Wikipedia talk:Requests for adminship/Godsy/Bureaucrat chat

Query to crats: How will crats treat support !votes, like the following?
WP:RFA mentions: In nominations where consensus is unclear, detailed explanations behind Support or Oppose comments will have more impact than positions with no explanations or simple comments such as "yep" and "no way".

I notice that in the crat chat, the focus of the opening statement has been purely on oppose !votes. I wish to enquire how will crats treat the following support !votes:
 * 1) Support - for no apparent reason.-- Stemoc 05:53, 5 December 2016 (UTC)
 * 2) Absolutely — foxj 04:20, 28 November 2016 (UTC)
 * 3) Support. Sure. Mackensen (talk) 02:44, 28 November 2016 (UTC)
 * 4) Support Nick (talk) 09:09, 28 November 2016 (UTC)
 * 5) Support  → Call me  Razr   Nation  09:42, 28 November 2016 (UTC)

I'll also appreciate the crats' comments on how they would treat a few other support !votes which, without mentioning any particular competence of the candidate, specify the reason of their support !vote as being purely to cancel out specific oppose !votes.

(For the sake of record, I support the candidate) Thanks. Lourdes 07:07, 5 December 2016 (UTC)
 * I oppose the candidate, and I welcome this question. I agree there are a lot of shitty oppose !votes.  But there are equally shitty support ones too.  If we're going to start cutting some out, we need to be consistent.--v/r - TP 07:13, 5 December 2016 (UTC)
 * +1 for consistency. Samsara 07:15, 5 December 2016 (UTC)


 * This is Requests for Adminship not Requests for DE-Adminship. To support is the default position to take. So unless you have a specific reason why someone should not become an admin, your options are to either support or simply not participate. If no one shows up, then a self-nom (and/or a nominator) would be the sole supporter, leading to a default +admin. -- &oelig; &trade; 07:30, 5 December 2016 (UTC)
 * The time that no one other than the self-nom/nominator shows up to an RfA is the time the world ends.  —   Gestrid  ( talk ) 07:33, 5 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Absolutely . That's why I have requested the crats to provide a reply. I hope and would prefer the crats mention your view clearly as their accepted procedure while assessing such and similar support !votes. Specially as WP:RFA mentions: In nominations where consensus is unclear, detailed explanations behind Support or Oppose comments will have more impact than positions with no explanations or simple comments such as "yep" and "no way".. Thanks. Lourdes  07:35, 5 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Is it documented somewhere that "to support is the default position to take"? I assumed the default was neutral (i.e. not participating). Although I've supported in almost every RfA I've participated in and think many people have standards set too high, I don't want my support assumed (and in practice, of course, it's not -- you have to make a judgment and decide to add your name to the support section). Receiving access to these tools requires a positive demonstration affirmed by the community. There has to be a reason that's affirmed, not just absence of objections. It's being a regular editor that's supported by default (i.e. you need to do something wrong to lose the tools -- a special process is not required to gain them). &mdash;  Rhododendrites talk  \\ 14:31, 5 December 2016 (UTC)


 * It should also be noted that User:Stemoc's "Support for no apparent reason" came minutes before the RfA was closed to voting. Leads me to suspect it could have just been a WP:POINTy protest vote. -- &oelig; &trade; 07:41, 5 December 2016 (UTC)
 * It's also possible they were voting, but didn't believe they had enough time to type out a rationale. After all, the RfA was technically over four hours before they actually voted.  —   Gestrid  ( talk ) 07:56, 5 December 2016 (UTC)
 * How about None of the Above? I think it has become a waste of time to support someone with a provided reason because evidently, they all disappoint by becoming 'inactive' within 3-6 months. Adminship is a joke, no doubt so why are we even taking it seriously?, I'm voting support for someone who can adminship for 3-6 months cause thats how long most last, nearly 90% of all admins are inactive, most only become active to save their sysop bit and fulfil the 'inactivity' criteria so please stop asking for valid reasons to support, only ask for valid reasons to oppose...reduce the inactivity criteria from one year to 6 months and we will have more admins and less reasons to have RfA's..-- Stemoc 08:37, 5 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Although I'm inclined to agree that the rate at which admins become inactive is indeed disappointing, I want to push back a bit on that. Admins should not be put under any pressure or be obligated to do this. We're all volunteers here and it's healthier to look at this project as a hobby, rather than a full-time job. Everyone burns out at different times. It's when it stops becoming fun that most people become inactive. We need to promote more admins that actually enjoy doing this type of wiki-maintenance, those that know where their skills would be put to best use. Rather than opposing because of lack of content creation, recognize that a certain type of editor has a skill-set more suited towards project maintenance and grunt work rather than creative writing and researching, and always support if it's a net positive. -- &oelig; &trade; 09:15, 5 December 2016 (UTC)
 * I have seen some admins being active here for longer than a decade even if they have a life outside of the wiki. The issue with inactivity is that instead of trying to solve that issue, we are trying to get more admins, so we are basically piling onto the issue instead of finding a solution for it and yes that technically means we will have more active admins at any given time but in the long run, the percentage of 'active' admins will drop rapidly whereas the percentage of 'admins' will keep rising. Personally, I prefer admins who have done a lot of actual work on the mainspace side of the project opposed to those that waste their time reverting and reporting vandals. Vandal fighters get bored easily and this is why a majority of our inactive admins all began as vandal fighters. I prefer those that create content because you can never get bored of doing that. I started off as a content creator a decade ago and I'm still here even after a short hiatus because I know that vandal fighters come and go but the 'real' contributors to the project stay on. The project over the last 3-4 years has been more focused on keeping the articles clean instead of creating more content, only 2.5million new articles created over the last decade and thus why more "newer" editors who generally/mainly do vandal control are more likely to become admins than those that have been around here for a while working behind the scenes, and sadly its the real reason why we cannot keep onto our admins cause we get the wrong type of people, you might say Godsy is in the same boat but as it has been proven, because we fail to fix the main issue of retaining or keeping admins for the long runs, we are forced to support (in the meantime), newbies (people that have been in the project for less than 3 years) as admins as those that have been around for a long time have no interest in becoming admins anymore.-- Stemoc 09:31, 5 December 2016 (UTC)
 * I don't think that your analysis of the problem actually argues for a tweaking of the inactivity clause as a solution. Samsara 16:27, 5 December 2016 (UTC)


 * Does anyone think it would be disruptive to ping the !voters mentioned above to explain their !votes a bit more? This way, we can avoid speculation about why they gave the rationale (or lack thereof) they did.  —   Gestrid  ( talk ) 07:56, 5 December 2016 (UTC)
 * I think you mean canvassing. Samsara 08:02, 5 December 2016 (UTC)
 * I apologize, I didn't realize it would be canvassing since they've already participated.  —   Gestrid  ( talk ) 08:05, 5 December 2016 (UTC)
 * It may fail criterion no. 3: "partisan audience". Samsara 08:06, 5 December 2016 (UTC)
 * That's true.  —   Gestrid  ( talk ) 08:08, 5 December 2016 (UTC)
 * AFAIK, just by their usernames being mentioned on this page, they're automatically notified. -- &oelig; &trade; 08:08, 5 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Also true. I forgot about that.  —   Gestrid  ( talk ) 08:08, 5 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Actually not true. I was only pinged by Nick below. — foxj 18:44, 5 December 2016 (UTC)
 * And, if the above mentioned editors are allowed to provide a rationale after the Rfa has been closed/put-on-hold, then would the same leniency be provided to any editor whose oppose !vote may be on the verge of being discredited by the crats? In other words, I don't think this is the venue for asking any editor the rationale for their !vote. The time was given, the choices exercised, and the Rfa is not open for comments anymore. Lourdes  08:16, 5 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Also, also true. If anyone were allowed to do that, they'd essentially be editing their !votes after the RfA had closed.  I should probably stop participating in these types of discussions at 3am.  —   Gestrid  ( talk ) 08:19, 5 December 2016 (UTC)
 * :D No. Lourdes  08:24, 5 December 2016 (UTC)


 * On the canvas issue, I don't think it would be partisan to call on both bare supports and bare opposes to clarify their !votes, but that's something the bureaucrats should do if they think it helpful, not random Joe on the talk page. They know what they're doing. ~ Rob 13 Talk 08:42, 5 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Not sure that it would be partisan to call one side up either. The votes are all in, no harm in getting some people to clarify theirs. If at all needed, though, it would make sense that 'crats call up people from both camps that they need clarification on. -- Ajraddatz (talk) 09:06, 5 December 2016 (UTC)
 * I think the general consensus right now is to disregard !votes contributed after the deadline, and applying the same rationale, embellishing !votes after the fact would also be problematic. There has to be an end-point to this. Samsara 09:11, 5 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Heh, it does seem to be dragging on and on. I'd generally agree that the 'crats should make a decision based on the votes in at the deadline. The added ones don't make a significant numerical difference anyway, and (if I might be so bold as to make a qualitative judgement) aren't adding anything new argument-wise. -- Ajraddatz (talk) 09:14, 5 December 2016 (UTC)


 * I opposed Godsy's administrator request, so I don't want to have a somewhat bias. However, I think that votes with no real context should be discounted. Voting for the sole purpose of voting is a stupid reason. While not in this case, the person you could be voting for could be the least competent person on the planet. Simply voting because everyone else is voting skews the results. In my opinion, any vote with no context or reasoning should be discounted, be it support or oppose. If not, the results aren't correct. UN$¢_Łuke_1Ø21Repørts 13:04, 5 December 2016 (UTC)

We allow RfAs to run for a minimum of seven days, but we don't specify a maximum time. So an RfA is only closed when a 'crat gets around to it. Votes added after an RfA is closed will get discounted, but those entered after seven days, but before a 'crat closes it, will be counted.  SilkTork  ✔Tea time  09:31, 5 December 2016 (UTC)

As regards support or oppose comments which give no rationale, we allow them. Indeed, for years that was the way folks voted. In recent times there has been an expectation that oppose votes should carry an explanation. The reasoning would be something like where a group of people come to a fork in the road, and one person proposes the group go left because that way looks easier; people would vote yes in support of this without the need for any further explanation because they are simply agreeing with the proposal; anyone who wishes to vote no would need to provide a reason, otherwise they would appear to be simply churlish or disruptive. When those opposing do provide a reason, that needs looking into to see if it is valid, because that may change the opinion of others. So an opposer may say no because "I have been both left and right myself, and left is a dead end, while right takes us to where we want to go". Such a rationale may then be challenged by someone else, thus: "But I have also been down the left route, and while it appears to be a dead end, it is actually a turn in the path which leads to a shortcut to where we want to go". And this is how RfA works. A support or oppose vote without comment is usually simply affirming what has already been said. There is an expectation on folks who are going against the flow to explain themselves. Explanations may then be tested or challenged. This RfA has followed the recent pattern.  SilkTork  ✔Tea time  09:47, 5 December 2016 (UTC)


 * We have had a number of discussions over the years at WT:RFA and elsewhere about the imbalance between assuming that bare supports agree with the nom and wanting to know why oppose votes disagree with it. The threads have not yet had consensus to change things, especially when those who disagree offer the compromise of giving support and Oppose !votes equal value at RFA. I suggest that the topic has been chewed over often enough to be given its own section at WP:PEREN.  Ϣere Spiel  Chequers  18:53, 5 December 2016 (UTC)


 * Regarding 'bare supports', I made some comments regarding supports of this nature at Requests for adminship/Hawkeye7 2/Bureaucrat chat and discussed my stance further here: Wikipedia_talk:Requests for adminship/Hawkeye7 2/Bureaucrat chat. –xenotalk 01:55, 6 December 2016 (UTC)

Self-nom

 * Well, it [this RfA] has followed the recent pattern, though there has been a new, and widely accepted, rationale given for opposing - that of it being a self-nom. Some have objected to this rationale, largely based on it being a new rationale - along the lines of "we haven't objected before, so we shouldn't start doing so now". Each 'crat will have their own view on that aspect. My own view is that because nobody has articulated an oppose based on self-nomination previously, doesn't mean that folks have not felt a qualm about supporting a self-nom. When that first objection went up, others had the option of ignoring that rationale, or going with it. Many went with it, so it appears now to have become a potentially valid objection. If the 'crats in their chat validate such an objection then we should update our guidelines to inform prospective admins that a self-nomination may raise opposition from the community.  SilkTork  ✔Tea time  09:58, 5 December 2016 (UTC)
 * As regards objecting to a self-nom being a new thing, I seem to recall such an objection previously, though not recently. Somebody may wish to look back though past self-noms (unsuccessful and successful) to see if indeed such an objection has been voiced before. I feel sure it has.  SilkTork  ✔Tea time  10:03, 5 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Wasn't there a guy who eventually got blocked because he was "opposed to self-noms in principle" or something like that? I'm thinking of the one who self-nominated on April Fool's Day one year. Or maybe it was someone else. In either event, SilkTork is correct – it's a perennial argument. Katietalk 12:53, 5 December 2016 (UTC)
 * I'm concerned that the self-nom objection is being blown out of proportion - that was a single oppose, but by my count six supports looked like they were made to "cancel" that one oppose, with an additional two expressing more general but vague "not convinced" sentiments. My personal view is that "cancel" votes should get the same treatment as votes eventually found to be of little substance. Samsara 13:49, 5 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Yes, Katie, you are right. And it was even mentioned in the RfA - it was Kmweber - see his 2007 edit history: .  SilkTork  ✔Tea time  13:55, 5 December 2016 (UTC)
 * I agree. Looking at the RfA, seven opposers brought it up, though only three strongly, and one of those later indented their oppose. Fourteen supporters mentioned the self-nom oppose, and said that self-noming didn't bother the, Seven supporters explicitly supported either because of the self-nom itself, or because of the oppose to it. I think the self-nom oppose votes should be counted, and that there shouldn't be any huffing or puffing about it. If the self-nom oppose votes are to be discounted, then those who supported because of it should also be discounted. We can't have it both ways. I put myself in as co-nominator to try and address any concerns folks may have about Godsy self-nominating, but that doesn't mean I felt the oppose votes were in themselves inappropriate or inaccurate. Looking back at the incident involving Kmweber serial opposing self-noms, it may well be that folks felt cautious about voicing such a concern in case they also ended up being blocked. Whatever. We should let folks support or oppose for their own reasons, and allow them to voice those reasons, even if others disagree with them.  SilkTork  ✔Tea time  14:09, 5 December 2016 (UTC)
 * How many of the supporters (myself included) who mentioned the self-nom opposes would have !voted 'support' anyways, but with a different rationale (or with the semi-traditional lack of rationale) had they known that giving this specific rationale would cause their !vote to be discounted? Saying that their support was to offset the self-nom oppose might have been a bit POINTy, but that doesn't mean that this was the only reason they supported.  Likewise, the opposes based on this might have opposed for other reasons... but I have trouble believeing that, at the time they cast their !vote, they had other reasons to oppose the candidate but chose to declare their opposition as being due to the self-nom. PGWG (talk) 18:12, 5 December 2016 (UTC)

Just for the record, I wasn't pinged or otherwise notified about this discussion. My support comment indicates that I support the candidate, Godsy, being promoted to administrator and that I agree with their own nomination statement. That is how comments such as Support and +1 have worked forever until today. I rarely comment on RfAs now, so I'm not just 'voting' for the sake of doing so, if I didn't believe Godsy would be a meaningful assistance to the project as an administrator, I would have Opposed and if I was neither convinced or unconvinced, I wouldn't have commented at all. I'll also ping that their comments/!votes are being called into question. If wants to change the weighting that bare support votes are given, wiping out 15 years of historical precedent, I suggest they do so before people participate in discussions/RfAs, and not after the fact. Nick (talk) 14:11, 5 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Hi . I have no such intentions. My query is to the crats, given that the current advisory at WP:RFA goes against the precedent that you mention, specially when consensus is not clear, as noted at the top of this page. I guess either the advisory should be changed, or our acceptance of precedent, in the case of consensus being unclear. Thanks. Lourdes  14:17, 5 December 2016 (UTC)
 * The advisory is complete nonsense. Consensus wasn't particularly unclear when I 'voted'. It was 18:4:0 when I left my Support (taking it to 19:4:0) which is quite different to the 138:65:4 as it currently stands. Nick (talk) 14:24, 5 December 2016 (UTC)
 * "The advisory is complete nonsense." Sure. I didn't make it Nick. I guess the advisory is given to encourage editors to leave comments so that if an Rfa goes into a discretionary range, the !votes are given weight. In my view, editors shouldn't assume that every Rfa will have a clear consensus for or against the candidate. Stuff happens, as it did in this Rfa. That's about it. Lourdes  14:32, 5 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Also, do we actually think ...comments will have more impact... refers to the bureaucrats, or just other editors who have come to the RfA and are weighing up how they will comment (support/oppose/neutral). I still think it's nonsense, I'd trust a one word opinion from a fellow editor I'm very familiar with over a lengthy comment from someone I'm not, but that's just me. Nick (talk) 14:38, 5 December 2016 (UTC)
 * If someone cares to trawl through my contributions over the last decade and change they'll see that I've expressed "Sure" before. This is a pithy way of saying that I have no objection to the candidate; that I find his or her answers satisfactory; and that their contributions are commensurate with my expectations for incoming administrators. I feel, and have always felt, that adminship isn't a big deal. I said as much when I stood for bureaucrat in 2007 and my views haven't changed. Something I said then appears relevant today: "If anything, the insistence on setting higher and higher standards at RFA has the effect of making adminship seem a big deal, but what it is really doing is making passing RFA a big deal, which is perverse. RFA is a means to an end. The end is the encyclopedia gaining another competent administrator." Cheers, Mackensen (talk) 14:34, 5 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the ping, . I have no idea what I'm supposed to say here. RfAs should (And in the past always have) been "no big deal". This means it makes far more sense to support than to oppose. (and indeed,,  and whichever 'crats wind up closing this discussion) — would you prefer I gave a huge long explanation to confirm my support is more than just a throwaway? Frankly I'm happy just to support to counter ridiculous opposition like "this user hasn't been here five years yet". — foxj 18:47, 5 December 2016 (UTC)


 * Curious about my own RFA, I went back and searched it on "self", and only found this one reference "Candidate seems fine, and gets bonus points for self-nominating. Opposes make a reasonable point about content creation, but not strongly enough to carry the day. Candidate's approach to this RFA demonstrates self-awareness and a likelihood of making the project better through their use of the buttons." (diff) though that comment was later struck and the support was withdrawn, leading to further discussion on my RFA's talk page. Nobody accused this candidate of having self-awareness. Noting that criticisms of their content-creation abilities were rather restrained until late in the week. – wbm1058 (talk) 15:50, 5 December 2016 (UTC)

Give 'em a chance
As the person who probably did the most discussing in this particular RfA, I implore everyone to sit back a bit and let the bureaucrats discuss. They know what they're doing. They're some of the best we have at assessing consensus and clearly explaining how they did so. It's likely to make it more difficult for them to do their jobs if we pepper them with questions on how they'll determine consensus before they've even started. If the assessments start coming in and things are still unclear, then it's a good time to ask, but let's give 'em a chance here. ~ Rob 13 Talk 10:07, 5 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Agree. At this moment previous RfAs in the crat chat are helpful (i.e., Hawkeye7 2). One thing I have learned is that numbers of !votes are just one factor among the crats. We have succeeded in prompting them to move to a chat rather than having one taking a decision on its own. Now, I look forward to reading their rationales.  Caballero /  Historiador ⎌  13:50, 5 December 2016 (UTC)
 * No matter how everything turns out, this is for sure going to be interesting to watch. If this RFA goes through successfully, I think we could see a spike in self-noms for adminship. &#60;&#60;&#60; SOME GADGET GEEK &#62;&#62;&#62; (talk) 14:36, 5 December 2016 (UTC)
 * And if this RfA fails, we could see a spike in aspiring admins kissing up to well-known admins just to get their nomination. Joshualouie711 (talk) 15:36, 5 December 2016 (UTC)

I hope no one will walk away from this discussion - whichever way it goes - thinking that the fact that this was a self-nom made the slightest difference to the outcome. I hope any would be candidate will concentrate on making high quality edits and not waste time on thinking about whether to self-nom or not. I guarantee that will be time better spent. WJBscribe (talk) 16:48, 5 December 2016 (UTC)


 * As has been said elsewhere on this page, the self-nomination aspect of the RfA has got blown out of proportion. That aspect has been interesting, but it appears not decisive. What has concerned me is the potentially poor reading into the various incidents the opposers brought up. Godsy has been accused of various things due to the way incidents have been read. What some see as forum shopping is read by others as appropriate admin-type action in opening up a discussion to the community to look into what may have been an inappropriate depreciation of a template. What some see as poor use of sources, others see as evidence of learning on the job because the incident was long ago and has never been repeated. But the variety of such opposes makes it difficult to see at a glance what is going on. As a result I don't think consensus is clear enough for Godsy to be given the tools, though I don't think anyone doubts that Godsy will become an admin next time round.  SilkTork  ✔Tea time  17:56, 5 December 2016 (UTC)

Reliable sources
Although I voted support, the (extremely late) allegation that Godsy tried to use InfoWars.com as a reliable source is very troubling. However, since I have yet to see an actual diff I'm willing to AGF and hope you do too. Not an easy call. All the best,  Mini  apolis  14:57, 5 December 2016 (UTC)
 * The diff is there in the comment. I'll leave it at that (don't want to try to belabor the issue -- I assume the crats will see it). &mdash;  Rhododendrites <sup style="font-size:80%;">talk  \\ 15:22, 5 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Here is the diff where Infowars was added as a source. It was removed almost immediately by another editor, here, and doesn't appear to have been added again. Bradv  15:24, 5 December 2016 (UTC)
 * To answer 's question, there were a few responses by supporters to Cullen328's oppose, but since it happened late in the RfA, it is understandable that there may not have been sufficient time for a response by the candidate. Mz7 (talk) 15:27, 5 December 2016 (UTC)

Thanks all for the info. 28bytes (talk) 15:42, 5 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Adding a citation to a non-reliable source in and of itself would be understandable - we all make mistakes sometimes, and can mistake something found through a Google search for real news. In this particular case, the source was been used to back up quite a controversial change in the wording of the article to suggest that the Nazi gun law theory is actually mainstream rather than a fringe theory. It may still be an honest mistake, but worth getting to the bottom of why this happened. &mdash; Amakuru (talk) 15:58, 5 December 2016 (UTC)
 * There are a couple of reasons why this citation could have been added. It was added on the word "theory" in the opening sentence along with two other citations (both reliable). This could have been added in order to demonstrate that this is a real theory that exists, in which case linking to a conspiracy theory's website isn't completely out of line. It is common in Wikipedia to use sources like this to demonstrate that something exists without giving credence to the contents of said website. (Not saying it's right, just that it happens.)
 * The other explanation is that the candidate didn't realize that was a conspiracy website, and simply added it as the result of a Google search. We have all done that at one time or another, and when challenged we let it go. Again, not a big deal, and certainly (hopefully!) doesn't disqualify someone from seeking adminship 18 months later. I trust learned from this, as they didn't challenge the removal as far as I can see.  Bradv  16:03, 5 December 2016 (UTC)
 * See the responses below oppose #60 for a couple supporters' responses to this particular concern. Thank you. ~ Rob 13 <sup style="margin-left:-1.0ex;">Talk 16:15, 5 December 2016 (UTC)


 * Just wanted to say that like, I too, voted support, but am highly concerned about the use of that source. Ordinarily I would not hold an incident that occurred three months into their tenure here against a candidate: I have made plenty of newbie mistakes, myself. That said, an examination of their behavior at that point does not really allow the "newbie" argument. If an editor can cite NPOV, I think it is reasonable to say they should be aware of its contents. Vanamonde (talk) 16:20, 5 December 2016 (UTC)
 * At least for me, I think the newbie mistake occurred as a result of failing to check a source for reliability, not misunderstanding policy. i.e. Taking for granted that a source is good because it pops up on Google. That's a very common early mistake. ~ Rob 13 <sup style="margin-left:-1.0ex;">Talk 16:27, 5 December 2016 (UTC)
 * It's possible, I suppose. I do wish I had heard about it earlier, and had had the chance to ask the candidate about it. Oh well. I'm not totally convinced by that explanation, though. Conspiracy theory websites are unlikely to pop up at the top of a google search, unless the search is for something very specific. I've worked on enough contentious political material to know. I'm not jumping to conclusions, but my concern remains. Regards, Vanamonde (talk) 16:32, 5 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Just a comment that while I supported this RFA and said I didn't see any issue with Godsy's actions, that was before this diff came to light. Had I seen this before the RFA closed, I probably would have withdrawn my support. –Grondemar 16:37, 5 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Voted against, prior to this appearing in the discussion, but I'm also concerned that an editor, particularly a would-be admin, would think that an article entitled "YES, HITLER REALLY DID TAKE THE GUNS BEFORE THROWING JEWS INTO CONCENTRATION CAMPS (OR GAS CHAMBERS)" (capitals as in the original webpage), forms a high-quality, reliable source, google search or no google search... :) That was only last year - not exactly a long time ago in editing terms. Hchc2009 (talk) 16:37, 5 December 2016 (UTC)

I am a little unsure about 28bytes's rationale as it appears not to be about reading the consensus of the RfA, but looks close to being a supervote based on his own concerns regarding one oppose which was suitably challenged as it involved one incident a year ago, which has not been repeated. Like earlier oppose statements, it makes an unfair assumption of bad faith. What I see, and two others note, is that the incident was a while ago when Godsy was new, and that he clearly learned from the experience because he has not repeated it. What I take from that incident is a positive not a negative. Let people raise such concerns in an RfA for sure, where they can be discussed and the community make their own assessment. Each to their on how they read that situation, but it is a questionable oppose, not evidence that the RfA was going against Godsy - indeed, there were more supports (19) after that statement than opposes (6).  SilkTork  <sup style="color:#347C2C;">✔Tea time  16:59, 5 December 2016 (UTC)

The problem with this type of oppose rationale is that it means that you don't think Godsy should ever be an admin. The sourcing issue occurred early in his editing tenure, and no other similar issues seem to have occurred. Thus we can infer that Godsy has learned from this mistake, but all these oppose votes seem to want to hammer him on this point only. We all make mistakes - seeing as Godsy made one and learned from it only strengthens my support vote. Are you guys really holding early editing mistakes against good, productive editors? Mr Ernie (talk) 17:12, 5 December 2016 (UTC)


 * I offered him some advice on his talk page... actually I told him one simple bold action he could take to win my vote, and his response was to refactor my comments out of the conversation. So, I'm not persuaded by the idea that any admins supporting his candidacy can successfully "mentor" him. I suppose Godsy is far from the only editor living in the Nazi-conspiracy-theory and gun-control content spaces that has tried POV-edits to tilt the balance to the right-wing. If Godsy has learned, surely then he has seen other such POV edits and reverted them. Godsy, if you recall making any such reverts, go find the diffs and show them to us... pronto! wbm1058 (talk) 17:28, 5 December 2016 (UTC)
 * I reviewed the action you suggested, and it seems to me like you were suggesting that he boldly implement a merge when there had been a prior discussion that explicitly resulted in a lack of consensus regarding the merge target. Declining to take the bold action is a reasonable, if not advisable, point of view. Mz7 (talk) 17:48, 5 December 2016 (UTC)
 * No. There was a consensus. Godsy's response to that consensus was to file a 30-day Request for Comment, i.e. a de facto deletion review. He could just boldly close the review that he started and implement the earlier consensus. This isn't rocket science, and such matters are simply not of such import to merit such a protracted debate. wbm1058 (talk) 18:11, 5 December 2016 (UTC)
 * I can understand your view, but since this is getting off topic, I'm going to go ahead and rest my case. (No need for a protracted debate about this here either.) Mz7 (talk) 18:28, 5 December 2016 (UTC)

Is there a diff in which Godsy actually defends InfoWars as reliable? Because if not, the most charitable reading of that edit is that Godsy merely wanted to start off the article with examples of the theory in the wild, which is allowed under our verifiability policy WP:SELFPUB. It's acceptable to cite InfoWars for the claim that such a theory exists if InfoWars published an "article" about the theory. I also think it's entirely possible for someone at that stage of their Wiki-career to both know that Wikipedia aims for neutrality and be able to cite WP:NPOV and to be unfamiliar with the reliability of InfoWars. Godsy's lack of substantial content work was referenced throughout the RfA and this may be the first time Godsy attempted to edit a contentious issue. Given that he made no attempt to edit war to add it back, but seemed to engage on the talk page, it seems like a valid application of WP:BRD, even if the intent behind it may be motivated by political views not held by the majority of Wikipedia editors. If similar edits haven't resurfaced since then, we should just assume that learned from his mistakes.

While I'm definitely not a fan of the edit, it should be pointed out some of the changes made in the edit, such as removing "fringe" from the hatnote and lede sentence, are still present in the current version, for better or for worse, after discussions on the talk page. I've also seen no issue with political bias during his activities at RfD, where I've been a regular admin since May. However, diffs showing continued problematic use of unreliable sources and/or a statement from the candidate would help clear the waters. Patar knight - chat/contributions 17:43, 5 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the diff. I'm glad it was an isolated incident, but it certainly wasn't minor in an admin candidate. As far as I'm concerned, the issue should've been raised much earlier in the RFA to give Godsy a chance to respond.  Mini  apolis  18:08, 5 December 2016 (UTC)
 * And after looking at the edit in context, I have more of a problem with the removal of "fringe" than with the InfoWars citation itself.  Mini  apolis  18:21, 5 December 2016 (UTC)


 * I wish I had taken the time last week to look at this RfA carefully. This is a serious issue. I don't know if still thinks this is contentious, or whether comments from many other crats are to be expected, but this is not the kind of edit (neither part of the edit) what we should see in an admin candidate. Drmies (talk) 19:20, 5 December 2016 (UTC)

I realize that the RfA closed yesterday, but I am troubled that the issue apparently of greatest concern in the 'crat chat is one that arose late in the RfA and about which the candidate was not asked any questions that would have provided him an opportunity to address the concern. There is the issue of the outcome of the RfA and also the potential unfairness that the candidate will be remembered as someone associated with the troublesome source although he may have an explanation or clarification to provide. Therefore, I invite Godsy to comment on this issue here. Newyorkbrad (talk) 19:31, 5 December 2016 (UTC)
 * It's definitely unfortunate to not get a candidate response, since as I laid out above, without his explanation, there are a multitude of possible explanations, some of which is relatively harmless and some of which would be disqualifiers if the behaviour was shown to be recurring (which I don't think it was). Maybe there should be crat discretion to let an RfA stay open long enough for a response if the crat deems it a serious enough issue? Patar knight - chat/contributions 20:14, 5 December 2016 (UTC)

I chose last week for a request for adminship because I could make myself fully available to the community for questioning etc. I am not able to do that this week. That being said, I only have time to make a quick limited statement right now, so it will be blunt and perhaps unpolished. I began editing on December 2, 2014 and my first edit to Nazi gun control theory was on April 5, 2015 (that's about a 4 month timespan and approximately my 750th edit to this encyclopedia). That was the first contentious article I had ever edited, though that was unbeknownst to me when I stumbled upon it. I alluded, albeit vaguely, to the circumstances surrounding that article in my answer to question number 3 (i.e. my being accused of being a sockpuppet stemmed from that matter). In regard to my addition of the info wars source: I honestly probably just googled the title of the article and used whatever came up expressing the view being described in that article. Anyone expressing that view of course, is generally neither mainstream nor reliable, which I now understand. I had no knowledge of info wars at that time and my command of policy was half baked in certain respects (e.g. neutrality in general vs neutrality here on Wikipedia). What can be seen in those early edits of mine to that article and its talk page is not how I behave today. How do I behave under semi-similar circumstances today?: I may raise policy or manual of style based concerns in a civil and appropriate manner on a talk page if a contribution I make gets reverted (or before making an edit if I believe there's a chance it will be controversial), and start a more formal discussion (e.g. a request for comment) there if needed, then I accept the community consensus whether or not it aligns with the position I've taken. Here is a more recent example of my involvement with a controversial topic, Talk:Kosher tax conspiracy theory. With appreciation to all those who participated at my request for adminship and this 'crat chat, — Godsy (TALK<sub style="margin-left:-2.0ex;"> CONT ) 21:05, 5 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Thanks for taking the time to help make sense of the latest developments in your RfA. It is unfortunate that we were unaware of what you just explained.  Caballero /  Historiador ⎌  21:22, 5 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the comment. This is exactly the point I was trying to make. Every editor makes mistakes as they learn to navigate the complexities of this project. That he has learned from this mistake and moved on is precisely why Godsy is a good candidate for the tools. I can't understand holding a candidate accountable for mistakes made early on that are not repeated. It certainly speaks something about the opposer. Mr Ernie (talk) 21:48, 5 December 2016 (UTC)
 * If we held every current admin and future admin to that standard the standard that none of them should have ever made a mistake (especially early-on), no one would be an admin.  —   Gestrid  ( talk ) 22:48, 5 December 2016 (UTC)
 * If you haven't notice yet, Godsy has answered your request.  —   Gestrid  ( talk ) 22:48, 5 December 2016 (UTC)
 * I did notice, thanks. Hopefully others will have noticed as well. Regards, Newyorkbrad (talk) 22:51, 5 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Since my name has been mentioned several times, please let me simply say that if Godsy is not given the administrative tools at this time, I will be happy to give the editor open-minded reconsideration in the future. I do appreciate the response above from Godsy. <b style="color:#070">Cullen</b><sup style="color:#707">328   Let's discuss it  00:09, 6 December 2016 (UTC)

I'm feeling somewhat burned out and frustrated by this process by now. Does Godsy's belated explanation make me feel embarrassed for jumping to multiple wrong conclusions, make me want to apologize profusely for my bad judgement and say sorry, let's wave him on through? No. But does it make me second guess myself? Yes. One immediate reaction, fair or not – "the I am not able to make myself available for questioning this week" excuse is almost a cliche by now as the typical response of someone who's just been taken to Arb Com. Has RFA gotten to the point where it's like an Arb Com hearing? Is the explanation of stumbling on the article and being totally clueless about certain websites credible? Maybe, but I feel my brain scrambling to make it so. I feel like the only way I could totally fairly evaluate the candidate at this point would be to walk through most of his complete edit history from beginning to end. I don't really have the time or desire to do that as it would take too much time away from my regular mainspace editing. This RFA has already done that. So, what's the answer, then? Maybe just totally lower the bar and let most everyone through, i.e. go back to the "good old days"? Arb Com hasn't been too busy lately, and that would surely help to fill their plate back up. If this one goes through, then surely we should promote candidates like and, two candidates I know much better, and am confident would be net positives that didn't break anything. They both dropped out before I even got around to voting. Anyhow don't let me stand in the way. If my swinging back to neutral is enough to let him through, then let him in. wbm1058 (talk) 00:10, 6 December 2016 (UTC)
 * I don't have much to add other than that I think WJBscribe summed it up very well. Mkdw talk 00:57, 6 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Thank you, wbm1058, for your vote of confidence! I've long thought that putting an editor through the often very negative experience of an RfA has little to do with whether or not we can trust the editor with the tools and is very much an arena where AGF soars out the window.  I've never really understood why experienced admins who have had the mop for a specified period of time cannot just "promote" a trusted editor if they think they would make a good admin.  Such a system as we have now would never work in any other promotional situation, such as in business or the military, and it doesn't really work very well here, either.  What might work is for an experienced admin to promote an editor, allow other editors to voice their opinion of the promotion if they would like to, and if there are no shake-the-world objections to the promotion, then we all move on.  In any case, it is nice to be mentioned in such a positive way by you; however, I think I would much rather see Godsy and Steel1943 as admins, since they would both be better at it than I would be.  Happy holidays to all!   Paine Ellsworth   u/ c  02:25, 6 December 2016 (UTC)

A Pattern?
I tried calling attention to what seemed to me a pattern of questionable behavior on that particular page. Nobody seemed to have responded. , I questioned my own interpretation. That is how I ended up voting for support rather than staying neutral. But with the emergence of this new info about the use of infowars.com as a source, I regret not keeping myself neutral. The inclusion of this source fits within what seemed an attempt to drag and become unhelpful to the editors who were trying to upgrade the entry to the status of Good Article. I wish to hear the views of those who have read the entire exchange. Caballero / Historiador ⎌  16:35, 5 December 2016 (UTC)
 * I've just skim-read it, and the assertion made by one in that exchange that GA nomination/review takes precedence over anything is, imo, mistaken. GA has a stability criterion and if that turns out to not be the case, it's a hard fail -> abandon review, get no plaque. I'd have to look at the actual edits to get a full picture of whether the edits were good and needed, but imo the premise that an article cannot be substantially edited while a GA review is ongoing is definitely wrong. Samsara 16:47, 5 December 2016 (UTC)


 * I cited Talk:Gun_show_loophole/GA1 in my late oppose, and probably should have credited you for bringing that to my attention. wbm1058 (talk) 17:03, 5 December 2016 (UTC)


 * From my reading of the discussion and the edits Godsy made to the article I am again seeing a positive. It looks to me that Godsy is trying to ensure the article is neutral and not weighted in any direction. That always takes precedence. We don't rush to finish GA reviews, ignoring problems; we address concerns. If addressing concerns holds up a GA review to the extent that the GA review has to close as not-listed, then that's as it should be. We should not be listing articles which are biased in the first place.  SilkTork  <sup style="color:#347C2C;">✔Tea time  17:22, 5 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Samsara, agreed that major reviews are not prohibited in the middle of a GA review. Thanks wbm1058. It is good to know. What to do with the sustained and strong support of respectable editors even after the emergence of this evidence? How do you factor them in your judgment? Perhaps this was indeed an incident that served as a stepping stone for a wiser editor, as Mr Ernie and SilkTork continues to argue.  Caballero /  Historiador ⎌  17:26, 5 December 2016 (UTC)

Started to comment here, but instead added some comments on the subject below. &mdash; <span style="font-family:monospace, monospace;"> Rhododendrites <sup style="font-size:80%;">talk  \\ 02:09, 6 December 2016 (UTC)

Certain pertinent points
I think Godsy is a strong editor and will definitely not misuse the rights if given, but that's besides the point atm. The issue here is of the crappy rationales that various respected editors give for opposition. There are legitimate ones and there are illegitimate ones, the crats clearly know the difference but even then this RfA faced the additional burden of needing technical supports to get it in the discretionary range, so that pointless opposes didn't put down a pretty normal candidate. Another point that I have to bring up is that this is a request for adminship, so I think it's pretty obvious that it's the opposes that need rationales (not saying this as a compulsion, but if you were to vote oppose, I'm pretty sure you want others to understand why you did so and maybe vote oppose as well) and supports are merely for affirming their faith in the candidate. Lastly,, , et al. we had a co-nom after the RfA was transcluded and that's something that was pointed out to be out of convention (I refuse to call it a formal procedure), so is this RfA considered as a precedent for any such future occurrences, not that I mind but I'm pretty sure it will be brought up again. And finally, if there is some kind of opinion on this talk page, will that be taken into account by the crats too, because since the community as well as crats are still in the middle of this - I'd prefer if all views were considered, it's only fair. I believe the crats should take their time with this one, as complicated it is. --<span style="font-family:'Tahoma',Geneva,sans-serif"> QEDK ( T  &#9749;  C ) 17:25, 5 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Why do supports get to merely "affirm their faith" but the bar for opposes is raised at a level of "must convince me personally to make it valid"? This is a discussion built on WP:Consensus like every other part of Wikipedia.  Consensus requires that each side put up reasonable arguments.  Setting the bar for opposes where it requires each and every subsequent reader to find it convincing before it becomes valid is an impossible standard.--v/r - TP 19:45, 5 December 2016 (UTC)
 * I said that opposes should generally have rationales, to explain to readers why they should go against that candidate in a request for adminship. I'm not raising the bar, simply saying as it is. An undefined oppose means you're against, sure but no one will know why and correlate with you that way. --<span style="font-family:'Tahoma',Geneva,sans-serif"> QEDK ( T  &#9749;  C ) 19:51, 5 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Whether or not it gets others to side with a rationale isn't what's at stake, here. What's at stake, here, is whether or not an oppose counts in the final tally.  The bar being set at a level of "must convince every single other person that it's valid" is too high.  I believe I was clear on that and your response doesn't address it.--v/r - TP 19:58, 5 December 2016 (UTC)
 * You're misinterpreting at this point, I do not think only oppose with rationales which are convincing should be allowed to stand, I'm not talking about the tally at all. I'm saying that they generally should have convincing rationales. --<span style="font-family:'Tahoma',Geneva,sans-serif"> QEDK ( T  &#9749;  C ) 20:15, 5 December 2016 (UTC)

Why this RfA should pass
It appears, as of now, that all of you are inclined to close this RfA as "no consensus." Ultimately, of course, you will make the final decision, and of course I will respect the decision that you make. But I would appreciate it if you at least read and considered the analysis which I will now make in favor of this RfA succeeding.

First, I will address the rationales of those who voted against Godsy's becoming an administrator. I would like to mention that RfAs, are, of course, decided by consensus, and as such it is governed (as are all other community discussions) by the consensus policy. In the section on determining consensus, the policy says: Consensus is ascertained by the quality of the arguments given on the various sides of an issue, as viewed through the lens of Wikipedia policy. This policy, then, clearly means that to be given weight in a discussion, an argument must be of high quality and must have a foundation in policy. Low-quality arguments not based on policy are to be mostly discounted.

The problem is that there are many "oppose" rationales in this RfA that are not of especially high quality and that are not based on policy. Consider oppose votes that oppose on the basis of:
 * 1) The RfA being a self-nomination;
 * 2) One's individual "criteria", which are then used to declare that, based on mere opinions and arbitrary statistics, Godsy's two years of editing are insufficient.
 * 3) A particular oppose based solely on the user's lack of image uploads and participation in WikiProjects;
 * 4) Godsy's mentioning his user rights in his self-nom. This is somehow used to accuse Godsy of being a hat collector, but in the real world it is universal practice to mention prior positions of trust when asking for a new position;
 * 5) "lack of content creation", even though Godsy has created at least two articles of considerable substance (see Adam's ale and Noah's wine), as well as another slightly shorter article.
 * 6) Godsy's tendency to correct his edits frequently.

Purely personal opinions on self-noms, editing time (especially when two years is considered insufficient), content creation, image uploads/WikiProject participation, the mentioning of one's user rights, and how frequently one should or should not correct oneself are hardly insightful (i.e., of high quality) and have absolutely nothing to do with policy. RfA is governed by WP:CONSENSUS, which, as I mentioned earlier, requires that rationales in any discussion be high-quality and have grounding on policy. Since so many of the oppose votes which I mentioned above clearly do not provide any policy-based insight, I contend that, in accordance with policy, all these votes should be discounted. If, in accordance with the consensus policy, we were to properly discount oppose votes (or parts of oppose votes, if only part of a vote fails the consensus policy) that have no actual rationale at all or that are based on mere personal opinion, my (somewhat generous) calculation is that almost 25% of the opposition would be discounted. This means that Godsy's support total would go up to about 73%.

However, not all of those who opposed Godsy's RfA cast votes like these. Some did give extensive reasons for their opposition. I would like to look at those reasons.


 * Many opposers cite SMcCandlish's oppose rationale. SMC cites Godsy's usurping of a shortcut (WP:PMC) from a section of the MOS to the page about page movers. Godsy evidently intended to direct the shortcut to the "Redirect suppression criteria" section of that page. SMC alleges that this somehow shows bad judgement, but as Godsy mentioned when redirecting the page, the shortcut had been used a mere three times on rather unimportant pages (I would note that the relevant MOS section was quite obscure anyway). I fail to see what is wrong with redirecting a little-used shortcut to page much more likely to been seen, especially seeing that the shortcut makes sense (redirecting WP:PMC to a "criteria" section on Page movers does seem quite logical to me). In any case, that incident was over 6 months ago.
 * SMC also cites Godsy's supposed "forum-shopping" of this discussion to the proposals section of the Village Pump. But there are two problems with this: (1) This incident was one and a half years ago, when Godsy had not even a year of experience; (2) Godsy's restarting the discussion on VPP was arguably not forum-shopping at all. Only five people participated in the original discussion, and that is hardly a representative, sitewide consensus. Godsy's moving this to VPP was, in all likelihood, simply an attempt to gain broader input from the wider community. WP:CONSENSUS says: Consensus among a limited group of editors, at one place and time, cannot override community consensus on a wider scale. And indeed, two times more people participated in the VPP discussion. In the end, the broader consensus overrode the smaller consensus. I would also note that SMC actually proposed this RfC, and the broader VPP consensus evidently produced a decision he did not favor, so that should be taken into consideration.


 * The "Legacypac incident" was also a popular reason for opposing. But let's actually look at the facts. The issue at hand was LP's campaign to get "stale drafts" deleted. LP had circumvented process to advance his article deletion mission; in one of his move summaries, LP said: "move to mainspace to subject to AfD to test notability - claims at MfD that GNG does not apply are too annoying." A proposition that LP be banned from a wide range of areas was disturbingly close: 7 supported, 11 opposed. Only a few more supports would have created a majority in favor of sanctioning LP. Legacypac was also found to have personally attacked Godsy. There was finally an RfC on the issue, and in that RfC, virtually 100% of the community strongly rejected LP's views on draft deletion. Therefore, according to community consensus, Godsy was clearly in the right in this dispute, effectively rendering moot the opposer's complaints about Godsy's involvement. To give these opposes weight would be to disrespect the consensus reached by the community in that RfC.


 * Some other editor's also cite Godsy's involvement in gun control topics, in particular Nazi gun control theory. What they fail to mention, however, it that his edits (which they say violated WP:FRINGE) were also made over one and a half years ago. Godsy was very new, barely having had six months of experience—considering his level of experience at the time, the most reasonable conclusion is that he was simply innocently unaware of the various nuances of Wikipedia policy. It is not reasonable to hold against a person something they did when they had only a few months of experience. The fact is that hardly anyone can cite anything that is no less than a year old. That says quite a bit about Godsy's significant advancement in policy knowledge.


 * It should be noted that Godsy (after being given permission by admin Newyorkbrad) commented on this incident above near the end of the long section.  We now return you to your regularly scheduled talk page reading.  —   Gestrid  ( talk ) 00:15, 6 December 2016 (UTC)

I believe these fact should be appropriately considered when weighting these oppose rationales.

Finally, some users contend that the supporters should be held to the same standard as the opposers. But from an actual policy perspective, it is a deeply established principle that the best should be assumed of editors. The default assumption should be a positive assumption, not a negative one. Therefore, the opposition should bear the burden of proof in showing why a default positive assumption is not warranted, and therefore they should be held to a higher standard. Those who support without detailed explanation can be assumed to be simply following WP:AGF. In addition, a support without explanation can simply be viewed as an endorsement of the nomination statement; when one supports a candidate, they are by definition agreeing with the nominator that the editor should be an admin. Therefore, supports have two things to default to: WP:AGF, and the nomination statement. Opposers have no such thing to default to, and that it why they should be expected to explain their reasons more thoroughly. Not to mention the fact that the opposition is already given a built-in advantage, namely the fact that their opinions carry 2 to 3 times more weight than those who support.

Thank you for reading this and considering my opinion. I realize this is quite lengthy, but seeing that this RfA is so controversial, it should be expected that detailed analyses will be given.

Biblio (talk) 23:54, 5 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Just pinging the 'crats again, in case my long comment caused the ping template to malfunction. Biblio (talk) 23:55, 5 December 2016 (UTC)
 * I would close as "consensus to promote"; read my comments again..?  Maxim (talk)  00:08, 6 December 2016 (UTC)


 * I have one small but possibly significant critique of the bureaucrats' rationales thus far. I see that you're weighting the supporting !votes that cite a desire to see a 'crat chat less heavily. You are right to do so, in my opinion, but I think appearances may be misleading here. If you discount 15 opposes and 15 supports, it seems at first glance that both sides had some flaws, but that still shoots Godsy's supporting percentage way up. To fall above the discretionary range at an RfA, you need 3 supporting editors for every 1 opposing editor. When you discount a roughly equal handful of supports and opposes, that may seem equal, but given how each oppose carries more weight based on how the process is set up, this should swing toward consensus to promote. If you take my 15/15 numbers from earlier, which are somewhat arbitrary but seem close to reality based on my reading of the RfA, the support percentage would be 72%, which is the upper end of the discretionary range. I'd like to see at least some comment demonstrating that you're thinking along these lines and looking at the actual percentage after you discount !votes rather than going with the "gut" that discarding equal handfuls of supports and opposes has a net neutral effect on how much support there is for this candidate. Thank you. ~ Rob 13 <sup style="margin-left:-1.0ex;">Talk 00:10, 6 December 2016 (UTC)
 * I also calculated that about 15 oppose votes would be discounted due to lack of policy-based reasoning (thus my comment that about 25% of the opposition would be discounted), although I forgot to mention that specific fact in my analysis. To clarify, the 73% figure that I gave was indeed based on the number of oppose votes left after discounting the baseless ones. Biblio (talk) 00:24, 6 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Importantly, my number of 72% also included discounting 15ish supports which seemed to be placed only to prompt a 'crat chat. I think that discounting is fair, but it has no meaningful effect on the percentage, unlike the discounting of opposes. ~ Rob 13 <sup style="margin-left:-1.0ex;">Talk 01:54, 6 December 2016 (UTC)

Responding to one of 's points:
 * Some other editor's also cite Godsy's involvement in gun control topics, in particular Nazi gun control theory - Presuming this one is at least in part directed at the can of worms I seem to have opened. The issue is not "involvement in gun control topics"; the problem is POV-pushing to make a fringe theory more palatable.
 * What they fail to mention, however.. - It was mentioned immediately after is was brought up, by BU Rob. As I said there, this is not a test edit, obvious vandalism, or otherwise typical newbie mistake due to unfamiliarity with policies and guidelines. Godsy wielded policies and guidelines in ways characteristic of a reasonably experienced user pushing a POV. I don't think it makes sense to dismiss it as a newbie mistake. There are also evident issues of judgment which extend far beyond knowledge of policies/guidelines (see point below). Could he have learned not to do so since then? Sure. But while it was some months after starting active editing, it was also just last year. Best case scenario it's overeagerness to jump into contentious situations and repeatedly make controversial changes without fully understanding the relevant policies -- which does not seem ideal for an admin (but can signify a dedicated volunteer, hence why I said I'd gladly reconsider given more time).
 * More importantly, this is not a one-off problem. People are looking at the citation of InfoWars as the sole problem, and for some people perhaps it is. But that was just one particularly problematic diff extracted from a larger pattern of problematic editing. We're talking about one of Godsy's most actively edited articles and far and away most active talk page, and the bulk of his edits to the page appear to be dedicated to removing descriptions like "fringe" and characterizing the theory more favorably. I appreciate that he acknowledged the distinction "neutrality in general vs neutrality here on Wikipedia" (in other words, WP:PROFRINGE/WP:FALSEBALANCE), but it's just too big a part of his editing history, and too recent to ignore.
 * I also want to mention another apparent focus area I noticed from around the same time, other than the nazi gun control theory: transgender identity issues. This was touched upon by in question 8 and cited by a couple opposers. There were many edits to Caitlyn Jenner and the talk page pushing to include a line about Jenner's genitalia, adding male pronouns to the article, etc. At the same time, Godsy went around to multiple articles to remove terms like "deadnaming" and "misgendering" as neologisms. If these were isolated or interspersed with other unrelated non-minor contributions that would be one thing, but as far as I got, I didn't see any other contributions to those articles, and enough of that sort of editing in general for it to emerge as an evident focus around the same time. I didn't bring it up in my vote because I had already typed more than I wanted to and it's less obvious when it comes to policy/guidelines (in fact, there were edits along these lines in which Godsy was clearly in the right, and there is no singularly egregious diff to point to), but it's something people expressed concern about that doesn't look to have been acknowledged in these post-RfA summaries of the oppose votes. &mdash; <span style="font-family:monospace, monospace;"> Rhododendrites  <sup style="font-size:80%;">talk  \\ 02:07, 6 December 2016 (UTC)


 * I'd like to request, given the fact that both rationales from bureaucrats finding consensus to promote were posted fairly late today and there is a bureaucrat actively reconsidering, that this discussion not be closed before the bureaucrats as a whole have time to evaluate the new statements from their colleagues. If no-one decides to reconsider based on those statements and some of the comments on this talk page, so be it, but it would seem premature to close this in the middle of the night seven hours from now given the newer comments from your colleagues. Assuming that the distribution of time zones is fairly "standard" among the bureaucrats, a closure along the timeline you originally suggested would mean many of them would likely not see 's rationale, at the very least. Thank you for your consideration. ~ Rob 13 <sup style="margin-left:-1.0ex;">Talk 03:45, 6 December 2016 (UTC)
 * I second that proposal. It will also allow the 'crats who commented early to see Godsy's comment above (diff) if they have not yet seen it.  Godsy was given permission by Newyorkbrad to comment on the issue that was brought up late in the RfA.  —   Gestrid  ( talk ) 03:55, 6 December 2016 (UTC)
 * In response to your (possibly rhetorical?) question, yes, I think 12 hours from now is sufficient unless another bureaucrat requests additional time for some reason. Thank you for being responsive to my concern. ~ Rob 13 <sup style="margin-left:-1.0ex;">Talk 05:57, 6 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Is this coming from the same Rob who asked everyone to shut up and let the crats do their job? Samsara 07:14, 6 December 2016 (UTC)
 * I asked everyone to wait for the 'crats to evaluate consensus and then comment afterwards if they had concerns. That's exactly what I did. Given the late comment by Avi, it was worth pointing out the issue with closing the discussion before most participants can react to new opinions and information. ~ Rob 13 <sup style="margin-left:-1.0ex;">Talk 07:50, 6 December 2016 (UTC)

This violates WP:BLP and is completely invasive. We don't report on people's genitals, period. It is only of interest to voyeurs and tabloids. This is an encyclopedia, not TMZ. Liz <sup style="font-family:Times New Roman;"><b style="color:#006400;">Read!</b> <b style="color:#006400;">Talk!</b> 02:44, 15 June 2015 (UTC)
 * I miss Liz. Wish she was still here to vote in this. She was the most deserving 'crat promotion ever, I'd say. I'm not waffling any more. Back to firm oppose. Can't believe more didn't object to this. wbm1058 (talk) 04:04, 6 December 2016 (UTC)
 * I know this is off-topic, but I do too. She was really helpful to me earlier this year. Patient Zerotalk 14:10, 6 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Agree. I never cast a vote in the main RfA, as I didn't really form a conclusive opinion one way or the other, and was neutralish - the opposes at the time were on the cusp of relevance for me. However, with the new information at the end of the RfA - the suggestion of POV pushing and trying to push WP:UNDUE weight on to genitalia discussion in transgender subjects means that I would now oppose were I to vote. I suggest the candidate come back in a year and convince us that the issues raised have not recurred. I'm sure they could be a good admin, but not yet. Thanks &mdash; Amakuru (talk) 13:40, 6 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Could you contextualize Liz's quote? Thanks. Caballero /  Historiador ⎌  13:56, 6 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Ya know, this is where conducting this RFA process in public like this gets the most difficult. You hope people would put in a teeny bit of effort to follow some not-too-subtle hint and links and just go see for themselves, without plastering this stuff on the village bulletin board. You try to say just enough to derail the candidacy without undue embarrassment to the candidate. I'm usually able to do that, but in this case I confess to skimming much of it. With all the Q&A though it becomes TLDR for those who still want to get some real work done. Add to the mix a ton of noise caused by some spurious issue ("self-nominated", which was a non-issue in my RFA... Ironically, I was hammered for my "content creation", or alleged lack of it – which should have been an issue here, but was not – perhaps because the noisy editors in my RFA aren't here any more) – the real issues get lost in the cacophony... until some hero like R. comes along and wakes us up. Maybe a side-effect of lowering the bar is forcing this stuff we'd rather keep under the rug up to the surface. While I thought I'd already been harsh enough on this guy already – I'm not that self-unaware – he has had every chance to abandon this and walk away from it, as Rob suggested to him earlier, he has stuck it out. So look at and follow the links to see the mainspace edits. Maybe some of the opposition was using the "self-nominated" excuse because they were just too uncomfortable with giving their real reasons. If the community just looks at this and shrugs, "notcensored" and all... then I just don't get "safe space" at all. Does that only apply in the real world and not online? So this guy just stumbled into Nazi gun control conspiracy theories, which he now understands was a mistake and regrets, then he stumbled into Jenner's genitals, now he's stumbled into Afro engineering, which he doesn't seem to regret, then there's the toxic manner in which he fumbled this Legacypac incident, which I only gave a cursory look. How can we have any trust or confidence that he won't keep stumbling into toxic topics? wbm1058 (talk) 15:04, 6 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the link. I appreciate the effort in your explanation. Caballero /  Historiador ⎌  22:08, 6 December 2016 (UTC)

Sorry I didn't reply here,, but I've been very busy IRL. FWIW, I read your passionate and reasoned comments (and all those on this page, and the later crat comments) very carefully. I did review the RfA. I usually do during a CratChat, as I'm not too proud to change my position based on arguments, and have done in the past. On this occasion, I didn't change my opinion. Thank you for your intelligent and constructive contribution though. --Dweller (talk) Become old fashioned! 09:15, 7 December 2016 (UTC)

Convenience break
Well, if I interpret Avraham's opinion correctly, the implication seems to be that if one wishes to avoid a vote being discounted in some way, one should not give reasons at all. I'm not sure that's healthy, but that's the only clear opinion I've heard on the issue - there may well be RfCs that I've missed, but I also wonder if WT:RFA is a better venue to discuss, particularly aspects not specific to the candidate (and for the rest, this may not be the best place either). Samsara 18:48, 6 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Not necessarily at all. I cannot give you quantitative weights; even if I could, I shouldn't, as our role is not to judge the merits of the arguments in and of themselves, but to judge if a consensus developed from the discussion. However, at least in my experience, a well-founded, well-articulated reason can be considered "stronger" in as much as a ill-founded reason can be considered "weaker". Moreover, people who spend the time to supply their reasons are often more successful at swaying opinions than those who do not, and the purpose of RfX is to engenger a group opinion as best possible, is it not? -- Avi (talk) 19:24, 6 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Agree, I generally consider straight [Support|Oppose] entries to have less weight than one with a reasonable statement. — xaosflux  Talk 19:36, 6 December 2016 (UTC)
 * The way I'd word it is that a straight support or oppose is standard (normalized weight 1) and the merit—or lack thereof—of the argument can act as a credit or debit. Of course, that is a rough heuristic; if it were as simple as that, we would not need bureaucrats and I'd have to give back my platinum-plated key to the Wikipedia executive washroom [[file:face-grin.svg|28px]]. -- Avi (talk) 19:46, 6 December 2016 (UTC)
 * The disagreement you have just demonstrated is exactly what I am talking about. Samsara 22:01, 6 December 2016 (UTC)
 * What disagreement? 1.1 > 1 > .9, no? -- Avi (talk) 22:34, 6 December 2016 (UTC)
 * I generally consider straight [Support/Oppose] entries to have less weight VS merit—or lack thereof—of the argument can act as a credit or debit. So with Xaosflux, giving an explanation can be a good thing, but with Avraham, you risk shooting yourself in the foot. Samsara 06:01, 7 December 2016 (UTC)
 * I cannot speak for Xaos, of course, but I don't think any bureaucrat would give as much weight to one of the "oppose due to self-nom" as opposed to a flat oppose. I'm pretty sure that for all of us, the explanation can provide color, either way. -- Avi (talk) 06:27, 7 December 2016 (UTC)
 * I think we all agreed that that one particular vote was poor reasoning - even opposers. Simply restating that in no way addresses the concern over whether giving a reason will routinely be used to attempt to discredit the !vote and reasons therefore should be withheld entirely. Samsara 08:33, 7 December 2016 (UTC)
 * I don't see any contradiction between what Avi and Xaos said. Xaos said that he weights blank supports/opposes less than one with reasonable statements (i.e. reasonable rationales boost your weight). Avi said that he credits/debits based on rationale, with a straight support/oppose being given a weight in the middle (i.e. reasonable rationales boost your weight, unreasonable rationales take away from your weight). Those are both consistent when compared to each other and, more broadly, consistent with the community's expectation of the role of bureaucrats, in my opinion. ~ Rob 13 <sup style="margin-left:-1.0ex;">Talk 08:46, 7 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Xaos did not state that he penalises poor opposes beyond blank ones, which Avi did state. So until I hear from Xaos that his sword also cuts both ways, it's a contradiction in my book. The contradiction was also initially acknowledged by Avi when he wrote, The way I'd word it is [...]. Samsara 08:54, 7 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Paging . Someone wants you here.  —   Gestrid  ( talk ) 08:59, 7 December 2016 (UTC)
 * The pipe (|) in my reply above is an "or" operator. I find that support or opposition comments that include a reasonable rationale are more useful for consensus building than just a signature. Conversely, comments that include poor rationales contribute less to the consensus building process.  (e.g. "Oppose, they are rude to other editors (diff)" > "Oppose" > "Oppose, I oppose anyone with two x's in their username" ). —  xaosflux  Talk 12:41, 7 December 2016 (UTC)

@Maxim
When you conducted your review of the opposes, did you consider the "Support because of the crappy opposes" style !votes?--v/r - TP 00:22, 6 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Yes, there were some "support because crappy opposes" that did not add anything to the discussion (e.g. explaining /why/ opposes are crappy). As a fraction of the population of the support votes, these were less prominent than the the portion of opposes that I considered on dubious grounds.  Maxim (talk)  00:55, 6 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Thank you for clarifying, that was my only question.--v/r - TP 01:50, 6 December 2016 (UTC)

Question
Does anyone foresee a Request for Adminship where the voting placed it within a 65-70% range, it goes to a bureaucrat discussion but the bureaucrats then determine a consensus to promote? I don't think this will ever happen.

In most RFAs there are supports with strong and weak rationales and opposes with strong and weak rationales. Here it seems that there was a higher proportion of weaker opposes and supports than usual and from the analysis above, when taken out bump up the support percentage slightly higher but not significantly. I can't imagine a situation where every oppose is ridiculous. Every RFA landing between 65-70% will have somebody making legitimate concerns even if the majority of voters disagree. And therefore there will never be consensus to promote.

If this is the case, widening the discretionary range was pointless and taking these RFAs to a 'crat chat is a waste of time. It's better to wrap these up quickly as before. Gizza <sup style="color:teal;">( t )( c ) 03:04, 6 December 2016 (UTC)
 * I believe I touched on that very point in my rationale, Gizza; the bar changed and that needs to be taken into consideration. -- Avi (talk) 03:06, 6 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Thanks for letting me know Avi. I started to write this before seeing your input into the discussion. Gizza  <sup style="color:teal;">( t )( c ) 03:19, 6 December 2016 (UTC)

Read the questions in some old WP:RFBs and you'll see all sorts of weird and wonderful old RfAs being discussed, including ones with very low levels of support that were passed by a Crat. --Dweller (talk) Become old fashioned! 09:17, 7 December 2016 (UTC)

Thank you
I want to personally thank everyone who participated in the chat via the talk page. Firstly, for extending your collective trust to me and allowing me to participate in these decisions. Secondly, and more importantly, for actually participating in the discussion. Speaking at least for myself, being human (last I checked ), seeing others' perspectives often reveals something I had not considered that should be considered when trying to tease out the existence of a consensus. So thank you again! -- Avi (talk) 19:56, 6 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Seconded. Thank you to everyone. ··· 日本穣 ·  投稿  · Talk to Nihonjoe ·  Join WP Japan ! 20:20, 6 December 2016 (UTC)


 * I, in turn, would like to say thank you to all of the Crats. You conducted a thoughtful and mature discussion, and arrived at a sound decision. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:53, 6 December 2016 (UTC)


 * This crat chat was extremely refreshing. Lately, I've been concerned with many high-profile closures or ArbCom cases which seemed to lack transparency. No-one walks away particularly satisfied when it's not clear how a decision was reached, regardless of what that decision was. While I may not like the outcome, I can fully appreciate the fact that it's clear how the bureaucrats reached their conclusions. We should probably expect nothing less from our bureaucrats, but still, thank you for clearly explaining your reasoning and being responsive to queries on the talk page. ~ Rob 13 <sup style="margin-left:-1.0ex;">Talk 23:23, 6 December 2016 (UTC)


 * Thank you, crats, for a demonstration of how consensus works. It's not always so clear, or clearly considered. BlackcurrantTea (talk) 03:38, 7 December 2016 (UTC)