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No RFAs--successful or unsuccessful, since the 13th, which was 17 days ago. Is this a record? Everymorning (talk) 20:40, 30 November 2015 (UTC)

• I don't think so. Just a casual check, but we went from 24 August 2014 to 21 September 2014 without an RfA, successful or not. --Hammersoft (talk) 21:00, 30 November 2015 (UTC)

Maybe, like bananas, they come in bunches. I know when I started my RfA, there were two other RfAs started within a day or two. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 21:50, 30 November 2015 (UTC)

Is that why everybody goes bananas over RFA? --Izno (talk) 21:59, 30 November 2015 (UTC)

• Perhaps Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Optional RfA candidate poll is preventing WP:NOTNOW RfAs from being started, which is a great thing. Esquivalience ^t 22:16, 30 November 2015 (UTC)

I doubt very much that that has anything to do with it, Esquivalience. . A research I did a few months ago and for which Opabinia regalis kindly produced the graphs, clearly demonstrated that RfA of all kinds as well as activity on this very talk page, have all been steadily declining at the very same rate. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 02:28, 1 December 2015 (UTC)

I think the thread you want is this one. Considering how few RfAs there are in general, I don't think the poll's been active long enough yet to see any effect. Opabinia regalis (talk) 03:05, 1 December 2015 (UTC)

• I recall people being all doom and gloom last year when we only promoted 1 person in 3 months. Mkdw^talk 00:49, 1 December 2015 (UTC)

Perhaps an RFB or three might spice things up. After all, this will be the first year with no new bureaucrat if there are no successful candidacies this month. –xeno^talk 01:04, 1 December 2015 (UTC)

There hasn't been a new 'crat or a RfB for very nearly 2 years. There's quite obviously little or no interest in it. The job just isn't interesting enough to go through what is practically a re-run for adminship and in today's climate probably even nastier. There's a school of thought that 'crats have to be boring people, but boring admins are not what are required. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 02:11, 1 December 2015 (UTC)

There's not an urgent need either. I'm kinda boring, and I ran for bureaucrat eons ago. Not that I'd have any chance in hell now. The Moose is loose! 02:36, 1 December 2015 (UTC)

Why are standards for 'cratship so amazingly high, anyway? I've heard rumors that you only get a few extra checkboxes on Special:UserRights, which can only be used in very limited circumstances, in any case. Maybe we'll be forced to elect more 'crats if the ongoing reform actually succeeds and results in more RfA. Biblioworm 17:58, 1 December 2015 (UTC)

My own supposition is that it's a safety feature. Bureaucrats when closing RfXes have enormous leeway at defining what is a consensus and what is not; the percentages are merely rules of thumb/guidelines, not policies much less policies that can get one decrated if violated. Naturally, lifelong access to blank cheque-like positions will be tightly regulated.Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 19:23, 1 December 2015 (UTC)

• If this guy would just register himself an account I might nominate him. At least I know he won't do anything harmful with the mop or the keys to the mop factory. I think I'll wait until 00:00:00 March 32, 2016 (UTC) to do the nomination and recommend that a 'crat close the nomination 23 hours and 59 minutes later. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 01:07, 1 December 2015 (UTC)

• Believe it or not, there was once a time when RfA was virtually *never* dormant - you always had at least three or four going at once, and often the majority of them would be in the "green zone". Nowadays I half expect to see a ball of tumbleweed roll across the screen when I check if there are any active RfAs. Kurtis ^(talk) 12:36, 1 December 2015 (UTC)

• We're fresh out of tumbleweed. All the tumbleweeds caught fire during a brush fire in 2014. --Hammersoft (talk) 13:48, 1 December 2015 (UTC)
• In the peak years of RFA, 2005-7 we averaged 1 promotion a day and the norm must have been for ten or so candidates to be running at any one time. Things are radically different now, but it might pick up now that the core community is growing again. What we don't yet know is whether this year's growth in editors saving >100 edits in mainspace each month is because of new editors who won't reach RFA for some time, of lots of less active editors occasionally having a very active month or of long established editors getting more active. The growth in active editors probably means an increase in the pool of potential RFA candidates, but we could do with better stats on this - if anyone who knows how to query for stats on this I have some theories I would like to test. ϢereSpielChequers 22:59, 1 December 2015 (UTC)

• If someone doesn't run quick, we will have gone a whole month since the last RFA was closed. Sounds like a pretty good reason to change this system (not sure how) if no one wants to subject themselves (or others) to it. Everymorning (talk) 03:36, 13 December 2015 (UTC)

Why in the world does someone need to run for adminship at least once every three weeks, or month, or even two months, except to satisfy your personal timetable? There is no timetable. And it's the holidays. And people have been leaving (retiring from) Wikipedia in increasing numbers. It has nothing to do with "changing" the RfA process. Softlavender (talk) 04:44, 13 December 2015 (UTC)

Not saying there's a requirement of any # of RFAs per month or anything. It just seems like a concerningly long time and reflective of a larger problem w/the way RFA works. Now of course it's possible that RFA being flawed is but one piece in the Wikipedia-as-a-whole-is-flawed pie. I would be totally open to that possibility. But maybe you're right, maybe people have more important things to do now than Wikipedia, whether that's finals or spending holidays with their families. Everymorning (talk) 05:16, 13 December 2015 (UTC)

I did actually take a quick look at the successful/unsuccessful RfA lists for the past few years, and I wasn't really able to pick out any concrete patterns as to December having less RfAs (though it's certainly possible if someone takes a more complete look at the data). There is, however, an active RfA reform RfC going on at Wikipedia:2015 administrator election reform/Phase II/RfC, though the scope is quite limited. ansh666 05:19, 13 December 2015 (UTC)

Almost a full month with zero RFAs! We finally killed the hydra! This is the ultimate RFA reform! Hooray! Agent 73124 (talk) 20:04, 7 December 2015 (UTC)

• Ah yes, no incivility this month on RfAs, no silly debates on RfAs, no suspicious meat puppet votes. Whatever we did, it's working! --Hammersoft (talk) 20:14, 7 December 2015 (UTC)
  • Now we just need to do the same thing to the rest of Wikipedia, and all Wikipedia's problems will be solved!!!~ ONUnicorn^{(Talk|Contribs)}problem solving 20:39, 7 December 2015 (UTC)
    • The problem with Wikipedia ... is that it's full of editors! --Hammersoft (talk) 21:49, 7 December 2015 (UTC)
      • And some pages are full of something else! --Tryptofish (talk) 23:08, 7 December 2015 (UTC)
      • Then I should be glad I'm a botop.—^cyberpower_{Merry Christmas:Unknown} 03:31, 8 December 2015 (UTC)

Well, I can understand one editor rejoicing that there have been no new promotions. They are waiting in the wings for the last admin to leave so that instead of putting the light out they can have the whole place to themselves without needing to be brave enough to go through RfA. --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 07:41, 13 December 2015 (UTC)

This RfC has been closed and the following changes will go into effect, effective immediately:

1. RfAs will now be advertised on watch list notices.
   • There will be a waiting period of 12-24 hours. Admin discretion may be exercised, before the 24 hour waiting period.
   • The usernames or the details of the RfA are not to be revealed. A short and simple one liner such as, "There are RfAs open for discussion."
2. RfAs will now be advertised on Template:CENT.
   • Some desire to use ((:User:Cyberpower678/RfX Report)) on the template has been expressed, though it is not a requirement. Cyberpower678 is willing to make changes to the template as needed, if desired.
   • The advertisement on CENT does not carry the same restrictions that watch list notices have.
3. There is now a limit on the number of questions a specific user can ask a candidate.
   • The limit is 2 questions.
   • Appropriate relevant follow-up questions are allowed.
   • Obvious gaming should be dealt with accordingly.
4. The discretionary range is now 65-75%.

If there is a problem with my close, please let me know.—^cyberpower_{Merry Christmas:Unknown} 08:27, 14 December 2015 (UTC)

Might want to edit the closing statement to make clear that the CENT advertisements are not restricted as the watchlist notices are. ansh666 08:32, 14 December 2015 (UTC)

 Done and fixed a typo.—^cyberpower_{Merry Christmas:Unknown} 08:35, 14 December 2015 (UTC)

• I embrace these changes. Small steps towards improvement of RfA; a big step towards the maturity of Wikpedia. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 10:05, 14 December 2015 (UTC)

I haven't had a chance to read though the RfC in detail but am a little troubled by the fourth point. How well advertised was the RfC - are we comfortable that it had sufficient publicity/participation to be the basis for such a change? I for one (although I recognise that I am not very active) was not aware that there was a proposal to change the discretionary range. Just to note that I have no objection to such a change, I just want to make sure we won't have a lot of people surprised if bureaucrats implement this. WJBscribe (talk) 10:16, 14 December 2015 (UTC)

• The second RfC was advertised in the "centralized discussion" side-banner, but it didn't mention the discretionary range explicitly or any other topic that was under discussion.Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 10:20, 14 December 2015 (UTC)
• It was also advertised on MediaWiki:Watchlist-details in a similar way, and on this page. You did not need to pass a door saying "Beware of the leopard" to access the RfC. —Kusma (t·c) 10:39, 14 December 2015 (UTC)
  • I did all the advertising, so for everyone's information it was advertised on the watchlists, WP:AN, WP:CENT, WP:VPPR, WP:VPP, and perhaps one or two other venues. It was left open for over two weeks, and there were no signs of any further activity. In light of this information, there is no reasonable way to say that it wasn't well-advertised. It was probably much more widely-advertised than most RfCs, actually. Biblioworm 16:48, 14 December 2015 (UTC)

• There does appear to be a trend emerging nowadays to pass new policy on RfCs with small quorums. As long as a minimum turnout is not stipulated by policy, I guess there is nothing we can do about this. What might have been regarded as cautious publicity is due possibly to the quite inappropriate accusations I received recently from a prominent former Arbitrator for what in fact was perfectly legal canvassing for a major new policy proposal. Obviously one can please all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but one cannot please all the people all the time. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 11:02, 14 December 2015 (UTC)

It was advertised as well as could be expected given past objections to various means of advertising RFC's. Anyone who pays any attention to RFA or their watchlist could not have failed to be aware of the RFC without having eyesight problems. Publicity was fine, however participation is only as good as whoever actually shows up. Ultimately I dont think it will be an issue. Anyone likely to take exception to the reduced % will already be active at RFA and so should have had their input already accounted for. If they were aware of the RFC, active at RFA and didnt take their chance to give their opinion, well thats an argument that is unlikely to go anywhere unless they can demonstrate significant opposition to the outcome by non-participants. Only in death does duty end (talk) 11:12, 14 December 2015 (UTC)

• I've gone ahead and added the currently running RfA to WP:CENT (in this edit), feel free to revert or modify if necessary -- samtar ^whisper 12:12, 14 December 2015 (UTC)

Did I miss a notification about this RfC at WP:BN? It's entirely possible - there have been quite a few discussions about RfA in different forms recently. --Dweller (talk) 14:34, 14 December 2015 (UTC)

I am glad to see some of the more sensible measures have been passed. This was a well advertised discussion, I was pointed to it multiple times and it had a lot of participation. It is good to see actual progress being made. HighInBC 15:27, 14 December 2015 (UTC)

• As Kudpung says, you can never please every person every time, so if a 'crat endorses the close upon review (I've asked for a review at WP:BN), I'm afraid we will just have to move forward with the changes. We can't halt everything just because one or two people out of dozens strongly disagree. Biblioworm 17:41, 14 December 2015 (UTC)

I for one am very pleased with these pretty minor tweaks to the process, and I hope that all interested editors will be up for calling out editors for attempting to game the rules. Well done to the proponents of these amendments. Peacemaker67 (crack... thump) 22:42, 14 December 2015 (UTC)

Evidently, you're unaware of the large dispute that is now occurring behind the scenes at BN and Cyberpower's talk page concerning this closure. It looks likely that it will be re-opened for another two weeks, and who knows what will happen then... Biblioworm 23:02, 14 December 2015 (UTC)

That's a shame, I believed discussion had become stale and was ready for closure. Perhaps the closer wasn't the right person, a crat might have been better, or at least an uninvolved admin. I suspect that some who oppose change will take advantage of an extension to pile on. I hope that doesn't happen. Peacemaker67 (crack... thump) 23:34, 14 December 2015 (UTC)

There is no reason this close should not stand. People had plenty of time to comment and the discussion became stale before closing. We can't please everyone and there will always be a group of people that resist any change to how RfA is handled. We came to a clear consensus. HighInBC 03:25, 15 December 2015 (UTC)

In the Phase I RfC for the RFA2015 reform project, there was a clear consensus that we should somehow try to lighten the load on admins, perhaps by automating some admin tasks. I think it would be good to have an open-ended discussion as to how we could do this (what tasks we could automate, how we could do it accurately, etc.) before we do anything concrete. Any ideas are welcome. Thanks, Biblioworm 00:22, 14 December 2015 (UTC)

A simple proposal (conceptually rather than technically, I have no idea if/how this would work with the software) would be that users should be able to delete pages in their own userspace themselves; I can't think of any downside to this and it would lighten the CSD load slightly. Sam Walton (talk) 00:28, 14 December 2015 (UTC)

Not to get all WP:BEANSy, but in practice that's exactly the same as letting anyone delete just about anything. It'd probably get noticed eventually, but it's hardly worth the 5-10 seconds it takes for an admin to review the typical U1 request. —Cryptic 00:43, 14 December 2015 (UTC)

Agree that there is consensus to do something. Really now needs a second RfC to propose specific concepts. -- Euryalus (talk) 00:48, 14 December 2015 (UTC)

Giving anyone the power to delete pages in their own userspace does introduce a loop hole. Let's say I was a vandal who managed to get himself autoconfirmed. I could now move random articles to my userspace, and delete them. Talk about the damage I could be causing. Hard to trace vandalism.—^cyberpower_{Merry Christmas:Unknown} 01:10, 14 December 2015 (UTC)

That's not even the worst part. —Cryptic 01:15, 14 December 2015 (UTC)

We could perhaps program a bot to automatically delete pages tagged with U1 after checking to make sure that it hasn't been moved from any other mainspace. If the bot does not delete the page, it will be left for manual review. Biblioworm 01:29, 14 December 2015 (UTC)

User:7SeriesBOT used to do that, and it was a bot I suggested in my RfA that I would revive if I were to become a sysop. Unfortunately, I missed my RfA by a hair.—^cyberpower_{Merry Christmas:Unknown} 01:32, 14 December 2015 (UTC)

I am always a little worried/disappointed/concerned when I see an RfC that asks a vague and open-ended question like "Should we do something?" and then treats the near-inevitable affirmative response as a consensus to go ahead and do...well, anything. Euryalus is correct that we would need a second RfC to propose specific, detailed concepts—but misses the point that the first RfC was actually useless. (It's also odd that this pointlessly vague question was shoehorned into an RfC on RFA reform, but I digress.)

As for users being able to delete their own subpages—there are the various BEANS issues noted above, plus it's not actually going to make a significant dent in the admin workload. Of fifty or so pages in CAT:CSD right now, just five are userspace, and none are self-requested deletions. (Actually, all of them are tagged G11: promotional pages.)

I suspect that virtually all proposals to lighten admin load will be found to fail on at least one of the following:

• Task doesn't represent a significant load on admin time.
• Task has already been automated by a bot.
• Task requires judgement and cannot be automated.
• Task requires judgement that should not be passed off to non-admin.
• Task, if opened to non-admins, would allow hard-to-track or hard-to-detect mischief.

TenOfAllTrades(talk) 02:35, 14 December 2015 (UTC)

Actually I agree with you. The first RfC had consensus to do something. But yes, it is useless unless that something is now defined. Mind you, I don't personally think anything does need to be done, as anything risk-proof is probably also trivial. The real issue is getting more people to run at RfA, not finding obscure labor-saving devices for current admin tasks. But I will leave it there as this is not the place to re-run the RfC debate. -- Euryalus (talk) 03:22, 14 December 2015 (UTC)

This looks like "We have consensus to use a hammer. Anybody see any nails?" A better question would be to first ask about the biggest timesinks/most persistent backlogs/least appealing tasks and then look at the workflows for those issues for opportunities to make improvements. I suspect that thinking in terms of "lightening the load" by taking on whole tasks, rather than in terms of incremental process tweaks, is causing distraction. Opabinia regalis (talk) 05:56, 14 December 2015 (UTC)

The proposal "Creating admin-bots to allow editors to delete a page they created in their own User: space if it meets certain other conditions (e.g. never been edited by anyone else, never been moved, etc.)" contained the necessary caveat about never being moved. As for how frequently they occur, previous back of the envelope statistics were that it would be the equivalent of gaining an average admin a year - a non trivial gain in our current situation. Of course the flows of these types of CSD is non uniform and a random batch of fifty CSDs may contain zero or several that would be automated this way, so I wouldn't worry that at one particular moment there were no applicable CSDs in the queue, overall there are enough for this to be worthwhile. ϢereSpielChequers 06:01, 14 December 2015 (UTC)

"An average admin a year"—so, 1 in 500 logged admin actions involve a CSD-U1, give or take? I'm surprised it's that many, actually. (Or is that just 1 in 500 deletion actions? Or 1 in 500 CSD actions?) In any case, that's a 0.2% 'savings', less whatever upfront and ongoing 'costs' are incurred in setting up, debugging, maintaining, and monitoring this process.

In practice, of course, maintenance of the speedy deletion queue tends to fall disproportionately to a small fraction of the admin corps. (Most areas of admin responsibility have their 'regulars', and the rest of us drop in from time to time, or capture particular tasks only occasionally as they happen to overlap with our own spheres of interest.) If you pull the last 500 deletions from the log, you'll find that big chunks tend to be handled by a small number of admins. Out of the last 500 deletions, 80 were by JamesBWatson, 130 by RHaworth, 60 by JimFBleak, and so forth. These admins are skilled and experienced at handling deletion requests, and probably don't even notice the microscopic burden imposed by the tiny number of straightforward U1s.

(Incidentally, out of those 500 most-recent deletions, 5 are flagged as U1s. There are no U1s currently in the CSD queue.) TenOfAllTrades(talk) 14:41, 14 December 2015 (UTC)

• Abandoned drafts could be automatically deleted after 6 months (under WP:G13) instead of needing patrollers and admins involved in the deletion process. Mkdw^talk 06:19, 14 December 2015 (UTC)

• TenOfAllTrades gets it right, while abandoned drafts can sometimes be saved, as DGG will tell us. Over the years I've rotated myself through most of the areas that need actual use of the admin tools, and I'm still nowhere near the most prolific admin tool user. That said, the insight I have gained in those areas shows that there are never really any serious backlogs. IMO any further automation would be automation for automation's sake - it would just satisfy the need of our geeks to persistently be writing more and more bots instead of maintaining certain tools we need and use every day. The only real backlogs I come across are hist merge and AfD closures. Those that are in the backlog are there because they are too difficult for people let alone bots. There are a couple of actions that could do with better helper scripts but I've never come across a task where I've said to myself 'I wish a bot could do this'. Claims of burnout and admin overload are constructs put about by those looking for a problem to make a solution for, just as the WMF tried a few years ago with New Page Patrol, but at the end of the day, we are volunteers, there is absolutely no material compensation whatsoever for what we do, and when we get fed up with something here we just go out for a beer, a game of snooker, go with the wife (or partner) to the restaurant, take the dog for a walk, or simply curl up in bed with a good book about democracy in the Antiquity.Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 07:02, 14 December 2015 (UTC)

I suggest we allow stewards and global admins to help with blocking straight forward vandalism (ip, logged in vandal) and let them delete obvious spam pages. The users are trusted and experienced with this type of work. Letting stewards delete obvious pages is already policy on meta and works fine for the local admins. Among the global-admins are the most active and experienced vandal fighters in the world. Such a change would represent a significant increase in vandal fighting admins and take away a huge load. Moreover it would give en.wiki experience to the global users, who might afterwards become more active here or even apply for adminship here and help the English Wikipedia even more. It is a win-win situation. Sincerely, Taketa (talk) 08:25, 14 December 2015 (UTC)

That's an interesting idea, Taketa. One could point to the fact that Stewards and Global renamers have been helping at WP:CHUS without any major policy/guideline issues popping up as proof that this type of arrangement can work well. The idea should be developed and put forward at a different venue. –xeno^talk 15:46, 14 December 2015 (UTC)

Dear Xeno, thank you very much for your input. I have started an RFC at Wikipedia:Village pump (policy) and we can continue the discussion there, hopefully with alot of people participating. Discussion is here. Sincerely, Taketa (talk) 08:15, 15 December 2015 (UTC)

Dry spells, wet spells, damp spells, whatever, but let me spell out what is happening and then make a suggestion (WSC, we'll need your input on this). The main problem is that the graph is still plunging towards the trickle of a brook, and there is no reservoir at the bottom. Just a puddle of stagnant water. It's also disappointing to note that of the recent promotions, there aren't many who actually use the tools much they risked life and limb to obtain at the drawn swords and pitchforks of RfA. The fact is that with only 19 promotions, this year shows a net loss of 42. Currently there are 1.330 but less than half make more than 15 edits a month. There are probably far fewer who make, for example, 200 edits a month. Of all these, there are dozens whose names you and I have never heard of, but there are some backroom beavers who do essential work such as Roger with a staggering number of admin acts far in excess of a quarter of a million without ever being known to hang out on the drama boards. Those who wade through the snake infested jungle of AE, roam the dark corridors of AIV, COI, SPI, and lurk with fixed bayonets in the trenches at ANI number a paltry 30 or so - they are our unsung heroes, though some of them escape to the safety of a seat on Arbcom (er, did I say 'safety'?)

An idea that has occasionally surfaced but without being noticed much, and one which I think is worth considering, is to hold quarterly RfA campaigns. This way we would have perhaps half a dozen RfA all happening at the same time (like we used to have in the 'good' old days); candidates would feel less isolated and less like a lone figure in the village pillary; the same turnout of voters would be making the candidates lives a misery, and with something to compare, the outcomes would probably be more balanced. There are a few other reasons why I think this would work, but I won't go into detail now, but if there is some positive resonance here, I'll post an RfC that I have drafted. --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 07:26, 13 December 2015 (UTC)

I like the concept, but there are some issues, for example: what if a candidate is not available for any of the time periods selected for RfAs? The good thing about the system now is that people can run when it suits them best; if we have a set "RfA week" or something then some people will have to set apart time which they may not have to run. ansh666 07:38, 13 December 2015 (UTC)

What if a candidate is not available for an Arbcom election? S/He has to wait a whole year. 12 weeks is no time at all on a Wikipedia calendar and it gives a choice of four sessions to choose from and prepare one's self properly for. No one, I mean no one, should be in a hurry to be an admin - well, the hat collectors perhaps. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 07:56, 13 December 2015 (UTC)

I tend to agree with Kudpung – no one has to be an Admin, and if you can't run one year because you're busy through all 4 quarterly elections, I don't think it's a huge deal to either the project or the candidate. But seeing the way ArbCom's 2015 elections just worked (with thousands of votes), I think the idea of set, timed quarterly elections for RfA is an intriguing idea that should be seriously considered. (Of course, if we hold one of those, and no one chooses to run, then we have real problems – or it'll be time to "crack" the tools, as a number of us have been suggesting while being poopooed the whole time...) Anyway, I would support holding an RfC on the idea – I just don't think anyone should get their hopes up, as nearly every good idea on RfA and Adminship reform seems to get shot down... --IJBall (contribs • talk) 08:19, 13 December 2015 (UTC)

They get shot down by two distinct factions: Those who want it made easier for them to get the tools (or more likely what they perceive as 'prestige' in having them), and those whose strange mission it is to derail all and every suggestion whether the proposal is in fact in their own interest or not. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 09:22, 13 December 2015 (UTC)

Okay, I understand that there's no requirement/rush to become an admin, but I still feel that compared to the current method it would be unfair to make people have to make time for this. As for comparisons to Arbcom, that's a different matter entirely - it has fixed terms and fixed size, where candidates are directly competing against each other for limited spots on a high governing body, while adminship is indefinite in length and effectively infinite in number (and not to mention supposedly WP:NOBIGDEAL, right?). Having a "RfA week" or such could even make adminship seem competitive like Arbcom is, when it really isn't, and you'd have people who don't get it !voting on the basis of "X is not as bad as Y", which could possibly allow candidates who would otherwise fail to pass and vice versa. I'd probably support the idea if it was proposed in a well-thought-out and detailed RfC, but there are definitely things to think about first. (And yes, I'm thinking of bad/worst-case scenarios, but that's a thing that needs to be done.) ansh666 10:11, 13 December 2015 (UTC)

Noted, but I still think that when I paint the full picture, the pros will outweigh the cons - my mission is to get more candidates of the right calibre coming forward and at the moment they are reluctant to do so. If you joined in 2007, you will remember that we were processing one RfA every day, so there was a lot going on at the same time; ...you'd have people who don't get it !voting on the basis of "X is not as bad as Y", which could possibly allow candidates who would otherwise fail to pass and vice versa - this is precisely what does happen at Arbcom elections, and worse than anywhere else. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 10:50, 13 December 2015 (UTC)

In my real-life experience, submission deadlines often help participation, so that I would rather support the idea--Ymblanter (talk) 11:15, 13 December 2015 (UTC)

• It's a good idea to do RfAs in batches. There would be some economies of scale and safety in numbers. And the candidates would be judged more in a comparative way than against an absolute standard of perfection. I'm not seeing the need for an RfC though as there's nothing to stop this happening already. All that needs to happen is some coordination between nominators to synchronise the timing. Andrew D. (talk) 11:32, 13 December 2015 (UTC)

  I do not think the coordination would work because there are also self-nominations, and not all possible nominators watch this page.--Ymblanter (talk) 11:43, 13 December 2015 (UTC)

"Those who wade through the snake infested jungle of AE, roam the dark corridors of AIV, COI, SPI, and lurk with fixed bayonets in the trenches at ANI". Maybe we need to appeal directly to former members of the U.S. Rangers or even the SAS!  ;) Leaky Caldron 12:32, 13 December 2015 (UTC)

• I think this a good idea (for various reasons), and I've thought about myself. I encourage Kudpung to post his RfC shortly. Biblioworm 19:34, 13 December 2015 (UTC)
• At first I though this meant a sort of "participation drive" at certain times of year, which is a good idea. But it seems to mean that RfAs should only take place in these prescheduled batches, in which case I don't see the appeal. You don't usually attract more candidates for a job by making the application harder.

  I disagree with Andrew D. above in that I don't think explicitly comparative judgments would be an improvement (see his support #100 here for an example of why not). Also, back in the days of a dozen RfAs at a time, there used to be a noticeable amount of mutual back-scratching going on. I think the real advantage of many ongoing nominations is that they dilute the efforts of the "must ask 7 detailed hypothetical questions of every candidate" types, because nobody is going to read 20+ questions and answers for 10+ candidates at a time. Having tried both methods myself, it is definitely different being the only one up in the stocks, but it's not really worse, or more intimidating, or likely to be a deterrent on its own. Also, it's a peripheral point, but I don't see evidence of the statement that recent promotions aren't using the tools enough. Of the recent promotions, only Ian.thomson isn't active as an admin, and he hasn't been active on Wikipedia at all in the last month. Real life happens. Opabinia regalis (talk) 19:39, 13 December 2015 (UTC)

• Oppose per Ansh666. Also, one of the few things that works about RFA is leaving the timing to the candidate. The analogy with Arbcom is a false one, if you are standing for Arbcom you are volunteering for a much more time intensive role than being an admin, it is a disqualification for Arbcopm to say that you aren't available for the particular time of the Arbcom election, but an admin who is active three or four evenings a month would be a useful admin. ϢereSpielChequers 00:28, 14 December 2015 (UTC)
• While there could be some benefits, it would encourage unhealthy comparing of candidates, and also significantly reduce scrutiny each candidate receives.--Staberinde (talk) 19:26, 15 December 2015 (UTC)
• RFA candidates should be held against community standards and consensus. If the only purpose of batching them together is for relatively comparison then it doesn't accomplish the purpose of RFA which is to determine if the candidate is trustworthy to use the tools, not if they're relatively trustworthy to their 'competition'. I also believe coordination will be a problem. What if someone like Beth wanted to run but there was another 1-2 month dry spell. Would we ask that candidate to wait for the sake of waiting? I don't think so. Not if they're working on something or have been working and could use the tools now. Mkdw^talk 20:57, 15 December 2015 (UTC)

Is there some reason why 72.26's RfA doesn't show up in the RfA summary box? And why their statistics aren't displayed on their RfA page (still showing as 0/0/0)? Has it somehow been missed by a bot? --MelanieN (talk) 16:25, 16 December 2015 (UTC)

@MelanieN: See a similar thread on WTT's talk - the labs server has been wonky today so the bot which updates it may have died. It should be reset tonight -- samtar ^whisper 16:28, 16 December 2015 (UTC)

I've done a manual update to the files Cyberbot normally writes to, which should be automatically replaced when the bot starts working around midnight UTC tonight. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 16:47, 16 December 2015 (UTC)

You've doomed us all Thanks Ritchie333 -- samtar ^whisper 16:50, 16 December 2015 (UTC)

Note that I did not do this happily (quite to the contrary), and for what it's worth I frankly think this is following rules for the sake of following rules, but I reopened the RfC in light of a crat's comment that suggested its reopening. We can only see what will happen now, but to prevent a group of self-selected users coming in and sinking all the proposals without anyone else knowing, I'll probably put this on the watchlist notice for another few days. Biblioworm 03:35, 15 December 2015 (UTC)

Nothing good can come of this. HighInBC 03:46, 15 December 2015 (UTC)

I agree, obviously, but what else was I supposed to do? I never would have heard the end of complaints that the new changes were illegitimate and should not be followed (especially from the status quo crowd). Biblioworm 03:56, 15 December 2015 (UTC)

I took a bit of time to pile on to the previously successful sections, hope it helps. ansh666 03:59, 15 December 2015 (UTC)

Well I suppose you could have told them that the duration was sufficient as the discussion had died down and that policy does allow for RFCs to be closed before 30 days. That it was well advertised and everyone got a chance to have their say. The complaints about the closure lacked merit plain and simple. Now we get one more chance to stagnate when we were actually moving forward. People are going to complain about change, unless those complaints have merit then we should not be holding up progress for them.

It is nothing personal against you Biblio, I know you were in a tough place. But we came to an honest consensus. I am more frustrated than angry. HighInBC 06:30, 15 December 2015 (UTC)

• Link to the RfC: Wikipedia:2015 administrator election reform/Phase II/RfC. North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 08:03, 15 December 2015 (UTC)
• Proposal C1 (the only one that is likely to have any substantial effect on getting more admins elected) has fallen from 79% support at the time of re-opening to 76%, in only about 12 hours or so. I think I might have predicted that would happen. But, really, I do so much research to prove that there is absolutely no correlation between the percentage of support and performance, and then it's apparently ignored. I'm quite convinced that if the proposal fails, it will be because of something other than facts. But really, why do so many people seem to be so frightened to make any changes that will actually matter? Besides, it's only a mere 5%, and yet some people act as if the world will end if we do even that. Biblioworm 15:25, 15 December 2015 (UTC)

Please keep some perspective, Biblioworm. In past years, editors have spent months working on RfA reform and no change resulted from all of their efforts. If even a few of these proposals pass, I think you should consider that quite a success. I know that I hadn't gotten around to looking at the RfC (which is a little daunting, to be honest) but now I have time to give it some consideration. As for as the percentage of support being changed, I'm sure if the change were only 0.5% there would be editors saying that the whole admin corps would go to hell. There are a lot of people who are afraid of change and what they imagine will happen. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 21:45, 15 December 2015 (UTC)

• Was this re-opened because of bureaucrats complaining they had not seen the discussion? In that case, could bureaucrats who are paying so little attention to RFA, this page and all of the major policy proposal boards please resign their bits for being out of touch? Anyway, the re-opening was wrong, and at the very least, should be done properly: even the "failed" proposals should be open until the RfC closes again (this changes the framing of the debate, which used to be a choice between several choices on discretionary ranges, and now is essentially about supporting/opposing a single proposal). —Kusma (t·c) 15:39, 15 December 2015 (UTC)
  • To be fair, the failed ones were WP:SNOW closed a reasonable amount of time before the full (reverted) closure. ansh666 15:47, 15 December 2015 (UTC)
    • Still, the debate was different when it was first heavily advertised than what it is now, and that may well influence the outcome. —Kusma (t·c) 10:05, 16 December 2015 (UTC)
      • Indeed, it just isn't the same any more, given all the negative publicity it's had. If it had just been left as it was, I think the result would have been much different. I predicted that after it was re-opened, all the "No, no, we must keep the bar high or Wikipedia will fall apart with abusive admins!" people will come out en masse and attempt to destroy the proposal so the status quo will be kept. (Despite the fact that this position is totally unsupported by actual facts.) What's happening? Exactly that, it seems. Biblioworm 16:56, 16 December 2015 (UTC)

  It was re-opened because it was closed early and it should not have been. Phase I ran for 30 days so the expectation was that Phase II would run for 30 days also, as with the vast majority of major policy change RFCs. "Since this proposal may have substantial effects on the RfA process, it will be as widely advertised as possible. Thirty days after the opening of the RfC, it will be closed." One does not simply close a discussion at some arbitrary timeframe when they have the result they want, and it would put the bureaucrats in a very awkward position to be guided by a poll the legitimacy of which was called into question. –xeno^talk 13:33, 16 December 2015 (UTC) (And as regards your comment about being "out of touch", the early closure was proposed, and then implemented within about 7 hours, while I was sleeping.)

I don't understand the argument that the RFC should not be reopened and allowed to run for the 30 days because it would give editors a chance to show up and "sink" the proposals. So proponents would prefer the early closure to stand, even if that means editors who did not have a chance to comment in the abbreviated time frame were disenfranchised? –xeno^talk 01:02, 16 December 2015 (UTC)

yeah, if the consensus is going to change if it is left open for the full time, then it should be left open. Otherwise we will quickly get another RFC to reverse the conclusion. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 03:51, 16 December 2015 (UTC)

• I fail to see the justification for closing the RfC more than two weeks early. This is not a race. If you want something to stick, then be patient. The proposals have a MUCH stronger basis on which to stand if they are allowed to run their due course. CAN the RfC be closed early? Sure. Policy allows that. Should it? Obviously no.
• Of note; since re-opening, the discretionary range proposal has received the most attention with 21 new votes (second is the limit questions, with 16). Among those 21, there's 57% support for the proposal. This has dropped overall support from 79% to 74%.
• Given that this RfC was closed for 19 hours, the new close time should be ~16:00 UTC on December 30th. --Hammersoft (talk) 14:59, 16 December 2015 (UTC)

As I look for potential candidates I often find that there are many which do not have CSD or PROD logs which some members of the community consider with varying degrees of weight. The desire to get those means that we may instruct candidates to make those logs and then patrol to build them up often taking more than a month to get a good sampling. Ian.thomson is a good example of this. He had actually been hand-tagging for years and involved in about 3500 deleted edits from these deleted articles with very good results. Rather than back-tracking to build the logs, it was easier for him to make the logs and then patrol for a while.

Is this really necessary? I'm looking at a handful of good potentials but this seems to be a common roadblock for them that slows things down. What do others think?
 — Berean Hunter (talk) 15:23, 13 December 2015 (UTC)

CSD and PROD logs are preferred, but any serious RfA voter would look at the candidate's archives and overall patrol log in the absence of one. Note that some editors without a CSD/PROD log also have a Page Curation log. Esquivalience ^t 15:35, 13 December 2015 (UTC)

Those logs are only created if you do semi-automated editing – that's an issue. Those of us troglodytes who are too stubborn to use semi-auto editing have to manually create our own (very small, in my case) PROD logs. I'd manually set up my own CSD log too, if I could figure out how to go back and figure out the very minor CSD work I've done (I think it's been only the very rare ((db-move)) stuff to the best of my recollection...) – so if someone knows how to manually figure out one's own CSD work, please drop me a line!!... --IJBall (contribs • talk) 17:09, 13 December 2015 (UTC)

• Well that's easy. Become an administrator and you can see your deleted edits. Of course, it's a chicken and egg sort of thing :) I keep a manually updated log, so it's possible to do if a bit more of a pain. I keep mine because of rampant accusations I see cast about, even by those of the upper elite here (you know, the pigs that are more equal than the rest of us pigs) that so-and-so does nothing on the project. It might be a good idea if this was something that was built into the software, such that one doesn't need special tools or manual updating to keep a log. It just exists. --Hammersoft (talk) 17:29, 13 December 2015 (UTC)

• Dang... This would have been a good thing to suggest for the 2015 Community Wishlist Survey, but it's too late now... Oh well. --IJBall (contribs • talk) 17:34, 13 December 2015 (UTC)

• Maybe for 2016. --Hammersoft (talk) 15:49, 14 December 2015 (UTC)

• I'm all for genuinely quantitative evaluation, but IMO these logs encourage pseudostatistics (much like the AfD "success rate" calculations). When I set up twinkle I chose not to create logs on the grounds that it seemed too much like scalp-collecting, but on the other hand, they're more transparent and easier to search than deleted contribs, so they do have a practical use. I guess I am squarely Meh on the keeping of logs, but I hope we don't have many qualified candidates delaying their RfAs just for the sake of creating them. Opabinia regalis (talk) 19:48, 13 December 2015 (UTC)
• Like OR above, I do not see a lot of value in these logs. In fact, I'd go further and say that the keeping of such logs (and the deep dives some editors do into those logs) is quite harmful to the community's ability to attract and retain new administrators. Almost all of the commonplace measures that people use to render their opinions (with the exception of communication skills) are quite useless in determining whether or not someone will be an effective and active administrator. Peer-reviewed editing is possibly the worst predictor, and "accuracy" at XfD is not quite as bad but is more likely to predict speed of burnout than effectiveness as an admin. Risker (talk) 07:11, 14 December 2015 (UTC)
• CSD logs and AfD success are poor matrices to judge by, but so easy to use, as they give immediate values to which one can apply a random "passing grade" to. I've seen 95% thrown around as a desired CSD accuracy level, but that is easily manipulated by someone only tackling the low hanging fruit. I despise the concept of AfD accuracy, being on the "losing" side of an AfD discussion doesn't inherently mean you were wrong. It means you had a different interpretation of policy. How boring would this place be if we all agreed on everything. RfA should be about the candidates, not just statistics. --kelapstick^{(on the run)} 11:42, 14 December 2015 (UTC)
• I created User:Ritchie333/saves partly to counteract the lack of a CSD and PROD log (I'm not the biggest fan of Twinkle, y'know). For AfD stats, I normally look at a few recent examples where consensus didn't go the candidate's way, and if I find they talked a good argument, I've got no issue with it. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 14:59, 14 December 2015 (UTC)
  • Quite in agreement Ritchie333, the AfD stats can be a useful tool when the discussions are reviewed, rather than just using raw numbers without looking at the actual discussions. Even those numbers can be skewed by only participating in discussions that are slam dunk deletions/keeps to fudge the statistics. CSD/PROD logs can be helpful if used for more than just a raw percentage without evaluation. For example, if there is a blue link in the log, check and see why. Was the page eligible for deletion at the time of tagging, or was it recreated in better condition after initial deletion? The problem (as I see it) is all this statistical information that we now have for evaluating people doesn't give much insight as to a user's competence with relation to policy, but it is so easy to access and apply a subjective requirement to. --kelapstick^(bainuu) 20:49, 14 December 2015 (UTC)
    • The problem is that in a system where you need ~3/4 of the votes to pass, even if two out of every three voters take the time to review the discussions and check each blue link, that 1-in-3 voter who just piles on to "too many blue links" or "poor AfD percentage" will sink the candidate's chances of passing. --Ahecht (TALK
      PAGE) 15:35, 17 December 2015 (UTC)
  • Agree about the AfD stats too. I do a lot of proxy nominations for IPs and new users who can't figure out how the (rather complex) system works, so I end up with a lot of false positives in the delete/nominated column. People have tried to use this against me in the past, about matters not even related to adminship. ansh666 23:39, 14 December 2015 (UTC)

Thank you all for above the answers which are very helpful.
 — Berean Hunter (talk) 14:38, 17 December 2015 (UTC)

• CSD and PROD logs can be very misleading. I've seen several editors who have stated that more than a tiny percentage of blue links on a CSD log will disqualify a candidate, but there are several entries in a CSD log (such as ((db-move)) and ((db-nowcommons))) that should always be blue, plus there are many pages that get deleted under ((db-copyvio)) or ((db-copypaste)) that are later recreated using original prose. Similarly, PRODs such as ((BLP PROD)) can often motivate the creators of unsourced biographies to add sources (and when tagging new articles, Twinkle explicitly says to use ((BLP PROD)) instead of just adding ((BLP unsourced))). I keep a CSD log mainly personal use, to monitor pages I have nominated to see if the nominations are declined or the pages are later recreated, not in anticipation of a future RfA run, but for potential candidates it seems like a liability. --Ahecht (TALK
  PAGE) 15:35, 17 December 2015 (UTC)

  Actually, I do not think this is correct. Whatever misleading the log is, a candidate should be able to offer reasonable explanations why the log looks like it looks. To give a slightly different example, on my RFA I was very explicit that I am not going to have any GA/FAs because English is not my mother tongue, and I can contribute in more efficient ways. I did not get a single oppose vote based on the lack of GA/FAs. Similarly, I am sure that if someone, for example, gets a large number of kept AfD nominations because they have improved nominated articles, they should be able to explain that.--Ymblanter (talk) 20:28, 17 December 2015 (UTC)

  If you look at my CSD log, I actually annotated it to note if something was recreated or declined or something. It's mostly for myself, so that I can remember if I made a mistake and not do it again, but I guess it could be useful for someone looking at it too. ansh666 21:24, 17 December 2015 (UTC)

Hello. You are invited to comment on this RfC concerning clerking at RfA: Wikipedia:2015 administrator election reform/Phase II/Clerking RfC. Please do not comment in this section, but rather make all comments in the appropriate place on the RfC. Thank you. Biblioworm 22:32, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

...needs updating; help from others would be appreciated. The page is here: User:Everymorning/RFA study. Everymorning (talk) 04:27, 24 December 2015 (UTC)

After 30 days of discussion and !voting, Wikipedia:2015 administrator election reform/Phase II/RfC has been closed by a bureaucrat (this time) and four changes have been made to RfA. An editor has challenged this close and opened a close review at the administrators' noticeboard, but it was dismissed within four hours.

• The "discretionary range" is now 65-75% instead of 70-(75|80)%, effectively lowering the bar. There were four unsuccessful RfAs this year that would have been in this new discretionary range.
• Each editor may only ask two questions per RfA. Relevant follow-up questions are allowed.
• RfAs will be advertised at WP:CENT and editors' watchlists.

– Esquivalience ^t 17:30, 30 December 2015 (UTC)

Thank you, Esquivalience. Also, people here may be interested in this progress report I have just made. Biblioworm 17:40, 30 December 2015 (UTC)

This edit request to Template:Editnotices/Group/Wikipedia:Requests for adminship has been answered. Set the |answered= or |ans= parameter to no to reactivate your request.

Please either object, endorse, or effect the following protected edit request:

Please modify Template:Editnotices/Group/Wikipedia:Requests for adminship so that beneath the first bullet which says:

• To ask the candidate a question, please use ((subst:Rfa-question|number of question|2=question)), which will format your question and add your username.

a new bullet point is added saying:

• Individual participants may not ask more than two questions of an RFA candidate. They may however, ask appropriately relevant follow-up questions for reasons of good faith; for example: to improve understanding or perhaps to mitigate the effects of a misunderstanding.

This request aims to conform the edit notice with the consensus achieved at the close of Wikipedia:2015 administrator election reform/Phase II/RfC. If better prose is available to accomplish this end, please use it instead of my suggestion. I nevertheless, do think it should be done, and beseech a doer to please see to it on my behalf.--John Cline (talk) 06:19, 17 December 2015 (UTC)

While I am capable of doing that, I am going to defer judgement to someone uninvolved, for obvious reasons.—^cyberpower_{Merry Christmas:Unknown} 06:21, 17 December 2015 (UTC)

While there does seem to be consensus for this, shouldn't we at least wait until the RfC is (re)closed? ansh666 06:34, 17 December 2015 (UTC)

I completely missed the discussion above highlighting that the RFC had been re-opened. Having now seen it, I think it clearly best to withdraw the edit request; leaving the prose as mere "food for thought", if ever consensus does indicate such a change is warranted. Cheers.--John Cline (talk) 06:45, 17 December 2015 (UTC)

• The suggested text is fine, but I think propriety demands that we wait until the RfC has been formally closed again. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 00:38, 24 December 2015 (UTC)

Done Biblioworm 05:40, 5 January 2016 (UTC)

The following table lists the number of current sysop accounts divided by the year in which the account was registered. No effort has been made to distinguish active vs. inactive sysops, nor have admin bots been removed. A majority of current admins joined Wikipedia more than a decade ago, and only 1.6% of admins joined during the last five years. Dragons flight (talk) 12:12, 11 January 2016 (UTC)

Speaking as an "oldie", it seems to me that this is only to be expected. Whereas most "mature" people who were ever going to join the project did so more than five years ago, most of those joining now are young. In fact, many of them will be children, who are not likely to apply to be admins even if they have an ambition to do so - and let's face it, we don't exactly encourage people under 18 to put themselves forward. I don't think it's particularly sinister. Deb (talk) 12:53, 11 January 2016 (UTC)

Why should most of those joining now be young? I think we have become less open and less accepting of children, so I would expect that most of them give up quickly and that the people who stick around for a year or so will be more mature. We probably need more data to say what is to be expected. Do many other Wikipedias have the same strange "most sysop accounts are really old" thing? —Kusma (t·c) 14:12, 11 January 2016 (UTC)

• I don't believe the age of an editor who joins has changed one whit over time. I do believe it's rare for any new editors to stick around longer than one year which makes the pool of admin to pick from is very, very small. --MurderByDeletionism^"bang!" 08:16, 12 January 2016 (UTC)

Does this distribution match the number of non-admin accounts which have been active in the past year? I wouldn't expect it to match for the past 2-3 years since that's around the minimum experience we seem to expect from admins, but I'd be interested to see if it matches the rest, or where it is different. Sam Walton (talk) 14:22, 11 January 2016 (UTC)

Not very well. In 2014, the editing activity by year of account registration from least to most: 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2010, 2012, 2011, 2009, 2008, 2013, 2007, 2005, 2006, 2014. The four least active groups from the early years (2001 - 2004) have 37% of the admin accounts and only about 6% of the recent edits. By contrast, the cohorts from 2010-2012 contributed about 19% of the edits in 2014 but have only 1.8% of the admin accounts today. Dragons flight (talk) 15:19, 11 January 2016 (UTC)

To be expected, truthfully. As mentioned above, RfA is not particularly inviting to newer users—nor anyone sane for that matter —though that's also to be expected if they're supposed to understand a sizable portion of Wiki policies. Whether or not users registering the past few years attempt to make runs for adminship in the future is always a huge question mark. I started editing in 2007, attempted RfA in 2009 (failed it quickly), and then dropped the thought of becoming an admin for six years before picking up the mop. We'll eventually see accounts from recent years join the ranks (hopefully) but reasons for the slow addition of admins at present have obviously been discussed ad nauseam. ~ Cyclonebiskit (chat) 15:04, 11 January 2016 (UTC)

It's not just RfA: Adminship itself is an unappealing job. It's no wonder that our longer-term Admins are suffering "burnout" and keep hanging it up: just recently Kudpung has resigned, Soap was desysopped, and Dennis Brown is effectively on indefinite "leave". I think too many people are getting lost in the "RfA is a cesspool" side of the equation, and ignoring "Adminship is a hard, time-consuming, thankless job that takes you away from editing" side of the equation. This is why I keep coming back to the idea that "unbundling" is an inevitability because we'll keep losing Admins through attrition without replacing them – and, because, right now, there are a lot of us "newer" editors (registered in 2009, but only started editing seriously in 2013) who don't want the "whole mop", but who might be willing to take on a "feather duster". --IJBall (contribs • talk) 17:30, 11 January 2016 (UTC)

About young editors: I'd like to see some evidence before accepting that most new editors are very young. Huge numbers of baby boomers such as myself are hitting retirement age and many have more spare time than they've had since before the internet was invented. If some of these aren't signing up as editors, and later as admins, I wonder why that could be. About adminship being unappealing: I've seen a number of editors write that they avoid adminship because they aren't ready for or just don't want to be involved in some of the jobs. Nobody makes admins take on any tasks they don't want to do. Yes, we need admins who are willing to take on the less pleasant tasks (although likely editors will disagree about which ones those are). However, it's not necessary to unbundle to admin tools; a new admin can just start on whichever he or she considers "feather duster" tasks and start doing others as time goes on. I do mostly deletions and history merges so far myself. They are only as "time consuming" as I let them be, so there's really no downside (except, of course, having to behave oneself...) —Anne Delong (talk) 20:30, 11 January 2016 (UTC)

The problem is, often, RfA voters won't let you take on "half a loaf". For example, if long-term "Joe Editor" (who's basically a "vandal fighter") comes to RfA with zero AfD experience, and even states "I have no intention of doing deletion work", "Joe" will still get plenty of "oppose" votes because "[Joe, you] have no AfD experience, and we're not giving you half the toolset, we're giving you the whole bit" (I call this the "BMK principle" after the editor who most articulately asserts it). We can keep doing things the way they've been done for the past decade, but we're going to miss out on a lot of editors who might be willing to do some maintenance work, but who don't want the hassle and responsibility of the "whole bit". And we're seeing it now, for almost 5 years at RfA: 25 new Admins a year is an unsustainable rate, and I don't believe there is anything that's going to happen that's going to increase the RfA above about 25 new Admins a year (regardless of what reforms we pass for RfA!). The current model of site maintenance here is just too unappealing to too many editors, and we need to start thinking outside the box here – Dragons flight's figures above are just another key piece of evidence showing this. --IJBall (contribs • talk) 21:13, 11 January 2016 (UTC)

• There are many problems with Wikipedia, and certainly this is one of them. Frankly, the entire project is falling apart at the seams. Nobody really cares enough to do something about it. Let me give you an example; we have Cluebot running around doing anti-vandalism work to the tune of about 1000 mainspace vandalism reverts per day. What happens if the bot owners stop running that bot? A bot THAT important should be under the control of the project, not under the control of a particular editor (even if several editors). We have an increasingly large amount of administrator work being done by bots. Not one bit of it is done by a bot that is owned and operated by Wikipedia. All of it is done by well meaning bot operators who could walk away (and some have). There is no plan for the long term sustaining of the project. None. There's a blissful ignorance that things will just keep percolating along as they always have, and we'll always have solutions. Except, we don't. --Hammersoft (talk) 22:05, 11 January 2016 (UTC)

Yes. You see the same thing on the "tools" end, esp. XTools and stats.grok.se tools – XTools, esp., is basically in shambles, with really only MusikAnimal seemingly "responsible" for it and maintaining it. ScottyWong's tools are another example – most of those fell apart after he "retired". --IJBall (contribs • talk) 22:12, 11 January 2016 (UTC)

I agree totally, this reliance on individuals to continue to attend daily, year after year, to the bots or tools they developed is plain daft. But there is little we can do here to directly influence this practice. Let's elect members to the WMF board to represent our views. Oh, hang on...: Noyster (talk), 18:21, 12 January 2016 (UTC)

Well, the WMF has been working on the Citation bot recently and the Internet Archive bot by cyberpower678 is also in the to-do list, so it's not wholly accurate to say that bots are being ignored.Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 19:16, 12 January 2016 (UTC)

@IJBall: I don't see where Kudpung has resigned. Can you please explain? Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 09:57, 12 January 2016 (UTC)

If you look at his rights log, it says via a request by email. He is no longer an admin. ansh666 10:08, 12 January 2016 (UTC)

Oh dear :-( Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 11:06, 12 January 2016 (UTC)

• I warned several months ago that we'll discover how few admins we actually have once all the ones from the early boom days naturally become inactive and are procedurally desysopped. This chart shows that 48% of all admins registered in either 2005 or 2006. Curiously, I happen to be one of those four admins (0.3%) who registered in 2014. Three of those four are humans, and only two of the four are humans who passed RfA (the other human only has temporary adminship). These two users are me and BethNaught, who passed RfA a little over a month after I did. Therefore, I'm the first person who registered in 2014 to pass RfA. Biblio (talk) 01:40, 12 January 2016 (UTC)

• Young whippersnapper. I knew I should have opposed your RfA! ;) --Hammersoft (talk) 02:25, 12 January 2016 (UTC)
• Who's the "temporary Admin"?! I didn't think any of those existed! – Carrite was turned down when he tried it, and no non-Admin has ever been voted on to ArbCom, so I'm truly puzzled who the "temp Admin" is. --IJBall (contribs • talk) 06:45, 12 January 2016 (UTC)

• What we need is unbundling of the tools; but under Wikipedia's model of "consensus", it won't happen. Esquivalience ^t 03:10, 12 January 2016 (UTC)

• Oh, it will happen, eventually – there's going to come a point when there simply aren't enough truly "active Admins" to keep up with basic maintenance tasks, and when that happens I suspect the floodgates will open in support of unbundling. Also, a lot of the opposition to unbunding comes from longer-term Admins, and they're gradually "retiring", so... --IJBall (contribs • talk) 06:45, 12 January 2016 (UTC)

• The tools that count are as unbundled as it makes sense for them to be; block/delete/protect form a logical set. What I can never figure out about these threads is why support for unbundling, support for higher minimum activity requirements, and belief that adminship is a very unpleasant and thankless task seem to be consistent fellow-travelers. Opabinia regalis (talk) 07:58, 12 January 2016 (UTC)

• Actually it is only 6 admins in the last 3 years (Randykitty and Anne Delong in 2012 ,Jakec and Jackmcbarn 2013 BethNaught and Biblioworm 2014) the others are bots ,WMF staff and Liz has a older alternative account and just 25 admins since in the last 5 years since Jan 1st 2010. IJBall they are apparently referring to Mattflaschen-WMF as a Temp admin.Further the statistic is even more dismal if you consider 821 former admins of whom over 99% are before 2010.Pharaoh of the Wizards (talk) 07:50, 12 January 2016 (UTC)
  • I wonder what this would look like for actual edits rather than account creation date - say, count from the first month with over 50 edits. It could be that many accounts were created early on but their owners didn't become actively engaged with the project till later. (I doubt this has much effect, actually, but it would be good to quantify.) Opabinia regalis (talk) 07:58, 12 January 2016 (UTC)
    • Despite my December 2011 register date I'm effectively a 2013 candidate since I only made about 200 edits before going inactive for just over a year. Sam Walton (talk) 12:17, 12 January 2016 (UTC)

    I also had a pre-2011 account, so do not count me in the 25.--Ymblanter (talk) 08:16, 12 January 2016 (UTC)

    Registered 2006, didn't become truly active until Feb 2008. –xeno^talk 13:54, 12 January 2016 (UTC)

• On the subject of age, I stand by what I said. For some reason, people are interpreting my statement as suggesting that there are no older editors coming on board or that there were no younger ones in the early days. That's patently untrue, but it is certainly true that the early editors were mostly in the mature age group. Children now learn to use wikipedia when they are at school and that's how they become contributors. When this project started, it wouldn't have been a lot of use to them as a lot of subjects didn't even have articles, and most articles were unreferenced; few people looked things up routinely on wikipedia as they do now. Obviously the age profile has changed over the lifetime of the project. Deb (talk) 12:13, 12 January 2016 (UTC)
  • • I find your observation rings completely true. In the old days, the average editor was mature. New editors are overwhelmingly 15-25. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 00:15, 13 January 2016 (UTC)
  • This is interesting - I can believe there were few children among the very early contributors, but having arrived in the "boom phase", I have the very strong intuition that there were many more children here in ~2005-7 than there are now. If that's not true I'll eat a hat. We also used to get a lot of high-school-aged admin applicants - and in the end, most of those kids with 2000 edits running on the strength of 4-6 months experience vandalwhacking turned out just fine. I suspect we are relatively less attractive to that age group now, since Wikipedia is just "part of the internet furniture" and has long since lost its upstart sensibility, and there are now many other places to invest your participatory energy that are much less work. Nobody asks for a reliable source for your Facebook rant. Opabinia regalis (talk) 00:00, 13 January 2016 (UTC)

As I get older, I find young people are increasingly younger than they used to be. I have no idea why that is. Jonathunder (talk) 00:38, 13 January 2016 (UTC)

I'll also add that Wikipedia is not respected as a reference site anymore (if it ever was), at least among my colleagues at university - so around 18-25 year olds. Nor is being an editor a "cool" thing, whatever that means - it's something that most people will laugh at or dismiss as pointless. ansh666 00:58, 13 January 2016 (UTC)

• Any article is only as good as its citations—Wikipedia itself is just the conduit. So there's no need for the entire encyclopedia to be respected as a "reference site". It is still a useful tool but each page can only stand on its merits. That's not to say that editors and administrators should not continue to work on improving any and every page. It simply reflects the fact that the quality of articles on Wikipedia must inevitably vary when anyone can edit them. It is both the strength and weakness of the project.

Having said that, and despite the tireless efforts of those who do contribute, I think Wikipedia is in trouble. The system needs a major overhaul. Solid contributors who could add something to the administration of the project are not stepping forward for what is pretty much a thankless job anyway. If not fixed this place will just keep slowly sinking. -- Ham105 (talk) 03:13, 13 January 2016 (UTC)

Yes, as an editor, I understand that, but among readers who don't know how the site works, they don't even want to come to the site to look something up; they'd rather look elsewhere even if the source is less reliable than that individual Wikipedia article. That's the power of respect. (And yes, I have seen this in person multiple times.) Or, to quote: "Who looks up stuff on Wikipedia anymore?". ansh666 03:30, 13 January 2016 (UTC)

• Fair point. "Wiki-wariness" is a good thing to have, but perhaps it's been pushed into "Wiki-worthless" territory by people who simply don't understand how it works. -- Ham105 (talk) 04:40, 13 January 2016 (UTC)

To reply to your anecdote with an anecdote, I see exactly the opposite; I haven't spoken to anyone in a long time who has regarded Wikipedia entirely negatively, most people I speak to - including an academic I was speaking to just yesterday - are positive about it. Sam Walton (talk) 13:34, 13 January 2016 (UTC)

Agree, who doesn't look things up on Wikipedia anymore? For most random subjects we are the top, or at least top page on search engines. Quick google search of some terms I just made up "ice cream cones, gravitational waves, golden globe winners, toxic plants" all have us at the top of the list. Students (middle school through bachelor's levels) I've spoken with use us extensively - at the higher levels they use us primarily as a means to FIND more reputable citations. (Much easier to follow our citations on a subject then to start searching JSTOR, etc as the first step). — xaosflux ^Talk 15:26, 13 January 2016 (UTC)

My impression is the opposite. There seem to be more greybeards around now and fewer teenagers than when I started editing in 2007. When I first attended a London meetup I was one of the oldest present, seven years later I am seven years older but far from being the oldest person at the typical London meetup. There are multiple other data points that convince me of the greying of the pedia. I think we are seeing two or more distinct processes here, on the plus side the rise of the silver surfers continues, and when a person coming up to retirement picks up a new hobby like editing Wikipedia there is a good chance they will be around till they die go senile or are banned. On the minus side the current generation of teenagers are wedded to smartphones and similar devices on which editing Wikipedia is near impossible, and the ratio of readers to editors is going to be very different with such technology. This creates an added tension in the wikigeneration gap, the greybeards among the editors are unlikely to be impressed at an admin corps still heavily skewed to people who were teenagers less than a decade ago. I suspect one minor feature of that is the growing number of editors who will vote against candidates they suspect of being under 18. ϢereSpielChequers 10:37, 14 January 2016 (UTC)

Spot on! Johnbod (talk) 14:24, 14 January 2016 (UTC)

I would also tend to agree with that observation. Looking at old archives, it seems to me that there were many more teenagers/children than we have now. And in any case, I'm inclined to believe that the detrimental effect of child editors is currently being overexaggerated by some people. The overall standards of the community have increased in the past few years, and consequently I observe less tolerance for childish children. Many children who act like typical children are blocked per CIR long before they have a chance of being taken seriously. (Actually, this is one reason why I left the first wiki I edited, and have never really had a desire to go back. The site is overrun by self-declared teenagers who do nothing but chat and have made very few, if any, actual edits.)

However, we do have a few exceptions to the rule; I've seen a limited number of teenage editors who are quite competent and would make fine admins. For this reason, I think it best to evaluate RfA candidates solely on the basis of demonstrated competence and maturity (although I do understand the arguments of those who auto-oppose all minors). My observation has shown that in general, the greatest problem is not children, ignorant newbies, or anything of that sort; it is the fully grown adults who consciously and intelligently make trouble. People like myself who have worked extensively in RfA know that to be true. If you don't believe me, start paying close attention to RfAs. ;) Biblio (talk) 17:02, 14 January 2016 (UTC)

Well, it's worth noting that the most vexatious of the recent RfA voters was in fact a sock who was banned by ArbCom. Beyond that, the most prominent group of editors who could cause problems at RfA seems to generally stay away. I tend to think that's why the RfA's in Nov. and Dec. were relatively staid affairs... --IJBall (contribs • talk) 03:28, 15 January 2016 (UTC)

As per Biblioworm: My observation has shown that in general, the greatest problem is not children, ignorant newbies, or anything of that sort; it is the fully grown adults who consciously and intelligently make trouble. Propriety forbids me naming names but I think if it happens again I'll make a case of it at ANI, if not Arbcom. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 15:47, 15 January 2016 (UTC)

After 30 days of discussion, Wikipedia:2015 administrator election reform/Phase II/Clerking RfC was closed by Dank with a bi-faceted consensus. The request for comment (RfC) proposed a system of clerking for the requests for adminship (RfA) process. The system designates a certain group of editors to maintain decorum and cleanliness of RfAs.

The closing statement is four paragraphs long. Here are the two key points:

• The community is against the idea of designating a group, whether based on editor permissions or appointment, to act as a clerk for RfAs, with one exception:

• Most participants in the RfC did not have any objections to allowing bureaucrats to act as a clerk for RfAs. The editor who closed the RfC noted that most of the participants trusted the bureaucrats to deal with decorum and order at RfAs. The specific powers of bureaucrats acting as a clerk in RfAs are currently poorly defined; it may be the the subject of future bureaucrat and community debate.

Of course, per the talk page guideline, editors not in the bureaucrat group may perform non-contentious cleanup and—in exceptional circumstances—revert inappropriate votes and comments. Administrators may use their tools, including blocking, protection, and revision deletion, as outlined in the relevant policies governing their use, but administrators are advised to take caution in using the tools as the participants in the RfC were strongly opposed to allowing admins to act as a clerk in RfAs. Esquivalience ^t 03:53, 23 January 2016 (UTC)

This edit request to Wikipedia:Requests for adminship has been answered. Set the |answered= or |ans= parameter to no to reactivate your request.

Please put Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Terminalcupcakes in the appropriate place Terminalcupcakes (talk) 00:40, 17 February 2016 (UTC)

 Not done - please carefully read WP:RFAGUIDE and WP:NOTNOW. Your self-nomination would have no chance of passing were it to run now. ansh666 00:43, 17 February 2016 (UTC)

I've noticed for a while that the external AfD stats tool that we link to from RfAs does not seem to be working consistently, at least not for my account. I thought maybe it was just slow to update but now I think it's actually broken. For example, my stats from about June 2015 only include threads where I was the nominator. Otherwise, it seems to recognize all of the AfDs that I edited, but can't determine how I !voted in those discussions. It doesn't seem to be behaving this way for other users, though. It's only occurred to me while typing this that the issue coincides roughly from when I started using an emoji in my signature (July 2015) and that might explain the whole thing, but I'm not sure why that would matter. I know we can't control external tools from here, but we rely on this tool for RfA candidate evaluation, and if this is an issue affecting many users then RfA should be aware of it. Ivanvector 🍁 (talk) 20:20, 1 February 2016 (UTC)

• Um, I don't see any June 2015 entries from you there at all.Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 20:24, 1 February 2016 (UTC)

I'd have to mine my contribs to see, but I think that is accurate - I wasn't around a whole lot in June, I just picked June here to highlight the issue. Prior to about that time the tool picks up most of my AfD activity, and after that only picks up threads where I was the nominator (but I was more active than that). Ivanvector 🍁 (talk) 20:56, 1 February 2016 (UTC)

Ivanvector, I recently pushed a change to how the tool detects votes (what a coincidence, right?), but it should have only affected how unsigned votes were detected. I'll look into it. Quick note: next time you open a thread about this tool, it would be awesome if you could ping either myself or Σ, since we're the maintainers. APerson (talk!) 22:10, 1 February 2016 (UTC)

@APerson: will do, thanks! I did not know you were the maintainers. I don't think it's a recent change. Going purely by memory, I think I first noticed this behaviour around November, when I started looking at the stats for a reason I don't remember now. Not that it started then, that's just when I noticed. Ivanvector 🍁 (talk) 22:13, 1 February 2016 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Found it! The problem is with your signature; the link to the talk page in your signature is targeted to "User talk:Ivanvector#top" instead of just "User talk:Ivanvector". We had another user with this issue (i.e. they put a #top in their link also) just a few days ago; I'll start looking into ways to fix the tool instead. For the other user, I just did a AWB run to change their signature in deletion discussions; do you want me to do that now, or wait until I can get the tool updated? APerson (talk!) 22:14, 1 February 2016 (UTC)

Great! It's not urgent, do what you think is best. If you want to keep those discussions instead as test cases for the tool, please do. I've used #top from the same time, just so that my modified signature doesn't show up as black bolded text on my talk page. Ivanvector 🍁 (talk) 22:34, 1 February 2016 (UTC)

It's clear to me that the watchlist notices are working and improving things quite a bit. I used to have the RFA page on my watchlist and I frequently missed when RFAs were happening, but the watchlist thing allows me to see it. Kudos to user:Biblioworm for making this happen. Oiyarbepsy (talk) 01:03, 2 February 2016 (UTC)

Indeed this was one of the ideas I really thought would work. I am glad Biblioworm ran with this idea. HighInBC 01:04, 2 February 2016 (UTC)

Of course, if it's so successful that we go back to the days when we have at least one RFA running at all times, it'll stop working. :D -- KTC (talk) 05:05, 2 February 2016 (UTC)

It doesn't generate new RFA, simply announces to a wider audience. Suppose it might drum up interest, indirectly. Not everyone agrees that it is a good idea, looking at BBW's talk page. Leaky Caldron 15:34, 2 February 2016 (UTC)

I disagreed in the RfC that low turnout was a problem with RfA, but as far as wider awareness of RfAs goes, the watchlist notices are certainly achieving their purpose. Well done! Ivanvector 🍁 (talk) 18:19, 2 February 2016 (UTC)

Fresh minds are the cure to stagnation. HighInBC 01:05, 3 February 2016 (UTC)

Keeping this as a short message and being careful with the cookie increments seem to be keeping these useful, while not intrusive. We don't have any good stats on how many more RFA READERS this has generated, but getting more eyes on it even as just reading may be enough to encourage a future RFA run for someone. — xaosflux ^Talk 02:43, 3 February 2016 (UTC)

I don't seem to have a watchlist notice, I dismissed it during a previous RfA, and I think it may have dismissed all future notices as well. --kelapstick^(bainuu) 02:55, 3 February 2016 (UTC)

I did notice quite a few completely unfamiliar names at the recent RfA and when I checked their user pages, many of them had around 1000-500 edits over several years of editing. I'm guessing that they are irregular editors but regular readers who happened to see the watchlist notice when they made a recent visit to WP.

I checked to see if there was an edit or editing history threshold for participating at RfAs and there isn't so everything was legit. But I think we can expect future participation of similar editors who might have a long association with Wikipedia but who don't edit frequently or did so in the past but have done little recently. It's difficult to assess what impact they might have on the overall RFA process but it did seem that some had older associations or older knowledge of Hawkeye7 than editors who started editing in the past few years. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 03:06, 3 February 2016 (UTC)

@Kelapstick: the watchlist uses an "id number" for each message when the message went to 3 RFA's the number was set to 229, you probably dismissed that one - as the remaining RFA's were part of that notice, you don't see them any more. If a NEW RfA were to open now, we would increment that to 230, then you would start seeing it again until dismissed. — xaosflux ^Talk 04:16, 3 February 2016 (UTC)

Maybe, but I don't recall dismissing one within the last week or so (I think I did for the first one, which was a while ago). I will keep an eye. --kelapstick^(bainuu) 04:28, 3 February 2016 (UTC)

Nope, it wasn't you - the cookie ID didn't get updated when we moved from 2-3; there were so many changes in such a short time; will watch for this. If you want to get really meta, you can watchlist changes to the watchlist notice by watching this page MediaWiki:Watchlist-details :D — xaosflux ^Talk 04:58, 3 February 2016 (UTC)

On User:Everymorning/RFA study, which needs a lot of updating. I'd really love it if I didn't have to do this all by myself. Thanks. Everymorning (talk) 21:44, 3 February 2016 (UTC)

@Everymorning If you move it out of your own userspace (to WP:RFA study perhaps?) other editors might feel more welcome and willing to contribute. Material in userspace is usually not edited by other people, unless they are explicitly invited. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 17:07, 4 February 2016 (UTC)

I have just done as you suggested, Roger. Everymorning (talk) 17:13, 4 February 2016 (UTC)

In a quite recent RfA, I note some editors seem to think that "brief" means "anything under a 500 word essay on the candidate"<g>. Ought we make a statement that "reasons" should be kept under 50(?) words, and that "extended comments" should be placed on the talk page? Or are the long explanations to be considered as a benefit? IIRC, we had already determined lengthy colloquies go onto the talk page? Thanks. Collect (talk) 16:58, 1 February 2016 (UTC)

Very good thread to start. I am often torn between explaining my own !vote, and still allowing others to come to their own conclusions. In general, it seems more acceptable for fewer words to support, but that opposes need to explain in detail. I'm interested in the responses here. — Ched :  ?  17:15, 1 February 2016 (UTC)

I was unaware that verbosity was discouraged on the main RfA page, especially since it's meant to be a discussion afterall. People are free to superficially skim through rationales as they see fit if they do not have the attention span or inclination. Of course I'd encourage no one to actually do this. What benefit does moving lengthy explanations to the talk page offer? I see the reason for moving threaded discussions to de-clutter, but a wordy rationale?  Wisdom89 ^♦talk 17:18, 1 February 2016 (UTC)

• side note: It's often a fine line between explaining one's own rational, and trying to actually persuade incoming voters. Intent isn't something that can be determined for the most part. (fairly rhetorical I suppose.) — Ched :  ?  17:22, 1 February 2016 (UTC)

Good point, although I'd wager that the disparity in length in many !votes tend to reflect an editor's personal proclivity for writing in general.  Wisdom89 ^♦talk 17:26, 1 February 2016 (UTC)

I obliquely mentioned this in my oppose (#24) for Hawkeye, but I have a neurologically based inabilty to communicate in brief, concise language. My rambling comments have no intent to do anything other that state my case. (Which in this latest incident, turned out that 'crats were paying attention to our debating skills, rightly or wrongly). I sometimes apologise for my rambling because on Simple Wikipedia I have been harshed and told to strike some of my text in disussions, sadly. Being limited to 50 words would handicap me right out of taking part. I do not believe I have ever written 500 words, except in a few of my talk page posts. (See what I mean? Perhaps this could have just said: I disagree...lol and sigh...) Thanks Fylbecatulous talk 18:30, 4 February 2016 (UTC)

• For all but the most serious flaws I would like to encourage people to look for and demonstrate a pattern before they oppose. That means citing multiple diffs, not in issues like personal attacks or outing where a single example should suffice but definitely in issues like miscalls over deletion. If the price of that is loss of brevity then so be it. ϢereSpielChequers 06:40, 4 February 2016 (UTC)

  Ched brings up an interesting point that you sorta alluded to in your comment. I've often wondered about the, err..motivations of the opposition at times. For the most part, well constructed, comprehensive and compelling oppose rationales (and I've seen some damn fine ones) are designed to be illuminating and highlight issues that could potentially affect the project negatively. However, does the caster also hope (and I'm being cynical for the sake of argument here) that their explanation will sway those on the fence or even encourage supporters to change their minds? We've all seen the pile-on that results from a damning oppose.  Wisdom89 ^♦talk 15:31, 4 February 2016 (UTC)

  Inevitably. Opposing means the opposer thinks it wouldn't be good for Wikipedia to have the candidate become an admin - else why oppose? So presumably the opposer hopes that others will either oppose too, or else persuade him it wouldn't be a problem after all. There's nothing cynical about that; it's only cynical if one opposes out of spite or for vendetta, and I think very few people really do that. --Stfg (talk) 16:52, 4 February 2016 (UTC)

The purpose of the page is discussion. Lots of talk is a good thing. Both explaining yourself and attempting to persuade others is part of the process. HighInBC 06:44, 4 February 2016 (UTC)

• While I've been told off for going into unnecessary detail on opposes in the past, I consider it a courtesy to the candidate to explain my reasoning in detail, even if the candidate doesn't necessarily appreciate it. If opposers don't explain exactly what they feel the candidate is doing wrong, then the candidate can't either make an effort to address the concern, or decide the concern is inappropriate and discount it; likewise, in the case of close RFAs it makes it easier for the crats to sift valid concerns from "I don't like the guy". ‑ Iridescent 18:44, 4 February 2016 (UTC)

Hey there. I was wondering if any editors are allowed to weight in on RfAs, or if there is a process to being able to weight in your opinion. Thanks. Boomer Vial^Holla 17:04, 4 February 2016 (UTC)

@Boomer Vial: Any registered user may weigh in on an RFA. Unregistered users are not allowed to !vote, but may express opinions/thoughts, and provide diffs in support of those thoughts. ~ ONUnicorn^{(Talk|Contribs)}problem solving 17:07, 4 February 2016 (UTC)

• Any registered editor may cast a vote on a RfA, but I strongly urge every editor wanting to vote on RfAs to read Wikipedia:Arguments to avoid in adminship discussions and to understand what adminship is. Esquivalience ^t 01:17, 5 February 2016 (UTC)
  • Or else Esquivalience will question whether in his opinion you deserve to have your say. And he might threaten you with an SPI. :) Juan Riley (talk) 01:41, 5 February 2016 (UTC)
    • In fact yes please weigh in civily even when you don't undertand. Some folk are helpful here. Juan Riley (talk) 01:44, 5 February 2016 (UTC)
      • Please do not weigh in if you don't understand. It's more than likely that your comments will be disregarded by the closing bureaucrats, rendering the time you invested pointless. ansh666 02:47, 5 February 2016 (UTC)
        • I would disagree with both of the above opinions. If there is something you don't understand; please ask questions and pay attention to the answers until you do understand, then weigh in. ~ ONUnicorn^{(Talk|Contribs)}problem solving 03:48, 5 February 2016 (UTC)
          • Well, yes, but the place to do that is here, not on a RfA. ansh666 03:59, 5 February 2016 (UTC)

* Thanks to all the editors that took the time to answer my question! :) Boomer Vial^Holla 06:04, 5 February 2016 (UTC)

Yo. If one thing comes to mind when I think about RfAs, it's scrolling up and down. A lot. How about we add some jump links to the template? Under each major header, links to jump to Nomination, Questions, Support, Oppose, Neutral, Comments. There are often reasons why the reader might wish to jump to another section - at present the fastest way is to hit Home on your keyboard (or the equivalent key for going to the top of the page), then finding the section you want in the table of contents. It works, but jump links would work better.  — Scott • talk 14:26, 7 February 2016 (UTC)

Neutral-ish on the proposal (it might help somewhat in reviewing) but @Cyberpower678: to comment on the effect, if any, this would have on the bot operation. –xeno^talk 14:30, 7 February 2016 (UTC)

Human needs greatly outweigh bot configurations - if this is helpful any bot would need to just be adjusted. — xaosflux ^Talk 15:58, 7 February 2016 (UTC)

This change might break the bot, but I'm not too sure.—^cyberpower_Chat:Online 16:04, 7 February 2016 (UTC)

Do you mean like this (excuse the typo in the general comments section)? Esquivalience ^t 02:38, 8 February 2016 (UTC)

Agreed, but I would prefer the bot were adapted prior to the change going live. –xeno^talk 12:18, 9 February 2016 (UTC)

The question is whether this is worth doing. Having to scroll through an RfA strikes me as a minor problem at best, possibly not worth "fixing". Especially if it is going to cause secondary problems or need a lot of re-coding. --MelanieN (talk) 14:26, 9 February 2016 (UTC)

• Is this a complaint about the aging software? Heaven forbid! --MurderByDeletionism^"bang!" 21:45, 11 February 2016 (UTC)

Hello all. I am a relatively new editor here so my question: Is there a minimum editing or time spent on Wikipedia requirement before participating to vote in any Rfa? I hope this is not a stupid question to ask. Thanks. Xender Lourdes (talk) 11:00, 20 February 2016 (UTC)

No, it's not a stupid question at all. There is no minimum threshold of experience or edit count - as long as you have an account and aren't a sock puppet then you can participate in any part of the RfA process, including voting. Hut 8.5 12:52, 20 February 2016 (UTC)

Thank you for the reply. Xender Lourdes (talk) 02:19, 21 February 2016 (UTC)

Imagine if once a candidate accepts, there was a, say, 48-hr waiting period before voting began. I'm not advocating it. Just throwing it out there as it might generate a constructive discussion. I don't even know what it might do. Has this been discussed? Would it have some sort of effect? Anna F remote (talk) 03:02, 9 February 2016 (UTC)

It's entirely possible for a lag period to promote better vetting of the candidate. However, people are free to spend as much time as possible before casting their !votes, so I don't know if it would have any effect on this aspect.  Wisdom89 ^♦talk 03:10, 9 February 2016 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Ironholds 2 immediately springs to mind; except that it has a 96 hour Q&A and discussion period. It did not seem to go well. Esquivalience ^t 03:27, 9 February 2016 (UTC)

I should have said nobody touches the page for 48 hrs. No question, nothing. Anna F remote (talk) 05:17, 9 February 2016 (UTC)

Then where would the discussion take place? ansh666 07:44, 9 February 2016 (UTC)

No discussion, no !voting, no nothing. It just sits there for a couple of days. Then the whole thing gets rolling. Anna Frodesiak (talk) 10:08, 9 February 2016 (UTC)

I think it's an idea with merit! While I can't imagine a game-able downside, I do see an upside with positive potential.--John Cline (talk) 22:38, 21 February 2016 (UTC)

I was just going to mention that failed experiment. The delay did absolutely nothing but put off the voting period. Kurtis ^(talk) 17:38, 11 February 2016 (UTC)

The two-phase approach that was discussed last year was very different than that experiment. In the spirit of a wiki, I feel we should be open to trying new, low-cost approaches. If they work out, great! If not, learn what we can from it, and try again. isaacl (talk) 22:13, 11 February 2016 (UTC)

I don't disagree, but I can't really envision it making much of a difference. The only thing it would do is prolong the inevitable. That being said, I guess it doesn't really hurt to try it out. Kurtis ^(talk) 23:16, 13 February 2016 (UTC)

A two-phase process has been discussed before. There are some participants who offer an initial opinion and do not return to the RfA discussion to engage further, and so their recorded opinion may not have benefited from later discussions. Having an initial phase without support/oppose statements allows some analysis to be present for all interested parties to review before stating a view on supporting the candidate's request for adminship privileges. It should also help enable some consolidation of the discussion regarding the candidate's pros and cons. This makes it easier for editors to quickly become up-to-date on the latest status of the discussion, which encourages participation. isaacl (talk) 09:17, 9 February 2016 (UTC)

Two-phases, eh? Interesting. Thanks isaacl. :) Anna Frodesiak (talk) 10:09, 9 February 2016 (UTC)

Anyhow, I just threw the idea out there. Sometimes it can give rise to another idea that makes a lot of sense. I would like to add that I see nothing terribly wrong with how things are going. Anna Frodesiak (talk) 10:08, 9 February 2016 (UTC)

Well, I can see two problems with the idea. First, how is it to be advertised? We have mechanisms like User:Tangotango/RfA Analysis/Report and WP:CENT that start up once a new RfA is transcluded. How would you propose a nomination is "announced" while it is not publicly available for a vote or comment? Secondly, any new RfA is bound to generate discussion. If there isn't an RfA page for comments the discussion will simply form elsewhere. I think your proposal might give the community two days to perform vetting but I don't think there's requisite benefit for the hassle this change would cause. The only real up-side is that admins could shut down the SNOW-close nominations before voting even starts, which is a questionable if necessary process. Thanks for the suggestion, Anna, but it doesn't make a lot of sense to me. Chris Troutman (talk) 19:51, 11 February 2016 (UTC)

Introducing a two-phase approach can be as small a change as adding a request at the top of the RfA for support/oppose opinions to be deferred for X days, and potentially setting a later overall RfA deadline to accommodate the two phases. I agree that I don't see a value in saying no discussion should proceed; I prefer the suggestion I linked to above. isaacl (talk) 22:13, 11 February 2016 (UTC)

• 7 Days is already a long process and discriminates against those editors for whom this is just a hobby that they put a few hours a month into. We shouldn't be looking at extending the process and making it less inviting to candidates. By all means let potential candidates take soundings and decide whether to or when to run, but don't lengthen the RFA process by making that a rigid and compulsory prequel. ϢereSpielChequers 12:35, 15 February 2016 (UTC)
  • The proposed two-phase process is intended to provide additional background information for those weighing in, rather than providing information for the candidate. There is a difficult balance to strike, since a shortened Requests for Adminship process also discriminates against editors who only put a few hours into Wikipedia, by reducing the available time window to participate. As I mentioned in the previous discussion thread, trying out new formats will most likely have to be something voluntary, so everyone can get an idea of how they may work before more definitive changes are made. isaacl (talk) 16:39, 15 February 2016 (UTC)
• I felt really bad after what happened to Ironholds. I think the community (including me as part of it) did them a disservice with that RFA. All the same rationales were applied. More time to consider and investigate the candidate. More time to ask and answer questions. RFA was always meant to be a discussion, but if anything we've learned that RFA discussions are often uncivil and rarely lead to good things. Editors claim they're badgered; discussions are moved off the main page and out of sight so they die; candidates are recommended to not participate in the discussion; there are no repercussions for uncivil behaviour and comments attacking the editor. If RFA were like a normal vetting processing conducted by a panel, then I would strongly advocate for these changes, but it's simply a court of public opinion -- on the internet of all places. Mkdw^talk 20:05, 15 February 2016 (UTC)
• I don't know. A lot of the RfA "regulars" already vet the candidates for a few days themselves, read the discussions, and then make a decision. Letting a new RfA sit there wouldn't really add much IMO, as seven days is already a plenty long process. It might also just increase stress for the candidate. Johanna^{(talk to me!)} 02:31, 17 February 2016 (UTC)

Especially now that we have Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Optional RfA candidate poll. Mkdw^talk 03:21, 17 February 2016 (UTC)

The optional candidate poll serves a different purpose that the two-phase proposal I linked to: it is for candidates who are unsure about how their contributions will be viewed in the light of a request for adminship permissions. Responders are not necessarily going to investigate in depth, and the emphasis is on a quick numerical response to provide simple feedback. It was deliberately not intended to be referred to during a subsequent request for adminship.

Regarding current practice, it's unclear to me how much in-depth investigation is performed by the majority of commenters, and there are many who comment once and do not return. I agree there are many regulars who do perform detailed examinations; I think the overall conversation would be improved if the fruits of these analyses could be posted first, and then participants could offer their views on supporting or opposing the request. isaacl (talk) 17:24, 17 February 2016 (UTC)

@Isaacl: Then it seems to me what you want is for people to wait for the "vetting" to happen before casting their votes. I don't think it makes sense, in a volunteer community, to try to push the opinions of the usual suspects that provide their opinions because you dislike the misguided actions of the hoi polloi. I get where you're coming from but this isn't a problem you should be looking to solve. RfA is political; get over it. Chris Troutman (talk) 17:38, 17 February 2016 (UTC)

The goal is just to have the best conversation possible regarding a candidate's suitability for receiving adminship permissions. Those stating their opinions can avail themselves of the analyses of others or not, exactly as is done today. isaacl (talk) 16:00, 18 February 2016 (UTC)

@Isaacl: The same thing is accomplished; a review of the candidate is done before there's an RFA vote. Regardless, the two-phase proposal doesn't work. It was tried previously and it doesn't appear there's anything original or things done to address the problems that occurred last time. I worry it would be a repeat of the same mistake and we've seen it's the candidate that suffers. The proposal didn't create a better vetting process but exacerbated the current problems with RFA. The hostile discussion environment; badgering, personal attacks, and so forth. Separately, I think it's highly debatable whether RFA votes receive more in-depth review than that optional RFA candidate poll. Some RFA votes are done without any review at all. Mkdw^talk 02:33, 21 February 2016 (UTC)

As I mentioned, the optional candidate poll is deliberately not intended to be used during the RfA discussion, so it doesn't serve as a way to provide background to those providing their views. I'm not aware of the specific two-phase proposal I linked to being tried before; the example mentioned above was very different than the proposal. If you're concerned about some opinions being expressed without any review at all, then having some background information provided prior to participants stating their support or opposition can help avoid this. Lastly, the tenor of the conversation is up to the participants: if they want a more collaborative discussion, they have to lead by example, and allow any negative branches to wither. isaacl (talk) 16:21, 21 February 2016 (UTC)

Delay before transclusion

I believe we can achieve the potential benefits of Anna's suggestion and allay the concerns iterated in the above section by this modification:

Instead of imposing a 48 hour moratorium to ensue directly after an RfA is transcluded, we can require that a minimum span of 48 hours must exist between the time-stamp of the first edit that creates an RfA subpage and the time-stamp of the edit which ultimately transcludes it as a live request. We can use categorization to segregate the pages, and parser magic to automate the entire process; ensuring accurate categorization for all RfA subpages, at all times, (accurate categorization is only assured for the categories inherent to this proposal). For example: we can create categories related to the RfA's "state of transclusion"; being either Pre/In/Post transclusion and further refine those in Pre-transclusion as being either <48 or >48 in accordance with the accrual of the required time-span.

Aside this, I suggest considering whether or not a maximum span might also be worth stipulating. I have seen RfA subpages at MfD because they were apparently abandoned; interminably languished in Pre-transclusion. We could do better by defining a terminus and using CSD on pages that exceed it.

I am curious to hear the opinions of others regarding this approach. Thank you.--John Cline (talk) 21:15, 22 February 2016 (UTC)

Thank you, John. I am curious too. Anna Frodesiak (talk) 04:49, 24 February 2016 (UTC)

Thank you, Anna! It is always a pleasure seeing you well, and a pure joy remembering how wonderful you are.--John Cline (talk) 13:27, 24 February 2016 (UTC)

• Comment - while 48 hours is sufficient for accomplishing many things, it could be that a different span of time actually would serve this endeavor even better. For example I would prefer the minimum of 72 hours be used and I am not averse to using as much as seven days. I personally do support a terminus as well and if it was mine to do, six months is where it would lie. Cheers.--John Cline (talk) 13:27, 24 February 2016 (UTC)

If there are no RFAs in the next 24 hours or so, then we will have had no RFAs (successful or unsuccessful) in a month, unless you count the recent one by User:Shy-Boy that was never added correctly. Does anyone else find it concerning that we could have such a long dry spell? Everymorning (talk) 17:21, 22 January 2016 (UTC)

Everymorning you brought this up less than a month ago and the subject is broached every time we don't have an RFA for more than 3 weeks. It's in line with the declining editing of Wikipedia and frankly we had a much larger "dry spell" in August and September yet we bounced back and had 6 candidates promoted and 14 candidates not promoted. I believe this puts us even ahead of last year. Mkdw^talk 17:31, 22 January 2016 (UTC)

Two things: I started that section on November 30 last year, which is almost 2 months ago, not less than a month ago, and that "dry spell" was 17 days, not 30 days as is the case today. Everymorning (talk) 17:41, 22 January 2016 (UTC)

What exactly do you find troubling about this very predictable and recurring dry spell?  Wisdom89 ^♦talk 17:42, 22 January 2016 (UTC)

The discussion continued on until December 13. If we want to worry about the semantics, I will certainly give you credit that you waited just over a whole month before bringing up the very same subject again. Mkdw^talk 17:54, 22 January 2016 (UTC)

The number of successful RFAs has fallen by over 90% since 2007, and by a whisker 2015 had even fewer successful RFAs than 2014. The level of editing has dropped since 2007, but if we look at the best available editing stat for potential admins, editors saving over 100 edits in mainspace that month, the drop is only by about a third; Not only that but 2015 has shown an increase on 2014, with some recent months having higher editing levels than we've seen since 2010. The decline of RFAs is not in line with the level of editing of Wikipedia. That said we know that a big chunk of the drop in RFAs came in early 2008 after the unbundling of Rollback and much of the drop in editing will be attributable to changes such as the rise of the edit filters, and a number of editors moving to Wikidata. ϢereSpielChequers 20:59, 22 January 2016 (UTC)

I always like hearing about the stats you track, WereSpielChequers but I don't understand your statement about the number of editors moving to Wikidata...are these individuals you are familiar with who've moved to another project or are there actual numbers that this is a concerning issue? Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 21:24, 22 January 2016 (UTC)

Hi Liz, I wouldn't describe it as a concerning issue, though it might have been concerning if wikidata was a rival project as opposed to another wiki within the wikimedia movement. It is just one of those quirks that one needs to be aware of when trying to use raw edit figures as a measure of community health. Many of the other wikis launched in the last 15 years have syphoned off editors from here, some have split their time, others have simply transferred to the other wiki. Off the top of my head I can't remember where I got the Wikidata info from, it may have been on one of the mailing lists. But the stat/claim I remember was that half of the wikidata crowd were new to the movement and half had come from Wikipedia. That was some months ago and might be worth someone doing some research on, my assumption is that successful new projects extend the wiki career of the editors who become their founding generation, unsuccessful new projects probably lose us editors. The important lesson for the community is that we need to think of retention across the whole community, I'm certainly aware of editors whose main or only focus has shifted from here to Wikimedia Commons - from an EN Wikipedia perspective they might be gone, but from a wikimedia wide perspective they are very much still with us. ϢereSpielChequers 21:49, 22 January 2016 (UTC)

Most definitely expected with the declining edit numbers. What is needed to stop this drought is editor retention efforts and better WMF management, but it takes 2 years for such efforts to have an positive effect on RfA, and I strongly doubt the WMF would even consider legitimate editor retention efforts. Esquivalience ^t 21:26, 22 January 2016 (UTC)

Hi Esquivalience what makes you think that editing numbers are declining, let alone declining on the same scale as RFAs? ϢereSpielChequers 21:52, 22 January 2016 (UTC)

@Esquivalience; There are very serious senior management issues at the WMF, not to mention some very opaque processes regarding their board. Their incompetence is finally catching up with them. I suspect that if the Esino Lario Wikimania fails (and I think it will do so), we'll see a big shakeup at the WMF with quite a number of senior and less senior types fleeing WMF like a sinking ship. --Hammersoft (talk) 21:57, 22 January 2016 (UTC)

I found this an interesting page: User:Katalaveno/TBE. It's denotes the time between 10 million edits. There's naturally lots of problems with the data such as factoring in automated edits, but the last 5 cycles have beat 9 cycles from 2013 to mid 2015. Mkdw^talk 22:03, 22 January 2016 (UTC)

• The halcyon days of Wikipedia are over. This project is dying. In response, the WMF is imploding. What should be happening is the construction of a very well developed strategic plan for moving Wikipedia out of its growth model and into a sustaining model intended to make it last for decades, if not centuries. But, that's not happening and now is likely to never happen, as the WMF is falling apart at the seams. There is an increasing possibility that we will be referring to Wikipedia in the past tense within five years. --Hammersoft (talk) 22:19, 22 January 2016 (UTC)

Why Wikipedia Is in Trouble Jan. 14, 2016 --Moxy (talk) 22:28, 22 January 2016 (UTC)

• People have been predicting the end of Wikipedia almost as long as they've been predicting the end of The Simpsons or Ken Barlow or Microsoft. It's not happening and a surer predictor will be when my watchlist shows no changes, which I can't ever imagine. (And I haven't even got a big watchlist either). Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 22:30, 22 January 2016 (UTC)

@Ritchie333: unfortunately your argument doesn't fill me with as much faith as it should - of the three examples you cite, The Simpsons is very likely to be gone within the next 100 years, Ken Barlow is certain to be gone (unless they somehow replace the character with a new actor when the current one passes away), and Microsoft, well, might or might not be still around. Similar giants have perished in the past. Wikipedia should be aiming for much greater longevity than those; as long as the internet and current civilisation is still alive, there is need for an online encyclopedia with accuracy, breadth, and depth; and by and large we do a better job of that than any other.  — Amakuru (talk) 18:37, 28 February 2016 (UTC)

The increase in overall editing is probably due to the probable increase of new vandal fighters in terms of their proportion. Some of them make tens of thousands of reverts in a few months, and I suspect a smaller subset of them are deliberately playing whac-a-vandal to gain more experience points and levels on Wikipedia. Vandal fighters will never pass RfA nowadays without other contributions. Esquivalience ^t 22:43, 22 January 2016 (UTC)

One change since 2007 is that vandalfighting bots and tools have got faster and more efficient, so most vandalism gets reverted faster and the typical vandal gets blocked faster, many only get in the five vandalisms that get them four blocks and a warning. The other slightly more recent one is the rise of the edit filters, and they prevent vandalism by not allowing the vandalism edit to be saved. So the current flow of edits almost certainly involves less vandalism than it did during the 2007 peak. That doesn't mean that all vandalism is gone, I still find some with some of my bespoke tools, and occasionally even on my watchlist, but I don't catch as much as I used to. Another big change to editing levels was the move of intrawiki links from a many to many system to a hub and spoke system. Previously if the Xhosa Wikipedia gained an article on Britney Spears hundreds of other language wikipedias would then have an edit adding an intrawiki link, on some languages this was a big proportion of all edits, and the change cost us a lot of edits here. I'd agree with your last point, "good vandalfighter" on its own has been insufficient to pass RFA at least since Rollback was unbundled in early 2008. But part of that is because we have less scope nowadays for human vandalfighters in the community, they've lost most of their role to edit filters and bots. ϢereSpielChequers 12:48, 23 January 2016 (UTC)

What do you need admins for? That is not a facetious question. The question arises from one proposition that I think makes sense and is informed by my experience. First, in my experience editing here, I have never said to myself, 'I really wish I could do that' - I have been empowered to do all the things I want to do, which leads to the proposition: this place is best run the less we, as responsible individual editors need to go to another class of individuals (admins). (Or there is the possibility that it is so well run that the admin work is done seamlessly, which also suggests that there is no need 'for more cooks to spoil the soup', as they say). Please understand that I am not asking what do admins do, I have been around enough to see that, I am asking, what do we need more for.

If a knowledgeable person, or group could come up with arguments and explanations which make real the statements like, "we need 'x' additional admins to do X", "'y' additional admins to do Y", these conversations would get a better return on their seemingly endless investment. (Then we can proceed to see if there are already admins, who can say, 'oh, I can pitch in there' and other editors, who will raise their hand and say oh, let me look into that and work in that area, so I can think about volunteering to do that tool work, or 'oh, no tools are needed for that', so is there another way we can entice useful people to do that, or unbundle some tool, if a tool is needed, or even explore assignment of admins). So, can anyone here, make even the beginning of a case in even one discrete area: 'We need more admins to . . . because . . . and be as convincing as possible, please? Perhaps, an alternative way to do this is get two or three admins who do the good work in an area to explain why they see a need for more adminning there, and then ask them to do active advertisement and recruitment. Alanscottwalker (talk) 15:13, 23 January 2016 (UTC)

@Alanscottwalker: We do not need more admins, as there is no deadline; however, more admins in the right areas (more obscure areas, aka areas that are not WP:AIV or related to deletion) would increase efficiency and help with the more complicated parts of maintaining 5 million+ articles. However, if we cannot promote more admins, we can encourage existing admins to maintain such obscure areas.

However, I more strongly advocate for better editor retention efforts and believe that it would be costly to promote many admins without a similar gain of content editors. There is a considerable cost in promoting prolific content-focused admins. Admins who actually use their maintenance-oriented tools have less time to create and edit content. Since content-focused admins are usually among the most prolific editors, Wikipedia's five million articles are negatively affected (although the admins are not at fault for this), reducing the usefulness of Wikipedia to readers. We need to encourage people to keep Wikipedia to date and to create content, and not by letting money and time flow down the drain with initiatives such as Flow and The Wikipedia Adventure (which makes Wikipedia look like a massively-multiplayer simulation game). Esquivalience ^t 00:52, 24 January 2016 (UTC)

I am surprised that no one has yet mentioned the possible effect of Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Optional RfA candidate poll. Only a few of the 56 editors who have sought opinions received high endorsements. Two are now administrators. A few others were on the edge or advised to wait and possibly improve in a few areas. The majority were rated low enough that no doubt they have been discouraged, almost certainly correctly for the near future. I have expected three or four more editors who received very high endorsements to file a request soon but we are still waiting. I think the opinion poll has taken the place of some filings. Donner60 (talk) 04:37, 24 January 2016 (UTC)

It seems to have definitely reduced the number of unsuccessful RFAs. Mkdw^talk 05:56, 24 January 2016 (UTC)

To actually answer your question, Category:Administrative backlog is a good place to start looking for places where more admins would be needed. Its contents will change over time so looking at it a few times over a few days might give you a good indication of the most backlogged areas—or at least, the most easily quantifiable backlogs. I swear I saw Category:Non-free files with orphaned versions more than 7 days old at a backlog of thousands just a few months ago, but either I'm mistaken or someone has been very hard at work. — Bilorv_(talk)^(c)(e) 11:43, 24 January 2016 (UTC)

@ Alanscottwalker There used to be two major arguments about our number of admins, latterly we've seen a third. One argument, the one I espouse, is that mops are cheap, we are a self governing community and an important aspect of that is that every clueful, civil member of the community should be able to become an admin if they so want. In a self governing community where a large proportion of established editors are admins there would be little scope for editors who specialise in only doing admin stuff and little or no pressure on content contributors to cutback their content work in order to do admin stuff. Another, as I think you express is that we should only worry about the declining number of admins when the shortage of admins reaches the point where some admin roles have insufficient coverage. I could respond to that one by looking at the canary in our coalmine - admin coverage at AIV, where there have been gaps and we need 24/7 coverage. Most admin functions are semi urgent in that they can if necessary build up a few hours backlog that is cleared in the US evening. Some are non urgent and build up much bigger backlogs. But I'd prefer to respond to those who only think the shortage becomes a problem when there aren't enough admins to do all urgent admin work, by asking them what their model is for a community in which admins are a declining minority with extra tools? Do you have an alternative governance model to the idea of this being a self governing community? The third and more recent argument for more admins is that we have a growing wikigeneration gulf between the bulk of the admins and a large proportion of the editors. I wrote a Signpost article about this in 2010, and sadly it has got much much worse since. I think that the Wikigeneration gulf is a cultural problem, and I know of no other solution than to appoint admins from the underrepresented wikigenerations. ϢereSpielChequers 12:01, 24 January 2016 (UTC)

Well, is this 'self governing' model you articulate what is actually leading to the backlog, in that no one is accountable nor responsible, so needed workflows do not get done, because admins will not or do not want to do them? (Laying aside, that if no one wants to do them and they languish, then perhaps they do not matter, much.) If admins do not want to do them, chances are very likely more admins would just lead to more admins who do not want to do them - so they will not get done, no matter how many more you have. Another self-governing model would be community assignment to get those things done, regular community-admin drives to do x, more community approved bots, more unbundling. Alanscottwalker (talk) 12:31, 24 January 2016 (UTC)

No, the backlogs don't cause a shortage of admins, the shortage of admins is the cause of any urgent and semi urgent backlogs that we have, more admins would mean that important backlogs would be more easily addressed. Community assignment of tasks is a very different model, it isn't easy to combine with a volunteer community. One way it can work is to hire staff to do things that volunteers think need doing but aren't volunteering to do. I don't see it as necessary or desirable for admin type roles here. More bots are possible, but we are running out of areas of admin work that don't need human discretion. Community admin drives to fix particular backlogs can yield results, I've done a successful one, but I see that as a temporary stop gap measure that risks exacerbating other problems, in particular the more you concentrate the existing admins time into admin work the more you detach them from the community. As for unbundling, I think that we should unbundle "block newbie" for experienced vandalfighters who don't have sufficient content contributions to pass RFA; sadly I doubt we yet have consensus for such a move. ϢereSpielChequers 12:54, 24 January 2016 (UTC)

You may have misunderstood the question. Backlogs don't cause the shortage of admins -- no one suggested they did - admins not doing them cause the backlogs. Why are they not doing them? More admins will not make them more easily addressed, they will still be the same task, that admins won't do. Alanscottwalker (talk) 13:30, 24 January 2016 (UTC)

One idea I had for a hired role is professional mediation: have mandatory binding mediation where someone dedicated to the task would work out content disputes on articles. Trying to get disagreeing parties to work together is a thankless job, sapping energy from whomever is involved. Having someone responsible for this full-time, with a track record that can be evaluated by the community, would help ensure that mediation can occur as effectively as possible. At the moment, though, I do not believe there is much appetite in the community to follow this route. isaacl (talk) 15:14, 24 January 2016 (UTC)

@Alanscottwalker I don't think I misunderstood your question, I just disagree with some of your assumptions. We have a stable or increasing community but a declining number of admins, and the vast majority of the admins we do have have been here a very long time. No one should be surprised if that means we have backlogs of admin related tasks, not because admins aren't using the tools, but because there are fewer admins around and many of us are less active than we once were. But a quick glance at the adminstats shows over 90,000 logged admin actions in the last month, including every type of action logged there. So admins are doing admin actions, just not as many or as quickly as we need. If the problem was that a particular type of task wasn't being done regardless of how many admins we had then you'd expect to either see that a particular type of logged admin action wasn't happening, or a particular backlog was growing with extra items being added to the backlog and nothing being actioned. I could understand your point if there was a backlog that had been growing since the "peak admin" years with little or nothing in it being actioned, but I'm not aware of any such backlog. ϢereSpielChequers 12:45, 25 January 2016 (UTC)

A few more thoughts, I am not a big fan of the contest model of editing but it seems to motivate some to do things - a contest model of backlog tasks would be less philosophically objectionable than in editing - 'thank you - that's a sucky task but you did it with aplomb, here's your prize'. Alanscottwalker (talk) 14:10, 24 January 2016 (UTC)

Jeff Atwood, when setting up Stack Exchange, described a model of community engagement where members gradually move from newcomers, who need assistance, to more experienced members able to help the newcomers, to long-time members, who are freed up to move onto other tasks. It's important for a vibrant community to keep the pipeline flowing: admins may not mind doing some tasks for a time, but they can tire of them, and either stop doing them or stop doing them as effectively as desired. It's easy to become jaded with dealing with new editors, for example, and start to lose empathy for the problems faced by first-time editors who genuinely wish to contribute useful content but need help learning about the Wikipedia environment. isaacl (talk) 14:57, 24 January 2016 (UTC)

With respect, it's that kind of comment that is all wrong with respect to needing more admins -- helping new users is not an tool task. Your comment seems to degrade experienced users. Alanscottwalker (talk) 15:05, 24 January 2016 (UTC)

My apologies: for the sake of conciseness, I elided part of the line of thought. There are certain tasks that require adminship privileges that admins may not mind doing for some period of time, but may tire of doing. (A small subset of this is related to interactions with other editors, such as deciding if they have contravened specific policies, and how this should be handled.) To allow admins to be freed up to move on to do other things, it is useful to have new admins to allow for turnover in who is performing these tasks. isaacl (talk) 15:22, 24 January 2016 (UTC)

This dry spell is a disaster (sarcasm). :) Mkdw^talk 00:53, 30 January 2016 (UTC)

This happens every time...I think we'll be fine. ansh666 04:36, 30 January 2016 (UTC)

Yes, I know hence the sarcasm note. Mkdw^talk 15:39, 12 February 2016 (UTC)

Nope – 2 successful RfA's per month (on average) is not enough to keep up with attrition. Further, the "resysopping" numbers for 2016 are abysmal so far. The day soon approaches when we won't have enough active Admins to keep up with tasks, and then this community is going to have a really serious discussion about what needs to be done to fix that on a permanent basis... --IJBall (contribs • talk) 00:51, 31 January 2016 (UTC)

However, the passing of time means that there will be more developments in the world of machine learning and intelligence. With a well-trained and well-configured neural network, many admin actions can be automated, even blocking, protection, deletion, and sockpuppet investigations (see Stylometry). However, the WMF lets moths fly around their $50-60 million in equity and relies on volunteers for bot work so that is a complete dream. Esquivalience ^t 03:20, 1 February 2016 (UTC)

I would agree that IT investments, especially in Artificial intelligence, could in theory automate some admin functions, perhaps not now, but surely in the future; If we had an AI bot handling most AIV reports and another most speedy deletion tags then our dwindling cadre of admins could keep the site functioning for many years by handling a reduced workload dominated by requests for unblocks and page restorations instead of as at present blocks and deletions. That would appease those who see the RFA drought as risking an insufficient group of admins to keep the site administered. But it does not address either of the Governance/Community problems, the wikigeneration gulf between most admins and much of the current community and the lack of an alternative to the governance model of this being a self policing community. ϢereSpielChequers 15:51, 1 February 2016 (UTC)

It bears repeating that the inactivity of admins, presumably some of the editors most invested in the success of the project, is a direct result of WMF's inability to address editor retention. If you've spent years editing and earning the community's trust all to pass the crucible that is RfA and afterward your engagement drops off because you don't think it's worth it anymore, I really have to question the institution for which we've been volunteering. It makes more sense to start cheering for Wikipedia's demise so we can fork en masse to somewhere else rather than find a novel way to shove not-good-enough editors into the broom closet. Chris Troutman (talk) 20:00, 11 February 2016 (UTC)

• The WMF is effectively incompetent in managing the coming realities in this project. They've so far refused to accept any concept of the evolution of the project, and have steadfastly insisted that things will always be as they were ten years ago. This, despite reams of evidence to the contrary. Wikipedia must evolve into a different architecture in order to sustain past a few more years before significant degradation of the product becomes unavoidable. Unfortunately, baring some tectonic shift in the senior management of the WMF, this will not happen. This isn't to say the sky is falling. Rather, the glacier continues to move, at a creeping pace, towards the cliff. Eventually, it will inexorably go over the edge. --Hammersoft (talk) 20:13, 11 February 2016 (UTC)

• It's not just the WMF – a good portion of our current Admin corps and our long-term editors don't want things to change from c. 2005 either. I think the community could do some things on their own to improve long-term prospects, but that won't happen as long as so much of our long-term membership digs their heals in and refuses to make the changes that need to be made. --IJBall (contribs • talk) 21:17, 11 February 2016 (UTC)

• My experience is the opposite, everyone wants change, just in different directions. Even when we can agree on a direction, and almost everyone agreed on Visual Editor, there's a risk of total snafu in implementation. Consensus doesn't help us here because sometimes you need to make a choice. When you are at a crossroads and you can stop, retreat or go down one of three different roads it can be difficult to get a majority for any one road and even more difficult to get consensus. Sometimes we need to go for most popular option, even if that doesn't have consensus or even a majority. ϢereSpielChequers 21:57, 11 February 2016 (UTC)

• Well, I think that's why some people why the WMF to be the "guy on a white horse" on this. On my end, I simply don't expect that to happen – we're going to have to fix it ourselves, if we want it done. --IJBall (contribs • talk) 22:12, 11 February 2016 (UTC)
  • Consensus doesn't scale up well, particularly in the volunteer English Wikipedia environment. Even with the best of intentions, editors can have different, valid opinions on how to proceed, and building a consensus is not an effective way to resolve this disagreement. At some point, the population of editors will have to change to one with greater alignment in their guiding assumptions and goals. isaacl (talk) 22:56, 11 February 2016 (UTC)

Sometimes, as with BLPprod, we hammer out a compromise that most accept as better than the status quo. Potentially new research could come in reinforcing one side or another over such divides as whether promptly tagging articles is the only way to communicate with newbies before they go, or an effective way of ensuring that newbies go away. I still think that both of these routes could give us progress on some currently intractable issues. But implementing the most popular solution sometimes has advantages, not least that there is almost always a least unpopular option. ϢereSpielChequers 13:08, 12 February 2016 (UTC)

There is a tricky dynamic in collaborative groups, and particularly volunteer ones, though. Just as consensus decision-making can give an advantage to non-collaborative behaviour, collaborative groups often will seek to address concerns raised by the most vocal participants. Thus the least unpopular option in English Wikipedia will usually still have voracious opponents, which can deadlock any attempts at progressing. isaacl (talk) 09:44, 13 February 2016 (UTC)

Yes, the consensus model relies on a significant proportion of editors trying to reach out to those they've disagreed with and build a solution that can get consensus support. Unfortunately we have become somewhat ossified, there are too many entrenched cabals who'd rather try for a blocking third than build consensus, and also too many who try to manipulate a near consensus by limiting the options in debate. The classic way to do that is to try and frame the debate as between three options, two you consider too discredited to gain much support and the option you seek to impose. ϢereSpielChequers 12:17, 13 February 2016 (UTC)

@Chris Troutman. Re your comment "If you've spent years editing and earning the community's trust all to pass the crucible that is RfA and afterward your engagement drops off because you don't think it's worth it anymore" There's a myth that a significant proportion of people who pass RFA then do little or nothing as admins. The reality is that most of our currently active admins have been around for many many years - we have more than twice as many active admins as we have appointed in the last 6 years. I think the myth stems not so much from the very rare admins who have done that, more from the hundreds of users listed at Wikipedia:Adminstats with 10 or fewer logged admin actions. But those figures are misleading because the logs only date back to December 2004, so some of the first generation of admins have all or almost all their logged actions ignored; They include loads of people who've never been admins but due to an anomaly have been logged as having one or two admin actions; and a handful of WMF accounts whose admin actions on behalf of the WMF should be rare. As for why admins leave, don't assume it is always because they "don't think it's worth it anymore", some take breaks while they are busy in real life, some get blocked, several are known to have died. ϢereSpielChequers 22:33, 11 February 2016 (UTC)

There have been no RfBs in 2015. The last RfB was Wikipedia:Requests for bureaucratship/Acalamari 2, which was closed on January 31, 2014. There still has not been any new RfBs as of now. Will there ever be another RfB? GeoffreyT2000 (talk) 16:29, 25 March 2016 (UTC)

Probably. :) I don't know what the current 'crats think of their current workload, etc., but I'd imagine someone will eventually throw their hat into the ring, and if many crat tasks get backlogged (as will eventually happen), I'd guess that would create additional pressure to find more 'crats. --joe decker^talk 17:20, 25 March 2016 (UTC)

I informally nominate Dennis Brown on this talk page, after his wikibreak... North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 17:40, 25 March 2016 (UTC)

I agree that adding more crats now and then is important -- even if the workload does not fully warrant it, it's important to show the vitality of a project and to not have everyone in that position be someone who was around in 2007 or before. -- Michael Scott Cuthbert (talk) 17:43, 25 March 2016 (UTC)

We have also seen quite a few Crats have their tools removed due to increased enforcement of minimum activity requirements. So it's been a two fold decline. Mkdw^talk 17:52, 25 March 2016 (UTC)

• We have enough bureaucrats (for now), as their responsibilities number few, and many RfBs will not pass at the high discretionary range as the sock loom and guild of trolls will in bad-faith filibuster and shoot down every RfB by competent candidates (just like RfA). Maybe in the future if bureaucrats are entrusted with more responsibilities requiring high trust (the #1 reason why we have bureaucrats in the first place) we should encourage the right editors to run. Additionally, the position of bureaucrat does not seem to be attractive, even to current administrators—they already have a large enough backlog, and they would attract even more of the same sock loom and guild of trolls if they were to succeed. Esquivalience ^t 18:09, 25 March 2016 (UTC)
• There are generally no bureaucrat backlogs anymore (ever since global renaming), that does not mean that additional and fresh perspectives would not be useful in, especially, bureaucrat discussions. I've thrown out a few names in the last, but none seemed interested in throwing their hat in the ring. –xeno^talk 23:58, 25 March 2016 (UTC)
• Anyone who has read recent RFAs will understand why nobody has the slightest interest in running for RFB, which historically has had an even higher requirement for "consensus". Risker (talk) 03:07, 30 March 2016 (UTC)

  Absolutely this. SQL^{Query me!} 06:36, 2 April 2016 (UTC)

This edit request to Wikipedia:Requests for adminship has been answered. Set the |answered= or |ans= parameter to no to reactivate your request.

Hello ! I will help all people. If I'm administrator . I have more time. I want something in our Wikipedia, has become the best. Sorry for the error. Vladislav Davydenko (talk) 14:28, 29 March 2016 (UTC)

@ Vladislav Davydenko (talk · contribs) - I'm not sure if you have experience as an IP user or with another account (or another wiki), but with this account you only have 2 edits worth of experience so far. To be an admin, you need a great deal more. I suggest you read Wikipedia:Guide to requests for adminship. - ^theWOLFchild 14:34, 29 March 2016 (UTC)

Also, you might want to consider requesting it on another language wikipedia, because english doesn't appear to be your first language. — Omni Flames (talk contribs) 08:03, 30 March 2016 (UTC)

We have other ESL admins here... - ^theWOLFchild 16:50, 2 April 2016 (UTC)