Wikipedia talk:Adminship survey

Ambiguous article name
The title of this is ambiguous. Are you surveying admins, or is it a survey about adminship, to which anyone can and should contribute? Consider renaming. --Dweller 13:38, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Survey on adminship. Page renamed accordingly. - Mailer Diablo 13:41, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Thanks. Much clearer now. --Dweller 13:53, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

Comments about the survey
As with all such surveys, there are a lot of leading questions. I think the outcome is going to be biased towards whatever the writer (unconsciously) wants to see. --Kim Bruning 13:46, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
 * sofixit.  &gt; R a d i a n t &lt;  13:53, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
 * (edit conflit) (resp to Radiant) Not worth the effort. Surveys like this typically don't provide very much useful data, for the reasons I mention. They can be fun though. Just pointing out that you should take whatever the outcome is with a couple of barrels of salt. And who knows, maybe one or two strange peaks might be worth investigating. Have fun! :-) --Kim Bruning 14:35, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
 * I'm not too worried about that. I expect this survey to be summarily ignored by those people in a position to do something about it, like it was last year. So it's not going to cause a problem, and as you say it could be fun.  &gt; R a d i a n t &lt;  15:15, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
 * I'm not so sure that declaring "Voting is evil" in the introduction and then going on to ask a load of questions about the pros and cons of voting is such a good idea. --Joopercoopers 14:42, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
 * This is not a "load of questions about the pros and cons of voting".  &gt; R a d i a n t &lt;  14:49, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Apologies - There were more questions re. "is RFA a vote" previously - they seem to have gone the same way as the "voting is evil" bit - It'll be an interesting read I think. --Joopercoopers 15:05, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

Chaps, I think this "I have trust in the judgment of current bureaucrats in determining consensus" occurs twice. --Joopercoopers 15:07, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Fixed.  &gt; R a d i a n t &lt;  15:15, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

Bot
I added the survey to Category:Non-talk pages with subpages automatically signed by HagermanBot. Hipocrite - &laquo; Talk &raquo; 15:57, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Does that work on subpages?  &gt; R a d i a n t &lt;  16:11, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

Trying now. Hipocrite - &laquo; Talk &raquo; 16:12, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

Bot documentation says it should, but it doesn't appear to. Ahh well. Hipocrite - &laquo; Talk &raquo; 16:16, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
 * HagermanBot doesn't sign comments starting with '#'. --ais523 17:50, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

"Certain !votes deserve to be ignored outright"
"Certain !votes deserve to be ignored outright" is a leading question with a 'yes' bias. You can't change it now as people have responded, but for the next time try a more neutral approach. JoeSmack Talk 16:33, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Since the survey has been open for barely an hour, if it bothers you, you can reword the question and contact the half-a-dozen people or so who have voted on it.  &gt; R a d i a n t &lt;  16:35, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

Many questions like that in the survey, don't know if it's worth the effort. Not a fault of the designer, this is more like an informal survey anyway, and is pretty much inherent to the territory. --Kim Bruning 16:44, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

I took a stab (and notified) at neutralizing. Hipocrite - &laquo; Talk &raquo; 16:49, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Canvassing! I kid, I kid... - C HAIRBOY  (☎) 17:58, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

What is the purpose of this?
What is the purpose of this survey? What will be happening with the results, if anything? -- Majorly  (o rly?) 20:37, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
 * I assume that people intend on looking at the results to determine where people want a change. -Amarkov moo! 21:25, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
 * I would hope so. Alex43223Talk 09:43, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

IS it possible to add another question?
As part of the section on existing administrators, I think it would be good to ask if the respondants if they have examined or know about the current RFC's on Use of administrator privileges? Since the respondants seem interested in if adminstartors are acting acceptably maybe we can uncover some reasons for the low number of responses.-- Birgitte SB  16:46, 18 February 2007 (UTC)
 * I think the question on RFCs from the last poll might shed some light on that question. Christopher Parham (talk) 17:30, 18 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Add another question? I don't see why not. Do note the date/time the question was added. --Kim Bruning 00:41, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Please do. - Mailer Diablo 03:18, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
 * I believe the general consensus is that RFCs on user conduct are pretty much pointless, and have been so for a long time. It's just that apparently nobody's had a better idea yet.  &gt; R a d i a n t &lt;  09:14, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

RFC/User's are useful mainly as official confirmation that a user's behavior is condemned by the community. They do not work in situations where there are opposing camps each with many members. Usually the subject of an RFC/User is unlikely to yield to community pressure, but it does happen. The primary purpose of an RFC/User is to collect evidence preparatory to an ArbCom filing. --Ideogram 23:25, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

So far
So far we have an indication that
 * 1) Most people don't like the current RFA process.
 * 2) Many people don't trust the current bureaucrats, but nearly nobody wants to have them reconfirmed, and nobody much wants to use a "straight" vote rather than 'crat interpretation. This appears to be oxymoronic.
 * 3) RFA standards are on the high side, but this is mainly caused by the voters; for instance, admins need not be all-rounders (despite that some people oppose candidates for that).
 * 4) RFB standards are way too high.
 * 5) Most people don't like how de-opping is handled; admins are not held accountable enough, and not enough is being done to weed out the bad eggs. However, trial adminship and WP:RECALL are not good alternatives.
 * 6) A lot of people don't like IRC.: &gt; R a d i a n t &lt;  10:36, 19 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the summary. I agree that it is accurate and complete.  As for bureaucrat discretion, I think that like RfA in general many people are unhappy with the current system but uncertain as to the best alternative.  The phrasing of the questions also lumps together potentially disparate decisions.  I think that my own position is typical of the oxymoronic votes.  Bureaucrats have abused their discretion often enough that I do not fully trust them, but still do not favour a system of straight voting since weeding out invalid votes (anons, socks, and jokes) does require a little bit of judgement.  I am not certain whether forcing 'crats to stand for anual reconfirmation would be helpfull and haven't expressed an opinion on it.  There are lots of options besides an inflexible 75% cut-off and total discretion that the poll doesn't fully explore and I think that one could find people advocating almost all of them.  Eluchil404 20:31, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Oxymorons will happen when you toss many different opinions together and average over them. You could try looking per person and see if they still contradict themselves? --Kim Bruning 13:14, 20 February 2007 (UTC)
 * I don't know if people don't like irc, or if they don't like #wikipedia-en-admins, which is a subset. Polls are always limited by the person who makes them. --Kim Bruning 13:15, 20 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Well, you were offered the chance to fix it and you declined. Less vagaries, more constructive solutions please.  &gt; R a d i a n t &lt;  13:26, 20 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Dude, if you take an elephant, and say it's going to fly, I'll go "hey dude, it's an elephant, it's gonna stomp around and trumpet". Elephants have limitations. Who cares if it doesn't fly. I'm already expecting it to stomp around and trumpet, I have no problems. The only person who might have problems is yourself, now that you see it is not flying. ;-)
 * Same thing here, this is an opinion poll. It'll give oxymoronic answers and the answers will be broad and unspecific. With clever statistics, you can still mine some amount of valuable info. Comments might also give some interesting nuances. You'll get a feel for where community opinion lies measured relative to the opinions of the person who created the poll.
 * --Kim Bruning 14:21, 20 February 2007 (UTC)
 * It's going to fly.  &gt; R a d i a n t &lt;  14:27, 20 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Ingekopt! ;-) --Kim Bruning 22:08, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

Every opinion poll reflects the bias of its writer. This one is a little worse than average. --Ideogram 23:03, 20 February 2007 (UTC)