel will better wikipedia. If I think the admin should be a bunch of real nice people again that should be my choice. So I disagree with the good faith requirement, and instead think admin should not be allowed to post anything underneat the vote of those who are voting, and nobody involved with the vote should be allowed to contact the voter until after the election for any reason. I'm getting sick of this change your vote demand to fit some status quo vote. --Masssiveego 07:10, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

Can this stuff be integrated into the main page? I'm not sure it makes sense to split part of the discussion here, and we should probably do it in one place or another... -- nae'blis (talk) 20:01, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

Modified RFA idea #1
Here's one possible idea (I'm not saying it's the one that we should or should not adopt; just consider it): Turn RFA into part of a larger process. Have a discussion session after a request for adminship is made. In this discussion session, have a debate on the suitibility of a potential admin discussed. After a week or so, allow the bureaucrats to make a decision (reflective of the community, of course) to promote or not promote. If promotted, the new admin can be considered on probation for 1 month. After this month is up, have a confirmation of adminship (a la RFA style) based upon this person's actions as an admin. If this person demonstrates leadership, ability, trustworthiness, etc., and the community agrees, then the probationary status is lifted and the admin is considered to be a "full" administrator. If the person screws up badly, then this will be reflected upon the RFA. If someone abuses the admin tools during the probationary period (define a set of rules, perhaps?), then the person is to be de-sysop'd.

Comments, please. Linuxbeak (drop me a line) 21:30, 17 January 2006 (UTC)
 * Problem 1: doubles the workload for all involved. Problem 2: admin must tiptoe the first month because he will get spite-votes otherwise. Problem 3: doesn't actually solve the problem that some admins, some time after their promotion, turn out to be problematic.

Way too complicated. --Masssiveego 07:02, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

Modified RFA idea #2
Here's my look on it: We simply keep the basic formatting of our current adminship nominating the same. Doing so would make it easier for people to adjust, and we wouldn't have to do any major page changes. The only things that warrent changing are the regulations themselves.

You lost me there. --Masssiveego 07:02, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

What stays

 * Nomination is still the same. Ethier you can elect someone or be elected.
 * The "voting" area still retains its oringinal format (ie. Oppose, neutral, support)
 * Votes are still carried out in the same fashion

What's new

 * Suffurage: 700 edits or more. And mere number is not enough; they must be contributive such as mainarticle space and talk
 * Reasons: Mandatory for all voters to have a detailed and concise reason why they vote the way they do, strongly encouraged to have diffs
 * No POV pushing: self -expalnatory. No spite votes, no avoiding of discussion regarding your vote, no half-assed answers
 * No voting by users currently under a open case in arbcom
 * Must have a "clean" history. No obsessive cases of vandalism, blocks, etc.

Comments, please. Zerobeak (drop me a line) 22:41, 17 January 2006 (UTC)
 * Problem is, you can't force people to cite diffs. For instance, if I say "Oppose per Sjakkalle", then it is impossible to tell whether I have evaluated the situation and agree with Sjakkalle, or am simply piling on because I trust Sjakkalle's opinion. I can copy/paste anyone's argument, and you can't assume that I haven't actually double-checked it. -Radiant_ &gt;|&lt; 01:15, 18 January 2006 (UTC)
 * I don't recall ever saying anyone having to force diffs. I said it should strongly encouraged. And "Oppose or support per so-and-so is fine IMO; its better than just signing your name and not saying anything. -ZeroTalk 15:37, 18 January 2006 (UTC)


 * Also, I fail to see what "no voting by users under ArbCom investigation" is supposed to solve. By "clean history", do you mean the candidate or the voter? Note that a significant number of admins have been blocked at some point. Does that mean they can't vote any more? Radiant_ &gt;|&lt; 01:15, 18 January 2006 (UTC)
 * Person(s) under arbcom have other things on their hands. As per before, "best to keep it in the white". Its natural for people under presssure to be more negative. And by clean histroy, I mean being an overall good contributor. Of course everyone's bound to run into some trouble sooner or later, be it a block or whatnot, as long as its still reasonably good. No "troublesome users" (ie. User:MARMOT, User:Copperchair come to mind). Overall, the voting prerecqisies need to be much stricter. And this "200 edit count and lower" suffurage is ridiculous. A person can amass these many edits in a couple of days (perhaps less). I follow the mentality A hard worker recognizes another hard worker. -ZeroTalk 15:37, 18 January 2006 (UTC)
 * I don't agree with such high suffrage requirements. I personally have a fairly low edit count (300 or so?), with a very small percentage of that being mainspace edits. I rarely edit the mainspace (outside obvious slapping an AFD or CSD template on them), because I personally feel that my writing style is terrible and entirely unfit for an encyclopedia. However, I love the project and I feel that my knowledge of the processes, etc. of Wikipedia should count for something. So yes, I do agree that a suffrage requirement should be set, however, I don't agree with setting it so high. Just because you edit the mainspace doesn't mean you have knowledge of process. --^demon 04:03, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

Disagree Any bot can put up templates for a higher edit count. Any two people can put up any warning on anybody at anytime, or request arbcom all the time. So the rules are pretty unfair and can't quite get a feel for character, or personality. --Masssiveego 07:02, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

Method 3: Quasi RfC
Keep the same format...but.... make the first week a 'discussion session' as stated above. Provide diffs for/against the candidate.

Then for another week we have a vote as we have in the past where people are required to give short reasons why they voted that way.

Bureaucrats close as they normally do (on their judgement of course).

As for the details and suffrage and stuff we have yet to work that out. &mdash; Ilyan  e  p  (Talk)  21:48, 17 January 2006 (UTC)
 * This sounds reasonable. Main problem is that it takes longer. But yes, starting with an argument stage would be good. Ask the candidate if they still wish to run at the end of that (maybe let the 'crats veto the obvious snowballs) Radiant_ &gt;|&lt; 01:15, 18 January 2006 (UTC)
 * (cross posting from main page)
 * I've created an example at User:Linuxbeak/RFA Reform/Adminship nominee discussion. It could probably be better as a pair of transcluded subpages, the "vote" page only created when the "mini-RfC" page is completed, and the RfC protected following that.  I'd also like someone who likes doing that sort of thing *cough* Durin *cough* to tell us about the change in ratios over time.  My real-world experiance says that most votes don't change ratios after the first half anyway, and if we could some figures confirming that than we'd be heading off possible objections at the pass. -  brenneman (t) (c)  06:46, 21 January 2006 (UTC)
 * Well, I tried to encourage something like this on my RFA and was totally ignored! Could we get a volunteer to make their RfA into a split-style one with no place for voting until added in by a b'cat?  With prior approval by a b'cat, of course. -  brenneman (t) (c)  23:43, 3 February 2006 (UTC)
 * Yikes... I meant it to jump to the edit screen, as that was where I had placed the "can we talk not vote" comment. Was that too subtle, perhaps? -  brenneman (t) (c)  23:58, 3 February 2006 (UTC)
 * Yeah, I considered that possibility, but figured you'd have mentioned it as an HTML comment if you had...sorry about that. -- nae'blis (talk) 17:40, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

Brainstorming
In the spirit of brainstorming - apparently the German wiki uses straight-out voting on its RFA, rather than discussion. This turns out to be less contentious, at least. Radiant_ &gt;|&lt; 13:06, 18 January 2006 (UTC)


 * What standards do they have for promotion and suffrage? Carbonite | Talk 13:16, 18 January 2006 (UTC)


 * de:Wikipedia:Adminkandidaturen. Both nominee and voters must have suffrage at the moment the nomination is opened, in this context meaning 1) two months activity, 2) 200+ edits in Article namespace, 3) not banned (duh), 4) not a multi-user account (interestingly, the German WP allows multi-user accounts). Also, anyone who votes twice will have all his votes stricken, because he's disrupting process (also interesting, the English WP would strike all but one of the votes).
 * Candidacies last for two weeks, and are considered succesful if they have at least fifteen votes in support, and at least 2/3rds of the votes are in support (not counting neutral votes). Any comments longer than a line are summarily moved to the talk page.
 * Radiant_ &gt;|&lt; 13:52, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

Pleased with discussion
So far I must say that I (and Jimbo, after showing this thing to him) am pleased with the progess that is being made here. I have heard some excellent arguements on all sides, and this combined with Radiant!'s admin accountibility poll is starting to show me possible avenues that we can take. We're not quite done discussing issues and ideas yet, however, so I am going to extend this discussion at least one more week from today.

Your next assignment: Although I am welcoming more comments on how the current process works/doesn't work, I want everyone to start focusing more on ways that we can change the process. Consider all comments and suggestions that have been posted, including any that you may consider to be outlandish. As Gene Kranz said, "let's work the problem".

Spoiler warning: Remember is that no matter what happens, it will not please everybody. Do not count on seeing a silver bullet solution to this problem.

I know that we can do this. Jimbo has told me that we seem to be handling it pretty satisfactorily, so let's continue on this path that we have blazed so far. Linuxbeak (drop me a line) 17:14, 21 January 2006 (UTC)


 * Great to hear. Er...just out of curiosity, did Jimbo say something specifically about the committee idea?  And to note, the third paragraph of Linux's post is one of the main points I've been hammering on: it is impossible to please everybody.  Regards, Redux 22:18, 21 January 2006 (UTC)


 * Good. I would like to make the following suggestions for official policy...
 * Strict suffrage limit for voters (in addition to sockchecking if necessary). WP:AAP suggests something near one month and 100 edits. Also, semi-protting all RFA subpages wouldn't hurt.
 * Strict suffrage for the nominees. E.g. two months and 1000 edits. Simply because anything below that is a snowball anyway, and may result in a negative pileup. We have lost editors that way. Technically this is instruction creep though, I realize that.
 * As suggested above, start with a couple of days for only comments. Then allow voting. Reason is, you can't really omit voting because it'll give rise to accusations of cabalism. But, early voters tend to be unaware of later comments. And it's always good to discuss first, as in WP:FAC. Comments should be in the form of concrete, diff-supported arguments why candidate X should or should not be an admin.
 * Strike the standard questions, because they're cliche and haven't been getting meaningful answers in a while.
 * Since many people in the WP:AAP suggested that standards should be higher, the 'crats may want to consider being less lenient about the % support necessary.
 * Radiant_ &gt;|&lt; 23:25, 21 January 2006 (UTC)


 * I could start praising the parts of your suggestion that I like and criticizing those that I don't like right now. Many others would do the same likely.  And there we'd be again: locked in the same vicious circle that has been preventing any meaningful change from being implemented (or being discarded as unnecessary decisively).  It has just happened again over at the RfA talk page: someone proposed a renaming of the sections for clarity, and the next thing you know, we're discussing political correctness and its place on Wikipedia, and closing with a call for civility.  Consider the discussion above about a possible new solution for reviewing RfA: the committee.  The discussion is a little long by now, sorry about that.  Regards, Redux 03:01, 22 January 2006 (UTC)
 * As a frustrated participant in that RFA debate it's difficult to see a way to keep these sorts of discussions going in a straight line. Rx StrangeLove 03:39, 22 January 2006 (UTC)
 * Hence the utility of using a committee. Redux 03:44, 22 January 2006 (UTC)
 * Well, I too was a little frustrated in that discussion. I wanted real feedback and got a sandstorm of randomness in return. I think it might work if we just propose one idea at a time and have people discuss it. Right now we have about a brazilian ideas on the table and no focus. That's one of the most intriguing aspects of The Committee: they present one idea to debate on. -- LV (Dark Mark)  03:46, 22 January 2006 (UTC)
 * Yes and I'm partly to blame for that, instead of agreeing with your ideas, I expanded on them which diffused them. It sort of came apart....proving that your one idea at a time suggestion is exactly right. Rx StrangeLove 04:11, 22 January 2006 (UTC)
 * Brazilian? Since when is a native of a certain south american country the name of a number? &mdash; Ilyan  e  p  (Talk)  05:23, 22 January 2006 (UTC)
 * It is derived from an old joke, turned into a new joke about U.S. President Bush... an example can be found here in the first comment section. I love puns. -- LV (Dark Mark)  05:31, 22 January 2006 (UTC)
 * Well, the way we do thing currently, proposing anything for the wide community to discuss is like a box of chocolates: you never know what you're going to get. But one thing is certain: you almost never get what you wanted in the first place.  Redux 03:52, 22 January 2006 (UTC)


 * Well, no. Thanks for the meta-remarks but that really is irrelevant, and it would be a better idea to concretely state what you did and did not like. Just about everything of what I said will be implemented or not implemented at the crats' discretion, and some crats have indicated they want actionable ideas now. Radiant_ &gt;|&lt; 11:33, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

Discuss the committee
Everybody, the discussion regarding the committee has been moved here. Demon has also begun to set up the draft page here. Thank you. Redux 12:21, 22 January 2006 (UTC)
 * instruction creep, WP:NOT a bureaucracy. HAND. Radiant_ &gt;|&lt; 13:30, 22 January 2006 (UTC)
 * That doesn't mean that we can't find new solutions for new problems. RfA is different from most forums because there the process has been immobilized by endless polemics, with too many opinions, little to no focus, and an utopian notion that we will somehow find a way to please everybody.  What should we do?  Insist on a method that has not worked for a while, or look for new ways to get things done?  Nobody wants to turn Wikipedia into a bureaucracy, but nor do we want to see it victimized by its own immobility.  I've said it before, and I'll say it again: we need to be realistic; and we need a compromise, or nothing will get done regarding RfA.  Redux 16:56, 22 January 2006 (UTC)
 * Feel free to do your best forming an eleven-man committee for the purpose of RFA reform. But let other people try it in their way; you may find that RFA has already reformed by the time you're finished. Radiant_ &gt;|&lt; 17:09, 22 January 2006 (UTC)
 * If that happens, all the better. The committee was proposed as a way to get things done, which is what is not happening thus far.  It's still in an early draft phase, and we're hoping to get a lot of feedback from the community on it.  This is by no means an isolated endeavor.  Redux 17:17, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

anyone, anyone...
So after the "committee" schism, are we dead in the water? Is this another failed idea? Or do we have consensus behind any of the ideas here (I'd say behind the WP:AAP and here, we've got a good thing going with the idea of X days of discussion/evidence/diffs and X days of "voting")? Are there other things that could come out of this positively to at least try, incrementally? -- nae'blis (talk) 21:51, 3 February 2006 (UTC)
 * Nevermind, I see it's been taken up elsewhere at Requests for adminship/Draft. -- nae'blis (talk) 17:41, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

Discussion that way >>
See Wikipedia talk:Discussions for adminship &mdash; Ilyan  e  p  (Talk)  18:14, 5 February 2006 (UTC)