Wikipedia talk:Requests for adminship/Archive 207

Ctjf83's RfA

 * The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.
 * As the user has withdrawn, please initiate a new thread if there is more fruitful general discussion to be had. – xeno talk 15:41, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

There is a debate as long as the River Nile, based purely on a userbox dictating the candidate is an atheist. There are people attacking the fact he has a lot of userboxes on his userpage. OMG, even his sexuality has been brought into the childish and highly unnecessary handbag-war! Too many times, people seem to forget that RfA is about can this candidate be an admin. No wonder the amount of RfAs has been steadily decreasing. Because why does anyone want to submit themselves to an atmosphere as Jurassic as this? The system stinks. Orphan Wiki 19:44, 16 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Agree. Some of the debate seems to have reached a new low for RfA.-- K orr u  ski  Talk 19:48, 16 January 2011 (UTC)
 * No one should have to be subjected to that. It's bordering on inhumane. Orphan Wiki 19:49, 16 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Please note that I'm saying this as someone who supports the candidate, and commented there against the kinds of things you criticize here. But I have to point out that those who oppose believe that their arguments are valid and significant. The point of the process is that one has to have community trust, and the community is what it is. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:51, 16 January 2011 (UTC)
 * The community is sadly very corrupt. Orphan Wiki 19:52, 16 January 2011 (UTC)
 * It is, of course, still early in the process, but it will be interesting at the end to see how the bureaucrats decide to weigh the various comments when they close it. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:56, 16 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Indeed. It will be very interesting... :S Orphan Wiki 19:59, 16 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Essential reading for anyone who thinks the community is corrupt. 28bytes (talk) 20:10, 16 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Hey, my ears have been burning for a reason! :-) Heimstern Läufer (talk) 13:03, 17 January 2011 (UTC)


 * Submitting oneself for an RfA is an offer to help. Where else but RfA would people, instead of politely saying "no, thanks" or "not yet", effectively turn around and tell the person making a genuine offer to fuck off and never darken the door again? RfA would be a much better place if candidates, regardless of their suitability to be an administrator, were treated with respect. That doesn't mean that one shouldn't oppose or point out a candidate's flaws, just that they should do it in a way that doesn't leave a dedicated editor feeling useless. We treat vandals better—at least they're quietly blocked rather than insulted, belittled and made to feel worthless. HJ Mitchell  &#124;  Penny for your thoughts?   20:26, 16 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Well said! --Tryptofish (talk) 20:30, 16 January 2011 (UTC)
 * No, submitting oneself for RfA is a request to be given authority over other editors. Malleus Fatuorum 14:14, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

I think a little history is being missed here. Keepscases is a long-time RfA participant who is well-known for opposing candidates based on their userboxes. As a candidate, if you have a provocative userbox, you have three choices on how to deal with this: Now, if I were a Machiavellian type, and I had serious problems with my candidacy that I wanted to gloss over (like, say, copyright concerns or poor AfD closures), I might choose option #3, so as to lure the community into arguing over userboxes (on which, overwhelmingly, people oppose Keepscases' position) in order to distract !voters from the serious problems. Now I don't think Ctjf83 is a Machiavellian type at all – he seems quite sincere and principled – but it is interesting to note that some of the support !votes to come along are essentially opposes of Keepscases' oppose, and seem to miss entirely the quite serious issues brought up by, for example, Courcelles. 28bytes (talk) 20:32, 16 January 2011 (UTC)
 * 1) Remove the userbox prior to the RfA to avoid the issue altogether.
 * 2) Leave the userbox up, and if Keepscases opposes, say something to the effect of "I understand you feel that userbox is inappropriate, but I respectfully disagree. You have the right to your oppose, and I ask any of my supporters to please not argue the point here." After all, it's just one person's oppose; it's not likely to tip the balance of the RfA.
 * 3) Argue with him about the userbox, pulling in dozens of people to argue about it, generating hurt feelings and kilobytes of angry text that is eventually collapsed or moved to the talk page, sucking all the energy out of any attempts to analyze the candidate's qualifications themselves.
 * I, for one, just paid very serious attention to what Courcelles brought up. But, if you don't think the candidate is being Machiavellian, then don't bring it up as a hypothetical. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:51, 16 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Just to be clear, no, I don't think Ctjf83 is being Machiavellian, at all. The point was more aimed at people who were tempted to focus on the issue that was generating the most heat, at the expense of more serious concerns. The Machiavelli thought actually occurred to me yesterday as I had Ctjf83's RfA open in one browser window, and this article he lists as a GA in another. If you read that article, perhaps you'll understand why that thought came to mind. Regardless, feel free to ignore anything from "Now, if I were a Machiavellian type..." on; I think the point about how to (or how not to) respond to a Keepscases oppose stands on its own. 28bytes (talk) 20:59, 16 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Thanks. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:11, 16 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I'd be interested to see how the usual smiley-face drive-by supports will be weighed, including those that came before the revelation that the candidate has no idea how to do the one thing he most wants to do with the tools (close AfDs). But that's already been answered by many previous RfAs. They get full value. And HJ you yourself could make RfA a better place by not insulting people you've worked closely with by saying you agree that their beliefs are superstitions. --Mkativerata (talk) 20:42, 16 January 2011 (UTC)
 * As far as I can see, HJ has not even come close to suggesting that people's religious beliefs are superstitions. :S Orphan Wiki 22:00, 16 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Well if that's not what he meant with this statement, he should explain himself. Perhaps it was an innocent mistake and he was unaware of the offence it caused. Otherwise I have nothing more to say to him. I will give him the opportunity now.--Mkativerata (talk) 22:03, 16 January 2011 (UTC)
 * He stated that he didn't think there was anything wrong with the userbox. The fact that he agreed while holding that belief doesn't mean he was insulting other people's beliefs. I think he said "I agree with the userbox's sentiment" because he believed that there was nothing wrong with the userbox. However, this is just my take, and HJ might have a different response in mind. The Utahraptor Talk/Contribs 22:08, 16 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Yes, I also feel that there was no malice or hurt intended in HJ's comment. The point I think he was making was similar to the essence of the broader discussion. That to oppose on the basis of an unoffensive userbox is somewhat daft. But, like what Utahraptor has said, this is my take only. Orphan <font color="Tiffany Blue">Wiki 22:13, 16 January 2011 (UTC)
 * No. He said he agreed with the sentiment of the userbox, that sentiment being that belief in God is a superstition. It offends me on two levels: (a) it insults my intelligence to call my beliefs superstitions; (b) in my religion, superstition is a serious sin (see my diff above to explain more). Let HJ speak for himself. OrphanWiki, while your at it, you can retract "childishness" as well. Seeing stuff from HJ Mitchell and others hit me hard yesterday (look at the recent history of my talk page), much more so than seeing the juvenile userbox itself. --Mkativerata (talk) 22:17, 16 January 2011 (UTC)
 * (edit conflict) This whole business of stoning RfA candidates to death is childish! It appalls me! Why can't RfA be assessing their work, rather than their beliefs or anything to do with them as a person? Why, if you're allowed to have a Christian userbox, a Muslim one, a Catholic one, a Buddhist one or a userbox depicting any religion, can you not have an atheist one? I fail to see ANY offense caused by any of those boxes? <font color="Blue">Orphan <font color="Tiffany Blue">Wiki 22:24, 16 January 2011 (UTC)
 * This is just getting redundant, We are judging RFA candidate on their content work, not thier sexual orientation, religious beliefs, or other beliefs that you may not agree with, but are completely irrelevant to the encyclopedia. If your going to oppose an RFA for a silly userbox, why don't you do the community a favor, and don't vote at all.  T ofutwitch11  <font color="Orange">(T ALK ) 22:27, 16 January 2011 (UTC)

OrphanWiki and Mkativerata: I agree, OrphanWiki. I'm sorry you're offended, Mkativerata, and I understand why you're offended, being a devout Christian myself. But isn't RfA about judging a candidate's potential ability (or lack thereof) to use the administrator tools? People have become so nitpicky at RfA nowadays, they'll try to find even the simplest reasons to oppose. I'm not saying that you're being nitpicky, or that all oppose !votes are nitpicky, I'm just saying that nitpicky !votes are becoming more common. The Utahraptor Talk/Contribs 22:29, 16 January 2011 (UTC)
 * My point exactly. Thankyou for putting the discussion back on track. <font color="Blue">Orphan <font color="Tiffany Blue">Wiki 22:31, 16 January 2011 (UTC)

I am a bureaucrat here. Because I may potentially be involved in closing or discussion the closure of this RfA, I will not comment on my position on this discussion. Nor may my position on this topic necessarily influence where I come out on the closure. But I will speak for all bureaucrats in this regard: we try our best to be fair and prudent in our decisions. Kingturtle = (talk) 23:29, 16 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Yesterday I was confronted with my actions, and came to reassess my role in this mess. While my intentions were good, trying to support a good editor who was being hammered for a petty and irrelevant issue (for clarity; not the content of the userbox, but the weak assertion that this userbox somehow had anything to do with adminship.) However, while I was trying to do good, I was in fact also escalating the problem. While I was not alone in this, I still regret how it turned out, even though I know that I am likely to do it again in future RfAs for the same reasons . The point I'm trying to make is that we are all looking for this in our own perspectives, after the fact. I doubt that anyone here wanted to turn this into a firestorm, it happened because everyone wanted to express their opinions. Perhaps it's time that this component was displaced; that editors cast their votes on the main page, and people have to challenge said votes on the talk page. That would, at the very least, allow for the heat to be someplace where it can do less spinning out of control. Plus, I tend to trust the 'crats to be competant enough in judging votes.  S ven M anguard   <font color="FCD116">Wha?  00:03, 17 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Sven - just two points. The first -- a cynical strategic one for your own future RfA -- is that going into bat so hard for a candidate who is so obviously unqualified can reflect badly on you. When the inevitable examples of poor judgment and policy knowledge come out, like the NACs here, you can be left with your pants around your ankles. The second -- being involved in off-wiki communications is a dangerous minefield. It can give the impression that one is trying to procure on-wiki outcomes away from the public eye. I'm not saying that's what you were doing here, but it is something to be very careful about. (See the statement on my userpage for my own approach to off-wiki communications).--Mkativerata (talk) 00:40, 17 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Mkativerata: As to the first point, I voted in support of him, and chased after Keepscases, before the issues with his closings came up. As to the second point, I consider myself an ethical person. The IRC is a great tool, and one that I will continue to use, however your point is valid. While I do not believe any impropriety took place, creating the illusion of impropriety is almost just as bad. I will be more careful in the future.
 * As to me running for adminship, yes, it would be nice to have some of the tools, specifically the ability to clean up after myself at places like this, I do not see myself running for adminship in the foreseeable future.  S ven M anguard   <font color="FCD116">Wha?  01:02, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

Returning, briefly, to 28bytes's 3 options: Option 1 may not succeed, if Keepscases pores over the history of the candidate's userpage to look for evidence that they used "offensive" userboxes in the past. Also, since WikiProject Atheism is a hateful group, project members can expect an automatic oppose too. Since, obviously, Keepscases is entitled to ask silly questions and make peculiar opposes that generate a lot of drama, the easiest way forward is that atheists should hesitate before requesting the mop, and that wikipedia should make do without some good candidates. bobrayner (talk) 02:14, 17 January 2011 (UTC)
 * 1) Remove the userbox prior to the RfA to avoid the issue altogether.
 * 2) Leave the userbox up, and if Keepscases opposes, say something to the effect of "I understand you feel that userbox is inappropriate, but I respectfully disagree. You have the right to your oppose, and I ask any of my supporters to please not argue the point here." After all, it's just one person's oppose; it's not likely to tip the balance of the RfA.
 * 3) Argue with him about the userbox, pulling in dozens of people to argue about it, generating hurt feelings and kilobytes of angry text that is eventually collapsed or moved to the talk page, sucking all the energy out of any attempts to analyze the candidate's qualifications themselves.
 * Or we could institute the auto de fé. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:23, 17 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I guess my point is... it's one !vote. I can't imagine any scenario in which the bureaucrats would fail to promote a candidate they otherwise would have promoted if it weren't for a single oppose based on a userbox. It's the whole "someone is wrong on the Internet" phenomenon. Some people, you're just going to have to agree to disagree with. 28bytes (talk) 07:56, 17 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Incidentally, the tedder RfA that was discussed in the Gordonrox24 RfA you linked to provides a textbook example of approach #2. Keepscases opposed, tedder declined to argue with him (instead, he requested everyone be respectful about the issue), and he easily sailed through his RfA, final tally 66/4/2. I agree there's a lot to be learned by reviewing these old RfAs. 28bytes (talk) 08:32, 17 January 2011 (UTC)
 * How candidates handle opposes (generally) is a key part of passing RfA. And it's not a bad part of the system, as it is a demonstration of their capacity to handle heat in the job when they revert to the wrong revision or whatnot. The flaw in the system is the capacity for well-intentioned supporters to fan the flames. I'd appeal to well-intentioned supporters to limit their responding to/badgering of opposers, lest they sink their own ship. The opposer's talk page is a good place to go. This is especially so if you're unlikely to change their mind. --Dweller (talk) 11:41, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

With regards to 28bytes 'three options', there is a fourth: hope that the RFA community gets its act together and takes measures to prevent users disrupting RFAs with unreasonable opposes. It's happened before: anyone else remember User:DougsTech? User:Kmweber? Both caused absurd amounts of disruption and drama with their RFA opposes before eventually being blocked. Keepscases, regrettably, seems to be the latest incarnation of the same phenomenon. While I believe he is acting in good faith, and I wouldn't want to see him blocked, his RFA votes are so out of line with community standards, and cause so much disruption, that it's worth asking whether his continued participation at RFA is a net positive to the community. Robofish (talk) 11:48, 17 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Who is to say what is an "unreasonable" oppose"? You? Malleus Fatuorum 14:12, 17 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Malleus may have a point. What is considered unreasonable to some could be considered perfectly reasonable to others. The Utahraptor Talk/Contribs 14:17, 17 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Agreed. Robofish, I think the community already does that: if you count the "support just to oppose the oppose" !votes in this RfA, they more than compensate numerically, assuming an oppose is "worth" 3-4 supports. 28bytes (talk) 14:43, 17 January 2011 (UTC)
 * That oppose votes are worth anything at all is another of RfA's fictions. The trend is quite clearly to eliminate all opposes and opposers, by whatever means possible. Malleus Fatuorum 14:52, 17 January 2011 (UTC)
 * It has been stated before that there are many valid oppose !votes that should be taken into consideration. We aren't trying to get rid of every oppose !vote; without them, even the WP:SNOW candidates would be getting through. We're simply trying to eliminate the oppose !votes that are based on factors that are irrelevant in an RfA, such as the addition of a certain userbox. The Utahraptor Talk/Contribs 14:58, 17 January 2011 (UTC)
 * As Dweller suggests above, sometimes the most "unreasonable" oppose votes provide the best insight as to how a candidate will deal with conflict. 28bytes (talk) 15:03, 17 January 2011 (UTC)


 * That would be a far more credible argument if the support votes based on factors like "why not" or " I like him" were equally discounted, but they never will be, because basically RfA is a dishonest election. Malleus Fatuorum 15:08, 17 January 2011 (UTC)
 * To answer the above question "Who is to say what is an 'unreasonable' oppose?", the answer in the end is bureaucrats. Kingturtle = (talk) 15:17, 17 January 2011 (UTC)
 * That's not an answer, just a symptom of the problem. Bureaucrats are chosen because they are the most anodyne of editors, not because they have any particular prescience. Malleus Fatuorum 15:26, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

Looking back at how this talk thread began, I fear it illustrates the dangers of unintended consequences when raising a complaint in this talk. A well-intentioned effort to point out unfair opposition to the candidate may have actually brought out more scrutiny, and more opposition in the end. (Sigh.) --Tryptofish (talk) 19:45, 17 January 2011 (UTC)
 * That's a curious comment. Are you suggesting that it would be a good thing if candidates were subjected to less scrutiny? Malleus Fatuorum 19:57, 17 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Oh, sorry, no. I meant it would be a good thing if there were less talk on this talk page. Mea culpa, if the shoe fits, and all that. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:02, 17 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I find it interesting, albeit predicable, to see the usual gripes about the opposes. To see where the bile is in this RfA, one only needs to look at the support column. Oppose voters have been called "childish", "bigots", etc. But that's ok because supporters of an RfA can say whatever they like, or nothing at all. --Mkativerata (talk) 20:06, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

I found that RFA a difficult one. On one hand I was disgusted by the this-person-dares-express-their-belief-that-X-is-a-myth opposes, but on the other hand I find it hard to see the prominent boxes and the "I will not be harrassed" notice as anything other than a "make my day punk" style of drama-magnet. I would feel exactly the same whatever the nature of the religion, politics or sexuality being waved as a banner in this way.

I couldn't bring myself to join all the how-dare-you-express-your-atheism opposers, but I'm still uncomfortable about this, because that much attention-seeking indicates to me that the candidate lacks the maturity to be an effective admin. -- Brown HairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 20:17, 17 January 2011 (UTC)


 * Some time ago, I went through the userboxes on my page and removed a bunch of things which, although factually accurate, weren't really relevant to my editing activity. I suppose it's possible that something still on my page would offend someone — almost anything will probably offend someone — but hopefully not.  As for this particular candidate, he certainly has a right to be an atheist (just as I have a right not to be an atheist), but there are numerous userboxes available which communicate that status in a matter-of-fact, non-polemic fashion.   Rich wales (talk · contribs) 01:10, 18 January 2011 (UTC)


 * I've said it before and I'll say it again: as long as we allow any userboxen not directly related to what a person does here on Wikipedia they can and should be completely ignored in any and all discussion of the user, including RFA. I happen to think that 99.99% of userboxen are a senseless waste of space, but the community at large does not seem to agree and more silly little crufty details can be added via userbox each day. It makes WP more like MySpace if we post boxes about what TV we watch or if we like bananas. The reason always given for keeping this dreck is that it doesn't harm anything, and yet we have seen it repeatedly become an issue at RFA and elsewhere. Beeblebrox (talk) 02:59, 18 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I'm sure there's a "This user does not like userboxes" userbox around someplace you could use. Maybe even with a crossed-out UBX ! 28bytes (talk) 03:28, 18 January 2011 (UTC)
 * If an editor had a user box indicating they supported a fringe or immoral cause then I'd find it hard to ignore. Pro-fascism, pro-pedophilia, etc. Further, if they had user boxes which made it appear that they were outspoken activists for even a mainstream cause I'd also be concerned. But ultimately it would be their editing which would matter, not their userboxes.
 * On the general issue of admin's user pages, I think that as supposedly responsible members of the community whose pages are necessarily visited by others, anything that puts Wikipedia in a bad light or would cause discomfort could be a problem. IIRC, one admin was given a barnstar that included a picture of male genitalia, and he was eventually asked to remove it.     Will Beback    talk    03:38, 18 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I would say that most people are missing the point. Count the number of opposes based on userboxen. Now count the number of supports based on those opposes.  It's clear that the minority of folks who didn't like the userboxen didn't sink the election: the poor question answers, copyright issues, poor AfD closes, and the badgering of the opposers (even if not done by the candidate himself... odd to have partisans like that, but whatever) all painted a picture of a candidate who was clearly not a good fit at this time. The userbox wasn't even a nail in the coffin--it artificially prolonged the RfA by drawing the reviewers' eyes away from the candidate's substantial deficiencies, which are brought out in later opposes. One could theorize that those are all pretextual, and in fact crypto-opposes based on the userboxen, but the number of diffs provided seriously undermines the credibility of that argument. Jclemens (talk) 04:04, 18 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Yup. What Jclemens call the "crypto-opposes" are much more evident in GiantSnowman's RfA than in Ctjf83's.— S Marshall  T/C 12:18, 18 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Low hanging fruit is what killed this RfA. I'll be honest (as I said in my oppose) I didn't fully vet this candidate like I have some in the past, but I didn't have to.  There was enough low hanging fruit to send of multiple red flags. I do not think that user boxes would have been a major concern unless there is more to the story---unfortunately his first RfA showed that there was history there.  This made the user box issue a piece of low hanging fruit, right or wrong, a reason to oppose.  You then have his "Zero respect for essays" attitude, which again is a low hanging piece of fruit.  If he has zero respect for essays, that raises serious questions about somebody who is willing to work within the norms of the community.  Plus, it raises the question of why he feels the need to post that statement so prominently on his page?  Is he a person who got tired of being presented with essays that conflicted with what he wanted to do?  Numerous red flags---numerous pieces of low hanging fruit.  The drawing the line in the sane with "I won't be silenced" and "I've been harrassed" attitude, which raises red flags about how he handles conflict.  More low pieces of hanging fruit.  A few botches on AFD, more low pieces of hanging fruit.  The combative attitude in the RfA itself, again easy to grasp on to.  It is possible that beneath all of this, is a person who might be qualified to be an admin, but at no point were we presented with a case that might compel a person to dig deeper.  This RfA failed because the candidate/nom/supporters failed to convince anybody that their first impressions were wrong---in fact, the more the RfA went on, the more the the apparent validity of those easy to grasp onto concerns were solidified.--- Balloonman  NO! I'm Spartacus! 17:13, 18 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Just goes to show, first impressions really are everything. -- &oelig; &trade; 04:05, 19 January 2011 (UTC)


 * As a supporter of this RfA, I would like to echo what Balloonman said, albeit with a more cynical tone. Failing an RfA is not a big deal, and failure here merely indicates that you have yet to suck up to enough people to pass. Convince the masses that you are one of them, and anyone can pass here. Hide anything that presents you as holding an independent opinion, and literally kiss ass like it is going out of style, making sure to glom on to some obscure Wiki-process with a built in set of voters sure to support you the next time around, and you will pass with flying colors the next time through. For myriad reasons, many pointed out above, RfA is a flawed process. The flaw, of course, is that we insist on calling it an objective vetting process of community trust, rather than the simple popularity contest that it is. If you make yourself unpopular, or unknown, then you lose. If you make yourself popular, then you win. Simple as that. If you really want to be an admin, you need a thick enough skin to not give a damn about what anyone thinks of you, and you then need to set about managing the process no differently than you would a campaign for anything that you genuinely want to win. Hiberniantears (talk) 22:25, 18 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I don't think it's really necessary to kiss ass, or even be super-popular, in fact I think a low-profile is your best chance, so others can judge you strictly on your work. Just keep your nose clean and don't venture near controversial areas, and adminship should be a cinch. -- &oelig; &trade; 04:05, 19 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Well, keep your nose clean, don't venture near controversial areas, and survive the ritual flogging. The ritual flogging can be rather off-putting for those who are naturally clean-nosed and uncontroversial. Danger (talk) 08:24, 19 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I'd say 'keep your nose clean, don't venture near controversial areas, and don't answer the tricky optional questions'. Doing so, no matter how much thought you put into it, invariably seems to lead to more opposes than you would get for simply not answering the question. Robofish (talk) 13:04, 19 January 2011 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.

User:Looie496 request for recall
For your information, a request for recall of User:Looie496 has been initiated, if it passes then Looie496 may either voluntarily resign as an administrator, or alternatively run through a request for adminship. Please see User:Looie496/Recall for further details of the process, as well as the recall request itself. Administrators in good standing may support the recall at that page. - Kingpin13 (talk) 20:21, 19 January 2011 (UTC)


 * He chose to give up the mop. At least he didn't leave Wikipedia altogether.   Rich wales (talk · contribs) 04:39, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

Some new Stats!
These stats are very raw and have some error of course and are only based on GiantSnowman's current RFA. Ive done some number crunching (why i spent the time to tally this.....) and found, as of right now, 28/59 supports have ran in an RFA before, 21/32 opposes have ran in an RFA before. Now im not saying this is a trend all the time in every RFA, But ive seen on a few occasions where it seems people have wondered whether running in an RFA influences your voting and discussion behaviour (ie you tend to look for different things). Of course this is only one isolated incidence of statistics. Ottawa4ever (talk) 13:22, 20 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I don't know what those stats show, if anything. Maybe only who is interested in RFA versus who is not.  You can usually find a stat to support any notion.  A more interesting stat would be how many of opposing editors have been on the receiving end of admin misuse of tools or admin ineffective use of tools or double standards, but then, have fun trying to produce that stat.  Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 13:25, 20 January 2011 (UTC)
 * This stat alone took a bit too much time, The amount of time for what you propose...well.... but ya, isolated, this is one RFA event out of 100s of rfas out there is difficult to show much in trends if anything, but its(both actually) still an interesting thought i think to ponder. Ottawa4ever (talk) 13:33, 20 January 2011 (UTC)
 * To me, no more interesting than how many people who hang out at FAC have written an FA or people at GAN who have a GA; people congregate in their area of interest. Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 13:34, 20 January 2011 (UTC)
 * The issue at hand is not whether it is mostly admins or former candidates who are involved in the process (that would make sense in the way you describe), but whether admins or former candidates skew toward oppose voting. (Unfortunately, the statistics wouldn't get at why: perhaps admins expect more from admin candidates, but perhaps admins are hazing the newbies and failed candidates are bitter.) --Danger (talk) 20:26, 20 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I agree that the admn non-admin divide is potentially interesting, if only because we occasionally hear the theory that RFA is broken because the existing admins are keeping their "club" exclusive by making it difficult to join. I looked at one recent RFA and found that the support percentage among admins was slightly higher than among non-admins. I remember that some time ago someone did a more rigorous study and found that admins usually were as supportive as the average !voter, but were slightly more likely to oppose certain high profile controversial candidates. But I'm not surprised at Ottawa4ever's stats as they fit into my experience, which is that most people start participating in RFAs with some uncontentious votes such as per nom supports of "greenzone" candidates and only move on to opposing candidates who have majority support after they have a bit of RFA experience.  Ϣere Spiel  Chequers  23:58, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

RfA etiquette
RfAs are not battlegrounds. The topic of conversation within an RfA should focus on the candidate's statements, responses, and history. Within the RfA, your responses to and conversations with other editors should focus on the RfA candidate, the candidacy, clarifications, and interpretations of policy. If you have specific things to say outside of those topics to another editor, use that editor's talk page to start a dialog there. If you have complaints about things outside of those topics that you'd like to voice to the community at large, find the appropriate policy talk page (including this one), and voice it there. Lastly, whether you are or are not an administrator yourself, your tone, attitude and language in RfAs should reflect the sort of tone, attitude and language you'd like to see in administrators. So, no belittling, no insults, no taunting. Model civility. Kingturtle = (talk) 19:21, 20 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I support that, but the reason I think it won't work is that many see admins not just as janitors, but as constituting a kind of power structure on Wikipedia. IRL, it doesn't seem to work to ask for civility during elections to positions of actual power ... people hear it as "Yes, he's going to destroy civilization as we know it, but you're not allowed to say that", and they don't take it well.  I've got a long history of favoring ideas that others thought were crappy, so no one should take this seriously, but ... what if we ask all admins to try to follow these 2 rules? 1. Always choose your words carefully, because others may assume that just being an admin makes your opinion special, and 2. Never use the tools as if you believe that, because it isn't true ... that is, never use the tools in a "political" way on Wikipedia.  (There's a current recall request that (just my opinion) is an example what I'm talking about here, where an admin used the tools as a kind of "super-vote", but OTOH, I don't think we should hang any admin for one non-catastrophic offense any more than we hang anybody on Wikipedia for one non-catastrophic offense ... but we can show some tolerance and be firm on the principle at the same time.)  I think where people get tripped up on this is, they say that clearly admins are in some sense part of the power structure on Wikipedia, so why should we pretend they aren't?  What they're missing is that anyone who has built "reputation" in some sense on Wikipedia becomes one of the influential people ... and that's okay, because reputation is a slippery thing ... you can have a good reputation on one page and not another, with one person and not another, on one day and not another.  Tools OTOH are not slippery ... when you block someone, they're blocked.  TLDR summary: if we could show that promoting people to adminship does not in general "increase their political power", and get people to believe that, then RFAs might become more civil. - Dank (push to talk) 20:28, 20 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Ah, but if adminship wasn't about "political power" and was, in fact, "no big deal", recalling an admin wouldn't be seen as "hanging" someone. --Mkativerata (talk) 20:30, 20 January 2011 (UTC)
 * "if we could show that promoting people to adminship does not in general 'increase their political power', and get people to believe that ... " then you'd be a politician, or perhaps a used car salesman, as it's clearly untrue. Malleus Fatuorum 20:44, 20 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Is it? Succeeding at RFA increases "reputation" in some sense ... but any big vote would do that. Just speaking for myself, I don't care and often don't know who's an admin, I value people's comments based on what they're saying and what I've seen them say before. - Dank (push to talk) 21:06, 20 January 2011 (UTC)
 * P.S. Work with me here, Malleus, because I could easily see us being on the same side on this one. - Dank (push to talk) 21:13, 20 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Perhaps you don't care because you know that you're also armed? Malleus Fatuorum 21:18, 20 January 2011 (UTC)
 * If you're referring to my rapier wit, then thanks ... I've never used my admin tools as weapons, and would be quickly trouted if I ever did. - Dank (push to talk) 21:57, 20 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Once you've been subjected to a 10-second block then you may begin to understand what I'm referring to. Malleus Fatuorum 22:16, 20 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I believe we're on the same side on this one; I believe the community should get tough on admins who use the tools to accomplish a purpose that they wouldn't be able to achieve or haven't achieved by dispute resolution. That's using the tools as a "super-vote". - Dank (push to talk) 23:22, 20 January 2011 (UTC)
 * There are no signs that I've seen of "the community" getting tough on admins. Quite the reverse in fact, excuses being being made for their all too often poor behaviour. Malleus Fatuorum 01:00, 21 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I think the reason people see adminship as such a big deal because of what you have to do to get the sysop flag. At RFA they are inspecting everything you have done, everytime you have hit that save button. If something was "not a big deal" would we go through all that work before letting them do it? I am not saying adminiship is or is not a big deal, I'm just throwing in my 2cents T ofutwitch11  <font color="Orange">(T ALK ) 20:50, 20 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Unfortunately, many editors now see passing RFA as evidence of a high order of political skills. Hawkeye7 (talk) 23:33, 20 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I read this as more of a comment on the threaded discussions beneath the votes that stray from being about the candidate to being about the voter (and then about the person who commented on the voter, and back again). However my own opinions may be coloring my reading.--Cube lurker (talk) 20:55, 20 January 2011 (UTC)


 * What Kingturtle said. Not insulting, belittling or taunting people shouldn't be a controversial suggestion. 28bytes (talk) 20:58, 20 January 2011 (UTC)


 * By the way, have we seen any recent examples of insults, belittling or taunting? I can't recall. We have to be careful not to confuse those three things with genuine, good faith and proper scrutiny. --Mkativerata (talk) 21:04, 20 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I've sure seen plenty, aimed both at the candidates and the candidates' critics. No sense hauling out diffs, though; it's probably best just to try to follow Kingturtle's excellent advice for future RfAs. 28bytes (talk) 21:11, 20 January 2011 (UTC)
 * The "excellent advice" is telling everyone how to suck eggs. If there is an actual problem then the offending users should be specifically tapped on the shoulder. --Mkativerata (talk) 21:15, 20 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Some folks who I've thought would be receptive to being tapped on the shoulder, I've tapped. In other cases, shoulder-tapping usually earns one a face-slap, so a general plea towards kindness and respect, as Kingturtle has offered, is probably the best route to go in those cases. 28bytes (talk) 21:22, 20 January 2011 (UTC)
 * People who need a tap on the shoulder will always react  either with  aggression, or with dumbfounded, wide-eyed innocence. The truly amazing thing is that  some of the contributors to this very discussion page (some it  long since archived, some not) who advocate change, are among the regular, major posers of inappropriate questions and drama mongering on the RfAs. When I  put this messy collection  of notes together,  I spent many  hours going through  every  RfA from 2010,  and my  aim was to  extract a catalogue of inappropriate questions. However,  I  can  honestly  say that  I  came across some of the best examples of incivility, insults, belittling, and taunting, such  as one can find on any  talk  page on any  day, and some of it  from  admins.--Kudpung (talk) 22:31, 20 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I think it's a good idea to assemble questions as you did, summarize them, and ask the community to come up with norms. That's a better approach than asking person X why they asked question Y, which is more likely to provoke a defensive reaction. - Dank (push to talk) 23:28, 20 January 2011 (UTC)


 * Kingturtle - You sum up your little tirade with .."no belittling".. and yet you open it with direct and accusatory statements aimed to the community at large; we are not toddlers (however much some people may act like school children) and I for one do not appreciate your effort to put us, metaphorically, on the naughty spot. If you want to engage in debate about the undeniable lack of courtesy and good faith at RFA kindly do so in a manner that does not show you embracing these very faults at the outset. Pedro : Chat  23:01, 20 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I'd actually rather that crats say ... maybe not these exact words, but something like this. In general, I think it makes the community less uptight when we get at least a little insight into which arguments the crats discount and why.  I think it's admirable that none of them have gone into any great detail about what they like and what they don't, but I always find the little dribs and drabs of information useful. - Dank (push to talk) 23:40, 20 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Bureaucrats have no more "authority" than any user of this site to say how people should act - we have policies for that. When one turns up, as Kingturtle has done here, issuing edicts (mostly in the second person personal - "If you have complaints....If you have specific thing to say....") - they (indeed any editor) risks making themselves look foolish (as Kingturtle has done here IMO). We have enough jumped up editors on this site, admins and bureaucrats, whose delusional concept of self-importance is harming Wikipedia far more than vadals, trolls and 4chan. You do not go around telling people what to do in this manner - it's rude, ignorant and disrespectful. Pedro :  Chat  23:52, 20 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I didn't like the words KT used (and I should have said that). But regardless of how they say it, I do appreciate getting some insight into how RFAs are "scored". - Dank (push to talk) 00:52, 21 January 2011 (UTC)
 * RfA is a vote, except in rare circumstances, and it would be well for that to be recognised. All the talk about discretionary areas is bollocks. The only decision the bureaucrats make is whether or not the candidate is generally popular. Malleus Fatuorum 01:10, 21 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Of course I see the weight in what you are saying. But, User:Taxman promoted me in 2006 from the discretionary zone at a time when I was, I think, generally unpopular, perhaps rightly so. So, it's either that I was a "rare circumstance" or that things have went downhill since 2006. Or both, perhaps. --John (talk) 04:18, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

Kingturtle 19:21, 20 January 2011. Agree. I think temporary banning of uncivil editors from RFA may help achieve these ideals. Someone should tap the shoulders of the uncivil. Who? Ordinary editors arguing about civility tends to become unproductive. Bureaucrats – no, they are not our keepers. The nominator – no, not unless nominators were not partisan. Perhaps RFA could use elected clerks, clerks who function more as moderators than as apprentice bureaucrats. (Moderator and bureaucrat are incompatible roles – you can’t judge a consensus that you steer).

Dank refers the use of block/unblock as a super-vote. I think he is right, and that this sort of thing is very bad form especially in how it looks to ordinary non-expert wikipedians. However, this can be readily fixed by better codification of use of block/unblock in policy, along the lines of “do not block/unblock without explicit consensus if there is already an active discussion on the matter”.

Adminship is a big deal, for most, in terms of perception and self-perception, and of the psychological hurdle, unlike any other, of putting yourself personally up for examination, and because of the permanence of adminship.

Mkativerata 21:04, 20 January 2011, “insults, belittling or taunting” are not well separated from “genuine, good faith and proper scrutiny” for young, amateur volunteer editors (applies either side). --SmokeyJoe (talk) 02:43, 21 January 2011 (UTC)


 * Joe, I am in no way calling for bans of editors from RfA. I'm suggesting that editors be more civil in RfAs (most already are) and that side conversations take place outside RfAs. But these actions need to come from the efforts of the editors themselves. It's their choice. Also, Mkativerata makes a very important clarification which I should have included. Genuine, good faith and proper scrutiny is essential to the RfA process. Civility does not preclude such scrutiny. Kingturtle = (talk) 05:38, 21 January 2011 (UTC) P.S. Kudpung, you deserve major kudos for that thorough analysis you put together.
 * Kingturtle, you certainly made no such call, that was entirely me. I guess that I am less optimistic than you that the last of the incivil will cease incivility though being asked nicely.   --SmokeyJoe (talk) 05:49, 21 January 2011 (UTC)


 * There have been over 2,500 commentators (still watchers) to  this RfA talk page since it  started. Theoretically,  irrespective of who  is talking today, or this week, that should provide a big enough pool of !voters for each RfA. But some introspection is called for. Kudpung (talk) 06:05, 21 January 2011 (UTC)
 * (continued - got  truncatied) I  don't  think the idea of a topic ban for incivility and/or irrelevancy should be entirely  ruled out as a possibility  for cleaning up the process. Admins are at least 'supposed' to lead by example, and civility  and intelligence  ought  to  be expected from the rest of the !voters too. The RfA process should be the very Wikipedia model of poise and dignity all round,  instead of the battleground it has been allowed to become. Kudpung (talk) 06:18, 21 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Someone picks a fight on the playground, teacher wades in, asks who started it, and suspends someone from school. Sure, that stops that fight and maybe some future fights.  But the teacher saw one event at one time, so really wasn't in a position to decide who was in the wrong, and it takes two to fight anyway.  If the student who got suspended felt they were wronged ... and they always do ... then they've got even more reason to fight, they'll just wait til the other kid leaves school to do it.  Protonk had a nice analysis of why topic bans are much less helpful than generally believed, I'll go ask him about it. - Dank (push to talk) 13:42, 21 January 2011 (UTC)
 * It's rarely good for a teacher to knee-jerk suspend someone. It is useful if a much present moderator has some authoritative backup in his pocket in case his moderating advice is spurned.  In my school experience, the effectiveness of the teacher negatively correlated with the teacher's application of discipline, but no one doubted the best teachers' ability to apply discipline.  Where is Protonk's analysis?  --SmokeyJoe (talk) 14:01, 21 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I've asked him to weigh in, I'll let him produce it if he wants to ... he may want to adapt it to this particular question. - Dank (push to talk) 14:09, 21 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Dan has asked me to leave a comment here. I'm not sure I have too much to add beyond the somewhat undirected ramblings I left on my talk page.  I should state outright that 6-9 months ago when keepsakecases' (or whatever their username is) actions at RfA brought up the possibility of a topic ban, I supported it.  If I were to make the same choice again I probably would not support a topic ban, but you only have my word on that--the record exists otherwise.  I am also grudgingly coming to support Malleus' view that RfA ought to be somewhat more adversarial.  However I don't think we know how to get there from here.  I would love to see RfA become a forum for serious thought about a candidate's ability to wield the mop effectively and fairly, but most of our lunges toward a discussion like that end up being petty and dispiriting.  I also--apologies to Malleus--see most of the tough questions at RfA as a means to extract a pound of flesh from some would be admin for debts incurred by admins long since discredited or desysopped.  The same seems to be true with this perennial userbox discussion.  Should we be able to engage admin candidates about the content of their userpage insofar as it might relate to future conduct?  Yes.  Have we managed to do so without engaging in internecine warfare and bullshit?  Nope.  As Dan said on my talk page, I didn't give any clear guidance.  There is, as always, the pablum of "trust your judgement", but no real indication that judgement should or shouldn't be influenced by a salient (as it is only the userboxes which stick out that we end up dealing with) userbox. Protonk (talk) 20:41, 21 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I don't know why you believe that I think RfA should be "more adversarial", as nothing could be further from the truth. Malleus Fatuorum 22:56, 21 January 2011 (UTC)
 * The "extracting a pound of flesh for the debts incurred by admins long since discredited" that you perceive could be dealt with very easily by having a proper desysopping process in place, or perhaps fixed term limits. To the extent that seems vanishingly unlikely then RfA will continue to be what it is. Malleus Fatuorum 22:59, 21 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I'm not using a negative connotation of "adversarial". I simply mean that you and others want RfA to be a place where opposing views have the same default consideration as supporting views and where a strong discussion can take place between voters as to the merits of the candidates rather than dismissing it as contrary to the somewhat vestigial notion of "no big deal".  I hope I don't need to bring out a mess of duffs in support of that claim, but if you insist I will do so.  As for the pound of flesh issue, I think you are validating my perception.  It is manifestly not the fault of a new admin candidate that we don't have a mandatory recall process, but you want to bring that limitation to bear in a discussion which should at least nominally be about an individual.  Whether that is wrong or right is probably an open question, but I don't think it is terribly productive. Protonk (talk) 23:13, 21 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I agree with your legalistic definition of "adversarial", and that is indeed my view, at least until the notion of "no big deal" is either made tangible by some kind of easy-in easy-out process or consigned to the rubbish bin of history. But please stop putting words in my mouth; it is neither my fault nor the candidate's that there is no effective recall process. Therefore anyone putting themself forwards at RfA has to expect that that may well be a factor in their candidacy. The unfairness here isn't to the candidate, it's to that mythical community. Malleus Fatuorum 23:33, 21 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I'm not trying to put words in your mouth, so for that I'm sorry. But what I am hearing is that a systematic or community problem (no real mandatory recall) creates a system whereby admins are relatively hard to dislodge from their position and so commensurately you argue the process should reflect that incentive.  What I'm saying is that the actual work to change RfA in order to meet this expanded threshold might be damaging or unpleasant for individual candidates who have little to no control over the existence of a community norm about recall.  Agency matters in this discussion.  If someone is treating an individual candidate a certain way because of a perceived incentive issue then that is fine, but the actual treatment should be discussed and not explained away recursively to the community incentive problem.  Again I should stress that I am sympathetic to the adversarial stance in theory but implementing it more often than not ends up resulting in people being nasty to one another. Protonk (talk) 00:21, 22 January 2011 (UTC)

Suggest taking a deep breath, everyone, when commenting here or !voting in an Rfa. I have been urging moderate language here for some time, if intermittently, and so would like to endorse the original post by Kingturtle that starts this thread. Indeed, the post itself is a model example of how to gently admonish with complete civility. Rfa will be a 'hot button' topic for the forseeable future at Wikipedia, so as the saying goes, let's try to chill. Jusdafax  23:55, 21 January 2011 (UTC)


 * Contributors have a tendency not to read long threads such as this from  the very  beginning  when they  chime in, so I'll just repost three of my earlier comments fo their benefit:
 * The RfA process should be the very Wikipedia model of poise and dignity all round, instead of the battleground it has been allowed to become.
 * The truly amazing thing is that some of the contributors to this very discussion page (some it long since archived, some not) who advocate change, are among the regular, major posers of inappropriate questions and drama mongering on the RfAs.
 * (on RfA) I can honestly say that I came across some of the best examples of incivility, insults, belittling, and taunting, such as one can find on any talk page on any day, and some of it from admins
 * Kudpung (talk) 03:07, 22 January 2011 (UTC)

Section break
I support Kingturtle's comments. Short of the past five months of spending my time on other language wikis and projects, I've read every RfA I've seen since March of 2006 when I supported Tigershark. Levels of vitriol with some candidates can be expected. So can rediculiously worded trick questions and all of the other perennial issues. As often stated, RfA is the worst system we have aside from all other systems.

Now, to my support of Kingturtle's comments. I've had the opportunity to spend a lot of time during the fundraising drive working with "smaller" wikis. I've learned a great deal about the admin selection processes for less sprawling wikis, and fundamentally they have an advantage. However, the English Wikipedia has enormous impact with instruction creep. We often take our habits over to other wikis, such as a trend we're working to quell in the volunteer response team process.

So I suppose my point in support of this bureaucrat's comment is that we need to stop grilling/roasting RfA candidates. Take some time, look through contributions. If you find problematic edits that aren't problematic but concerning, straight up ask them on their talk page. If they are enough for you to oppose, just oppose and don't fish for a bad response. These are simple ways to make RfA a much smoother place. There will be controversy, but after a couple years of expecting 20 "optional" questions to candidates- most of which are irrelevent to block, protect, delete, and AGF- we need to step back and start being a little more welcoming to hands. Administrators are not the cabal. Keegan (talk) 00:06, 24 January 2011 (UTC)


 * Yes, I think we can all agree a request for adminship has become too much of a grilling due to ever rising standards. That has basically been the main topic of discussion here on this page for the past few years. In the mean time, nothing has changed for the better however.--Atlan (talk) 00:27, 24 January 2011 (UTC)
 * If we all agree on that, why can we not ask editors to back off and enforce our desire for a healthy community and have it heeded with appropriate respect? We've been talking about it for years and I've failed to see an explanation for why we're not doing it.  It's up to the community, we have no higher power.  Keegan (talk) 05:29, 24 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Because there's no way to get rid of the bad pennies, simple. Regular editors are routinely blocked for the most trivial of reasons yet administrators have a job for life, no matter how abusive they turn out to be. Malleus Fatuorum 05:36, 24 January 2011 (UTC)
 * We haven't talked in a while, so I'll engage :) How abusive have I been?  Keegan (talk) 07:23, 24 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I'll say it again for the third (or fourth) time: There will be no  change as long as  some of the contributors to this very discussion page (some it long since archived, some not) who advocate change, are among the regular, major posers of inappropriate questions and drama mongering on the RfAs. Shame I  can't  list  the names. Kudpung (talk) 07:11, 24 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Instead of listing names, perhaps you could go to their talk pages and share your concerns with them there, person-to-person? I haven't seen any of the RfA questions I've asked appear on your list yet, but if you're considering adding any, I know I'd be much happier discussing your concerns and my rationale for asking them one-on-one than to see them posted on a "wall of shame." 28bytes (talk) 07:28, 24 January 2011 (UTC)
 * You know I would never commit the indiscretion of posting the names. It's comforting  however to  know that  some introspection  is taking  place and people are looking  to  see if they  can  recognise their questions on  my sub page ;) As far taking  it up  with  them  on  their talk  pages, you've gotta be kidding - I  already  have enemies enough who are going to  ask  me a bunch  of trick  and silly  questions on  my  own RfA! Kudpung (talk) 07:46, 24 January 2011 (UTC)
 * RfA standards will not change until consensus on the role of admins has been reached. Anecdotally, I would suggest that a healthy majority of people hold the extremely broad view that adminship needs reviewing in some way, but equally that a majority of people believe any review would end in an inconclusive mess, and therefore that it isn't worth doing. So we're stuck with the status quo. As a consequence, this page tends to descend into a discussion over whether supporters' standards are too low because they rightly or wrongly see admin numbers as a problem to be solved, or whether opposers' standards are too high because they rightly or wrongly fear abuse or rubber-stamped incompetence if they let any but the very best through RfA.


 * As I've been saying for some time, I believe that the answer is to separate who we trust to use the tools within a defined set of parameters (speedy deletions and what have you), and who we deem capable of making difficult judgement calls, such as gauging consensus. But heaven forbid that we do that, or we'll end up with a cries of a hierarchy. As if one doesn't already exist. —WFC— 11:59, 24 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I agree with your first paragraph but I'm not so sure of your second. In my experience RFAs rarely fail over difficult judgement calls, though perhaps they fail over concerns that younger, newer or less active editors would be less likely to have good judgement. But I'm struggling to think of the last RFA that failed because though we'd trust someone to use the delete, block and protect buttons on "routine" matters we as a community don't trust them on the difficult calls. If that was a common oppose reason, and if we could readily identify certain types of difficult calls, then perhaps we could fix RFA by upbundling such calls to the crats. But I'm no longer sure either that such a change is viable or that it would fix RFA's problems.  Ϣere Spiel  Chequers  12:55, 24 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Making sensitive judgment calls is the one area where RfA candidates have least previous experience. It's an administrative area in which every sysop has had to learn on the job. Theoretically, the most conscientious newly promoted admins would continue to solicit advice from their peers before making a bad call. My own sketchy analysis of all the 2010 RfA tends to show that many of the oppose !votes are from picky  participants who single out one or two misapplied CSD, then yell 'Totally  incompetent!' The irony is that every day I come across experienced admins making  the same errors,  and even worse: breaches of civility. The other main  reason  to  oppose a candidate is for either not  answering  the trick  questions 100% correctly, or providing  a neat surprise answer that the questioner did not expect. In both instances, these are again items that even experienced admins get  wrong from time to time. Not all  RfA candidates intend to  get  very  involved in the controversial areas, and indeed, it's not mandatory -  we're all  volunteers. Kudpung (talk) 13:18, 24 January 2011 (UTC)


 * One of our most recent candidates was someone I would class as being a very good candidate for the janitorial side of adminship, but for want of a better phrase a very poor candidate for AfD, which incidentally he wants to work in. And I think that's quite a common theme. Just because few people explicitly state that they have concerns over judgement doesn't mean to say that it isn't a common concern. —WFC— 15:05, 24 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Re to Kudping, my experience as an opposer, and one who often focuses on candidate's CSD tags, is that one or two misapplied CSD tags are unlikely to be worth making an issue over, in fact I've been known to support despite finding an isolated error. For an RFA to be derailed due to concerns about CSD tagging there have to be enough recent examples to indicate a problematic pattern. I would hope that in such circumstances people would see my oppose as being focussed on one or more areas where I thought the candidate too heavy handed, as opposed to considering the candidate "'Totally incompetent!'", something I have rarely if ever thought of any Wikimedian, and I hope that even where I've thought it I've managed to hold my tongue.
 * As for WFC, yes that's a fair point, but I think AFd is one of the areas where it is possible to see how an RFA candidate would make sensitive judgement calls, especially if they participate in AFDs that are close calls. Another is AN/I and I can think of candidates who have come unstuck over involvement there as well. But IMHO CSD, AIV and UAA should rarely involve difficult calls.  Ϣere Spiel  Chequers  16:45, 24 January 2011 (UTC)
 * My point exactly. —WFC— 16:46, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

If no one runs in the next 7 hours, then we'll have had 3 mops handed out in January, after a total of one in December. If February continues the trend, then I'll hope that most of us will at least be able to agree on a sense of urgency, if nothing else. - Dank (push to talk) 17:16, 24 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Point taken, but "urgency" won't solve things. I think most people accept that something needs to happen, and it would be nice if it were to happen quickly. But history shows that a proposal devised today and made tomorrow will inevitably be sunk the day after. —WFC— 17:51, 24 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Anyone know how fast we're currently losing active admins? - Dank (push to talk) 17:57, 24 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Ask someone with technical knowledge and toolserver access to cross reference the list of usernames active in the past 30 days with the list of people that have the admin rights. It's apparently easy to generate each list independently, but cross referencing them is harder, and I would think might take time and manual labor. That or your question was rhetorical. Either way, less important than the number of admins running is the question of "is [admin related] shit getting done?" If that answer is no, then we have a problem. If that answer is yes, we have much less of one.  S ven M anguard   <font color="FCD116">Wha?  18:06, 24 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Taking a peek at, the inactive number seems to be relatively stable over the last month. However, as Sven notes, it doesn't show the whole picture. An admin will be listed as "active" or "semi-active" by making an edit within the past three months, but they might have done nothing administrative. – xeno <sup style="color:black;">talk 18:09, 24 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Yes, that approach overstates the number of truly active admins. I've been active as an editor in the past 30 days, but I long ago ceased to be an "active" admin and have used the tools only very rarely for the past year or more. In fact, I would have given them up long ago if not for the ability to see deleted revisions, which I find very useful. It might be more useful to pull the admin usernames from the block/protection/deletion logs for the last 30 days to get a better idea of how many people are actually doing administrative jobs. MastCell Talk 18:12, 24 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Generic yawn* —WFC— 18:22, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

Sometimes getting worried is the better bet
We had 117 mops handed out in 2009 and 75 in 2010, and every time someone makes a chart, the number of "truly active" admins has been trending downward, so we must be losing faster than we're gaining, so I'll go with a rough estimate of losing 10 active admins per month, compared with 4 new admins in November, 1 in December, and 3 (probably) in January. Up till now, I've supported those who say that there's no actual crisis, and acting like there is a crisis when there isn't one is likely to produce a bad outcome. But it's actually getting a little scary, now. I've heard several reasons "it ain't so", and I don't find them persuasive:
 * "At the point where jobs aren't getting done, then I'll worry": that's about one year too late to worry. If we were a for-profit company, we could just hire people when we need them, but we can't tell a volunteer: "Ok, we're short on admins, so we'd like for you to donate a staggering amount of your free time over the next year and learn all the skills while being welcoming and helpful to everyone you meet, and then we'll give you a mop so you can work even harder."  This is a volunteer project; all we can do is pull, not push.
 * "If we have fewer admins, then non-admins will pick up the slack": I believed this with all my heart, and I've done everything I could to make this happen. I've given out barnstars for admin-related chores and tried to get others to do the same, and I tried to get volunteers interested in sub-admin jobs such as "clerkship".  Some volunteers are actually interested; the problem is that the community has some kind of fundamental distrust of, or disinterest in, giving volunteers the kind of recognition and support that would make "sub-admin" jobs attractive.
 * "If the jobs aren't getting done, then the Foundation will just have to hire people to do what's needed. They've got plenty of goodwill and money now.": Can't happen.  The Foundation has important legal defenses concerning copyright, indecency and defamation violations that depend critically on the fact that their employees are not involved with content (in any serious way).
 * "Google, Facebook and others rely on Wikipedia to make them look better, and they've got more money than most countries. They'll never let us go under": Right, that's the problem, they've got all the incentive in the world to change Wikipedia in a way that increases their value and decreases the value of their competitors.  If we ever become vulnerable, I have no doubt they'll be there in a heartbeat to "help" us ... help us become more like them and less like Wikipedia. - Dank (push to talk) 18:55, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

Personally, I don't enjoy anything vaguely resembling working on "RFA reform", I only get enjoyment out of working on and reviewing articles these days. But at some point ... probably the end of February, unless we get a sharp uptick in new mops ... the risk of losing it all is going to outweigh other factors, at least for me. - Dank (push to talk) 18:55, 24 January 2011 (UTC)


 * This isn't an RfA-specific problem, so I don't think you can fix it by tweaking RfA. The number of active contributors has been declining steadily, so the pool of potential admin candidates is smaller. The supply of people who want to commit their volunteer time to building an online encyclopedia is limited (although we pretend that it's not). We lose good editors all the time, in large part because we treat them as expendable and replaceable. To get more RfA candidates and more admins, you need to start at the bottom, with this project's dysfunctional culture. We need to treat good editors as valuable resources rather than expendable drones, and make active efforts to support and retain them. We need to make Wikipedia an appealing place for people who are interested and committed to creating an encyclopedia - because right now, it's more appealing to people who enjoy protracted flame wars and political grudge matches. If we do those things, then the pool of editors will grow and improve, and you'll see more and better RfA candidates. MastCell Talk 19:04, 24 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I couldn't agree more that what's important is the volunteer's environment in the months before they run for RFA, not what happens at RFA. However: RFA is (sadly) unique; it's extremely difficult for a volunteer to get RFA-level recognition and feedback at any point before RFA, and many experiments to change that have failed.  Fixing RFA won't be sufficient to solve the problem, but it will probably be necessary. - Dank (push to talk) 19:27, 24 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Each year we don't start with zero admins. We start with all the mops from previous years and add to them. Let's see the number of admins each year and see if the total is going up or down. My feeling is that it's going up. A few are de-sysoped, a few leave, but we make more and more. Some real figures like number of active admins are required for each year. Regards, SunCreator (talk) 19:10, 24 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Agreed. This was a back-of-the-envelope calculation; we need better numbers. - Dank (push to talk) 19:27, 24 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Working on some charts, may or may not get something complete. However, one thing which is obvious - the active admins has been heading pretty steadily down since around April 2008 - Kingpin13 (talk) 20:09, 24 January 2011 (UTC)
 * The scariest numbers I've heard are the ratios between active editors and total articles. If I remember correctly, it's just under 1 editor to 1000 articles. Perhaps, and I know I'm going to get flogged for this, Wikipedia is just too big. In an effort to cover everything, we have tens of thousands of pages of nothing, nobodies, nonsense. We love to pretend that we don't have the problems that other encyclopedias do, specifically that we have infinite space. Well, if Britannica wanted to include more, they could, but they don't because they realize that at a certain point, having more quantity means having less quality. We're always going to have staffing issues and quality issues, but part of the problem is that we just have thousands of pages of what is ultimately junk. A backlog of 300,000 unsourced pages, dozens of other backlogs of major issues, the vast majority on pages of interst to only a tiny number, often one, person. Yes, we have culture issues, but I think what's sapping the most out of Wikipedia is the bloat. It needs to go.  S ven M anguard   <font color="FCD116">Wha?  20:22, 24 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Wouldn't the actual problem there be that the editors who created those articles, and presumably had an interest in them, have left? How many wrote a few articles on specialized subjects and were driven off by the culture? How many have contributed just one article, had it speedied, been templated, and never returned? Maybe keeping more editors around, rewarding them for their contributions, training them as editors and even making them admins if they won't break the whole place would result in a lower articles-to-editors ratio.  Jim Miller  See me 21:11, 24 January 2011 (UTC)
 * When I say bloat, I'm not talking about "specialized subjects." I'm talking about crap. We have tons of non-notable albums, no name politicians, "subjects of local interest" (i.e. tiny village block parties), and pages on every episode of many television shows. There is a difference between bloat and good content, but that is blurred by people that see deleting anything as bad.  S ven M anguard   <font color="FCD116">Wha?  00:58, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

Moving things back towards admins (since that's what this page is meant for), here I have done some graphs, basically just a bunch of charts showing various stats over time which I thought might be of interest, all taken from User:Rick Bot's editing history (check the times on the individual graphs, they are different, this means that graphs combining others (i.e. the Semi-active and active graph and the Admins graph) are only accurate to within a day or so (all of them are only rough, and may by slightly botched in places)... ;). I also still have all the raw data on my computer if anyone wants to see that - Kingpin13 (talk) 21:13, 24 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Okay, if the amount of active admins are going down, or contributors overall, etc, why do we make it so hard to become an administrator? If we need more, why are we stopping perfectly good candidates from getting a few extra buttons here and there to do a few extra things because they mess up every now and again, why, why, why, and why again. We all make mistakes, even the most "experienced" admins; but they come out like never before in RFA. If adminiship was really not a big deal, RFA would not be like it is today. Just my opinion. T ofutwitch11  <font color="Orange">(T ALK ) 21:17, 24 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Because not everyone agreed (I didn't) that we had an actual crisis, and other considerations seemed more important to some ... making sure that admins respect content creators, or respect different points of view, or don't get ban-happy. Those were and are all perfectly reasonable considerations, but I really don't think we have any regular voters who, faced with an actual, palpable threat to Wikipedia, aren't going to be willing to engage in some kind of dialogue and compromise.  What they're not going to do is say "Right, we've been the problem the whole time, and none of our concerns were valid."  If compromise is going to work, we're all going to have to put some serious time into understanding various opposing positions, and searching for a way to make everyone equally unhappy with the final result. - Dank (push to talk) 21:29, 24 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Some of the reasons Tofu, as I've mentioned many times before, are that many editors are possibly not much good at anything very much, so they  go to RfA, where they  don't understand much either, and enjoy throwing their weight about. Then there are a few types of newly  created (and older) admins: those who lose all interest in the system that got them the bit, and we never see them !voting on RfA or commenting here, and there are the ones that get or got  the bit fairly easily and then start fazing the good faith candidates with silly and/or trick  questions (and who sometimes don't even know the right answer themselves), and there are others who go to RfA polls to  be able to be uncivil with impunity. The bar is not too high,  but it's difficult to get the bit because of the imbalance between the serious and the flippant judgment calls on  RfA. Kudpung (talk) 21:49, 24 January 2011 (UTC)


 * Sven Manguard and Jim Miller weren't so far of topic at all. 300,000 junk or very poor articles is due very much to the imperfections of our New Page Patrolling system. If people aren't reporting enough CSD, AfD, Copyvio, and SPI, etc., then it appears as if the incidences are low and all is well. Statistics often have a hidden grey area.
 * Then we recently even have editors who suggest vociferously that NPP is an unnecessary project!  If we had effective NPP and SPI watchers (for example), the truly active admins we have today would be completely swamped. Kudpung (talk) 22:05, 24 January 2011 (UTC)


 * This question comes up periodically, usually prompted by a release of yearly data or a paucity of recent admin candidates. Invariably, as Dan points out, a predominant response is to ask where the emergent crisis is.  Rationalizations (some true, some a bit contrived) are trotted out.  We have rollback, we have bots, we have the edit filter.  Each of these tools empowers regular editors and reduces the demand for admin action (esp. the edit filter).  This is an incredibly difficult point to rebut because you have only two possible strategies.  You can find an actual crisis and use that as a counter-example or you can argue that a crisis is unnecessary for action.  Both responses have troubles; the latter being particularly difficult to support as we can imagine hundreds of WP issues without incipient crises where urgency may be required and questions arise how would we assign resources to one crisis over another.  However, this is the route we must pursue.
 * I'm going to make an analogy here, so if you feel the need to object to particulars in the analogy or complain about weak linkages between WP and the subject being used as an analogy--don't. The internet is very good at missing the forest for the trees when anyone brings up an analogy.  Don't lower the signal to noise ratio by being the analogy police.  Our basic concern is that we have an alarming trend in admin promotion and retention, but we don't yet have a symptom or at least a catastrophic symptom.  Michael Mace has an article about Research in Motion and the misleading nature of rates of change in market share.  Mace sketches out the technology adoption lifecycle for any technology product and attempts to pin down where RIM was and where RIM thought they were.  As RIM exhausts the early adopters and gets on the right-hand side of the adoption curve, revenue change and subscriber growth are still positive.  Management looked at the standard numbers for any product (profit, revenue, subscribers) and could feel confident that they had an acceptable product, but in reality new subscribers and device margins were falling.  Not drastically enough to arouse attention, but they were falling (this is the 2006-2010 era, so those of us outside RIM know they were getting eaten alive by Android and Apple).  By the time top-line numbers became a cause for concern, the platform was nearly dead.  Read that again.  By the time a crisis emerged for RIM with respect to Blackberry market share and profit, it was almost too late.  They learned that their subscriber base was comprised of increasingly large fractions of old users and that some of those old users were also leaving for new platforms at a rate faster than new user adoption.  Once those trends manifested themselves in share/profit/subscriber growth, the capacity for expansion was nearly gone.  I think we are in a similar situation here with respect to admin (and new user) growth.  We have obvious signs of userbase aging.  We have signs of fewer admins being promoted (in absolute terms or in terms of percentages of long term users) per year.  We have higher admin retirement or effective retirement per year.  Everything points to a coming problem except the existence of that problem itself.  By the time we reach a point where wikipedia will not be able to function due to a lack of willing admins we won't be in a position to say "Ok now we can get along with the business of incrementally changing RfA to meet this issue".  We will be undergoing a post-mortem.  As I said at the start of the paragraph, you can quibble about the details of the analogy, but the basic trends bear a strong resemblance.
 * Trouble is what to do about it. The theory for RfA regulars seems to be that RfA doesn't attract enough admin candidates because RfA is too hard or standards are too high or some other aspect of getting/using the admin tools is distasteful.  That's one possibility.  Another possibility is that the growth of admin candidates is a symptom and not cause.  The cause may be that growth for long term editors on wikipedia is flat or declining.  The push in Dan's push/pull framework is smaller than it was 4 years ago.  Again, not so small that it is a disaster.  The editor base still grows year over year as does the number of articles and the number of edits.  But the rate of change for all of those metrics are nothing like what they were in 2006.  So what do we do?  If admin growth is a function of editor growth alone, then we probably don't have too many policy levers we can pull here at RfA, short of making anyone an admin.  It also doesn't paint a very pretty picture for the extreme long term future for wikipedia (think >5 years out).  Because I have the floor I'll give a few reasons why that might be:
 * WP is fundamentally a "Web 1.5" site. We are obviously created completely by user content but the norms and technical functions of the site came to maturity before really aggressive social aggregator sites came into their own.  As a result we have a slow moving and non-architectural reputation system, we don't have easy methods for users to collaborate, and we have no real mechanism for reputation to be applied to mainspace activity.  We attempted to solve this with flagged revisions (or whatever it is called now), but what we were really after was solving the "respectability problem" not creating a system by which users can rapidly and frictionlessly rate or vet changes.
 * WP has no mobile presence. You used to be able to get an official editing app for iphone/ipod but I don't see it on the app store anymore.  Either way, it was awful.  You were routed (without any choice on your part) through the mobile servers so you couldn't even edit.  If there is one trend which you can bank on over the next few years it is that more and more people will be getting on the web with phones and phone-like devices and wikipedia's approach to mobile has to be aggressive in order to not either be left behind or treated as a static resource.
 * WP is not well equipped to deal with problems like this. We have this bizarrely myopic stance toward problems on wikipedia.  I'd call it the keys and the lamp-post problem, but it isn't even that.  We focus too much on problems which matter to a narrow set of people on wikipedia (fighting over the margins on notability issues) or matter to Jimbo when he hits the cocktail circuit (some washington post column about how wikipedia said Ted Kennedy was dead when he was merely sick).  Not existential threats to the WP model or WP itself.  the same thing could be said about the FR debate.  Editors worried that wikipedia wasn't a respectable resource because frankly who wants to work on something of low social status?  But is our social status (or our perceived social status) as a class of editors all that important?
 * WP is too confident about the battles we have won and is hyperfocused on a narrow set of competitors. I admit it.  I get a little giddy when I think of all the jerks who left for Knol or Citizendium or whatever because both of those projects are basically defunct.  But while wikipedia now has the overwhelming share of "serious generalist" encyclopedia content covered we are facing death by a thousand pin pricks from narrow specialist encyclopedias (many of which live on Jimbo's for profit venture) who can each claim some local advantage--smarter fair use rules, better admins, whatever.  I don't think the solution is to emulate each of the specialist competitors in order to stem the flow of editors and eyeballs, but we have to be serious about who and what are at the forefront of knowledge.  8 years ago if you wanted to learn about something you went to wikipedia.  Can you universally say the same thing today?
 * Are we going to fix each of these? Are they even an exhaustive list of real problems or simply the rantings of a grumpy periodic user?  I don't know.  But as much as they are off topic they are vital to consider if we are to talk seriously about admin shortages and pending crises.  Maybe I have this all backwards.  Maybe RfA was always broken and the dramatic rise in editors from 2004-2007 covered up a lot of the flaws in the system.  But we need to own up to the problem.  Organizations like wikipedia are like LNG tankers.  They require a considerable amount of foreknowledge about obstacles and courses in order to be piloted properly.  You can't steam ahead and then hope to execute a daring turn in order to avoid a shoal, it simply won't move like that.  Any change we make here will take months to execute and many more months to percolate to the rest of the community as a social norm or expectation.  Only then should we expect some changes in participation (both for candidates and voters).  So starting at the first sign of danger is far too late. Protonk (talk) 00:24, 25 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I don't think anyone who opposes more than, say, 25% of the time, is unaware of what is happening. Yet the opposes still come, which isn't all that illogical. Appoint an unsuitable person in the good times, and they might be a hinderance to an otherwise smooth process. Appoint an unsuitable person on the edge of the crisis, and they might be a hinderance as we enter a deeper crisis.
 * I've explained why I think people oppose in the first place, with little reception. What I will add is that it is far easier to make a spurious/unexplained/let's-be-ultra-nice support than a spurious/unexplained/let's-be-ultra-nasty oppose, and therefore I don't understand Kudpung's rationale for why so many fail. —WFC— 00:39, 25 January 2011 (UTC)


 * I could summarise your well-reasoned statement in a single sentence Protonk; "I believe in the idea of wikipedia but not in its current implementation". From a purely personal perspective the fact that an editor like myself and many others similar would have absolutely no chance at all at RfA says all that needs to be said as far as I'm concerned. The sooner a viable alternative without all of the social engineering pops up the better, and you won't see me for dust when that happens. Malleus Fatuorum 01:00, 25 January 2011 (UTC)
 * "a viable alternative without all of the social engineering" - what would that look like? Can we get there (or closer to it) from here? Rd232 talk 15:36, 25 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Maybe. In many ways I love the idea and the implementation.  We just may not be equipped to handle how the internet is changing and it is starting to show. Protonk (talk) 18:08, 25 January 2011 (UTC)
 * We probably need to be more radical. A relatively simple step we can do is to actively promote Editing on the Main Page - have a whole box there about how to get started editing, maybe with rotating current tasks, etc. More complex, needing Foundation backing, would be improvements to the Watchlist (eg being able mark edits as Reviewed And OK by Me, so the Watchlist can then hide them) and perhaps even a move to some kind of trust-based system that would make editing a lot more efficient, by allowing editors to filter out recent changes from their Watchlists by editors they trust, depending on the context (eg their trust score, context/history and type of change, etc. All that kind of good stuff which we've been talking about for years, and instead we get farting around with LiquidThreads and the Vector skin, neither of which seem real improvements. Bottom line, the community needs to work harder to get more people in and be more helpful to newbies, and the Foundation needs to work harder on making editing easier for newbies and more efficient for experienced editors. Rd232 talk 21:09, 25 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I agree with most of this. What is especially disheartening is that a few of these innovations are not vapor.  When I installed Huggle on my windows partition 2 years ago (I guess 3 now), I could see a visual display of the revision history, the revision history of the most recent editor and the relative activity of the two.  Using just those visual cues you could get a quick sense of which pages or editors had been sources of trouble most recently.  It can't be the case that generating such a graph is only possible with .NET.  Huggle is high frequency, but filtering watchlists offers a low frequency supporting feature.  Part of our issues with BLPs comes from the fact that we have eliminated most of the blatant vandalism and are now faced with the much harder task of assimilating low grade or uncertain edits.  With the current apparatus (edit filter tags for BLP vios notwithstanding) our only recourse is social pressure and manual attention, but the problem itself is amenable to technical solutions or support.  And most of these technical solutions don't require community input, the all purpose excuse for avoiding large scale changes.  If we make it easier for editors to participate and react to changes, more editors will stick around to get to know the community.  We are veering off topic, but all of this feeds back to the idea that RfA faces both a push and pull problem--this is the push. Protonk (talk) 22:27, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

@::WFC. My comments throughout  this perennial  discussion  have never bordered on sayiong  there should be no oppose !votes. I do  my  fair share of opposing where 'I' feel it's obviously required, but  I  refrain  from  posing silly, trick, and pile-on questions, and incivility -  the things that are discouraging  the serious editors from  coming forward, and leaving  us with  a high  frequency  of  NOTNOW and SNOW, and in the worst  case scenario, serious editors have retired from  Wikipedia in disgust. We need to find fair ways of dissuading  people who  are clearly  not suitable candidates from  eeven starting  an RfA, and we need to convince many of the contributors to this discussion page that  they  themselves are are partly the problem  we are trying to  solve. Kudpung (talk) 01:48, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

Concerning community questions
It is my understanding that the community is encouraged to ask questions of the candidate to clarify the candidates position on various aspects or statements in the candidate's statement. As such I have a concern of oblique assertions that a concern I raised as a question was not productive to the project I do acknowledge that I made a less than civil remark on my personal talk page after an editor nearly accused me of not understanding the purpose of the RfA process. I would like to open the discussion to the community as a whole to determine if a policy needs to be implemented regarding community submitted questions to the candidate. Hasteur (talk) 14:22, 26 January 2011 (UTC)
 * "RFA used to be plagued with pointless questions, but I thought that problem had died off a while back."
 * "pointless "optional" question"
 * "I'm impressed you answered q4 though, I think I would have refused."
 * I too am confused by any objection to question #4. IMHO that is a model of what an optional question should be.  Not some canned open book quiz, but rather a request to give further info on a specific concern about the candidate based on his 'on the record' wikipedia history.--Cube lurker (talk) 14:26, 26 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Well, since I am one of the people quoted above, let me respond. I understand where Hasteur was coming from, especially now that he has followed up, but frankly I would have gone for the direct "can I be sure that enquiries to you about administrative actions will not be left for days on end without any sort of feedback" from the get-go, with no need to drag someone's personal life into it (albeit in the most politely phrased way!). In my view, an admin should not have to answer questions about their off-wiki existence, and having a busy life or demanding job should not be seen as even contributing to a possible reason to oppose. That is why I would have been unhappy with answering this question myself. Furthermore, I really don't believe there are many (if any?) admin actions that genuinely require urgent response from one specific admin, such that an admin taking the occasional break to get some work done would interfere with the role, so I would question whether the question is particularly relevant. That said, let me be clear that I have not said your question is pointless nor do I consider it as such. Also, I apologise for what was rather oblique criticism rather than raising my concerns with you directly. I hope this helps.-- <font color="#96C8A2">K orr <font color="#96C8A2">u  ski  <font color="#96C8A2">Talk 14:37, 26 January 2011 (UTC)

Walking down a bad path?
I don't want to start any drama, but I have an objection to Keepscases' question on Smartse's RFA. The question asked was, "Please click "Random Article", improve the article somehow, and tell us what you did." For an editor whose edits are more than half in article space, they still need to prove that they can contribute? I know there's a perpetual discussion of content edits, but I find this question to be a particularly heavy-handed way of proving that. And I wonder if asking that sort of question is walking down a bad path. —  Hello Annyong  (say whaaat?!) 14:01, 26 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Of course it is. I don't recall ever seeing a relevant, useful question from Keepscases. AD 14:02, 26 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Questions aren't commands. A candidate who feels the way you do would have a perfect opportunity to demonstrate his diplomacy in responding to the request.--Cube lurker (talk) 14:12, 26 January 2011 (UTC)
 * FWIW, I objected to Q4 as well, but the candidate chose to answer both that and Keepcases, and did so very well, so I don't see the issue. I suppose it becomes a problem if they feel they can't refuse for fear of people opposing them on that basis. Not much can be done about that, though.-- <font color="#96C8A2">K orr <font color="#96C8A2">u  ski  <font color="#96C8A2">Talk 14:15, 26 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Any candidate can refuse to answer an optional question. Protonk (talk) 17:10, 26 January 2011 (UTC)
 * In theory, but it's at least one almost guarunteed oppose vote, from the questioner, and could easily be a few more if people happen to get in a huff about it, or want to use it as an excuse.-- <font color="#96C8A2">K orr <font color="#96C8A2">u  ski  <font color="#96C8A2">Talk 17:18, 26 January 2011 (UTC)
 * That's why 100% isn't the required threshold.--Cube lurker (talk) 17:23, 26 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Mmm, not really the point. One oppose vote requires roughly three support votes to counteract it, so it's not insignificant.-- <font color="#96C8A2">K orr <font color="#96C8A2">u  ski  <font color="#96C8A2">Talk 17:50, 26 January 2011 (UTC)
 * If the question truly is inappropriate, and the refusal is done in a polite reasonable way, there will be a lonely oppose that won't be a blip on the radar. Then again if you refuse by typing "@#$%^ OFF YOU FILTHY ...." and you get more than a single (or couple) oppose, then we've all learned something.--Cube lurker (talk) 17:56, 26 January 2011 (UTC)


 * I may have read this one differently than you, but on what planet is making a single improvement to an article a bad thing? I'm guessing it took longer to answer the question than it did to actually make the improvement. UltraExactZZ Said~ Did 21:28, 26 January 2011 (UTC)
 * That's not the only question of that type Keepscases has made -- it seems to be about the only thing s/he does. Look over his contribs...he's been at ANI, RFC, but with no changes. I left him a note on his talk page yesterday, don't think there will be a response, you can see a bunch of diffs there about his/her editing. T ofutwitch11  <font color="Orange">(T ALK ) 23:04, 26 January 2011 (UTC)
 * UltraExactZZ, it was more of the idea of being put on the spot like that to improve an article. Just rubbed me the wrong way. —  Hello Annyong  (say whaaat?!) 00:36, 27 January 2011 (UTC)
 * HelloAnnyong, exactly what do you propose for questions that "rub you the wrong way"? Keepscases (talk) 03:59, 27 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I have to say I don't see any harm in Keepscases' questions. I think they can help to lighten things a bit at the usually dourly-serious RfA inquisition - and nobody is going to fail RfA just because they choose not to answer one. -- Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 13:02, 27 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I would not really have bothered him/her about the questions if they had other contrib's to Wikipedia. But their contributions show little work to improve Wikipedia. T ofutwitch11  <font color="Orange">(T ALK ) 15:49, 27 January 2011 (UTC)

RFA record
Is the current RFA tally (4 RfAs) the most 100% RfAs at once? --<font face="Times"> Perseus, Son of Zeus ✉ sign here   18:32, 26 January 2011 (UTC)


 * Probably not. Does it matter? I fail to see the significance.--Atlan (talk) 18:38, 26 January 2011 (UTC)


 * It's early yet. Four RFAs finishing at 100% within a 24 hour period? That's something worth noting. That said, I'm tempted to throw a neutral in there just to add some random numbers. UltraExactZZ Said~ Did 19:41, 26 January 2011 (UTC)


 * Well, there was a neutral in one of them. 28bytes (talk) 20:02, 26 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Grumble, moan, been here to long etc. but seriously - as per Atlan; So what if it is a record (which I strongly doubt it is, coming as I do from the dinosaur age where 10+ concurrent RFA's was pretty usual, and standards where lower sensible, so a number of requests running at 100% was frequent). Of all bits of meta discussion on this page, these threads are the ones that offer the least (i.e. zero) value. Pedro : Chat  22:45, 26 January 2011 (UTC)


 * This is pretty common pattern. There's a lull in RFA's presented, that spurs a lot of conversation about the lack of admins/RFA's, then a few pop up as a result (I assume). No way to tell if there's a direct link but it appears there is. Having said that, I've never been one to get too worried about the lack of editors coming here for RFAs. But I think the last 6 months (year, 2 months whatever) have shown a distinct sea change. For whatever reason, it's clear that there's a lack of editors coming through. I remember at time (not even that long ago) that it was common to have 5 or more successful RFAs going at once. The sign of an effective organization is that it can anticipate problems and take corrective action before they even become problems. But this isn't an effective organization, so we'll just have to wait until it's a problem and hope it doesn't do any permanent damage. RxS (talk) 19:02, 27 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I dunno, it's a pretty alarming trend. Pretty soon we'll have to go back to "Oppose. Too many admins already currently." ;) Franamax (talk) 19:12, 27 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Actually, I did an unscientific sweep and it looks like it's a lot longer than I thought since it was common to have 5 or so successful RFAs going at once. Time flys. I wonder if it just wasn't a case of an overstock of admins in the middle of the last decade (me being one of them). Maybe it's self adjusting? Maybe when there's a shortage of admins people step up? And when there isn't, people don't see a need? I dunno...RxS (talk) 19:23, 27 January 2011 (UTC)
 * From mid 2005 to early 2008 we had three years where more than one admin per day was the norm - so much if not most of the time we would have had 7 RFAs in the green. Since then we've had a drought of nearly three years, initially for more than a year with about a dozen new admins a month, then for about a year we had half a dozen a month. But for the last three months we've had even fewer - just 8 in three months, an average of less than three a month - see User:WereSpielChequers/RFA by month. I don't believe this drought is self adjusting, I think we've created an RFA process that certain groups of editors, especially those with less than three years tenure and I fear that those who edit in their own name are unwilling to undergo. What we don't know is how few admins we could get away with, or what effect there will be on the community of this longterm decline in the number of active admins. But my fears are that eventually we will run short and until that happens the fewer active admins we have the greater their de-facto status will be.  Ϣere Spiel  Chequers  23:32, 27 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I think the current boost  is coinicidence/a flash-in-the-pan. Not the current ones perhaps (I haven't  checked), but many candidates have never seen, read, or contributed to this talk page. Kudpung (talk) 00:06, 28 January 2011 (UTC)
 * See also: stochastic. --Tryptofish (talk) 00:10, 28 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I think people have been reading this talk page and reading how worried we all are about a lack of admins and they've decided to make a run for it. — Fly by Night  ( talk )  03:33, 28 January 2011 (UTC)
 * You mean of course as in making a run for it as far away from  Wikipedia as quick as their legs can carry them, leaving the last remaining editors to run for adminship with little or no  opposition. Kudpung (talk) 05:38, 28 January 2011 (UTC)
 * And Atlan and Pedro demonstrate perfectly how to put someone down in one easy step. It was only a case of being intrigued. Where would we all be if we never asked questions? :( <font color="Blue">Orphan <font color="Tiffany Blue">Wiki 13:57, 28 January 2011 (UTC)

Some stats
I've been collecting stats on the drought for quite some time now at User:WereSpielChequers/RFA by month, but after the last three months I think we have enough evidence that the drought has entered an even drier phase, with eight new admins in the last three months combined. Eight would have been a typical month earlier in 2010 and an unusually bad month in the first 21 months of the drought. But there's another phenomenon at work which I believe fits in with some of what Protonk is talking about. We have no admins who started editing in 2010, and only 13 who started editing in 2009, if we ignore bots our 100 admins who most recently started editing go all the way back to July 2007 3.5 years ago. I can understand why we have no admins who've edited for less than 13 months, but why are so few of the editors who started in 2008 and 2009 coming to RFA?  Ϣere Spiel  Chequers  01:04, 25 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Stats. - Kingpin13 (talk) 19:10, 25 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Note: Again not 100% accurate, but good enough. Tim Song's rename resulted in a mistake where it looks like the RfA was before registration. Might make some bar charts which would be easier to read at some point, if I'm bored :) - Kingpin13 (talk) 19:18, 25 January 2011 (UTC)
 * So the conclusion to draw is ...? (Sorry, I'm not so good with data.) Guoguo12 <font color="blue" size="1">--Talk--  19:38, 27 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Well, very roughly, it shows that the general trend in 2010 is that candidates who fail at RfA are accounts that were created around 2006-2010, while those who pass are created around 2005-late 2008, - Kingpin13 (talk) 12:41, 29 January 2011 (UTC)

Commentary not related to stats

 * This may sound like a cliché, but maybe they're discouraged because RfA has become a bloodbath? The Utahraptor Talk/Contribs 01:52, 25 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Yes, Utahraptor. Who makes it  a bloodbath? Perhaps someone is more prepared than I  am to  break the bounds of decency and start  some  name calling. I'm sure that if this discussion were taking place in a conference room, there would be some red faces. Kudpung (talk) 01:57, 25 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Honestly this is wearing thin. Knock it off or name names.  If you think someone is personally responsible then cowboy up and solve the problem.  Insinuating that there is a problem and that unnamed people should be ashamed is lame. Protonk (talk) 02:02, 25 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Isn't naming names a bit bitey? The Utahraptor Talk/Contribs 02:04, 25 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Did you read that page before linking it? If you think the long term contributors to discord and unhappiness in RfA are new users then I guess calling them out would be bitey, but I doubt that is what kudpung means. Protonk (talk) 02:06, 25 January 2011 (UTC)
 * It's good to refrain from name calling, as it can eventually turn into conflict. The Utahraptor Talk/Contribs 02:10, 25 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Protonk, If you are genuinely  concerned, go through all  the 2010 RfA, and go through all the 2010/2011 comments on this page, do  your own homework,  and then contribute some solutions. Kudpung (talk) 02:15, 25 January 2011 (UTC)
 * In fact I'm not at all concerned. That's the point.  I'm suggesting that your comments are wearing thin.  Coming to the WT:RFA page and declaring that "some" editors which you won't name are disproportionately causing problems and then being coy when asked to substantiate or retract your accusations is not a contribution. Protonk (talk) 02:56, 25 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Re:WereSpielChequers: What has kept 2008-2009 editors away from RFA, well, the expected "1 Year or more" that is required (by some editors, more than one year) and editcountitis that goes on at RFA -- it is hard to get the expected amount of edits in a year, whatever that number may be, everyone has their own ideas. That's whats kept me away from RFA, and what will for quite some time... T ofutwitch11  <font color="Orange">(T ALK ) 02:21, 25 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Wearing thin or not. What  I am  is saying, is that  some of the commentators on this page who  glibly join  in  and agree that  RfA has become a snake pit, are the very ones who  contribute to the drama. Fact. The whole point is, Protonk, that no one needs to name the names. Kudpung (talk) 02:31, 25 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Tofutwitch, if those were the reasons, why are so many  mature, reasonable, civil, well versed Wikipdians not coming  forward? Don't  scratch  your head over it -  they've told us already.Kudpung (talk) 02:31, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

I won't name specific names, but it's the people that pick one error in an otherwise qualified candidate and oppose over it that discourage potential candidates. More often than not, those ridiculous oppose !votes create a pile-on that ultimately fails the RfA. The Utahraptor Talk/Contribs 02:35, 25 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Thank you for two sentences that make my point. Keegan (talk) 07:05, 25 January 2011 (UTC)
 * The vast majority of people, regardless of voting tendency, do not spend upwards of 10-20 minutes researching a candidate. While I don't have statistics colorfully decorated in a bar or pie chart to back that up, I don't think that can credibly be disputed. Therefore, all most people have are the questions, editing stats, and other people's support/oppose/neutral rationales. And as inconvenient a truth as this is, a far higher proportion of articulate opinions supported by diffs will be found in the oppose or neutral sections, than the support section. Perhaps even the majority, but again, this is a complex-statistical-analysis-free zone. —WFC— 12:06, 25 January 2011 (UTC)
 * And that is the exact problem with having the wide open venue for questions - they promote drive-by voting rather than actual examination of the candidate. A simple restriction that all questions must be about something in their editing history would go a long way towards improving the tone of RfAs. We're supposed to be judging candidates on what they have done, not on what they might do in the future. Of course that leads us right back to the point that for many people RfA is exclusively concerned with what they might do in the future because it is a lifetime appointment with limited means of recourse, and the cycle continues again.  Jim Miller  See me 14:21, 25 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Re to WFC. I'd hope you were wrong, but fear you could be right about the idea that some !voters spend less than twenty minutes assessing a candidate. It's true that only admins can access the candidates deleted contributions, but everyone can access a candidate's other contributions. However from the way recent RFAs have focussed on the question and oppose sections it is possible that some people are voting on candidates without checking their contributions - and no I don't count looking at a statistical analysis of someones's contributions as researching that candidate. But as for the oppose section containing a higher proportion of articulate, diff supported opinions, I'm afraid that is an inevitable and probably desirable part of the process. I'm fairly frequently in the oppose section, but I hope I've never opposed without giving or endorsing a clear diff supported rationale, whereas if after checking the candidate I basically agree with the nom, why say anything more than "Support per nom"? OK it helps if you say what aspects of their edits you've checked, but otherwise unless you spot something good that the nom missed, "Support" is all that's needed.  Ϣere Spiel  Chequers  14:28, 25 January 2011 (UTC)
 * If you think a fair percentage of !voters go any further than the RfA page, then I think you are a bit niave. We've had nominators fail to notice basic issues that would doom a candidates RfA when the issue are still on the candidates talk page.  Based upon what I've seen here, my gut guess is that 15% base their !votes on previous knowledge/impressions of the candidates.  40% of !votes are made solely based upon what they read on the RFA page themselves.  30% of !Votes are made without digging any further than the candidates talk and user pages.  12-13% are made with somebody spending up to an hour researching the candidate, and only 2-3% are made with somebody doing more than an hours research.  (Note: That is for the initial !vote, sometimes a person will !vote and then spend more time looking at the candidates.)--- Balloonman  NO! I'm Spartacus! 14:42, 25 January 2011 (UTC)
 * You may be right about the percentage of editors who don't go further than the RFA page, but it is a very difficult thing to measure. We have had RFAs turn on things that were pretty easily found but which dozens of !voters hadn't spotted, also I once used a page view counter to see how many people had looked at various pages linked from a candidate's userpage. One page that I thought every serious reviewer of that candidate would look at was viewed 7 times in the week of an RFA which over 100 editors voted in. I suppose the flip side of that is that those of us who do review candidate's edits and where appropriate produce diff supported opposes may have rather a lot of influence in the process.  Ϣere Spiel  Chequers  17:39, 25 January 2011 (UTC)
 * True, but that is the fault of those who support until one or two who have done their homework suggest otherwise, rather than the people doing the digging. But the thing is, whenever a few such diffs are produced, a suggestion is made that these are isolated incidents and that subsequent opposers/switchers are jumping on the bandwagon. Similarly, while Kudpung has a point on questions, I think AfD is a huge deal, because of the wide discretion available to admins and the fact that it's nigh on impossible to overturn one unless it's a blatant abuse of power. I therefore place huge importance on AfD questions, as well as looking at AfD participation. Others may have other areas in which they place similar importance. Yet if half a dozen people oppose over an AfD question, and another half a dozen over AfD "behavior" (a deliberately broad term), they're accused of depriving us an admin who would have been a net positive. —WFC— 18:20, 25 January 2011 (UTC)
 * (ec)It's also one of the reasons why I've thought about writing another RFA How To Essay... it would be "How to respond to opposes at RfA." How people respond often has a huge effect on the RfA. Mature/rational/reasonable responses can get opposes to turn around. But the key is to identify what the oppose is really about. Let's take Keeps' oppose rationale. When Keeps opposes based upon a user box with the word "GOD" stricken out and other people start to oppose on the same ground, the defenders need to ask, "Why are they opposing?" Is it because of the single user box? Not really. It is because of a perceived concern that the individual in question won't be able to be impartial on the subject. Let's take a silly example, suppose I have a user box declaring that I'm a fan of "The Simpsons." Now, I go and close an controversial AFD on a Simpsons related subject. Somebody objects, takes it to DRV, and cites the user box. No big deal, if I can show that I can be a fan of the Simpsons and be objective about the subject anyways---then my expertise/subject knowledge might come in handy. Same scenario, but instead of 1 box I have 6 user boxes professing my undying love for the Simpsons. Now I'm taken not only to DrV, but possibly ANI because the perception would be that with 6 such user boxes, that I cannot be objective/impartial. Keeps' oppose garners strength because it is based upon the perception that one such user box indicates a person who can't be objective on such a crucial subject. The way to respond to it is not to denounce Keeps or declare that Keeps oppose rationale is flawed, but rather to demonstrate that the candidate in question might have said user box, but is able to still maintain objectivity/neutrality when the subject comes up. Basically, if somebody opposes you based upon "low hanging fruit", then you need to figure out what their concern is and show them through your history that their initial perception is wrong.--- Balloonman  NO! I'm Spartacus! 18:36, 25 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I think your overall point is spot-on, but a more apt example might be if you had a userbox that said that people who liked The Simpsons were idiots. That's going to be an issue for some people even if you never end up closing an AfD on a non-notable Simpsons episode as "delete". The "X is dumb" userboxes are always going to grate on people who like "X", regardless of what X is. 28bytes (talk) 18:50, 25 January 2011 (UTC)
 * No, a more apt one would be that you find the "Simpsons to be dumb" or something. The user box that Keeps opposes does not expliticly call people who believe in God to be idiots, but one can infer that the person who uses it might think so.  A user box that makes a negative declarative statement about a population of people generally SHOULD be opposed or at least challenged.--- Balloonman  NO! I'm Spartacus! 19:10, 25 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Point taken. I agree, a "This user thinks The Simpsons is dumb" box would be a more fair analogy. 28bytes (talk) 19:13, 25 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Even though I would prefer that we all lower our entrance requirements for adminship, I'm in favor of asking a handful of candidates to tone down their userpages ... just before they run is fine with me. I'm not worried about what an "activist" userpage says about the candidate; I'm worried that a new user who just got blocked will get the idea that they didn't get a fair shake. - Dank (push to talk) 20:34, 25 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Personally, I've got less of a problem with someone having an "activist" user page than one that has "anti" messages. If you're a new user who just got blocked for something (possibly even something "innocent" like picking a username that sounds like a company), and you go to the admin's userpage and see a message dismissing or denigrating your religion/political viewpoint/favorite TV show/whatever, I can understand how you might feel a little bullied. Ideally people should be able to express who they are without denigrating what they aren't. 28bytes (talk) 21:26, 25 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I see your point re: blocked users but I disagree with the main thrust. We can believe what we want as long as we can enforce WP:NPOV on wikipedia. People passionate about subjects are still capable of being neutral; if you think they're not, well that's your own problem..... Pedro : Chat  21:34, 25 January 2011 (UTC)
 * People living in Western democracies have come to expect a certain neutrality from "the law". Everyone here knows that admins are nothing like "the law", and they're certainly not the court of last resort, but the newbie who just got blocked doesn't know that, and I think we can forgive them for overreacting to what they see as bias ... because these days, everyone overreacts to what they see as bias from their governments.  I gave an analogy recently at  User_talk:Protonk. - Dank (push to talk) 21:42, 25 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Re to WFC. Yes when someone produces a diff based oppose one of the issues that will come up is whether that diff was an isolated incident or was illustrative of the candidate's edits. In hindsight I can remember an oppose I made for an isolated incident where I was being too picky. So now when I find an error when checking out a candidate I ask myself whether that error was sufficiently serious to merit an oppose, and if not whether it was an isolated mistake or symptomatic of a problem, and if appropriate I will furnish multiple diffs to support an oppose.  Ϣere Spiel  Chequers  17:31, 27 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Therein lies the key and the reason why opposes weigh more than supports. Most supports are, "Support, is a good guy" or "Support, I've seen him around so I trust him."  Whereas most opposes are, "Oppose, per this link where it shows X, this link where it shows Y, and this link where it shows Z."  Going back to Keeps oppose.  Keeps makes an oppose based upon user boxes, it garners support because others wonder if the person can be objective about a highly controversial issue.  Rather than addressing the underlying issue that Keeps brings up, people attack Keeps and his oppose, thereby propelling the issue to the forefront.  How much more effective would the defense have been if it said, "I use the user box and do have strong feelings in that arena, but that does not stop me from being effective and impartial in areas dealing with the issue as demonstrated by the following discussions link/link/link."  Show us cases where the candidate kept their calm and mediated issues---give us the difs. (I keep using Keep's oppose because I think it is a valid oppose rationale that can be easily refuted addressed if done right.  Unfortunately, I think Keeps has been getting the persecuted because people attack him rather than address the concern he raises.) --- Balloonman  NO! I'm Spartacus! 18:11, 27 January 2011 (UTC)

A little more radical
There's a good argument that our figures on loss of "active" admins are not that helpful, but until someone provides better figures, let's go with the ones we've got. We added 192 new "active" admins in 2009 and 2010. The total number of active admins dropped steadily during this time, so we must have lost more than 192 active admins (including losing some new admins). So we're talking about losing roughly 10 per month, averaged over two years. I have no idea if the number is going up or down. Some believe that we don't need as many admins now because we've got fewer contributors ... but OTOH, we've got more pages, and admins are critical to the processes that watch pages. Being conservative, let's say we only need to replace 8 lost admins each month to get the basic maintenance jobs done. My question is: is every good idea that's been suggested on this page really going to raise the RfA success rate from the current 1-3 per month to 8 per month? I don't see how.

If we want to have enough admins to handle copyright problems, promotional edits, defamation, vandalism, etc., then I think we're going to have to radically redefine an "admin" from "the very model of a modern Wikipedian" to "someone who's geeky and competent with a few tools", at least when it comes to new candidates. We could even prohibit admins from using the tools in any situation where tool use might come across as a "super-vote" ... this list will vary depending on who you ask, but I'm thinking of the decisions that tend to generate a lot of heat, such as the toughest AFD decisions (require admins to send it to Deletion Review without closing it) and who to block and unblock at ANI (let that be decided by consensus ... and don't both use the tool and be the one to decide what the consensus was). Some are bothered by admins using the tools to usurp content decisions ... okay, let's get a better handle on that, and give admins better guidance on what they should leave alone. If we find that Wikipedians can't stop thinking in terms of a higher standard at RFA, then fine, we can always make up some jobs that require stringent vetting. My point is: we're risking Wikipedia's survival by confusing that apparent need to vet and elect "leaders" with the need to appoint people to get the geeky, grindy maintenance jobs done. Btw, I'm not suggesting that we suddenly devalue all the admins who have worked hard to learn their skills and build reputation ... I'm just suggesting that we ask all admins to participate on an equal footing in discussions and not use the tools as a super-vote. If that happens, and if Arbcom and other forums get serious about defrocking admins who don't "get it" (and, if we give them clear instructions and explain why this is necessary, I'm very optimistic that they'll be happy to comply), then voters won't be so quick to oppose at RFA, and candidates won't spend a year trying to be "Mr. or Ms. Everything" before they run, they'll spend time at the noticeboards learning the specific skill sets we need. - Dank (push to talk) 19:58, 25 January 2011 (UTC)
 * My concern is that our number of active admins is consistently falling by circa 20% year on year even though editing levels are broadly stable (User:Katalaveno/TBE shows us that the gap between ten million edits is still at 51/52 days as it was in late 2009 - somewhat below the 2007/8 peak). In an increasingly mature editing community you would expect a growing proportion of the regulars to be admins, but the opposite seems to be happening (I believe the community is increasingly mature in terms of editing experience, but the proportion of active admins amongst our experienced editors seems to be falling). I take comfort in my discussions with editors from other projects such as ES, DE and RU in that it is possible for a project to operate with far fewer admins than EN does, however I'm not sure that I want adminship to become an ever bigger deal simply because admins are becoming scarcer, nor do I want the "gain an admin - lose a good editor" phenomenon that other wikis report. I prefer the EN wiki model where most admins can spend most of their wiki time doing non-admin editing, and think that admins who only do admin actions risk losing touch with the community. I believe that there are plenty of candidates out there who could and should become admins, and might be tempted if we were clearer as to what our expectations were, and if we had a few more Balloonman style nominators presenting good candidates to the community.  Ϣere Spiel  Chequers  13:35, 26 January 2011 (UTC)


 * (e/c) Re to Dan - Regarding the content issues, I have thought for some time that we need to end the fallacy that when editing content, admins are "normal editors." Many editors, especially new ones, see every action by an admin as an administrative action, and admins should not be allowed to use that contrived division of powers as an excuse for anything. The admin policy should match that reality - all actions performed by admins are considered admin actions. WP:ADMINACCT should have the phrase "involving administrator tools" removed for the purpose of accountability. The policy as written calls for a higher standard of behavior, but does nothing to enforce it.  Jim Miller  See me 13:48, 26 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Well at least the "bloodbath" seems to be draining away. There are currently 3 candidates up, with combined votes of 84:0:0. Is this a record? Johnbod (talk) 16:59, 26 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Mmm... I hate to say it, but I have this nagging feeling that all this discussion could have just scared people off opposing. I suppose that might not be a bad thing, but it does seem a bit odd that we suddenly have three candidates and no oppose votes...-- <font color="#96C8A2">K orr <font color="#96C8A2">u  ski  <font color="#96C8A2">Talk 17:07, 26 January 2011 (UTC)
 * We always get a little bump when there's a lot of talk about how we need to be more lenient at RFA ... let's see if it lasts. - Dank (push to talk) 17:33, 26 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I thought that was the whole thrust of recent discussion on this page, to chase away all opposers. Malleus Fatuorum 00:28, 27 January 2011 (UTC)
 * So if I'd have waited two weeks, the snakes would have been dead anyway and I wouldn't be knocked on my back with a stress-related flare up? Figures. --Danger (talk) 13:44, 27 January 2011 (UTC)
 * That seems quite likely, yes. Malleus Fatuorum 13:45, 27 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Sorry to hear about the flare-up. - Dank (push to talk) 15:28, 27 January 2011 (UTC)

Proposal to make all RFA an automatic approval unless vetoed
I had some reservations about a RFA so I marked opposed. There was a big arguement about it. As a result, I am reluctant to opposed anymore RFAs. With that, I would like to suggest a new method of administrator selection.

All candidates with 2 years of editing experience would automatically be made administrator. To ensure that they are sensible, they would be subjected to a 3 month trial period. Candidates with less than 2 years could start a RFA and ask for exemption from the 2 year period. Contentious candidates with over 2 years experience could be challenged if the challenger is able to show clear proof that they are argumentative or unsuitable. Madrid 2020 (talk) 00:00, 27 January 2011 (UTC)
 * That is an enormous, sweeping change and contains elements that have been repeatedly rejected by the community. If you are serious about pursuing this I suggest you create a separate page on which to initiate an request for comment, as it would undoubtedly be a very long conversation. Beeblebrox (talk) 00:04, 27 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I don't know how many regulars there are that have been editing for over 2 years, but I'm sure it's a lot of people. All of them would suddenly become "trial admins" overnight if this proposal would actually be implemented. How could we possibly monitor all those people? Besides that, I think this is just a bad idea altogether.--Atlan (talk) 00:10, 27 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Eh, apply a sensible and internally consistent rationale for approval or rejection of a candidate, vote your conscience, be articulate, and engage tersely yet politely with those who don't like your rationales. Far easier than changing everything else, no? Jclemens (talk) 00:20, 27 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I feel  that  a long  discussion  on  this proposal would take up  valuable time that  could be invested more productively on other discussions,  such as for example (at the risk of wearing a bit thin), cleaning  up  the silly/inappropriate/trick questions  that get posted at RfA,  and putting  the lid on  the incivility. A compromise could be perhaps a proposal that all nominations with less than 1 year and 2,000 edits,  should be seconded by a 'crat before transclusion. This may stem some of the NOTNOW/SNOW/WITHDRAWALS. --Kudpung (talk) 00:23, 27 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I agree (wink) that it is a conversation probably not worth having, the idea of any kind of automatic adminship is deeply flawed and has been shouted down again and again. Some people will never be capable of handling admin tools responsibly, and some people don't want the tools. Provisional adminship has also been repeatedly rejected because the tools are often used on concert. Splitting them up would actually increase the admin workload as it would take two partial admins (or padadmins as I call them) to do what one could do alone now. I only meant that if we are really going to have this conversation it is going to need a wider forum than just the RFA talk page. I like Kupdung's compromise proposal (and I'm not just saying that, I really do). Beeblebrox (talk) 00:35, 27 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I suspect what's being proposed is that anyone who applies for a mop should get one if they have at least 2 years experience, not that a mop should be thrust into the hands of everyone whether they ask for it or not. But it's still a fatally flawed idea, as there are plenty of 2-year veterans who shouldn't get a 3-minute trial, never mind a 3-month trial. And lots of similar suggestions have been firmly rejected in the past - ref WT:RfA passim (ie the archives). -- Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 01:36, 27 January 2011 (UTC)

Modification: Any user with 2 years of experience could ASK to be an administrator and would need sponsorship by 2 administrators and no record of disruption or bad judgement (the burden of proof would be the objectors). Then a 3 month trial period. If this were the case, I would not object to any of the 3 current RFAs Madrid 2020 (talk) 02:21, 27 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Let me be frank. You're taking something that you have just been told has been proposed before and has been deemed a bad idea, making it needlessly complicated, and turning around and proposing it again. Something tells me that the answer will still be "no." Furthermore, many opposes do not get multiple objections to them. Usually, 0 or 1. You only get multiple comments on an oppose if the community, or at least several users, think it's a poor decision. Also, being the first oppose generally tends to attract a few more remarks. Don't say that you won't oppose, there's a reason anyone can do so. Perhaps instead wait for a few days so that you might not be the first oppose, and then raise your objection.  S ven M anguard   <font color="FCD116">Wha?  02:38, 27 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Another view is that a relative newcomer, not having reviewed all history before commenting, proposed what xhe might have hoped to be an out-of-the-box proposal. Upon hearing that the proposal has been discussed xhe tried to make a change to improve it. I understand it can be frustrating to replow old ground, but it isn't old for newcomers. Perhaps we need a good FAQ with a summary of past proposals.  Actually I wouldn't be surprised if one exists in some form, but I don't see it attached to this talk page.--  SPhilbrick  T  14:32, 27 January 2011 (UTC)
 * OK, I'll have a bash at a draft FAQ...
 * Q) What has already been proposed?
 * A) Everything under the sun, and then some.
 * Q) What has been accepted?
 * A) Nothing, ever.
 * Q) Has anything ever come close?
 * A) Nope.
 * [[Image:Teeth.png|16px]] -- Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 16:41, 27 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Where is the like button?--- Balloonman  NO! I'm Spartacus! 16:54, 27 January 2011 (UTC)


 * I sympathise with Madrid2020's intentions, and think he deserves an explanation why this is a bad idea. It won't actually improve anything. Presumably the idea is to avoid users who would be uncontroversially promoted from having to go through an RFA, but such uncontroversial users are not a problem at RFA. If a user really is a good all-round candidate, they can sail through with little or no opposition: just look at the current crop of candidates. The problems at RFA are all to do with the 'controversial' candidates (as in, more than 10% of the community oppose them), where it has a tendency to become very bitter and divisive. This proposal would do nothing to solve that problem, since any user who was opposed by anybody would presumably have to go through RFA anyway.


 * Additionally, on a point of principle, it just seems a good idea to make all admins have to go through RFA first. Even if it doesn't turn up any problems, it shows they have the community's approval; and it guarantees all candidates receive at least a cursory examination before getting the tools. You seem to think it would be an easy task to ascertain which users have shown 'disruption or bad judgement', but that's actually what RFA is all about, when it's working correctly; how do you propose to decide whether a user's judgement is good enough to become an admin, except, well, through RFA? Robofish (talk) 18:48, 27 January 2011 (UTC)


 * There is no way to "improve" anything here, the momentum against any kind of change is too great. I stopped looking at RfAs when they became a "let's hunt down and kill those nasty opposers and their trick questions" routine. Malleus Fatuorum 04:11, 28 January 2011 (UTC)
 * " I stopped looking at RfAs when they became a "let's hunt down and kill those nasty opposers and their trick questions" routine. Malleus Fatuorum 04:11, 28 January 2011 (UTC)". You still look at RfAs as you do, such as User:Gimme danger.  You engaged in what you say you despise.  This is not a question, no response is needed.  Keegan (talk) 07:49, 28 January 2011 (UTC)
 * While I agree with a lot of what you say here Malleus, I don't think "let's hunt down and kill those nasty opposers and their trick questions" is perfectly accurate; "let's hunt down and kill those nasty trick and silly question posers, the !voters who can't be civil, and the sheep" might be more closer to reality - at least it's what I have been advocating. But  of course, every time we hit a nerve, someone neatly changes the subject, everything gets buried in the archives, and new commentators join the talk without an inkling of what's been discussed before. The actual  changes that  are needed are relatively  simple. Kudpung (talk) 04:39, 28 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Perhaps, but very few would be able to agree on what those relatively simple changes are. Malleus Fatuorum 04:48, 28 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Agreeing is one thing (a lot of people have 'agreed' on  the points above) - getting  a Wikipedia style 'consensus'  is another... --Kudpung (talk) 04:57, 28 January 2011 (UTC)
 * ... is in reality impossible. This talk page might as well be closed down as historical. Malleus Fatuorum 05:02, 28 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Gosh no! That would be a bigger catastrophe than closing  down  the local  pub. Kudpung (talk) 05:40, 28 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I have to say I agree with the general gist of what both Malleus and Kudpung are saying here. I don't think we'll get change, because for each individual suggestion, simple though it may seem, there are too many people who like things the way they are to achieve a consensus for change. I think there is often too much badgering of opposers, but we wont get a consensus to stop it, because too many people want to keep badgering opposers. I agree that there are too many trick questions, but we won't get a consensus for change, because too many people like asking trick questions. And so on. -- Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 12:56, 28 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I fear that we are unlikely to get consensus to change policy at RFA, even a relatively simple change such as requiring candidates with less than 1,500 edits to only run if they have a nominator fails the hurdle that even uncontentious good ideas struggle to get consensus. But I do believe that discussions here result in substantial change at RFA, quite a few people participate here, I suspect many more read these discussions and some of those discussions result in people changing their behaviour; For example I believe that more editors in the support column are giving details as to what they've checked, I think we also see people alter their RFA voting criteria as a result of discussions here, I know I have.  Ϣere Spiel  Chequers  13:32, 28 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Mine are substantially lower than they used to be as well, although you probably will still see me more in the oppose column than support---I typically don't get involved in RfA's that are clearly going to pass/fail.--- Balloonman  NO! I'm Spartacus! 14:52, 28 January 2011 (UTC)

I'm not  going  to  drop  my  criteria because in  my  experience, the bad eggs in  the corps of admin come from the era when there were hardly  any  criteria at  all. However, I too have slackened off !voting on  RfA that are going to  be very clear passes. As for others having quietly  changed their habits on  RfA after having lurked on this talk page, I'm not  so  sure. The silly season for questions still  seems to  be very  much  in  vogue, and the wannabe policy  intellectuals still can't  resist  trying  to  faze even the most forthright, gnomish and trustworthy candidates who have  plenty  of the right  kind of contribs and lots of clue. WSC has clearly proved that  there is a drought of applicants, and those are the reasons why. Kudpung (talk) 10:29, 29 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Since we're talking a little bit about how the "criteria" for adminship changes, I thought I would just share a few thoughts. After watching RfA for some amount of time, it becomes clear that it goes through phases where there are certain criteria, for example, some will remember back when it was practically essential to work at AfD to pass, or when !voters would vote based on edit summary usage. Recently I haven't seen many people commenting on either of these things. So I dare say there's something of a hive mind mentality at RfA. Now I believe that to properly reach a consensus, we need to encourage individuality (to a certain extent). While everybody needs to eventually come together and agree to reach a real consensus, it's no good if people automatically try to agree with whatever they think is "hot" that week, month, year etc., instead everyone should voice their own opinion, so that we can see what the best course of action to keep everybody happy is. So how do we encourage a little bit of individuality? Well to me, it seems fairly straightforward: (and I know this isn't a new idea by any means) firstly, badgering, and criticising another's opinions needs to be minimised. Even this thread to some extent is basically just pointing fingers and discouraging people from asking good faith questions. If you don't like those questions, then you're free to say so. If nearly nobody likes those questions, then they won't have any noticeable effect on the outcome. However, some people may think that these "trick questions" as you're calling them are useful (as an admin, I personally come across users who ask these outside of RfA, to try and manipulate how a situation appears, so there is an argument in favour of seeing how the candidate responds to those questions). In addition, people to to vote based on what they want in a candidate, not just what they think the community wants (or in other words, not just vote one way or the other to try and fit in), after all, they are they community. - Kingpin13 (talk) 12:38, 29 January 2011 (UTC)

Charts, Graphs and RfAs
I'm a mathematician and I love a good graph. I would like all of these people that make graphs to make a graph-of-graphs. Namely: relate the number of RfA policy changes that have come about as a result of sections with graphs posted on this page. The result would be a big, long, straight line along one of the axes; i.e. none! I mention graphs because some people have spent a lot of time compiling the data and creating the graphs, and I acknowledge their efforts. It seems to me that this talk page is the most unproductive, vacuum of time, that I have come across on Wikipedia. I, myself, am guilty of wasting many hours on here. But we all like a good bit of drama, don't we? — Fly by Night  ( talk )  23:05, 29 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I thought you  had noticed - this is the local  pub.--Kudpung (talk) 05:37, 30 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Yeah, but the drinks suck. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:01, 30 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Yeah, watching editors talk about the same thing over and over seems like a soap opera. But I suppose it doesn't hurt to have a little drama. --Monterey Bay (talk) 05:44, 30 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Statistics can say anything you want as is often noted here; You could always relate the interest in discussion (number of sections by date), to the amount of applicants who run for rfa by date. Pretty sure there would be a interesting correlation. Ottawa4ever (talk) 10:23, 30 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Is the essence of this argument 'nothing has changed before, therefore to try to change anything is a waste of time'?-- <font color="#96C8A2">K orr <font color="#96C8A2">u  ski  <font color="#96C8A2">Talk 09:04, 31 January 2011 (UTC)
 * The essence, for me, is that management-by-community fails when the community gets too large - everyone agrees that there are things wrong, but for every suggested improvement there is too large an opposition to achieve consensus. Still, I live in hope. -- Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 13:41, 31 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I suppose that comes from spending half your time in the LOS ;)
 * The real problem is that there is indeed a dedicated, core interest group here, but every now and then, an outsider breezes in, leaves us all stunned by a pompous or intellectual speech, and immediately  we've forgotten what  we were all talking about, launch into a mega side track, the original discussion gets archived, and a bit later we start the original discussions all over again. Anyway, as I  was saying... Kudpung (talk) 15:41, 31 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Hehe :-) -- Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 15:51, 31 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I know you're not really serious, but describing people who don't use this page as their favorite timesink as "pompous outsiders" isn't going to win anyone over. ;)--Atlan (talk) 15:57, 31 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Win anyone over to  what? We've got what we want: lots of banter  about  what we would like to see done, but not wanting to get our fingers dirty doing it ;) Kudpung (talk) 16:45, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

request for adminship
REQUEST FOR ADMINSHIPMayborn1975 (talk) 09:20, 1 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Hi Mayborn, unfortunately this is not the place to ask (see the instructions on  the top  of the page). Anyway, with  only  7 edits I  don't  think  you  are ready  to  be an admin. If you  have followed the discussion  on  this talk  page recently, you'll  see that  a lot  more edits, more experience, and a much longer time on  Wikipdia are needed. If you  would like any  suggestions as to  where and how you  can start  contributing, don't  hesitate to  ask  me on my  talk  page - I'll  be happy  to  show you  around. Regards, --Kudpung (talk) 10:06, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

Weird
There have been comments that the current  Requests for adminship/5 albert square is wierd. I share that  view, but  perhaps not  for the same reasons. Maybe the only wierd thing  about  it is that  it  appears to  be going, at  least  for the time being, the way most RfA  should do: clean, free of viperous comments about  the candidate or about  each other, very few additional questions (except  the obligatory nonsense). Would it be too much to hope that this is a new, most welcome trend? --Kudpung (talk) 04:45, 1 February 2011 (UTC)
 * I suspect that the discussion here has shamed some people into thinking harder about oppose votes, which can only be a good thing. I doubt it will last, however.-- <font color="#96C8A2">K orr <font color="#96C8A2">u  ski  <font color="#96C8A2">Talk 09:29, 1 February 2011 (UTC)
 * I can only hope that  the hours and hours of previous discussions here have shamed some people into thinking  harder about  the quality and number of questions they  pose, which  can also  only  be a good thing. I hope it will last. --Kudpung (talk) 09:55, 1 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Shaming people to change their behavior is *not* a good thing. Shame is *not* a productive way to improve long-term behavior. People who are shamed tend to withdraw and develop anger, and are more prone to develop depressive symptoms. In the latest issue of the Psychological Bulletin, Sangmoon Kim (et al.) says "Shame strikes at the core of a person’s identity, and as a result, forces the individual to contemplate the possibility of a defective, unworthy, or damaged self." That's not IMHO how we want to deal with people on Wikipedia. I don't think it is useful or helpful to people in this community. No where in Wikipedia Policy or in the Behavioral Guideline is there mention of using shame to change user behavior, and rightly so. Etiquette, Civility, Dealing with disruptive editors say nothing about shaming people; quite the contrary. These guidelines and policies discuss the work entailed (and sometimes it is really hard work) in helping and nurturing others. That's how I read it. Kingturtle = (talk) 18:56, 1 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Um... not sure what to say to that. I think it is clear to everyone else that what I mean is that the discussion here has made users think twice about a type of behaviour which they had previously thought was acceptable, and might now realise was frowned upon. No harm in that, and absolutely no call for a diatribe about the extensive psychological damage caused by shame, based on a strict and clearly irrelevant medical definition.-- <font color="#96C8A2">K orr <font color="#96C8A2">u  ski  <font color="#96C8A2">Talk 14:01, 3 February 2011 (UTC)
 * For the record, I'd scaled back the questions I ask well before the discussions on this page, and for reasons completely unrelated to "shaming". I happen to have a few still up my sleeve, although significantly redesigned since the event that led me to rethink (Richwales's RfA). I happened to solicit feedback on my questions at the time -- had more positive than negative but decided to recalibrate anyway. Anyway, if some editors have been using their comments on this board to "shame" others, that is a very disruptive approach. --Mkativerata (talk) 01:40, 2 February 2011 (UTC)
 * I think it can be summed up as 'good candidates get through fine'. Nothing strange or new.--Cube lurker (talk) 19:14, 1 February 2011 (UTC)
 * A lot of the  people who post regularly on this page are the ones who  !vote fairly regularly on RfA, and if they have engaged in some introspection like Mkativerata has, there may be less drama. Yes, good candidates get  through fine, but the main issue is that  an ever decreasing  number of them are coming  forward, and several of them have told us, on and off Wiki, why.  Even I was told that  I  would be better off gouging my eyes out with a rusty baked bean tin than running for office! Kudpung (talk) 16:55, 2 February 2011 (UTC)
 * You'd get my support - for admin, of course, not the baked bean thing ;-) -- Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 17:01, 2 February 2011 (UTC)

Kingturtle: you make a very good point. But I don't think anyone was talking about shame in the deep rooted. personal, psychological sense. I think they meant that people had seen how others might disapprove of their attitude and had decided to alter it. I think people used the word shame in its informal, day-to-day meaning, and not its psychological state of distress meaning. But, as I said, you do make a very good point. — Fly by Night  ( talk )  22:54, 2 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Fly by Night:Thanks for putting it  that  way. It  was the essence of the first draft of my  message above, but  I decided to cut it out, and briefly  mention introspection  instead. Kudpung (talk) 07:36, 3 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Kudpung, thank you for clarifying. best regards, Kingturtle = (talk) 20:52, 3 February 2011 (UTC)
 * What Cube lurker said. What is far more important is that we get more of the same whenever the next close RfA happens to come around. Good natured debate, ill-informed or completely absent rationales being challenged where necessary, and any side-issues taken, as the name suggests, to one side (for instance, on user talk or the specific RfA's talk page). —WFC— 20:59, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

Random edit button
I've been watching the last month of heated debate with great interest and also with hope that a compromise could be found. It's obvious that because RfA is !voter driven, the !voters are indirectly to blame for the problem of RfA decline. To quote one editor:

"However from the way recent RFAs have focussed on the question and oppose sections it is possible that some people are voting on candidates without checking their contributions - and no I don't count looking at a statistical analysis of someones's contributions as researching that candidate. But as for the oppose section containing a higher proportion of articulate, diff supported opinions, I'm afraid that is an inevitable and probably desirable part of the process."

So I'm suggesting something simpler than candidate pre-requisites, something simpler than trial periods or reconfirmations. Simply what the header says: a "random edit by the candidate" button in the "Links for XXX:" section that would lead to a randomly selected edit by the candidate. I also suggest a limit on how old the edit is; i.e., the link would lead to a randomly selected edit by the candidate from the last X months. I'm confident that such a simple link would aid many !voters in making more informed considerations. Any comments? Technical issues? Criticisms? Personal attacks? Spam? Legal threats? Epithets? ... Guoguo12 <font color="blue" size="1">--Talk--  21:04, 3 February 2011 (UTC)
 * It's technically possible (well, it would show you a single contribution line and you would have to click the diff, unless someone can come up with something even more clever), but would it be any more useful than opening up the candidates contributions page and randomly clicking/hovering over a few diffs? – xeno <sup style="color:black;">talk 21:10, 3 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Well, you have a point, but I think it wouldn't be as random and therefore as effective as a truly (theoretically, of course) "random" selection. For example, you may be more likely to check more recent edits, or you might skip edits to certain namespaces that later prove to be core policy violations. Of course, these are just examples, but my point lies within the slightly greater objectivity in random checking. Guoguo12 <font color="blue" size="1">--Talk--  21:25, 3 February 2011 (UTC)


 * What Xeno said. I recently enabled popups and that's exactly what I do now (in addition to other "manual" vetting like trawling through article creations). Popups is (are?) perfect for this. Just pull up the contributions page, select 250 or 500 to get a nice big sample, and hover around. 28bytes (talk) 21:27, 3 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Er no... a judicious sampling is often better because you can single in on the types of edits you are concerned with. Do you want to see how he handles AFD, then you would not be concerned with how he edited "random article X."  Are you concerned with his policy knowledge related to BLP?  Then you would not be concerned with how he !voted in the recent ArbCOM committee.  Are you interested in CSD/talk page behavior/etc?  Whatever your area of interest, that is what you would be focusing on when you review.  A random item wouldn't help you much in evaluating candidates based upon what issues are important to you.  Furthermore, the time frame is up to individuals as well.  What is the cutoff 3 months? 6 months? 9 months? A year?  More?  Well, it depends on the person and the issue in question.  Was it mere policy knowledge that he has since learned/acquired?  Or was it for a blockable offense?  Neither solution is viable nor desirable IMO.--- Balloonman  NO! I'm Spartacus! 04:05, 4 February 2011 (UTC)
 * A little more, while random edits could be defended via statistical analysis, it doesn't work in the fact that not everybody is equally equipped/familiar with the subjects being reviewed. Reviewer X, an expert on CSD, randomly selects an edit related to an uploaded image whose copy rights status is in question, does that reviewer have the expertise to evaluate the edit?  At the same time, Reviewer Y, an expert on photos and copyvios randomly pulls up an edit related to CSD---but lacks familiarity to deal with the nuiances of the CSD policys (or doesn't care about them.)  A random selection detracts from getting qualified reviewers to review the appropriate subjects being edited.--- Balloonman  NO! I'm Spartacus! 22:57, 4 February 2011 (UTC)

How would looking at a random edit help? Most edits are little tweaks here and little tweaks there. Probably one edit in 100 is a new article. Most of the time you'd just get sent to a diff of someone adding a comma or reformatting their talk page; something like that. You would almost never the problem edits. Hypothetically, an editor could have made 20,000 edits and then two days before his RfA has a massive edit war and reverted an article 12 times while not being picked up for a 3RR violation. What are the chances of landing on one of those 12 troublesome edits out of the 20,000 edit total? (That's a rhetorical question, I can do the maths.) — Fly by Night  ( talk )  02:47, 5 February 2011 (UTC)
 * A better approach would be a more organized review. A dozen editors divide up the article contributions into six blocks, with two editors looking through each range. Report any findings. Another group does the same with talk page comments. Another group looks at the Wikipedia name space.-- SPhilbrick  T  15:44, 5 February 2011 (UTC)

Well, obviously that proposal failed pretty quickly. Thanks for the quick feedback. Unsurprisingly, I understand your POVs now, and it's clear that a random edit button would not be ideal. Guoguo12 <font color="blue" size="1">--Talk-- 16:26, 5 February 2011 (UTC)

RFA of GutiLucian02
GutiLucian02 appaear to be a new user who has decided to run for Adminship and bungled the transclusion in his nomination> I have tried to have it transclude properly on the page but I can't figure out what wrong with it. The Resident Anthropologist (talk) 20:16, 5 February 2011 (UTC)
 * He has only around 100 edits, so I reverted an earlier failed attempt (he'd tried to transclude a non-existent page) and strongly suggested he shouldn't run yet. Oh well, I guess it's crash and burn time again. -- Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 20:22, 5 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Fixed. 28bytes (talk) 20:29, 5 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Amazing isn't it? Exactly while we are heavily debating this very kind of problem, we get flood of them. Kudpung (talk) 05:34, 6 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Well, I'm quite sure that adding on another layer of bureaucracy for the newbie to read when s/he hasn't read any of the other bureaucracy will solve the problem! :) --Hammersoft (talk) 14:31, 10 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Why would it be amazing? As of your post, 1 week after the discussion started above, we had 2 NotNow closures.  In the 4 weeks leading up to that we had 6.  1-2 NotNow closures per week is pretty standard.  It would be amazing if we had a true flooding of them, but 2 in 1 week?  That's not a flood.  I mean, I could equally say, "Amazing, we've gone 4 days without a NotNow.  Exactly while we are heavily debating this very kind of problem we get a dearth of them."--- Balloonman  NO! I'm Spartacus! 23:46, 10 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Not to toot my own horn, but the fall-off in NOTNOW cases coincides with the time since the edit notice was made changed to make it more obnoxious and thus harder to ignore. I know, i know, I'm inviting comment on my skill at being obnoxious... Beeblebrox (talk) 00:08, 11 February 2011 (UTC)
 * corelation <> causation :P--- Balloonman  NO! I'm Spartacus! 01:29, 11 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Too soon to tell to be certain, but it might have something to do with it. Beeblebrox (talk) 01:32, 11 February 2011 (UTC)
 * And a butterfly flapping its wings in Africa might have caused Katrina :P --- Balloonman  NO! I'm Spartacus! 19:45, 11 February 2011 (UTC)
 * @Beeblebrox; I'd give you a barnstar for being obnoxious, but I can't seem to find one ;) --Hammersoft (talk) 19:31, 11 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Here you go:


 * It's not obnoxious enough. Make the text blink hot pink or something.  S ven M anguard   <font color="FCD116">Wha?  04:18, 12 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Agree, Make it flash between Inverted colors, I want it to OBNOXIOUS enough to give some one seizure. The Resident Anthropologist (talk) 00:41, 13 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Right! Instead of the current image, use this.  S ven M anguard   <font color="FCD116">Wha?  00:54, 13 February 2011 (UTC) (Seriously, don't click "this" if you're seizure prone. It actually caused seizures.)
 * I'm afraid this is pretty much the upper limit of my coding skills. Beeblebrox (talk) 19:27, 14 February 2011 (UTC)
 * I released some of my limited HTML-fu. In some browsers it might blink. Colors may also vary with different browsers. Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 21:16, 14 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Hmm, I think my medium/color is more obnoxious; hmmmm T ofutwitch11  <font color="Orange">(T ALK ) 21:26, 14 February 2011 (UTC)
 * I chipped in something from my personal collection of psychedelic images (which are used to pacify people in my building when they take shrooms. It actually works. They sit there clicking and staring at the images for hours. It's creepy.)  S ven M anguard   <font color="FCD116">Wha?  21:49, 14 February 2011 (UTC)

RFA box
Anyone know why SoxBot did this? I guess just an error... → ♠ Gƒoley ↔ <font color="maroon" face="Papyrus">Four ♣ ← 23:37, 14 February 2011 (UTC)
 * It's possibly because someone created a second "Support" section - it's been fixed now. -- Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 23:45, 14 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Yes, this edit in particular. – xeno <sup style="color:black;">talk 23:46, 14 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Oh okay. Thanks. → ♠ Gƒoley ↔ <font color="maroon" face="Papyrus">Four ♣ ← 23:48, 14 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Ouch 0%... that could have been depressing if I'd noticed it before the edit.... :) As I spotted it I fixed the !vote, it seems to be the editors second edit :s Does that happen a lot (it's a terrible thing but I am completely out of touch with the RFA process) --Errant (chat!) 23:51, 14 February 2011 (UTC)
 * If someone's second edit is to an RfA I think it's a safe bet that we'll be seeing their RfA before their 100th edit. 28bytes (talk) 23:53, 14 February 2011 (UTC)
 * I always wonder how the heck they find this place so quickly. It's no WP:FSC but it isn't somthing I'd expect people to find out about for at least a few weeks.  S ven M anguard   <font color="FCD116">Wha?  01:14, 15 February 2011 (UTC)
 * I think it is partly the RFA box located on my user page and many others. After all, I (or the bot in behalf of me) welcomed that user. → ♠ Gƒoley ↔ <font color="maroon" face="Papyrus">Four ♣ ← 01:19, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

Minimum requirement?
Is there any chance, do people think, of a consensus to apply some minimum requirement above just being a registered editor in order to stand for RfA? I ask because we have just had someone run who had only 76 edits to their name - and we regularly get applications from people with just a few hundred. They're always good faith and always well-meaning, but they never stand a chance, and it must often be demoralizing for a newcomer to be snowed out of RfA in short order. As it stands, we're basically saying "Yeah, you're registered and you've only been here a few days - no problem, that's enough to run for RfA". And then when they apply they get slapped down and told they don't have a chance in hell of passing. I really think some realistic minimum requirements would at least help to set expectations and avoid such disappointments - we know people with so few edits can't succeed at RfA, so why do we continue with the farcical notion that they can run? I realise I might be wasting my time, after WSC's recent comment about being unable for get a consensus for requiring candidates with less than 1,500 edits to only run if they have a nominator (which I think is an excellent idea). But I live in hope. Any thoughts? -- Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 13:19, 29 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I think most people who watch this page support it. I do. - Dank (push to talk) 13:25, 29 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Wasn't there a case - a few months ago - of somebody who applied for RfA for a very specialised technical need, who already had a lot of relevant experience on other wikis but not so much experience here? I'm all in favour of a broad rule that sets a minimum requirement, as long as there's a bit of wiggle room for truly exceptional cases (and it should be worded so that Sue and Sam NewEditor don't get the impression that their 100 edits over the last month qualify them as an exceptional case). bobrayner (talk) 14:29, 29 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I believe you're thinking of User:Lustiger seth. - Dank (push to talk) 23:03, 29 January 2011 (UTC)
 * We've had Leyo and MGA73, who seem to fit the "special cases" bill. I think the "Fewer than 1,500 edits and you need a nominator" suggestion would cater for any unusual cases like that. -- Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 14:38, 29 January 2011 (UTC)


 * When we've discussed this in the past there have been four meaningful objections that I remember:
 * We need a safety valve to allow for the very occasional exception - hence the precaution that this is just for self nominations, if someone appears who submits flawless FA candidates prepared offline that only ever need one edit, then another editor could still nominate them after less than 1500 edits. Alternatively we could make an exception for people who are already administrators on another Wikimedia project - that would actually apply to the people who have made admin here on under 1500 edits in recent years.
 * We should only do this if there is a way of doing it automatically or at least semi automatically - so if we have an edit notice that successfully warns such editors off from RFA then this could work. If however we put an edit notice in and we still get two or three such trainwrecks a month then it benefits nobody. I would suggest we test it with an edit notice and see if that works.
 * It risks reinforcing Editcountitis at RFA. Which is a fair point but if we want to combat editcountitis I wouldn't start here.
 * Where do draw the line? I'm of the view that there is a clear group of candidates who fall so far short of current community requirements that it is best for them especially that we introduce some sort of minimum threshold for candidates, others have argued that underqualified candidates who run are a random lot and a minimum threshold would make little difference. I think that Kingpin13'srecent stats shows a clear pattern - if we can deter enthusiastic newbies from running at the very start of their wiki career then they are unlikely to run until they have at least a chance of success. I don't particularly care whether you make that threshold three months editing which would fit Kingpin's graph or 1,500 edits - either would address the issue.
 * I think that answers all the past objections to this idea, and leaves us the potential benefits that dozens fewer newbies would be bitten every year and a certain amount of reviewer time would be saved.  Ϣere Spiel  Chequers  14:45, 29 January 2011 (UTC)
 * That's a good graph. I like graphs. If only more debate on this page were based on statistics rather than gut feeling... :-)
 * Considering the driver for such a change, I'm not very motivated by the idea of weak candidates making extra work for people who hang around here - nobody has to !vote and it's not a heavy burden to add yet another WP:NOTNOW on the pile. I'm more motivated by the problem that a new(ish) but motivated editor will arrive here wanting to help the project, and they'll get some very demotivating answers... that's not good for the rest of wikipedia. bobrayner (talk) 14:57, 29 January 2011 (UTC)


 * Great stuff, thanks. The recent 76-edit candidate had been around since June 2009, so how about something like "If you have been editing for less than three months or have made fewer than 1,500 edits on all Wikipedia projects, you need someone to nominate you"? I think that would address the concerns above. I think it is stringent enough to dissuade the 100-edit newbies, but a low enough bar to avoid seeing it as promoting editcountitis. I do agree we need some sort of automated notice though - just stating it in the policy pages somewhere is unlikely to work, as if newbies haven't read the current guidelines they're probably no more likely to read any new rules. I've seen a few of the snow closure newbies get seriously upset about their rejections and talk about quitting - if we could minimize the chances of that happening, I think we would be doing something good for the project. -- Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 15:09, 29 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Close but how about. If you have been editing for less than three months or have made fewer than 1,500 edits, then unless you are already an administrator on another Wikimedia project, you need someone to nominate you".  Ϣere Spiel  Chequers '' 15:51, 29 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Yep, that hits the spot. -- Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 16:00, 29 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Support It might help avoid the hurt feelings of newbies, some of whom think a couple hundred edits and a few weeks is sufficient. I seriously think being told there is a rule would be accepted better than being told they weren't good enough to be seriously considered. It isn't a problem for the rare example of someone who might othewise qualify as, it should be easy enough to find an admin to nominate.-- SPhilbrick  T  01:17, 30 January 2011 (UTC)

I don't agree with making instruction-creep minimum requirements. The page already states "The community grants administrator status to trusted users, so nominees should have been on Wikipedia long enough for people to determine whether they are trustworthy". The candidate should be recommended to look at recent successful RFAs for an idea of what is required, but saying "Must have 3 months" or "1500 edits with a nominator" is just getting needlessly complicated, and there are always exceptions to the rule making the rule pointless. AD 15:18, 29 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Candidates *are* recommended to look at the relevant policies, recent RfAs etc, but that's clearly not working - we are regularly getting newbie no-chancers having a go and getting burned, and sometimes that ends up chasing away potentially good contributors. If we know such people won't succeed (and we do know it), what is the point of letting them run and take the flack? Exceptions to the rule making the rule pointless? The nominator thing takes care of that - all an exceptional case needs is to ask for a nominator. -- Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 15:33, 29 January 2011 (UTC)
 * They have a go, despite the clear warnings and notices? That's their choice. We have to stop treating newcomers as if they're idiots. RFAs are already close per NOTNOW and SNOW anyway, and this can easily be extended to RFAs that have yet to begin. AD 17:16, 29 January 2011 (UTC)
 * So your approach to newbies who don't really understand the ropes is "fuck them, let them sink"? I prefer a more collegial and supportive approach to newcomers - one which welcomes them, tries to help them understand and integrate with the project, and doesn't say "Yeah, go on, try for admin" when we know full well they don't have a chance. -- Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 17:26, 29 January 2011 (UTC)
 * No, not at all. I just prefer using NOTNOW, which does those things just as well. At no point does anyone say "Yeah, go on, try for admin", when they're blatantly unqualified. At the same time, we don't need instruction creep saying you can't run until you have x edits and n days experience. I'd be more insulted that I couldn't try, than if I went head-first into a process I clearly didn't understand and rightly got opposed. If you don't like newcomers being bitten at RFA, deal with the biters. AD 17:54, 29 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Ok, I understand what you're saying. And if that approach was working, then I'd agree. But despite what our guidelines say, despite our asking people to check past RfAs and make sure they have the right experience, and despite the way those experienced editors amongst us might deal with it in the same situation, unqualified newbies with just a few hundred edits are running all the time - and they're crashing and burning. It isn't specific bitey replies, so I don't think there are actually any biters to deal with - I've just seen people wholly demoralised by the whole experience of running and getting a pile-on of "not now" opposes. -- Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 13:16, 31 January 2011 (UTC)


 * How do you impose a minimum requirement, and what stops people running nonetheless? Users are going to have to be vetted some how, and how do you do that? If someone posts an RfA then it gets vetted there and gets removed within the hour. It's not like it causes any extra work for anyone, except a few clicks. It'd be different if they had to stay open for seven days. But at the moment, you're asking to introduce some new policy to solve a tiny problem. We're going to waste more time and effort trying to craft a solution then we do on the "problem" itself! Besides that, it causes other philosophical problems. Would it apply retrospectively? How is it fair that someone got the mop four years ago who wouldn't even be allowed to have an RfA today? I bet there are loads of non- or semi-active admins from those days that still have the bit. While some of today's active editors have more experience and have more clue; but can't get close because of today's standards. — Fly by Night  ( talk )  15:30, 29 January 2011 (UTC)
 * How would we do this? Well an edit notice would probably be sufficient. No this would not be retrospective, admins who passed with less than 1500 edits would remain admins. This proposal is purely to screen out some future not now RFAs. If we were talking about something that bit one or two newbies a year then I could see the argument that this was a relatively small problem, but it is dozens per annum and scores since we started discussing this solution. So this isn't just a few clicks, it is dozens of bitten newbies, some of whom are driven off, and many hours of other editors time as well.  Ϣere Spiel  Chequers  15:45, 29 January 2011 (UTC)


 * "How do you impose a minimum requirement, and what stops people running nonetheless?": Very good question - I think WSC's suggestion of some sort of automatic edit notice is the way to go, if that's technically achievable.
 * "If someone posts an RfA then it gets vetted there and gets removed within the hour": If they do get through, I think an actual policy reason for closure would be a lot easier on the candidate than the current "You're not good enough" snow closes we often see.
 * "Would it apply retrospectively?": No.
 * "How is it fair that someone got the mop four years ago who wouldn't even be allowed to have an RfA today?": Nobody is proposing that. They'd just need to get a nominator, and as long as they're not an obvious trainwreck, I think that should be easy enough. (And anyway, standards in societies change all the time - there's no obligation to stick to something just because that's the way it used to be.)
 * "While some of today's active editors have more experience and have more clue; but can't get close because of today's standards": Not being able to get in because of today's standards is a whole different ball game to trying to minimize the number of NOTNOW/SNOW candidates who go through the fire.
 * -- Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 15:48, 29 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Wow, they're a lot of answers to my rhetorical questions. This all feels like inventing the electrical saw to crack a nut. Looking at the length of this thread, more time and effort has been spent that would be spent on a whole year's worth of WP:NOTNOW closures. As for some people's reasoning that we should mollycoddle every new user so they don't get bitten. Shall we idiot-proof the rest of the project? If they're dumb enough to run for adminship in their first week then they deserve to get bitten; it's called natural selection. — Fly by Night  ( talk )  20:38, 29 January 2011 (UTC)
 * This isn't supposed to be a Darwinian free-for-all, it's supposed to be a collegial and supportive environment where we help each other for the overall benefit of the project. I think a little bit of effort expended in helping newcomers to avoid making themselves look like a fool (which is how a lot seem to feel when they get bounced out of RfA), and encouraging them to become long-term contributors, is effort well spent. -- Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 13:20, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

I would oppose a minimum requirement. The work of removing unqualified candidates is slight.--Wehwalt (talk) 15:39, 29 January 2011 (UTC)
 * That's not the point. The point is that that "work" disheartens the candidate and often puts them off Wikipedia for good. - Kingpin13 (talk) 15:42, 29 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Exactly. The current system is like welcoming no-chance candidates in with one hand, while hiding the big stick we're going to hit them with behind our back in the other. -- Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 15:51, 29 January 2011 (UTC)
 * WSC's comment was similar to my suggestion of a minimum of 2,000 edits and 1 year, and anything less (whoever the  nominator is) to be examined and seconded by a 'crat  before transclusion.  But  let's be realistic, the secret consensus is that  however much  we discuss it, no  changes are going  to  be made, because 2,448 users are watching this page and the number of candidates is still falling. Even the recent interlude on JW's tp fizzled out and got archived. On this tp too many different arguments for change and improvement are always being addressed simultaneously while the important  issues carefully  get side-stepped like dogs' doos on a Parisian  sidewalk. This page  needs to  focus on the problems in  perspective, and IMO, encouraging the mature, experienced editors is higher on the priorities at the moment than discouraging the SNOW and NOTNOW. Kudpung (talk) 16:06, 29 January 2011 (UTC).
 * 2000 edits and 1 year? Those requirements are excessively high. What makes bureaucrats so special they can examine a candidate? All they do is judge the consensus of a discussion, not the candidate. AD 17:16, 29 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I support this proposal. It questionable whether an editnotice would do much to stop unqualified candidates putting themselves forward; WP:Requests for adminship/Nominate already says, 'While there is no minimum requirement, self-nominated candidates with fewer than 2,000 edits and three months of active editing often see their RfAs closed per WP:SNOW or Wikipedia:Not Now shortly after adding them.' But even if it does nothing to stop such users, I agree that it would be preferable to have a policy-based reason to close their RFAs ('sorry, you don't meet the minimum requirements') than the current situation ('your obvious mistake meant you got pile-on opposed by twenty users in the first ten minutes. We hope you can survive this public humiliation and one day feel able to show your face here again.'). The only question would be where to set the minimum requirements. I'd say someone ought to take a look at the record of past RFAs, over the past three years or so, and see what was the minimum edit count and account age that a candidate passed with; then set the limits below that. My gut instinct is that 1,500 edits might be a little high, but if we've never had anyone pass with less than that, then I guess it would be reasonable. Robofish (talk) 16:12, 29 January 2011 (UTC)
 * You're right, 1500 edits is high. AD 17:16, 29 January 2011 (UTC)
 * This may be a bit late, but lets think honestly, lets say a user has been on Wiki for a year and accumulated 1,600 edits. Would you really vote for them? Or would you oppose questioning experience. When is the last time an editor that was not an admin on another project passed rfa with less than 2,000 edits. A while ago, I know. T ofutwitch11  <font color="Orange">(T ALK ) 18:11, 29 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I might. Seriously. People are looking at this in the wrong way - is it right that standards are getting excessively high? No, it's wrong. Especially in terms of edit counting, we're looking at the wrong things. Knowledge is probably the most important for an admin, but that isn't measured in number of edits. We've digressed though - point is, we don't need bureaucratic instruction creep stopping someone from applying. Say the minimum of 2000 edits was imposed - the candidate applies with 2001 edits, and gets opposed for just being over the threshold. That's what people at RFA are like - any excuse to oppose someone, and they will. I said above, if you want to stop newcomers being bitten, deal with the biters. Until then, I'm firmly against adding set criteria to keep the newbies out. AD 18:20, 29 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I'm not saying I wouldn't, but I can't speak for the other 100 voters or so. Unfortunately, many people's "RFA Criteria" is around 6,000. For example, If I were to run (which I won't for quite some time...) I would be below many peoples RFA Criterium (at 4,200). There is not enough people that are willing to even look at someone with that amount of edits. T ofutwitch11  <font color="Orange">(T ALK ) 18:23, 29 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Where they got 6000 from, I don't know. All it tells us is they're very active. So what? I could make 6000 edits in a week or maybe less just playing on Huggle. AD 18:25, 29 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Exactly -- any anyone could, but then they would oppose because all the edits are Huggle. I'm not sure where anyone comes up with this criteria; but, I think you'd be a fine Admin, Aiken drum. But then there is those who will fuss over edit count and number or GA's... T ofutwitch11  <font color="Orange">(T ALK ) 18:29, 29 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I think the solution to the problem of newcomers being bitten is to not bite them. Using the most recently closed RfA as an example, it's possible to say "Oppose WP:NOTNOW/WP:SNOW" in a less terse, dismissive way that might actually guide the newcomers towards something they'd enjoy doing, like vandal-fighting. Demoralizing a new user doesn't have to be part of the RfA experience; just treat the candidate like an adult and explain why you think they're not ready in human terms without throwing a bunch of acronyms at them. And I empathize with the desire not to drive newcomers away, but my observation has been that it's not the newcomers that are driven away so much as the editors who would meet any minimum tenure and edit-count criteria we'd reasonably put in an edit notice. No minimum requirements would have prevented this bloodbath. 28bytes (talk) 20:01, 29 January 2011 (UTC)
 * The solution to newcomers being bitten at RFA was why I wrote WP:NOTNOW in the first place. Alas, it has (unsuprisingly) been hijacked as a WP:YET ANOTHER BLUE LINKED VOTE. Pedro : Chat  20:47, 29 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I think "hijacked" is the right word. I'm going to go out on a limb and assume that when you wrote it, you didn't expect it to be used to oppose editors who'd (for example) been active for four years, made 40,000 edits and created 2,300 articles. Maybe someone needs to write WP:I'm not ready to support at this time, but tossing [[WP:NOTNOW at you would be pretty disrespectful given your accomplishments here, so I won't do that either and will just oppose normally.]] 28bytes (talk) 21:38, 29 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Very right. NOTNOW is a non bitey alternative to SNOW and speciifically related to RFA. It's intention was to remove the WP:BITE intimated at some RFAs with SNOWball comments which impled "you don't stand a chance in hell". Alas, it's even now turned up as an AFD argument, for goodness sake. Classic bluelinking to shortcuts that sound right without understanding them. Pedro : Chat  21:50, 29 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Yes there are also other problems at RFA that this proposal would not fix. But fixing one problem at RFA does not stop you going on to fixing other problems - if anything fixing one problem would break the tradition that nothing changes at RFA and make it easier to fix other problems.  Ϣere Spiel  Chequers  20:36, 29 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I don't have an objection to an edit notice strongly discouraging people from self-nominating if they have less than N edits, but making it an official requirement will, I think, have the unfortunate side effect of generating a lot of WP:NOTNOWs for editors who have N + 1 edits, who will be even more upset to receive the WP:NOTNOWs since they've "passed the requirement for adminship." Further, a hard limit will not discourage people with 80 edits from transcluding anyway, since the existing edit notice practically begs them to read Guide to requests for adminship, and they obviously don't, or they wouldn't be transcluding in the first place. With the minimum requirement proposal, they'll still get a "no thanks" message on their talk page, but it will probably be more brusque since they've not only disregarded a community norm, but they've now violated a requirement as well. I'm very sympathetic to the goal of being less bitey to newcomers, I'm just concerned this proposal might backfire and have the opposite effect. 28bytes (talk) 21:24, 29 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Anyone with 1501 edits would SNOW out anyway. Even finding successful RfA's for candidates with 3000 (double the proposed minimum) is hard.   —  Soap  —  21:33, 30 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I have an odd idea that might help with the bluelink dilemma. What if we mandate that all votes, supports, opposes, and neutrals, be at least 10 words long, make at least one point (it could be "I agree with the assessments made by this person and that guy" but would eliminate the "per above" votes and would force users to explain what the policies they quote mean. Thoughts?  S ven M anguard   <font color="FCD116">Wha?  22:36, 29 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Come on folks. This is degenerating into mental masturbation. Can we do this? Should we do that? What about this? We're inventing problems to solve. So come on, let's stop all this chitter-chatter and get back to some editing. We are here to make an encyclopedia, after all. — Fly by Night  ( talk )  23:01, 29 January 2011 (UTC)


 * I've tweaked the wording of the existing edit notice slightly to stress some of the points made here. It may help, it may not but it can't hurt to try. Beeblebrox (talk) 23:50, 30 January 2011 (UTC)
 * That looks good, thanks. I honestly think it's nuts allowing people to run for RfA who we know have no chance of succeeding, and I don't think that voluntary recommendations work anywhere near as well as actual rules in such things. But changing the notice has got to be worth trying - as you say, it can't hurt. -- Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 13:27, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

Straw poll
I'd like to ask for a straw poll regarding the above suggestion, just to quickly see if it's a waste of time. And I mean a genuine straw poll - that is, completely non-binding and with no action to be taken as a result of it, but just to get some idea of the numbers and a feel for whether it's worth pursuing further.

Anyway, the proposal is the we implement something along the lines of "If you have been editing for less than three months or have made fewer than 1,500 edits, then unless you are already an administrator on another Wikimedia project, you need someone to nominate you." -- Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 13:35, 31 January 2011 (UTC)


 * Support -- Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 13:36, 31 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Support well obviously. --Kudpung (talk) 14:04, 31 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Oppose as pointless instruction creep and a needless increase to the workload of already overburdened admins.--Atlan (talk) 14:14, 31 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Oppose Sorry, it's not a bad idea, I just don't see the benefit. Self-noms of clearly WP:NOTNOW candidates is surely not a massive problem with RFA. Infact, the clearly WP:NOTNOW candidates tend to get treated quite gently, maybe with a moral support or two and, if they look like a good editor, a comment like "you're going along the right lines, come back in six months". Where's the harm? The time wasted isn't particularly egregious, and setting a specific edit count just encourages people to think that an edit count indicates anything of any importance.-- <font color="#96C8A2">K orr <font color="#96C8A2">u  ski  <font color="#96C8A2">Talk 16:23, 31 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Oppose How about we're all just nicer to each other and make honest attempts to cut down on the venom in RfA? How about we just make an effort to calmly explain to the newbies that we expect a high level of committment to the project before they become admins, instead of spamming WP:NOTNOW like lazy assholes? That seems like a better option.  S ven M anguard   <font color="FCD116">Wha?  16:36, 31 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Can you suggest a way to make people nicer to each other? (I'm sure the UN would love to hear from you if you can [[Image:Wink.png|16px]]) -- Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 16:40, 31 January 2011 (UTC)
 * On Wikipedia, that way would be that the community decides that they have had enough and decide to start blocking people for incivility at RfAs. It'll happen eventually, as none of these reforms will alleviate the underlying issue that there is no punishment for being a total dick to other people, other than the occasional community ban for the most extreme cases. That or people decide to lead by example and cut the blue linking.  S ven M anguard   <font color="FCD116">Wha?  16:49, 31 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I'll choose "leading by example" over incivility blocks any day. Incivility is a bad thing, but it's also quite subjective, and strangely seems to occur most often in those we happen to disagree with. 28bytes (talk) 16:58, 31 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I don't quite see the rationale for it being an increase in workload - if anything, it would save the time wasted !voting on what in the first 24 hours might not be a blatantly obvious SNOW or NOTNOW. Kudpung (talk) 16:47, 31 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Support Similar setups are in use on other WMF wikis and they seem to work well.  — Soap  —  18:10, 31 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Support It'll definitely help in keeping away quite a few of the bad actors, but more importantly (to an extent) keep the genuinely enthusiastic newbie from being barraged with "you didn't use an edit summary here" or "you haven't made any edits to xyz board" etc. &mdash; Spaceman  Spiff  18:43, 31 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Support. The thing about de facto rules is that only the people who already know them...know them. There's no reason we shouldn't inform users looking to step onto the block about the fact that this is how things actually work before they get trampled. Fluffernutter, previously known as Chaoticfluffy (talk) 19:12, 31 January 2011 (UTC)
 * You're right: where de-facto standards exist, this information should be available. But this isn't a de-facto standard, as candidates with 1600 edits and 100 days' editing also have no hope of passing. Brushing that technicality aside, I don't think the main RfA page is the place for outlining de-facto rules; there are dozens. And I question the idea of making explicit that while we are all equal, those with >1500 posts and >3 months experience are more equal than everyone else. It further reinforces the perception of there being a hierarchy. In my view the problem (if enthusiastic editors with no chance of passing being WP:NOTNOW-ed and being offered the guidance of some of Wikipedia's finest is a "problem") is that the very informative guide to RfA is not prominent enough. It should probably be included in the editnotice. —WFC— 01:50, 1 February 2011 (UTC)


 * Support. More detail above, but this would reduce some possibly hurt feelings.-- SPhilbrick  T  19:43, 31 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Neutral I like the concept, but the numbers aren't right. IMHO, I don't think someone with 1700 edits and 6 months of experience would make it. While I think that our current standards are to high, lets not kid ourselves here, most of us would not vote for someone with 1700 edits and 6 months of experience, 1500 edits and 3 months is even a bigger no-no. I'm not trying to say at 1,500 edits and 3 months someone would/would not be ready; I just know that they wouldn't make it (unless they are an admin on another wiki). I don't know where I stand. T ofutwitch11  <font color="Orange">(T ALK ) 20:08, 31 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Yep, I get what your saying. But I'm not suggesting that someone with 1500 edits and 3 months will stand much chance of passing, just that they will hopefully have enough clue by then to know not to run - and if they want to run with that level of experience, they'll have been around long enough to stand on their own feet. All I really want to do is stop the really green newbies with only a couple of hundred edits who really have no clue about admin, and who would benefit by not being slapped down almost before they've started. I think getting over that first 1,000 edits or so makes quite a difference to one's level of understanding - it certainly did with me -- Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 20:17, 31 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I understand what your saying better now, I'm going to stick unsure though -- we will see what happens. However, even with the editnotice, that doesn't stop people from creating their RFA does it? I mean, they could completely ignore the message etc; but we would hope they have the sense not to, I guess. T ofutwitch11  <font color="Orange">(T ALK ) 20:24, 31 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I think they could still create it, but now, instead of agonizing over whether it is a NOTNOW or SNOW, or should be allowed to go longer, all the while the candidate is getting dumped on, the response could be a quick "sorry - you must have missed the rule".-- SPhilbrick  T  20:28, 31 January 2011 (UTC)
 * If that's truly what happens, I could support this. As long as they don't get a nasty "warning" template for violating the new rule. I still worry that we'd just be setting them up for a massive flameout as soon as they get their 1501st edit and transclude an RfA, but I suppose as BsZ says, by the time they have that many edits perhaps they'll know not to do that. 28bytes (talk) 20:37, 31 January 2011 (UTC)
 * "As long as they don't get a nasty "warning" template for violating the new rule": Oh yes, definitely - I would want to see a friendly "Sorry, you don't meet the minimum requirements for a self-nomination just yet" fail - if issued quickly, I think it would be better than a 0/10/0 SNOW/NOTNOW. -- Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 20:45, 31 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Oppose as instruction creep (including a few figures in the guide to adminshio might be helpful, without problems. Septentrionalis PMAnderson
 * Hi, I really don't mean to badger, but just saying "instruction creep" doesn't really tell us why you think that's bad - good instructions are good, and bad ones are bad, surely? -- Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 20:48, 31 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Support - Seems like a sensible idea to me, and with self-nominations that don't meet the set requirements closed quickly with a friendly note left on the requester's talk page as suggests, it should speed up the inevitable for some RfAs and give a better impression to newer users. CT Cooper · &#32;talk 21:59, 31 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Oppose as useless instruction creep that is likely to have unwanted side-effects. Set the minimum requirement too high and it will cause immediate damage. Set it too low and editors will reasonably assume it's OK to apply as soon as they meet it. In the short run this will cause more failed RfAs, not less. In the long run it will lower standards. Hans Adler 22:15, 31 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Oppose, both the general principle and the specific measures mentioned. On principle: setting arbitrary lower bounds would imply that racking up x edits is a route to adminship. In any case, if a user below three months or 1500 edits doesn't have the WP:CLUE necessary to realise that they're wasting their time, a brief (and comparatively friendly) taste of RfA might not be such a bad thing. If they're trolling, they have very much outed themselves as such, and if they're acting in good faith, I can't think of anywhere where they're more likely to find someone who can help them become a better Wikipedian. —WFC— 00:07, 1 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Support - I won't repeat the reasons I gave for this above, but I think this is a good idea and worth a try, even if it's not much of a 'pressing issue'. Robofish (talk) 00:41, 1 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Support per Fluffernutter. I don't consider this to be instruction creep, and I do think that newbies should be protected from making such a common newbie mistake.  Ϣere Spiel  Chequers  01:05, 1 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Oppose. It's pointless. Anyone can just get their 'wiki-buddy' to nominate them anyway. Should we set restrictions for nominators to be experienced too? -- &oelig; &trade; 01:33, 1 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Oppose Solution in search of a problem. A microscopic number of new editors overeager for the buttons and having a bad experience as a result is not a problem - if they're really thick skinned enough to someday be admins, they'll value the learning experience. Townlake (talk) 01:57, 1 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Oppose It's merely a pointless restriction. 99.999% of these noms will end up going the way of WP:SNOW in the first few minutes/hours anyway...--<font style="color:#191970">White Shadows <font style="color:#DC143C">We live in a beautiful world 02:15, 1 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Do you understand that you've articulated one of the strong reasons for support? A newbie comes along, makes a couple hundred edits, gets excited about actually being a part of this ambitious project, sees someone vandalizing, and getting blocked, finds out that one has to be an admin to block, and decides they want to be an admin so applies. Under the present rules, they are told to go away, they don't stand a snowball's chance in hell of becoming an admin. Under the proposed rule, they are told, sorry, one has to have a little more experience before applying on your own. Which editor will be happier? I think there's no question, that the second case is a much better experience.-- SPhilbrick  T  21:50, 2 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Do you realise that you've painted a picture of the worst possible reason for wanting to become an administrator? "Because I want to block people." It doesn't need a rule to allow you to tell a candidate that their nomination is premature. Malleus Fatuorum 22:07, 2 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Actually, the worst possible reason for wanting to become an administrator is "to pick up chicks". bd2412  T 22:46, 2 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Yet you can use the fact that you are an admin as a pick up line, and in rare occasions it works... Tito xd (?!? - cool stuff) 22:53, 2 February 2011 (UTC)
 * I am stunned and amazed to hear that. On the other hand, I've been married since before there was a Wikipedia, so I would not know. Still, stunned and amazed. bd2412  T 23:05, 2 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Hmmmm. if that's true I might try and take advantage of this (no doubt temporary) armistice myself. Malleus Fatuorum 23:37, 2 February 2011 (UTC)
 * weak support-- It's requiring a nominator, not banning RfAs for people who don't tick the right box. In its current state, this is a remarkably conservative suggestion. The editors who are most likely to seek out adminship from an early stage are also those who are likely to realize (I hope) by their 1500th edit, given contact with admin-related spheres and RfA itself, that it is more demanding than they would have earlier expected. However, simple:Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Normandy is one recent example of the argument that arises from having even a vague metric as simplewiki does; this gives me pause. <font color="#CC0099">sonia ♫  03:01, 1 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Ouch. Yeah, this is exactly what I fear will happen here if we implement this. 28bytes (talk) 03:35, 1 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Oppose This is unnecessary. Kingturtle = (talk) 04:33, 1 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Hi. Care to expand? You  don't  have to  of course, but  your rationale may  help the project along, whether others agree with  you  or not.Kudpung (talk) 06:30, 1 February 2011 (UTC)
 * ... —WFC— 14:58, 1 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Oppose --<font face="Times"> Perseus, Son of Zeus ✉ sign here   17:00, 1 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Replaced # with * . No other comments have been signed like this. → ♠ Gƒoley ↔ <font color="maroon" face="Papyrus">Four ♣ ← 17:08, 1 February 2011 (UTC)


 * Support - Most newbies simply don't understand that they won't make it and then getting shot down in an obvious NOTNOW RfA simply will not help their morale. Might I suggest that it be put across as a suggestion rather than a guideline? And forgive me if I misunderstand the suggestion, but just so that RfA's don't seem to be closed as newbie self-noms rather than NOTNOWs. Does that make sense? Of course, there will still be people who don't read the guidelines and do it anyway... -<font face="Lucida Calligraphy"> PrincessofLlyr royal court 17:32, 1 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Oppose – Per user:Hans Adler. (We've wasted far more time and effort on this discussion that we have closing premature RfAs.) — Fly by Night  ( talk )  16:03, 2 February 2011 (UTC)
 * It's not about the effort of closing premature RfAs, it's about minimizing the discouragement of potentially long-term newbies. -- Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 16:14, 2 February 2011 (UTC)
 * I've already commented on that too: if people are dumb enough to run for adminship in their first week then they deserve to get bitten. It's called natural selection; or you propose to idiot-proof the entire project? — Fly by Night  ( talk )  08:45, 3 February 2011 (UTC)
 * And again, I think "It's a bloodbath, fuck 'em if they can't survive" is entirely the wrong attitude to take towards newcomers in what is supposed to be a collegial project. 09:23, 3 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Newcomers who don't understand the ropes yet are not "idiots", they're just inexperienced - we need to be encouraging them to become useful editors. -- Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 10:52, 3 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Please try to relax. Don't take things so personally. You're blowing everything out of proportion. There's no need to use language like that. I'm sorry, but if you apply for an administrator role in your first weeks then you must have a total lack of common sense. Are these the kind of people you want to mollycoddle and keep on the project? I think we're better off without those kinds of people. This all inclusive approach is why we have millions of pages of rubbish and our public perception is slipping. Dumbing down is not the way to go. — Fly by Night  ( talk )  11:43, 3 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Oh, I'm very relaxed and I really am not taking it personally - please don't confuse honest straight talking with emotion. I just honestly think that seeing it as a Darwinian struggle here is an entirely destructive attitude. I really don't mean that to be personally offensive either, and I apologize in advance if it does offend, but it's the only way to state my honest opinion. -- Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 16:06, 3 February 2011 (UTC)
 * No offence taken, and I'm glad I hadn't offended you either. Just some straight talking from both sides. To be honest I think your rheotoric is too colourful. I don't see anything as a Darwinian struggle. People need to learn from their mistakes. The mind boggles at what other things the apply-in-the-first-month user might get up to next. I didn't apply in my first month, did you? You can't wrap everything in cotton wool, that's just dumbing things down. My point is that we shouldn't cater for the lowest common denominator. Life is hard, and we learn by our mistakes. Everyone will get bitten sooner or later on here; so live and let live, or live and let die. I'll set you a challenge: make a list of those candidates that applied for administrator while not meeting your proposed standards. Then we can look at what these users went on to accomplish. Moreover, we'll see how many left the project broken and disheartened and you seem to suggest. — Fly by Night  ( talk )  20:27, 3 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Well, you did call it natural election, and if that's not Darwinian I don't know what is. I won't take you up on your challenge - the proposal is already dead, so there's no point spending the time. In fact, I'm going to bow out of this discussion now too - thanks for your thoughts -- Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 12:26, 4 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Support, after some consideration, and with the understanding that nothing's going to be done here either way (not nearly definitive enough of a proposal to actually be put in place (which was never the intention)), I've decided I might as well stick add my support here. I think it's fairly clear that Wikipedia isn't nearly as friendly to newbs as back in the day, and believe this would be one small way to help retain editors rather than scaring them off. While some above say that the real problem is uncivil voters, I personally think it's just because there's no nice way to say "no" in this case. Simply not allowing any self-nom candidates to run until they've got more experience would avoid this (and for those debating how much experience is needed - I don't think we need to worry overly about the exact cut-off point (and if we get it right, don't need to worry about it becoming thought of as the "right time to run" even if it's not), I'll expand on that if requested). However, I do think the "just be nicer" argument is one of the strongest presented by the opposition, not overly impressed by some of the rationales given (e.g. the "too much work" argument). - Kingpin13 (talk) 23:46, 2 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Oppose: a user with just 1500 edits and three months experience would still fail RfA, so it would be a pointless rule. It would just delay NOTNOW closures by three months. BigDom   talk  11:30, 3 February 2011 (UTC)
 * My hope is that in the course of doing those 1,500 edits, the newbie would have gained enough clue to know not to run yet. -- Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 16:06, 3 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Thanks for proving my point; 1500 edits is a meaningless requirement. BigDom   talk  23:38, 4 February 2011 (UTC)
 * 1500 edits doesn't mean only 1500 edits, it also includes anything smaller than that. With the idea being that from (for example) n to n + 5 an editor is not ready for adminship, and from n to n + 3 they are not capable of realising they are not ready. Therefore, by setting the limit at somewhere between n + 3 and n + 4 (and this doesn't have to be exact, i.e. why the 1500 edits is arbitrary to a small extent) we stop candidates who are not ready and don't realise that from running. - Kingpin13 (talk) 23:44, 4 February 2011 (UTC)
 * I know what you're saying and I can see your point but I disagree with it. By setting a requirement of 1500, you're luring in relatively experienced editors with one hand and punching them in the face with the other if you know they're going to fail anyway. BigDom   talk  10:15, 5 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Yep, I do get your point, and I do think there's a risk people will read it as "Once I get 1,500 edits, I can be an admin". I would expect most of them to be more clued up by then though, not read it like that, and be able to analyse their chances a bit better than when they only had a couple of hundred edits - but obviously I might be wrong, and they might still be as clueless after 1,500, and might still just run. Out of interest, do you think it might work with a higher limit, or do you think it should be dropped altogether and people should be able to self-nom without any minimum, as now? -- Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 10:54, 5 February 2011 (UTC)
 * It's difficult to say really. There are editors with over 10,000 edits who wouldn't pass RfA, but still try to, so it's not easy to set a minimum number. On the other hand, the current system isn't working particularly well either as it is not clear enough to new editors what is expected in order to attain adminship. By the way, what's going to stop a user with less than 1,500 creating an RfA anyway? Surely the outcome would just be the same as it is now; the request would be SNOW closed, and that would be the end of it. BigDom   talk  11:09, 5 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Yep, I pretty much agree with those thoughts. That's why I would be opposed to setting an actual limit below which people simply aren't allowed to run, but just one below which they'd need to find a nominator. Should a sub-1,500 editor self-nom anyway, I'd envisage a "Sorry, but you're not allowed to nominate yourself just yet" close, which could be done by the first person to spot it. (It would be good if it were possible to actually prevent a self-nom with under 1,500 edits, but I can't really see that being possible) -- Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 15:43, 5 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Weak support. Perhaps it would stop the bloodshed (it's a hyperbole, folks, take it easy) before it happens. Most newbies don't notice the glass ceiling until they hit it, which is arguably a bit more painful than not trying in the first place. We need editors, as made obvious by the above discussions on this page and all the statistics. Guoguo12 <font color="blue" size="1">--Talk--  20:41, 3 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Support Perhaps this could be the first step towards genuine RfA reform. Ronk01   talk  14:56, 4 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Oppose New users tend to be treated nicely at RfA anyway, so this doesn't solve any problems. Epbr123 (talk) 15:15, 4 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Support if it can be accompanied by a clear disclaimer that meeting the threshhold does not mean that the community will consider the candidate suitable. My fear is the candidates with 2,000-5,000 edits being driven off the project by SNOW closes having been encouraged by the threshhold to run. They're more of a loss than the 20-edit NOTNOWS. I'd also back lifting the 1,500 to 3,000 for the same reason but there's obviously not going to be support for that here. --Mkativerata (talk) 05:13, 5 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Therein lies the strongest reason to Oppose I've seen. If we set the bar here at 1500/2000/3000/20000/whatever, then anytime somebody gets opposed for not enough experience, they will point back at this and say, "but the candidate had X number of edits, which was more than the minimum recommended number, how can this be a NOTNOW close?"--- Balloonman  NO! I'm Spartacus! 05:37, 5 February 2011 (UTC)
 * I fully agree -- I've been juggling it in my mind for a few days, but I'm confident (although some might say overly optimistic) that we can deal with it by way of a strong disclaimer. Also, setting a minimum bar might force opposers to come up with better reasons than NOTNOW and actually look at the contribs of editors in the 3,000-5,000 range.--Mkativerata (talk) 05:41, 5 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Support. This describes the current de facto situation, and making it explicit will help to avoid some futile nominations which waste everyone's time and energy and may lead to the candidate being offended. It would be a good idea to stress that other criteria apply too, and that having more than 1,500 edits is not sufficient of itself ... but I can see no merit in leaving the current de facto rule unstated. -- Brown HairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 12:38, 5 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Support per WSC, BHG etc. Johnbod (talk) 15:31, 5 February 2011 (UTC)
 * I think you will find that offering up the number 1500 as a target is going to open the floodgates to self-noms with 1501, because you've given a target to shoot for. The target either needs to be a lot higher or you should say "a substantial contribution history" or some such thing. --B (talk) 15:44, 5 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Oppose, regrettably. The current nomination standards are woefully inadequate. However, requiring a specific number of edits will just encourage users to rack up their count through many means: Not doing previews and instead saving every little nit edit to a page, running Huggle before they're ready, and commenting on everything in sight. Requiring a time threshold perhaps cuts out users that were IP editors for a long time, although I would still support 6 months editing with a registered account. We could be more clear in specifying that a candidate's edit history demonstrate the ability to correctly apply our policies and guidelines. I can see the logic in someone thinking that if they've made 100 edits without getting reverted, obviously they can be trusted. Then we WP:SNOW them and they're all confused. —UncleDouggie (talk) 06:40, 6 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Why don't we just condense the section on general advice for nominees down to about half its current size (focused on our standards instead of the process) and drop it right into About RfA? No links, just plop it in there right after "...determine whether they are trustworthy." Once a person decides to run, I doubt that any edit notice is going to make them change their mind. We need to explain what's required when they first think about it. Currently, the page says to be familiar with the guide (buried within a bunch of other links) and the actual standards just say be trustworthy. In reality, the guide has the standards. Why do we make it so hard for people? —UncleDouggie (talk) 07:06, 6 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Support per BrownHairedGirl. Lets have the rules line up with reality. Also we can't expect brand new editors to know how everything is run. Its better to hit them nicely with a clue bad then across the face --Guerillero &#124; My Talk   17:51, 11 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Oppose A solution searching for a problem. --rgpk (comment) 19:13, 11 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Oppose I don't think nominations are the solution, and I feel like this might be taken as a target to shoot for. ErikHaugen (talk | contribs) 19:50, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

Some conclusions
Obviously there may be more people who still wish to comment above. But with the near 50/50 state of things at the moment, it's clear that this is sinking fast, and that my time would be more wisely spent elsewhere. Thanks for all your thoughts. -- Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 11:26, 1 February 2011 (UTC)
 * I dont think 50% support is that bad. This discussion has been brought up before and rejected every time. This time we actually got more support than I expected.  Certainly not "consensus" though.    —  Soap  —  14:15, 2 February 2011 (UTC)
 * I still think it's clear that, with regards to RfA, the community is impotent when it comes to actually doing changing anything. -- Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 16:17, 2 February 2011 (UTC)
 * And that's fine. The current RFA system is the worst possible system, except for all the other systems that the community has rejected. There's some things about RFA I personally would change, but at the end of the day the bottom line is the current system is functional and sufficient. Townlake (talk) 05:00, 3 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Just because the community rejects your proposal doesn't mean its impotent. Please, don't take it personally; but maybe it just wasn't that good of an idea. But at least you had the guts to try. — Fly by Night  ( talk )  08:48, 3 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Hi. I'm actually not taking it personally at all, so I'm sorry if it came across that way. And I'm not basing my conclusion on just this one proposal, but on having been watching here for a couple of years - absolutely nothing ever gets close to being accepted these days, even though almost everyone thinks that something is wrong. It may be that nobody ever has a good enough idea, but I really don't think so - I think it's just an inevitable failure of management-by-community, partly because the participating community has grown too large with too many diametrically opposed opinions, and partly because everyone gets an equal say regardless of their aptitude for management and decision-making. In conventional organizations, and in representative democracies, professional managers/representatives get to make the decisions, and even if some of them might be poor ones, at least something happens. Here nothing can change. (-- Boing! said Zebedee (talk) forgot to sign earlier)
 * What's the solution? Shall we organise a coup? I'm up for that ;-) — Fly by Night  ( talk )  11:46, 3 February 2011 (UTC)
 * They solution can only be in the Foundation's hands - in the event of a crisis I expect they'll step in and act where we are unable. -- Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 16:17, 3 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Don't give up  yet  Boing, there will  still  be more !votes coming  to your poll, and even if there is never to  be a clear consensus, it  will  be extremely  interesting  to  see who  has !voted on it - it  may  be representative of the editors who  are genuinely  concerned with  change of any  kind, and who  are prepared to continue to  be actively  engaged in getting  it. Kudpung (talk) 02:40, 4 February 2011 (UTC)
 * What I see from the results so far is that even some of the people who don't support the idea do agree with the intention, but are concerned that we're just shifting the barrage of NOTNOW votes and hurt feelings to the point where they've reached "the magic number" of 1500 edits and decided they're now a shoo-in. If we can come up with a way to avoid that, I think this could actually get consensus support. 28bytes (talk) 20:00, 5 February 2011 (UTC)

Alternative
This is basically a good idea, but per UncleDouggie, a specified edit minimum is potentially risky. I'd prefer requiring editors to go through WP:Editor Review, which is more useful and less painful for NOTNOWs, as well as for others not quite ready. We could simply say "if you have not undergone an Editor Review in the last month in which your intention to apply for adminship was discussed, you must be nominated by two administrators". So there's a loophole for any that really don't want to do it for some reason. Rd232 talk 18:13, 11 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Not sure I like the idea of experienced editors with many thousands of edits behind them having to go for an editor review or get two nominators - the whole point is to stop no-hope newbies, not to make experienced editors jump through unnecessary extra hoops -- Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 00:50, 13 February 2011 (UTC)
 * If they're that experienced then getting two admin nominators shouldn't be a problem (if they're that keen to avoid Editor Review), and part of the point of this approach is that Editor Review is never useless. Even quite experienced candidates can find serious (and not-so-serious, but enough to fail) flaws exposed at RFA, and that can be very demoralising, potentially losing contributors. One of the perennial issues on this talk page is that discussion at RFA isn't high enough quality - well having a prior Editor Review would help, as a better format for real discussion in a less pressured environment. This is not at all just about NOTNOW candidates - it's also about good candidates who are just not quite ready, and revealing that not-quite-because at Editor Review is easier on them and should result in fewer failed RFAs, because they'll go for it when they're really ready. The format is also more likely to be helpful and supportive in terms of helping potential candidates to really understand what they need to do to get ready. Rd232 talk 02:31, 13 February 2011 (UTC)
 * If we go this route, I suggest extending the timeframe for editor review to 90 days because they don't happen overnight and a candidate may not be immediately ready to go to RfA. Would the final decision to start an RfA be up to the candidate, or would there need to be consensus at editor review first? I also suggest changing the alternative to a single admin nomination. While there probably would be several administrators with a favorable impression of a quality candidate, sticking your neck out for a nomination requires doing some homework to make sure there aren't any surprises and it might be a burden to ask two admins to take this time. —UncleDouggie (talk) 09:12, 13 February 2011 (UTC)
 * OK, thanks for your comments. (i) 90 days may be better, fair enough. (ii) "would there need to be consensus at editor review first" - no, the review is purely feedback for the potential candidate, and they're expected to be competent enough to draw appropriate conclusions. (iii) I suggested 2 admins as a requirement to bypass Editor Review because I think everyone can benefit from ER, and even if that's not true, it's harder than you might think to predict who really wouldn't. There are certainly cases of long-established editors nominated by an admin where the RFAs failed and got rather messy/heated, to no-one's edification. But if people rather prefer to lower the requirement to 1 admin (or perhaps 1 admin + 1 user in good standing), that's certainly better than not getting this implemented. Rd232 talk 03:31, 14 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Experienced editors nominate themselves and sail through regularly with no problems at all - in fact, one of our problems is that we don't get enough of them. So I honestly don't think we should be putting any more hurdles in their way, and I see no need to impose an editor review or a requirement for noms on the majority of RfA candidates. -- Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 12:57, 13 February 2011 (UTC)

OK, let me try harder (it's 3 am) to explain the advantages of using ER. Note: all of this assumes that ER works as advertised, and gets decent quantities of input. There have been some concerns that it currently doesn't, but prominently linking it with RFA will help in itself, and then there are other things that can be done to boost participation, eg WP:CRS or better advertising (like WP:RFC/Us are listed in several places). Rd232 talk 03:31, 14 February 2011 (UTC)
 * 1) Better discussion. The RFA discussion format has long been an issue. ER provides a very different, more free-form, more informal, lower pressure discussion format. That is simply a helpful supplement to discussion about potential candidates' qualities.
 * 2) Better feedback for candidates. RFA has a two-fold function: screening out candidates who shouldn't be admins ever; and screening out candidates who shouldn't be admins now, but need to improve in certain areas in order to be good candidates. An Editor Review is much better for the latter function because it's focussed on constructive feedback for improvements, and not (like RFA) for screening candidates. Even the most established editors can benefit from feedback; either they're doing some things wrong, and get constructive feedback for that; or if they're flawless they'll get praise and feel good about their contributions (and you can never have too much of that).
 * 3) More candidates. Once the ER route is established, it becomes easier for people to prod potential good candidates to consider running. It's easier for the suggester, who can simply point them to this ER route, without having to commit the work of "I'd be willing to nominate you". It's easier for the candidate to dip a toe in the water of what the community really thinks of them as a potential admin, without the intensity of RFA itself. So some people who wouldn't currently do RFA would do an ER with a view to a possible RFA, and some of them would actually do RFA following that feedback. Boing! called ER an additional "hurdle", but it remains optional, and I frankly can't see anyone being put off applying for adminship because they need to do an ER first: the main thing putting people off RFA is the uncertainty of how the community will react, which at times is surprisingly and unpleasantly negative. It's been called "hell week" for a reason! That's the real issue, and ER should help with that.
 * 4) Lower failure rates at RFA. Candidates are far more likely to be ready having done an ER as an initial public discussion of their readiness. Since failing at RFA can be severely demoralising to good contributors, this matters both because we want more admins and because we want fewer failed candidates to get demoralised and reduce or cease their contributions.
 * This proposal has some merit and I'm not sure if the extra hurdle will be a problem or not. To address Boing!'s concern, how about if we poll 10 recent successful RfA candidates to see if they would still have run had this proposal been in effect? Perhaps some of them will even jump right in here. —UncleDouggie (talk) 04:14, 14 February 2011 (UTC)
 * A poll certainly can't do any harm. And just to address a couple of points above - forcing a candidate to either go for ER or find noms, rather than doing neither, *is* an additional hurdle. Also, ER is not really anything to do with admin - there are some fantastic editors out there who would fly through ER, but make lousy admins. I guess we could ask "and please review me with specific regard to my suitability as an admin" - but that's what RfA is. -- Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 15:01, 14 February 2011 (UTC)
 * " I guess we could ask "and please review me with specific regard to my suitability as an admin" " - that was part of the proposal. Otherwise the ER would risk being irrelevant. As to "that's what RfA is" - see points 1-4 above. Rd232 talk 00:55, 15 February 2011 (UTC)


 * This is a terrible idea! What you're proposing is to turn adminship into a three and a half month process. If we have trouble recruiting admins now, this will only make the problem much, much worse. There's also no gaurentee that someone who has smooth sailing through an ER won't get shot down in an RfA based on any of the same reasons that they get shot down now (missing a question, year old blocks, coordinated campaigns by editors with personal grievances.) The first time someone goes through ER with no major issues raised and fails an RfA, we'll be right back here, and more than likely, the editor who just went through the ER will be horribly disgruntled. The alternative would be finding nominating Admins, which will reinforce the belief in elite groups within Wikipedia, become horribly politicized, and will likely also be just as demoralizing in the end to potential admins. Finally, none of this will stop people that are too clueless to read up on adminship from self nominating themselves prematurely anyways. No, this is an awful idea, and it deserves to be shelved with all the other awful ideas that have come through as 'solutions' to RfA. It's a terrible system, but it's the best one we have, and for the sake of discussion, a few fried newbies a month is the /least/ of RfA's issues.  S ven M anguard   <font color="FCD116">Wha?  07:16, 14 February 2011 (UTC)
 * I see we are back to shooting down any proposals to improve RfA with the same vehemence that we regularly unleash on candidates themselves. What is about this place that guarantees that next year it will look just like it does today? If you're correct, and perhaps you are, my proposed poll would surely have led to the same conclusion. But what if Rd232 is onto something here? Or, what if calmly proving the futility of this proposal leads Rd232 to come up something else that really works? As to your specific comments, there is no mandatory three and a half month process. You could go for ER and next week on to RfA. I suggested allowing the ER to have taken place within the last 3 months, not that it's a 3 month process. Your concern over an elite group is justified. We could change it to requiring a nomination by 2 editors who each have over 1000 edits and one year experience; we don't have to kill the whole proposal. Lastly, this is most certainly not just a problem of fried newbies. We regularly see editors with many years and thousands of edits get ground to a pulp. I reluctantly participated in one myself today that I don't relish. It's cases like that where I think ER could really help give a potential candidate good feedback instead of resulting in a negative outcome. —UncleDouggie (talk) 08:45, 14 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Re: "I see we are back to shooting down any proposals to improve RfA with the same vehemence that we regularly unleash on candidates themselves. What is about this place that guarantees that next year it will look just like it does today?". That's just an inevitable consequence of there being too many people involved, with many opposing but good faith opinions, all pulling in different directions - management by community just can't work when the community gets too large. -- Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 14:51, 14 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Just another thought - it might have been better for this new proposal to have been made entirely separately, as the original specifically was about the "fried newbies" problem (I know it was, because it was my proposal). What we have now is something like "Instead of proposal A to solve X, why don't we try proposal B to solve Y instead?" -- Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 14:55, 14 February 2011 (UTC)
 * No, it's "proposal B to solve X + Y". It clearly solves the "fried newbies" problem too, since the ER will tell them they're not ready. Rd232 talk 15:33, 14 February 2011 (UTC)
 * OK, I see what you're saying - I was getting distracted by people talking about other things. I'm honestly not convinced an ER is the right route for newbies though, as it is intended for purposes which are nothing to do with admin. Oh, and as another aside, any requirements for noms should not require admins - admins have no more say in the process than any other registered editors. -- Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 15:41, 14 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Fine, it could be "two editors in good standing" instead of two admins. The point is to make the ER route not seem a lot more work than the nomination route. Rd232 talk 00:55, 15 February 2011 (UTC)
 * How are you defining "in good standing"? No recent blocks unless issued by a power-crazed administrator? Malleus Fatuorum 01:14, 15 February 2011 (UTC)
 * It should be obvious from the way this thread is developing that defining that isn't a priority! But I would imagine a reasonable minimum edit count, nothing else. I mean really, this is only in the proposal to avoid forcing people to do an Editor Review first, which people would surely object to even more. Hence a "nomination" route where ER isn't necessary (whereas with ER, self-nom is fine). Rd232 talk 01:48, 15 February 2011 (UTC)
 * It should be obvious to anyone who's paying attention that very little posted on this talkpage makes the slightest difference to anything. I was just interested to know what your definition of "in good standing" was. Would an administrator who'd made a recent unequivocally bad block be in good standing, for instance? Malleus Fatuorum 03:22, 15 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Well following my previous reply your question is offtopic enough that I'll respond with a joke: "good standing" = any user whose username is not Latin. :P Rd232 talk 04:43, 15 February 2011 (UTC)
 * You may find that amusing, but I don't. Malleus Fatuorum 04:51, 15 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Ask an offtopic question, get an unfunny joke; tough cheese. Do you have any thoughts on the actual proposal? You yourself had bad experiences at RFA, twice. Rd232 talk 05:02, 15 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Why are you being so evasive? What you said above was "Fine, it could be 'two editors in good standing' instead of two admins". I simply asked you what you meant by "in good standing". How that's "offtopic" is beyond me, but then I'm not one of you omniscient administrators. My thoughts on the proposal are like my thoughts on every other similar proposal; it's a waste of time, as nothing will change here. Malleus Fatuorum 05:12, 15 February 2011 (UTC)
 * It's off-topic because I indicated that "good standing" was a phrase I hadn't put any thought into using in this context, and replaced it with a straight editcount minimum. As to "nothing will change" - well nothing ever changed with that attitude. You accuse me of being evasive on an irrelevant point, and won't even say what you think of my idea! Bah. What a waste of time this little exchange has been. Would you rescue it by giving some constructive thoughts, please? Rd232 talk 05:31, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

I don't think this is the right proposal if I am honest. Reason being is that as well as addressing the problem it purports to fix (NOTNOW RFA's) it also affects every RFA nomination, a situation which is no necessarily broken (at least not in the same way). An edit count / time served limit specifically addresses the profile of this problem. --Errant (chat!) 15:05, 14 February 2011 (UTC)
 * "An edit count / time served limit specifically addresses..." - that hasn't achieved consensus because it may be misleading and/or encourage edit count inflation. Rd232 talk 15:33, 14 February 2011 (UTC)

These responses are a bit frustrating. Would it help to split the proposal in two: (i) editcount below 1500, proposal as above, because newbies won't be able to launch NOTNOW RFAs without going through ER, where they'll be told they're not ready (ii) editcount above 1500, proposal as above, for reasons 1-4 stated in bold above... ?? Rd232 talk 15:33, 14 February 2011 (UTC)
 * I like the idea of reforming RFA, and I like the idea of making more use of Editor Review or similar processes. But I don't like the idea of requiring there to be a nominator except for notnow candidates, or for nominators to be admins, or of requiring a conom. Perhaps we could create some sort of ER style process for "not quite consensus" candidates where the crat could close an RFA with a condition such as "candidate is ready for the mop but needs a checkuser to confirm they are not a sock of their nominator", or "candidate is ready for the mop but needs some actual referenced contributions". If the conditions are subsequently met then the crats would have discretion to promote. This would put a greater pressure on the opposers to be clear as to what the candidate would need to do to get their support, and so would encourage opposers to be clearer as to why they oppose.  Ϣere  Spiel  Chequers  15:50, 14 February 2011 (UTC)
 * I don't really understand how that's relevant. The nomination requirement is part of the proposal in order to give people a route to avoid ER if they really want. If they do an ER, self-nom is fine. Rd232 talk 00:50, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

Anybody who thinks that an ER prior to running for RFA would solve issues with experienced editors needs to review this experimental rfa. For four days, people were free to raise questions/concerns/issues about the candidate. For four days there were issues raised and almost 50 questions asked! Ironholds answered the questions and I remember thinking that he had a decent shot at passing the RfA. When the RfA finally went live, there was one !vote that basically doomed the RfA. That person had not made a comment nor said anything during the review phase, but as soon as the RFA went live had an oppose ready to go. That opposer was accused of bad faith and a minifirestorm occured because the user had waited until the RfA went live rather than raise his concerns during the review phase. Basically, this proposal would be a revival of that failed experiment.--- Balloonman  NO! I'm Spartacus! 16:40, 14 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Anybody who mentions the single example of Ironholds 2, which is now 2.5 years ago (October 2008), as definitively ruling out trying anything vaguely similar, is required to give a date when we're allowed to try again to reform RFA. February 2011 too soon? OK, February 2021? Longer? Something inbetween? Rd232 talk 00:50, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

I want to like this as a kinder, gentler method of helping candidates to understand if they're ready, but on the pragmatic side of things, for this proposal to function, we'd need to get Editor Review functional, which it's largely not. Reviews tend to sit for a very long time and then eventually be done halfheartedly by another, not necessarily experienced, person needing a review (not always, but often enough). That's not going to help anyone get evaluated for RFA readiness. If ER were to become an RFA feeder, we'd need an active community working it, similar to the one we have at RFA. And if we're just going to transfer over a bunch of RFA-watchers, well, it's a bit silly to split it into two venues. A fluffernutter is a sandwich! (talk) 16:39, 14 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Yes, agreed, but raising the profile of ER is a project that follows fairly naturally from raising its significance in this way. I gave some suggestions on how to do this already. Rd232 talk 00:50, 15 February 2011 (UTC)
 * We could create an ER+ specifically for those interested in RfA that would review more than their article edit history. However, it would still follow the format of ER in that the feedback would be comments as opposed to questions and !votes. This is significantly different from the Ironholds experiment because there would be no expectation of an RfA opening in 4 days. If a reviewer posts a comment, others would have no need to pile on. The editor being reviewed would also have no obligation to defend themselves, but they could ask for more clarification if a comment isn't clear. I suggest we run an experiment on a recently successful RfA that passed with about 75% support to get the format right. After that, a second test with a recently failed RfA would be useful if we can find a good sport. —UncleDouggie (talk) 01:47, 15 February 2011 (UTC)
 * I'd be happy to trial it; I can't see how a trial of an optional pre-RFA-discussion would be detrimental to any participants (in contrast to the Ironholds messing-with-RFA-itself experiment). I'm not sure that a trial on past RFAs would be helpful as a trial, though perhaps on a recently failed RFA it might be an opportunity to test design issues. On a recently successful one I'm just not sure we'd get much input. Rd232 talk 04:38, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

Before proposing anything, are we sure we're pursuing a real issue? It might sound reasonable that somebody who isn't ready for the mop is turned off the project by a very unsuccessful RfA, but has this actually happened? Are we proposing yet more rules to address problems that don't actually exist? I'd like to see some statistics on the lifespan of new users who pursue an RfA versus those who don't. Let's not simply make rules for their own sake. Throwaway85 (talk) 07:41, 15 February 2011 (UTC)
 * There's more to the problem than just turned off candidates. Rd232 explains it well in the four bolded points near the top of this section. —UncleDouggie (talk) 08:35, 15 February 2011 (UTC)