Wikipedia talk:Requests for bureaucratship/Mackensen

Mackensen's edit stats using "wannabe Kate" tool as of 22:50, 6 April 2007 (UTC):

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Block log: 1311 Deletion log: 2384 Protection log: 57

Calling all rogue bureaucrats
You know, it would be fun if one of the current bureaucrats adopted Mackensen's own philosophy and promoted him despite being under 85% support. The irony would be spectacular, but at the same time laudable, to me at least. Grand master  ka  12:08, 7 April 2007 (UTC)
 * It would be a tragedy if that were to occur. It would make for some good fireworks though, so long as you don't mind fireworks that burn bridges. Johntex\talk 02:04, 9 April 2007 (UTC)


 * ... but you can't make an omelet without breaking some eggs? --Kim Bruning 14:30, 12 April 2007 (UTC) just wanted to throw in some more metaphors, honest ;-)

Observation
I confess that I find all these opposes grounded in the idea that I propose some kind of despotism surprising. Eliminating a focus on numbers increases the importance of individual comments and, if anything, ought to encourage engaged participation. The focus on borderline cases is worrying–in the vast majority of candidacies the outcome ought to be obvious. The major change, hopefully, would be the encouraging of additional people to run together with a loosening of requirements (requirements not grounded in any policy) which would eliminate the phenomenon of people doing certain actions just to pass RfA. That kind of culture is not healthy and has been criticized by the same people opposing these changes. If possible, I'd like to start some dialogue here as the main page is quite long enough already. Mackensen (talk) 16:56, 7 April 2007 (UTC)


 * Allowing any Wikipedian to play the role of "the decider" with respect to a candidate's qualifications is going to be percieved as despotic to a significant number of Wikipedians. One thing you may not have appreciated is that the historical role of Bureaucrats is to judge consensus, not to judge qualifications.  In other words that they are supposed to look at the strength of agreement or disagreement with respect to promoting the candidate, but are not generally expected to make value judgments about whether this or that kind of opposition makes sense or should be given greater or less weight.  I suspect some of the opposition you are seeing stems your desire to change from consensus judging model to a candidate judging one.


 * On a second point, you'd have a hard time finding any requirements clearly identified in any written policy. RFA has historically rejected establishing any criteria whatsoever with respect to candidacy requirements, and as a result essentially anything goes when it comes to oppositon.  I've proposed in the past drafting a set of guidelines for what makes a good admin (e.g. Must communicate well with others; Have experience writing articles; Remain civil, etc) and requiring oppose voters to demonstrate how the candidate fails to meet such criteria, but such proposals have never gained much traction.  Dragons flight 17:29, 7 April 2007 (UTC)


 * It is quite clear why people reject any criteria for voting on adminship and why they don't want the bureaucrats to have more say. People want to know that their opinion matters (even if other people think a given opinion is silly). Any attempts to make individual voices less relevant will be unpopular. And for good reason, I think crowds are more trustworthy than bureaucrats. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 17:40, 7 April 2007 (UTC)
 * My principal concern here is that making people feel their opinion is valued may not be of any tangible benefit to the encyclopedia. I admit that I value the encyclopedia more highly than any individual editor's feelings, including my own. This may be a blind spot but there we are. I'm slightly offended that your apparent distrust of bureaucrats en masse (correct me if I misunderstood you) has been transferred to me. Are bureaucrats inherently untrustworthy and liable to harm the encyclopedia? Mackensen (talk) 17:58, 7 April 2007 (UTC)


 * Well, you're not a bureaucrat yet, so this does not apply to you. :) Seriously though, our bureaucrats are on the whole wise and experienced people, but I still trust the community vote more (even if, as pointed out, the people who vote are not necessarily representative of the community). Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 18:24, 7 April 2007 (UTC)


 * (cross-posted from my talk page) I don't intend that my remark be interpreted too broadly, no. I agree wholeheartedly that people should be happy writing the encyclopedia, but we aren't talking about writing the encyclopedia! What we're talking about is selecting people to help with the maintenance of the encyclopedia, and this really is a separate question altogether. This is secondary, perhaps even tertiary to the writing of the encyclopedia itself: people should come here, to Wikipedia, to write an encyclopedia, not to participate in RFA. We need to balance people's desire to participate in process with the very real need to create additional administrators and to arrest the alarming development of administrative backlogs. Best, Mackensen (talk) 19:28, 7 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Well said. But as wrote somewhere else, taking the power of decision from the people is not the way to go. I don't know what the way to go is. Perhaps lowering the promotion threshold. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 20:11, 7 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Basically, majority is a way to approximate consensus in situations where there are very many people indeed, and where there is limited time to make a decision. In the case of wikipedia, we have plenty of time, and not too many people at any one location, so we can actually make use of consensus directly, rather than a mere reflection. This does not take the power of decision away from people. Quite the contrary, using pure negotiated consensus (even of the "rough consensus" kind) empowers people greatly, I have learned. If your opinion is really important it will be heard. If it's a secondary point, it might even just be carried out as a matter of course, as opposed to it becoming lost as happens in majority voting. And those are some of the reasons why I'm so strongly in favor of using consensus directly. --Kim Bruning 04:22, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

I've written up a brief proposal for improving RfA. The process would remain the same up until closure. RfA that aren't obvious pass/fails enter a discussion period of all bureaucrats. I believe this would help to reduce the perception of "rogue" bureaucrats and also increase the number of successful RfAs by widening the discretionary range to 60-80% support. I welcome any feedback and hope this can be refined into a workable process. Thanks! Note: I'm posting this here as well as WT:RFA since it's mostly related to bureaucrats. ChazBeckett 17:50, 7 April 2007 (UTC)


 * I really like it. The biggest problem I see with Mackensen's proposal is that potentially controversial decisions can be made by a single bureaucrat. If there'd be a rule that states that at least 2 (or 3?) bureaucrats have to be involved in controversial RFA closings, it'd be much easier for me to support this RfB. Don't get me wrong, I trust our bureaucrats, and I trust Mackensen, but we're all human after all, and humans make mistakes from time to time. --Conti|✉ 18:05, 7 April 2007 (UTC)


 * I certainly see no problem with that, and endorsed the idea in principle in response to an earlier question. Mackensen (talk) 18:07, 7 April 2007 (UTC)


 * Great, I'm glad to hear that people think my proposal has some merit. I think the proposal strikes a good balance between the simple "German RfA solution" of raw support percentages and the reality that this doesn't work well in every case. I think this would provide the oversight to prevent candidates from slipping through the cracks while also unifying bureaucrats in potentially controversial RfAs. ChazBeckett 18:14, 7 April 2007 (UTC)


 * The German RFA system is one of their systems that happens to be known to work slightly less well, so we're better off not emulating that one ;-) --Kim Bruning 04:23, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

When this ends...
Looking at things now, I don't think Mackensen with have the ~90% support traditionally required to create a new bureaucrat. However, this may have well over 2/3 support, which would make it one of the most supported reform proposals in recent memory. I'd like to consider whether there is a gray area here where A) the support is not sufficient for Mackensen to be promoted, but B) the support is still considered sufficient to justify trying his reform. Obviously that would require one or more existing Bureaucrats to be willing to try implementing it. Personally, I think the proposal is a mistake (as explained in my oppose vote), but I am not opposed to allowing it to be tried if the community does produces a moderately strong mandate here. However, I would like to get other people's opinions on whether it is sensible to allow for the possibility a split decision in this case. Dragons flight 21:55, 7 April 2007 (UTC)


 * The problem is that the support may be a combination of enthusiasm for the proposal and trust in the candidate. I'm not sure how that translates. I wonder if mackensen's proposal with the slight tweek of the closing requiring a consensus of at least three crats might work. That would keep its strengths without requiring the benevolent dictatorship of the one. Sure that might mean more crats - and perhaps asking crats to renew their community mandate annually (like stewards do) - but it might be worth it.--Docg 22:02, 7 April 2007 (UTC)


 * I support the notion wholeheartedly. As I've indicated, repeatedly, I have no ego at stake here and I have no desire to act the benevolet dictator. Mackensen (talk) 22:08, 7 April 2007 (UTC)


 * It's hard to separate the proposal from the candidate while interpreting the result here. It would be simpler if he wrote up a proposal which could be put up for community discussion (or, hey, a thousand person vote as that seems to be in vogue). Haukur 23:18, 7 April 2007 (UTC)


 * The problem is that we all know that will not work. An excellent proposal can be put together, but even if there was a hypothetical consensus that the proposal was preferable to the status quo - you'll only get started with the discussion before you get a host of people saying "no, let's look at my alternative proposal instead" and before you know, we've got 4 competing ideas and no consensus. Perhaps what we need is to put the top 6 options on the table and vote using single transferable votes to find the one most agreeable ;) (Joke).--Docg 23:23, 7 April 2007 (UTC)


 * That sounds workable (as long as status quo is one of the six options). Why is it a joke? Haukur 23:33, 7 April 2007 (UTC)


 * I'd be happy for the status quo to be an option. It is a joke because it isn't possible. You'd need to propose this as a new process for settling processes, and the minute you've done that, you'll get objections. Some will say - that's not the wiki way - and others will come up with new processes of their own - and you'll be back at square one. The irony of those who said that Mackensen's RfB is not the way to change policy, is that years of debating this issue have shown that there are no ways of changing policy here.--Docg 23:37, 7 April 2007 (UTC)


 * There's something to that. We don't have a workable way of changing policies. Once we have a workable way of changing policies in general then we can probably change the RFA policy in particular. Can we sneak a new way of changing policies into effect? (Joke). Haukur 01:06, 8 April 2007 (UTC)


 * I don't think we should interpret this RfB as a call itself as an endorsement of any sort of trial. It is too hard to seperate support for the candidate from support for the candidate's "platform".  This is partly because the "Support" commentors rarely explain their reasoning as well as the "Oppose" commenters, yet the "Oppose" commenters generally recieve most of the arugmentative replies. Any such trial should be proposed and discussed on its own merits and such a discussion should be widely publicized. Johntex\talk 02:02, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

Another way of looking at it
We don't count votes on Wikipedia. Mackensen is running on this proposal, which is Wikipedia policy. Unless there is a consensus that the policy should be changed, we may continue to not count votes on Wikipedia. A very small minority has expressed opposition to this policy. Bureaucrats should take note of this, and should refuse to count votes, because this is against Wikipedia policy as repeatedly affirmed in discussions like this one. --Tony Sidaway 00:01, 8 April 2007 (UTC)


 * Except for all the times we do count votes... In previous discussion, both Bureaucrats Taxman and UninvitedCompany supported a proposal to treat RFA as a straight vote (aside from eliminating sockpuppets and other disruptive participants).  The de facto reality is that RFA is already treated as a vote in literally 99% of cases.  Dragons flight 00:28, 8 April 2007 (UTC)


 * Two bureaucrats cannot override Wikipedia policy. I agree that the distinction only matters in edge cases. --Tony Sidaway 01:16, 8 April 2007 (UTC)
 * But you'd have only one do it. Oh the numbers can be so confusing? Splash - tk 22:30, 8 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Who's proposing a policy override? Mackensen (talk) 22:32, 8 April 2007 (UTC)
 * I thought policy is what we currently do. What we might do in future is then a policy change. It probably becomes an override when someone simply does it off their own bat. Splash - tk 22:38, 8 April 2007 (UTC)
 * However, at some point we started couting votes at RfA, even though RfA is not a vote and never has been. Why the bureaucrats slid into that mindset is beyond me, but that was a policy change too (to use your framework) and was certainly never the subject of a consensus poll or any such thing. We have those unfortunate numbers and people start thinking it's a vote. There's also a question of immediacy, beyond these meta-concerns: we're desperately short of administrators and we're not creating new ones fast enough. Furthermore, we're not creating nearly enough content-editing administrators. It used to be that they dominated, which meant content-areas of the encyclopedia had administrator support. The current regime (with its regulars) doesn't favor them--one of the few areas of agreement between Giano and myself.Mackensen (talk) 22:50, 8 April 2007 (UTC)
 * You can't make admins significantly faster than is already occuring. Perhaps beteween the crats they could force one more promotion every week or something; a meaningless quantity in the scheme of things. Nor will you necessarily be offered more candidates of the kind that you like, unless you plan also to go fetch them and then promote them (which you don't). This is more about the three section headings, trivial as they are. We can call them "Good", "Bad" and "Neither" and put them on a subpage of RfC if that stops the baying. I guarantee that it will still not promote every candidate that everyone thinks should be promoted first time every time. Partly, at least, because some of them would make unsuitable administrators regardless of what you might happen to think of them. Splash - tk 23:06, 8 April 2007 (UTC)
 * However, I don't see how this RfB material. You don't need a new bit to do this, and to try to conflate this RfB with your personal respect and call that an endorsement of whatever you opted to include in your nomination statement is not fair. Splash - tk 23:06, 8 April 2007 (UTC)
 * I'm not doing the conflating, the people on the main page are. I can point to dozens of people who state that they agree with the idea. I can't help it if people !vote without reading what I actually wrote–I know from reading the comments, and I've read them all, that plenty of people on both sides didn't bother. That, incidentally, proves my point better than anything else. Mackensen (talk) 23:11, 8 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Consensus is also policy and consensus cannot be determined if one completely ignores numbers. One can't discuss consensus without reference to the number of people supporting or opposing an action. -- Black Falcon 22:54, 8 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Quite right, but consensus also relies on people making informed judgements. The section on consensus vs. supermajority is relevant here. If there's an overwhelming number of people in favor of something, they're probably right. Briefly regressing to numbers, a bureaucrat would be out of his mind to promote if only 20 out of 100 people supported somebody. That would probably indicate the kind of substantive objections I'm talking about. My main concern is to "lower" (if that's the word) the standards for adminship. Mackensen (talk) 23:00, 8 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Well, aside from vandals, no one will oppose a candidate unless she has a substantive objection. The problem is in juding what is and is not "substantive". Is it a substantive objection that a candidate repeatedly uses derogatory language in edit summaries? Who defines what is derogatory? In the current RFA process, consensus does. Editors make their arguments and others are free to be convinced by them or to disagree. With your proposal, a bureaucrat makes the decision. That makes the RFA process rather elitist. Additionally, although bureaucrats are among the most respected members of the community, they are still human and make mistakes. -- Black Falcon 23:34, 8 April 2007 (UTC)
 * I disagree strongly here, and this gets back to something I said on your talk page. Your premise only makes sense if people approach RfA asking what's good for the encyclopedia. People often come to RfA to settle scores or exact vengeance. I've seen candidacies derailed because of it. It happens frequently. Characterizing such people as vandals is improper--they aren't vandalizing the encyclopedia, they're just being petty. People also don't go back and re-read what others said, and excessive commenting is presently discouraged. A format switch may alleviate these problems. Mackensen (talk) 23:43, 8 April 2007 (UTC)
 * You're right, I do assume that most people who oppose a candidate do so out of genuine concerns rather than pettiness, although I know that there are and have indeed seen exceptions. I don't regularly patrol RFA, but in the couple dozen RFAs I've read or skimmed (not all of which I actually participated in), petty opposes never affected the outcome. Whether a candidate receives unanimous support or 98% support is not that significant. However, when multiple people oppose a candidate, it's far less likely that they do so due to old grudges. -- Black Falcon 23:57, 8 April 2007 (UTC)
 * There's also the situations in which nationalist grudges come to the fore--such candidacies are often withdrawn because of the abuse heaped. Mackensen (talk) 00:00, 9 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Would you mind pointing me to a few examples (not of the nationalist grudges specifically, but of RFAs derailed by editors with personal scores)? I will understand if you don't want to as the examples may offend the editors involved. -- Black Falcon 00:20, 9 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Out of deference to the editors involved I'm unwilling to name names or point fingers. It has happened and will happen again. Mackensen (talk) 00:23, 9 April 2007 (UTC)
 * I've not seen this happen. I respect your decision not to drag any particular person through the discussion here, but without links ot such a discussion I have to continue to believe that this sort of thing must happen in a vanishingly small number of cases.  I think if anything it is the people with valid opposition to a candidate who are more likely to be driven off. Johntex\talk 01:59, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

FWIW, I helped write the consensus policy, ''Ok so that's not worth much, except to show that I've thought about the topic. :-)''

AFAIK, it might be wise to be careful of your terminology. Consensus has nothing to do with numbers whatsoever. Polling does have something to do with numbers, but we strongly recommend people use consensus instead as much as possible.

On RFA, consensus is still involved in forming a decision to an extent. Bureaucrats are actually charged with following consensus, but currently, many just count votes. Ergo, a number of people are not doing their jobs very well. :-/ --Kim Bruning 00:34, 9 April 2007 (UTC)


 * I certainly do not mean to imply that consensus is only about numbers. However, how can consensus be entirely separated from numbers? "Consensus" refers to a "consensus of editors", not a "consensus of arguments". -- Black Falcon 00:41, 9 April 2007 (UTC)


 * That's a good question, and I can't really answer it the way you ask it. We  have been consensus without anything to do with numbers practically since wikipedia started, which is logical, since consensus has nothing to do with percentages in-and-of itself. The percentages crept in later, after the concept of  rough consensus was firmly embedded. (and even then it took quite a while). --Kim Bruning 04:38, 12 April 2007 (UTC)


 * What does "following consensus" mean to you in practice? How would you go about closing a contentious RFA? Take Requests for adminship/Danny for example. How would you determine whether consensus has been reached on promoting the editor? I'm asking Kim but I'm also curious about Charles. Haukur 09:06, 9 April 2007 (UTC)


 * In the case of Danny, we have some considerable opposition. I would take some more time for this RFA, and invite people to discuss options and maybe reach a compromise on the talk page. For instance, there's the situation where some people conflate Dannyisme with Danny. Dannyisme is the account Danny used when he was "acting under orders", while Danny is his regular account. If people could manage to explain that to each other, and reach some sort of agreement as to how we view that, I think we'd already be well on our way towards consensus.
 * Maybe I'm thinking too much like a mediator though. You decide. Would this approach be reasonable? --Kim Bruning 04:29, 12 April 2007 (UTC)
 * I'm just not sure 300 people can effectively have a discussion and reach a compromise. Haukur 14:36, 12 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Indeed. Consensus doesn't scale well.  Kelly Martin (talk) 14:45, 12 April 2007 (UTC)
 * That's right. And on the other hand, vote counting becomes asymptotically more accurate when the number of voters increases. Not that I am implying anything. :) Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 15:18, 12 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Somewhat true, though actual consensus decisions will always be about as accurate as we can get, so you can work it both ways. Either centralize everything (possibly thousands of pages) and have huge majority voting processes votes which are inefficient in other ways, and have many disadvantages, or we can decentralize the few centralized systems we have at our disposal. (see below comment from before edit conflict) --Kim Bruning 15:26, 12 April 2007 (UTC)
 * I agree that consensus does not scale by itself. In general, any centralized process will not scale well in a consensus environment. So Don't Do That (tm). --Kim Bruning 15:26, 12 April 2007 (UTC) for *FD, we already have WP:PROD on standby, for things like WP:MEDCOM and (to a very limited extent) WP:ARBCOM; we have had WP:MEDCAB actually fall in when they faltered (note that the central medcab page is facultative, it is used for coordination only) and it is on standby; some arbcom tasks are now done by community consensus. What we currently do lack is a decentralized replacement process for RF*.

A general comment on the badgering of Opposing statements in RfAs in general
This is not directed specifically at this candidate, but I would like to make a further general comment about the RfA process. I think it is very dangerous to go too far down the road of questioning statements made in an RfA. If a person states something like "Oppose - does not pass my criteria of having 5,000 namespace edits nor of being here for at least 16 months." - the crat should take that Oppose statement seriously. They may disagree with that particular criteria, but what they are supposed to be doing is judging the consensus of the overall community. That person's view is just as valid as someone else who will support a candidate with fewer edits or shorter tenure. It is just as valid as the person who supports 19 out of 20 nominations with a comment like "Per nom" or "Sure, why not? Adminship is no big deal".

The fact that a candidate can pass with 20% or 25% in opposition already accounts for the fact that no candidate can please everyone. We don't need the crats to add even more liberalization to the process. Johntex\talk 01:56, 9 April 2007 (UTC)


 * On the contrary - these sort of votes do nothing to form consensus, they simply screw up the numbers on each RfA. If the vote says "Not enough edits" then it's utterly useless and stupid. If, on the other hand, the voter says "lacks enough edits raising concerns over lack of experience" then they're making a useful comment. Like much of RfA - it's not what you say that counts, it's what you don't say. -- Nick  t  02:08, 9 April 2007 (UTC)


 * If someone writes "not enough edits", it's implied that they mean something along the lines of "lacks enough edits raising concerns over lack of experience". A "not enough edits" oppose is no more brilliant or stupid than a "great editor" support. RFA is about trust and I believe every editor is entitled to his or her own standards for trusting admin candidates. If we disagree with a particular editor's standards (and I disagree with many of them: writing FA articles, a certain # of talk space edits, X months on Wikipedia, and so on), we can try to discuss the issue with the editor. What we should not do, under any circumstance, is simply to ignore people's comments and votes (whether supporting or opposing) just because we disagree with their rationale. -- Black Falcon 02:19, 9 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Very well said, Black Falcon, thank you. Johntex\talk 15:04, 9 April 2007 (UTC)


 * I don't advocate "poking the opposers", by any means, but I don't think that "individualistic opposes" are not ultimately helpful. (Come to that, the same is true of supports, it just to arise less often in that direction, perhaps because of the "majority pressurising the minority" dynamic -- obviously an RFA heading towards 30%/70% is unlikely to lead to much in the way of attempt to talk 'round the supporters.)  The ideal is, after all, to determine a consensus, and that's not aided by any appearance of 'I have my opinions/criteria, leave me alone and count my (!)vote".  If (say) 30% of the contributers to a RFA feel the need to oppose for some particular reason, that's in line with what the community has previously expressed, then I think it's generally going to be pushing things to construe that as "a consensus to promote".  OTOH, the same numeric opposition, composed of a motley collection of opposes for reasons that are mutally incoherent, or that are outwith the scope of generally accepted criteria, I'm less keen to see that as any sort of "automatic" blocking minority (plus of course the issue of SPAs and other vote-stacking).  I realize it's a fine line between suggesting that BCs should explicitly have scope to second-guess, or "line-item veto" such opinions, and enabling them to engage in "ILIKEIT" supervotes, but I feel it's a distinction worth at least trying to make.  Alai 02:28, 10 April 2007 (UTC)
 * One comment and one question, please. Comment:  My interest is not in a 30/70% case and people trying to sway supporters.  It is an observation that in a 80/20% case or 70/30% case that people would scream bloody murder if a minority went through and belittles the comments of the supporters, yet for some reason we tolerate the same thing when it is aimed at the people who oppose.  My question is, what do you mean by "individualistic opposes"?  Thanks, Johntex\talk 04:48, 10 April 2007 (UTC)
 * My point about the 30/70 case isn't to worry about that, but just to hypothesise is that the syndrome is in effect, "majority pokes the minority, when there's a perception that successful poking might change the outcome" (while it's superfluous in the case of a clearly failed RFA). I'm not sure about the "bloody murder" effect you suggest;  we get plenty of that at present, I think, and I don't think there's greater restraint by opposers, necessarily, so much as them being simply "outgunned" in such cases.  By "individualistic opposes" I mean opposes for reasons at odds with general consensus for what appropriate and relevant criteria are.  (No, I'm not going to give you a formula for determining what that is and is not...)  Alai 06:39, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

I've been answering so many people in the same way, I'm almost tempted to make this a template:  :-P --Kim Bruning 02:56, 10 April 2007 (UTC)
 * I agree with your self-diagnosis, but not on your prescription. :/ Alai 03:01, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

Sockpuppets?
Having watched the close of Danny's RFA, I wanted to point out some sockpuppets noted through CheckUser.
 * was blocked for multiple voting through socks, , and . Just H has voted in this RfB, but I did not see anything from his socks.
 * and are apparantly unrelated socks.  Christian has voted here, but James has not.

I bring these up for notice, but due to my own inexperience (and bias, I've already voted here) I can't offer an opinion to keep or strike these comments. Both users are currently blocked for sockpuppet voting on another case, but it doesn't appear they've done it here. If there is a precedent, I'm sure someone will point it out, else this note lives for whomever closes this request. --InkSplotch 13:41, 10 April 2007 (UTC)


 * Logically, if Christian was a sockpuppet when he contributed to Danny's RFA, he also was when he made his earlier contribution to this RFB, even if this was just an "innocent" edit designed to provide cover for the later one (like the welcomes for non-existent users, the token vandalism reverts, etc). I'd recommend striking it out (but I've also !voted, so I'll refrain from doing so myself, at least for now).  Alai 17:26, 10 April 2007 (UTC)


 * If Christian had voted under both accounts, I'd have no problem striking them myself..no matter what they voted or I voted, multiple votes under different accounts is clearly out. I'm confused here, only because each convicted sockpuppeteer only voted once (so far as I know) on this request.  So they haven't disrupted this process, but they have another.  So, honestly, I don't know what to say.


 * Really funny thing is, Just H and Christian's votes are opposite each other, so it won't really throw the balance off much either way. But that's no reason to chuck 'em out.  --InkSplotch 19:30, 10 April 2007 (UTC)


 * I'm now even more confused about who is whose sockpuppet: are you are saying Christian and one of the other socks are the same person, and are thus allowed one vote between them, for that actual person?  I just happened to notice that he's been indef blocked as a "Vote-stacking sockpuppet", on which basis I conclude that his "real" account has already voted, or else he doesn't actually care to vote at all on this.  In either event, the sock vote (and any other similar such, on whichever side) should be struck.  Alai 18:41, 11 April 2007 (UTC)


 * I agree that it's not going to change things in this instance, but we shouldn't start counting bad faith contributions to RFA. The normal practice is to strike them. --Tony Sidaway 11:51, 11 April 2007 (UTC)