Wikipedia talk:Requests for adminship/HickoryOughtShirt?4

Too new
Am I misreading things or are people really pulling the "too soon" card on someone who's been here for around 18 months and has over 50,000 edits? I'm pretty certain that the vast majority of admins today didn't have that when they became admins. Reaper Eternal (talk) 18:55, 25 April 2019 (UTC)
 * When there’s no other reason, the only way is to make criteria even higher... Aiken D 19:02, 25 April 2019 (UTC)
 * Agree with Reaper. I wasn't around in the early days of RfA, but it seems that the standards back then were much lower (this one got the mop after only 3 months of activity) but now they seem too high. Perhaps these increasing standards are why only a few brave souls go to RfA nowadays? SemiHypercube 19:06, 25 April 2019 (UTC)
 * Fwiw, I think part of the reason that people don't go for RfA these days is because they are afraid of RfAs in the 80s since most RfAs pass well in the 90s. We need more candidates who are willing to take the risk and put themselves out there without the perfect record in every area of Wikipedia. Admins don't have to be super-stars: they just have to be competent and willing to learn from mistakes. TonyBallioni (talk) 19:09, 25 April 2019 (UTC)


 * I'd cite Requests for adminship/Primefac 2 as a perfect of example of there being very little correlation between an RfA "final score" and how good somebody actually is as an admin. As long as the opposes contain fair and reasonable criticism, it ought to end up with a better candidate as they will understand exactly what they need to be careful of and not have a tendency to go off the rails. Ritchie333 (talk) (cont)  21:14, 25 April 2019 (UTC)


 * As I noted in the general comments section, one can not really compare length of tenure back then and now. If you ran for admin with one year tenure in 2004, you were basically around "forever" already. On the other hand, if you have a tenure of a year now, it means you've been around for 5% of Wikipedia's existence. And the longer Wikipedia exists, the more "senior" those who joined sooner will become (you will note that many of those !voting on grounds of tenure are "older" editors with Chris Troutman at six years being the youngest afaict). I'm not saying that this is a good reason to withhold support but it's understandable where people might come from. Personally, I think the standard should merely be whether someone can be trusted with the tools and 18 months should deliver sufficient evidence to decide that question (although I did not yet have time to make up my mind). Regards So  Why  19:19, 25 April 2019 (UTC)
 * If anything, I think it should be the opposite. We need new blood and having someone who's only joined the project in the past two years and ready for adminship is a great thing. &mdash; Amakuru (talk) 21:19, 25 April 2019 (UTC)
 * Very true. If we only support long-term "career" editors, we basically turn adminship into a "good 'ol boyz" club. In my opinion, that's a bad thing. Reaper Eternal (talk) 04:52, 26 April 2019 (UTC)
 * 18 months seems to high for adminship. For something beyond adminship, yeah, that's too short. But we're not talking about private data here. --Rschen7754 07:10, 26 April 2019 (UTC)
 * This RFA is currently at 90% support, and unless something very strange happens in the next day or so is going to pass. Unless something very bad happens with this candidate in their first year as an admin, that pretty much reaffirms that the community's tenure requirement at RFA is still less than 18 months. I suspect that fifteen months could also still get through unless there were significant other issues. I might well support a good candidate with some months less experience than that, but I doubt I would nominate a candidate with much less than 15 months tenure in the current RFA mood. Even though I'm conscious that we know from past cases that people can learn what they need to become a good admin and show the requisite attitude in a lot less than a year.  Ϣere Spiel  Chequers  07:00, 30 April 2019 (UTC)
 * Meanwhile, an admin with 14 years' experience and whose RfA passed with 100% support is being dragged off to Arbcom with people wanting to desysop them. Ritchie333 (talk) (cont)  12:35, 30 April 2019 (UTC)

Semiprotection
I notice that has just semiprotected the RFA page. Was this really necessary? There was one edit this morning that has been redacted, but I'm not sure that's enough to warrant kicking out all IPs at this stage? Note that IP participation is actually baked into the rules at WP:RFA "All Wikipedians—including those without an account or not logged in ("anons")—are welcome to comment and ask questions", so we really shouldn't be semiprotecting unless there are insurmountable reasons to do so. Thanks &mdash; Amakuru (talk) 09:29, 26 April 2019 (UTC)
 * It was not just one IP this morning, there was some yesterday too. It's also oversightable material. They can always propose a question or comment here, and have it transferred, I'm sure many people would be willing to do that. As they can't !vote anyway, there is no concern there. That's why I protected it. -- Amanda  (aka DQ) 09:35, 26 April 2019 (UTC)
 * Can't PCP handle it then? Regards So  Why  09:40, 26 April 2019 (UTC)
 * For visibility on the actual page, yes. For people who have it on their watchlist, no, it encourages them to see it. -- Amanda  (aka DQ) 09:42, 26 April 2019 (UTC)
 * It also doesn't do anything about material that needs revdel/suppression. ~ Amory  (u • t • c) 10:58, 26 April 2019 (UTC)
 * Just a thought, but why is this? Should we really be having editors with <4 days/10 edits commenting on RFAs? --Rschen7754 18:19, 26 April 2019 (UTC)
 * Because you can edit for years and make thousands of contributions without a confirmed account; because edit count doesn't make an opinion any more or less valid; because we're an open community (the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit), etc., etc...? –&#8239;Joe (talk) 11:36, 27 April 2019 (UTC)
 * There are several other wikis that don't allow votes from new editors/IP editors - frwiki, dewiki, wikidata come to mind (though granted, they don't ban all comments). I'm not saying that we necessarily should do this, but we should at least leave the option on the table, if we really want to consider ways to improve RFA. --Rschen7754 15:57, 27 April 2019 (UTC)

This talk page
I've had to semiprotect this talk page now too due to introduction of suppressible material by sockpuppets of banned editors. Reaper Eternal (talk) 16:57, 26 April 2019 (UTC)