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Key policies/issues to consider[edit]

Proposals[edit]

Please use the discussion section to reply to any of the proposals. "Proposals" section is for proposals only. Any other comment will be either moved or removed.

Proposal #1 by White Cat

I think different levels of adminship should be given. Currently there are 5 major levels of access on wikipedia. These are: anonymous, regular users, administrators (sysops), bureaucrats, stewards. Having levels between users and administrators would be productive. These levels should not however be "trial admins". -- Cat chi? 20:53, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

I disagree with that 100%.  Tcrow777  talk  00:36, 29 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Disagree, but could change depending on further explanation of these levels (and don't forget CheckUser and Oversight!) Diez2 14:58, 2 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Disagree - I see what you're saying, but I don't think it's worth the extra bureaucracy that it would demand. — xDanielxTalk 18:57, 14 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Proposal by Picaroon

I think Requests for adminship should be refactored into Requests for Comment form; after reading the nomination statement and answers to the three standard questions, anyone who wants (besides the candidate) can make their own header and, under it, state why they think the nominee should or shouldn't become an admin. Others, including the nominee, can then endorse or rebuke these sections. After seven days, a bureaucrat (maybe two in tricky cases) evaluates the merits of the support and opposition, after which they either promote or they don't. The end. Picaroon 22:09, 7 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I disagree with that 100%!  Tcrow777  talk  01:27, 1 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Disagree This is already possible with the current RfA system, between the "Discussion" and "Support" headers. Besides, many people make their reasons out beside their vote. Diez2 15:00, 2 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Proposal by TomasBat

I think that all of this is aleady solved. According to a key policy, Wikipedia is not a democracy, and because of this many users believe that it would be better if we were to discuss instead of voting when it comes to new administrators; but really, it is perfect how it works right now. This is because users vote but behind-the-scenes discussing is what encourages those votes. Votes are the results of discussions, so we discuss voting, making Wikipedia a non-democracy but a place where decisions are easilly handled. ♠TomasBat (@)(Contribs)(Sign!) 02:59, 8 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Disagree The bureaucrats do know that consensus is important, but they do occasionally IAR an RfA depending on the strength of arguments made on both sides. Diez2 15:02, 2 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Proposal by Kncyu38

The problem as I understand it is that, while not officially, RfA is actually being handled as a vote. Many votes are based on pre-existing sympathy/antipathy or parotting arguments given by others. Many votes are not even accompanied by an explanatory comment at all. I believe there is no way to change that. But we do have the opportunity to enhance the meaning of the numbers: RfA should officially be a vote.

But to gain credibility, candidates and all supporters and opposers must be able to spread relevant info regarding new arguments/developments. Very often, support votes are not changed even in the face of substantial disqualifiers. Oppose votes are redundandtly discussed in the RfA page, distracting interested users (and the closing b'crat) from quickly assessing who said what. In my opinion there is an easy solution to all of this that would not increase the bureaucrat workload, but instead drastically decrease it.

WP:CANVASS—as far as canvassing for RfAs is concerned—should be abandoned, while commenting on other users' voting comments within the RfA page should be forbidden. The existing possibility to canvass only behind the scenes (via quick e-mail notification, for example) strongly favours established cliques while discriminating against all others. Currently, for example, it is forbidden as canvassing to inform voters of new developments and/or arguments on their respective talk pages. Commenting on support votes is easily seen as canvassing, commenting on oppose votes rarely so. Actual discussions as opposed to votes may be too controversial and tedious for any b'crat to sort through and decide upon. Most of these problems regarding the relative weight of the given votes and comments could be solved simply by the two things I propose: Allow canvassing and establish a rule that makes it possible to vote and comment, and to add to or change your comment, but forbids commenting on other users' comments within the RfA page. —KNcyu38 (talk • contribs) 09:46, 8 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Disagree This would seriously throw out Wikipedia:Consensus. Diez2 15:12, 2 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Proposal by Theresa Knott

I think the root of the problem lies in the fact that people vote on the adminship of people that they do not personally know and trust. Perhaps a RFC style page that is not linked to some centralised page but instead linked only to the user's talk page and perhaps to their signature. That way, only people who had actually interacted with the user in some capacity would know they are up for adminship and only they would comment on whether they are trustworthy. I want adminship to be granted based on a candidate's past behaviour, not on how well they answer a set of standard questions. Theresa Knott | Taste the Korn 10:54, 8 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Agree, but needs more detail. How will we ensure that a person commenting had actually interacted with this user at all? Diez2 17:06, 2 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Proposal by Sam Blacketer

My proposal is written up at User:Sam Blacketer/RfA reform. In brief it aims at getting away from the vote-counting and looking at assessing adminship candidates in the round, based on their editing histories in several different aspects. By doing so it gives discretion to bureaucrats (who continue to be appointed in the same way as now) to decide whether concerns raised by other editors over aspects of the candidate's contributions demonstrate suitability or unsuitability for the admin tools. Sam Blacketer 11:34, 8 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Proposal #2 by White Cat

Perhaps rather than a pure vote, rfa should be more like rfar.

-- Cat chi? 20:53, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

Disagree RfA is not an arbitration case, where there is a dispute already ongoing. Pusing the RfA process longer than 1 week would only slow things down further. Finally, there really isn't much of a problem with the newly registered voters voting. Sure, the occasional new user will vote, but for the most part, they aren't a problem. Diez2 17:10, 2 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Proposal by Sbandrews

Reduce the amount of work that admins have to do by allowing normal editors to close AfD's etc. Then admins would only be required to deal with problem cases, essentialy blocking editors that close incorrectly, vandalise, etc. There would have to be a concurrent improvement of the current policy guides for closing AfD's etc. but that would happen naturally as a way of avoiding anarchy. RFA's could happen the same way. Regards sbandrews (t) 20:18, 8 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Disagree Bureaucrats have that job, and there really aren't that many problems with it. I mean, the bureaucreats are chosen mainly because they are good at recognizing what consensus is. Diez2 17:12, 2 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Proposal by ChazBeckett

As linked. Discuss on proposal's talk page. --Random832

I've written up a brief proposal for improving RfA. The process would remain the same up until closure. RfA that aren't obvious pass/fails enter a discussion period of all bureaucrats. I believe this would help to reduce the perception of "rogue" bureaucrats and also increase the number of successful RfAs by widening the discretionary range to 60-80% support. I welcome any feedback and hope this can be refined into a workable process. Thanks! ChazBeckett 17:45, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

Agree, but leave the bureaucrats enough discretion to IAR a vote. For example, if the opposing side only has 5 votes, but makes a much more clear case against the support side, which has 35 votes, then the RfA should be declared as a failure. Diez2 17:15, 2 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Proposal by Durin; stop offering proposals

I know, radical idea, right? :) Seriously, there have been a bazillion proposals dating back to not long after RfA began. Virtually none of them gained any traction, and the very, very few that did were for very minor changes. For example, creating a subpage for each RfA. Ooo what a radical idea that! :) Proposal after proposal after proposal that has suggested significant change has fallen flat on its face. The long list of proposals on this page will be no different. There will not be significant traction to any of them. Enough of the proposals already!

What I think should be done is a more careful analytical process. One of the first steps of this should be ascertaining what is wrong with the current RfA system. Please contribute to the beginnings of this at User:Durin/What is wrong with RfA. Another early step should be ascertaining the goals of RfA. I did this at Wikipedia_talk:Requests_for_adminship/Archive_82#What_are_the_goals_of_RfA.3F, though I don't think there was enough discussion.

In short, before we can decide what direction to go in, we should get a firm understanding of where we are (what is wrong), why we are here (what causes these problems) and where we want to be (the goals of RfA). Only then can we start intelligently discussing what car to jump in to get from Point A to Point B. Lots of shiny cars here. All of them might be wheel-less or out of gas for all we know.

Enough proposals :) --Durin 18:42, 9 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Amen. RfA is fine. Cool Bluetalk to me 22:35, 5 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Disagree Completely RfA is a very flawed process. the problem that we have is identifying the real problem, and then iding the solution. Diez2 17:16, 2 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Proposal by Radiant

The only real problem on RFA is people employing arbitrary and meaningless benchmarks to judge candidates by. This is a matter of culture. The assertion that RFA is horrendously difficult to pass is self-perpetuating because some people who would pass easily don't dare to face it, and inexperienced people who shouldn't be admins are unaware of this, thus skewing the results. The way to fix this is simply by nominating candidates. Therefore I propose that everyone active on this page finds a suitable nominee this week. >Radiant< 10:57, 10 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Neutral Nominees do help, but it ould be a WP:CANVASS violation to just go out and ask "Will you nominate me?" That's why we have self-noms to begin with. Diez2 17:18, 2 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Proposal by Sjakkalle

Abolish the "support", "oppose" and "neutral" sections and lump all the votes, and !votes into one section as is done on AFD (where "keep", and "delete" sections are a rejected idea except on the French Wikipedia). This format is far more well-designed for a discussion and also makes it much clearer how the debate is developing. Keeping a count of the votes and !votes is a bit tougher, but in the end it is the final one which counts and that can be established quite easily anyway. Sjakkalle (Check!) 13:30, 10 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Proposal by Mr.Z-man

Create an actual set of criteria to eliminate ridiculous votes. This would work similar to the criteria used for GAs and FAs. This could be based on: Experience, Quality of Work, Civility/Behavior, and Administrative Duties. Arranged in order from most important (top) to least important (bottom):

Similar to Sjakkalle's proposal above mine, this would also abolish the current setup of separate sections for Support/Oppose/Neutral (though not the votes themselves) by lumping all comments into one section. This proposal would also eliminate the "vote counter" as certain criteria are considered more important than others. Finally, instead of the three current questions, the nominee would answer questions more related to the criteria. This would eliminate any outlandish "oppose" reasons that have little to do with the sysop tools. Mr.Z-mantalk¢ 18:57, 10 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Agree This system would deal a lot more with that actual sysop tools and elimate the really dumb opposes. Diez2 17:21, 2 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Agree I am about to go on vacation and am supposed to be on wikibreak, but I just could not keep away. There is too much focus on mainspace edits and article writing. Also agree with Diez2.  Tcrow777  talk  21:33, 3 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Proposal by Rackabello

I personally do not like the way that admins selection is conducted. I agree with several past proposals that guidelines and benchmarks are arbitrary and users who vote many times vote for a RfA candidate whom they know almost nothing about. Here is my proposal for refroming the RfA system:

Just some thoughts Rackabello 05:36, 11 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Disagree I want to have the ability to poll in RfAs and self-nominate myself, the way things are right now, if someone nominates themself, then the community gets to decide if the user becomes an admin. This proposal will take away important community freedoms.  Tcrow777  talk  00:54, 4 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Sir Nicholas's opinion on Headless RfAs!

My dear ghosts, ladies and gentlemen! Lend me your ears. I must be a bit uncouth and churlish so that my words my find a place in your kitchen cabinets! RfAs have been a major pain in the ass for a while now, and all we have done is aggregated more problems rather than finding solutions (that includes me!). From the look of it, we are nowhere near getting a revolutionary new concept of deciding the worthiness of a candidate to become a system administrator. So we must salvage what we have and build upon it.

  • Passing an RfA is not difficult. Or is it? If you have been a good boy for six months, kept your head down, and have not made a lot of noise. It'll be a cinch. You'll pass and no no one will notice.
  • If you have been a bit boorish with others and have hurt their egos so bad, rest assured that that will come to haunt you on your RfAs. It pays to be sensitive and civil, especially when you're not an administrator. (It worked for me *shrug*)
  • If you have been too active for your own good, amassed a slew of edits and fast, lot of them mechanically, with automated tools, you're in for a lot of reprovals and sideswaps. So young fellows, mind you write a few good articles and shut those fat mouths up. Frankly speaking, no one likes a bureaucratic fuck, and there is a singular and good reason for that. Experience. Nowhere else, but by article writing, you get experience of dealing with trolls, vandals and difficult users. It takes utmost skill to get past them all and have them all sign an armistice and work towards consensus.
  • Affirmative action. Get involved in some disputes, no jump right into them. Try and mediate and don't let the shit hit the fan. If it does, well, you did your best! Remember though, condescension is your enemy and not your friend. Treat everyone fairly and they will repay your favour.

Well, that's the easy way of passing RfAs. There are some who do not follow these unwritten laws and get involved in high-scoring matches and revellers fire up altercations on talk pages, spitting and swiping at the unlucky devil who happened to promote or dismiss the candidates. Here's what I think, and I have said it before – [1], [2]. –

Ideally, a discussion amongst bureaucrats should occur in the RfAs that undergo special circumstances, such as Danny's. RfAs are controversial from time to time, and if more bureaucrats had the chance to discuss the RfA at hand, then there wouldn't be such a community backlash against one bureaucrat who decided to promote using his/her discretion. I haven't been looking over the actions in Danny's RfA, but I'm hoping that a future trend of discussion amongst all bureaucrats on some Wikipedia page (Bureaucrat's noticeboard) would occur (if it already hasn't; mind me, I've been out of my usual heavy RfA watching recently, so I'm not fully up to date on things). Nishkid64 21:43, 11 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Proposal by Walton

WP:CANVAS should be abolished in relation to RfAs. The users who are best-qualified to judge a candidate's suitability for adminship are those who have already encountered and/or worked with that user. Therefore, although sales pitch shouldn't be encouraged, candidates should be allowed to advertise their RfA to other users. Linking to an RfA in your signature and on your userpage should also be allowed, for the same reason; if you spot the RfA while in the midst of discussion with someone, you're more qualified to judge their suitability for adminship than if you see them for the first time at RfA. Walton Vivat Regina! 18:58, 11 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Proposal by bibliomaniac15

I do not know how we will abolish the ideal of a vote, or how we will ever manage to survive the incessant deluge of RFA reform suggestions, but I do know that we must have one thing: the setting of actual standards to evaluate a nominee for adminship and cratship. Just as we have policies for reliable sources, deletion, and all that other good stuff, we must eliminate the arbitrariness that is going on. I believe it's really preventing people who would otherwise be good sysops or crats from attaining such a position, especially RFB. I acknowledge that this page is for RFA only, but if we do reform this and it is successful, it is inevitable that requests for bureacratship will have an overhaul. I seriously believe that if Taxman or Raul tried to run today, they would have been opposed many times over. As for me, I very much like the RFA standards that Z-man proposed:

I apologize for making my statement tedious and dragging, but I felt my sanity was at stake. :P bibliomaniac15 01:31, 12 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Addendum: After examining the reforms and the plans that we've made in the past, I've come to a conclusion: many of us lack foresight. We only see what we want in the beginning when in fact, we'll be kicking ourselves a year later. Consider the case of Esperanza. Formed during rough times in 2005, what happened after that? It created a bureaucracy and shut down. Similarly, we've already created the present RFA format that we haven't anticipated would be so derided. We have to start thinking more in terms of the future and how we will affect a new wave of future admins. bibliomaniac15 00:22, 18 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Proposal by MaxSem

Adminship is no big deal? But de-adminship IS. As a consequence, some people are afraid to support, being afraid of possible abuse. I propose developing a simple and clear policy on removing sysop rights. Easy come, easy go. What it should be? Discussion like on AfD, votish discussion like on current RfA, vote like the Board Elections? I don't know, but the CAT:CSD backlog suggests that something must be done. MaxSem 18:46, 12 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Proposal by Oleg Alexandrov: Pure vote, 75% cutoff

Disadvantages

Advantages

Proposal by Errabee: abolish support and neutral; focus on objections

Currently, the proposal by Sjakalle is being tried at Moralis' RfA. Although I am not very pleased with that experiment (to put it mildly), I think the idea behind it is good, but lacks a proper elaboration. So instead of just complaining, I thought I would contribute a new proposal (sorry Durin).

As most of the contributors have said already, RfA is not a vote, but in practice it is dealt with as if it were a vote. And according to the Admin survey, RfA has become a popularity contest, with canvassing as an unwanted side effect. Time for a radical change. I propose the following changes:

Abolish the support and neutral sections, and disallow any support or neutral statements. The RfA should focus on objections as to why the candidate should not become an admin. These objections will have to be documented, and can be discussed by the candidate and other contributors. Candidates will not benefit anymore from canvassing, so that would put an automatic stop to that practice.

If the closing bureaucrat decides that all objections have been answered to his or hers satisfaction, the candidate is sysopped; optionally the bureaucrat can give a statement as to why he or she feels this should be the outcome.

Finally, I think the current questions to the candidate are not very relevant to the process and could be deleted. Errabee 12:48, 13 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Proposal by Rebroad: Solid (policy/guideline based) reasons need to accompany votes

Regarding a recent request for adminship I've just looked at - This appears to be a good example of a user which would have made a good admin being rejected purely on their beliefs rather than their potential ability to administrate. I propose that arguments for or against a candidate should need to be based on valid grounds written down within existing Wikipedia policy and/or guidelines. Any votes not based on such policy should not be counted. --Rebroad 17:07, 14 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Proposal by Spawn Man

Opening - Like I suggested on the adminship survey, RfA should have a set of criteria that the editor must meet before they can get promoted. This idea is similar to the proposals by Mr Z man & Bibliomaniac above (Darn, you beat me to it...) ;). These criteria would undoubtedly be decided by Jimbo & the Wikipedia elites (But would probably have to go through the community to see if there's a consensus on which requirements would be needed - the final decision however, would be made by Jimbo etc...) & would have points that needed to be met before you could be given sysop powers. These could include -

Nominations - So that would be the first change. Next would be the method of nominating & being promoted. To be promoted, you would need X number of Buerocrats to endorse your nomination - that way there wouldn't be as much pressure on a single crat to make the right decision. In addition to the endorsement of the crats, there would be a "citation" section on the nomination, where normal users could "cite" the nominated user of any uncivil behaviour or breach of site rules (This would act like the oppose section now & would advise the crats on how the user has acted in the past). This would be in place because just meeting the rrequirements of the list would be too easy to pass & thus the imput from other users would be needed to affect the end descision. After reading the "oppose citations", the crats would then endorse the nomination & if you get enough, one would make you a sysop. (Similarly, crats could also oppose the nomiantion & if X nubmer oppose, then the nomination would be removed - No explaination would be needed, just a solid endorsement or opposition....)

Reasons why this may work - This way of voting would cancel out a number of problems people have with RfA at the moment - the pile on support votes, editors getting promoted who don't meet many requirements, popularity contests & questionable crat judgements to name a few. Techincally, supporting a nomiantion would be taken out - the only support which would be needed would be that of the crats. More notice would be taken of oppose votes, as they would be the ones advising the crats how this user has acted other than meeting the requirements to the list. This would also save much time, as cratswould only need to see if the user met all the requirements & if any users had cited them for bad behaviour. Also, there would undoubtedly be a cut down in the amount of users who have failed RfA's leaving the project in despair, since they would know if they met the requirements before they even nominated themselves (IE, there'd basically be no "You're not good enough, that's why we're failing you", but rather a "I need to improve in these areas before I can get nominated for adminship"). I see this as a very simple system which Jimbo could have a direct hand in creating & would solve many of the problems we all have. We all hate calling things a vote, so why not put up this "procedure" & make things simpler for everyone? Cheers, Spawn Man 02:50, 17 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Proposal by AQu01rius

I think many of the concerns on Requests for Adminship may be slightly exaggerated. The current simple voting method is not horrendous as noted by some editors. The final decision is in the hand of bureaucrats. Anyways, here are my proposal:

That's it for now. Excuse me if I have been redundant, as I did not read much of other proposals. AQu01rius (User &#149; Talk) 01:40, 19 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Proposal by Shirahadasha

Intention

The intention behind this approach is to somewhat standardize the process and create a more even, predictable, and fairer outcome, and let potential admins know what to expect and approximately when they should expect to be ready, while still permitting community discretion and escape valves to address an editor the community believes to be a problem, and still permitting a very straightforward process with "support", "oppose", and "neutral".

Create guidelines to guide process: 1. A set of threshold requirements setting basic minimum standards that establish a clear threshold based on fairly objective criteria -- see below for a proposal. 2. A set of soft competency requirements with skills that candidate must demonstrate (see below) 3. A set of objection guidelines identifying legitimate reasons to oppose.

Process: 1. A candidate would have to meet the threshold guidelines to be considered -- speedy remove from RfA if they're not met. Suggested threshold standards: Depending on the community's preferences, 2000-3000 edits, a few hundred minimum in each of main, talk, and project space, four to six months of regular editing on the project, absence of recent blocks or repeat warnings (with mechanism to override/discount abusive ones). Also, suggest that an editor review be required first (with no particular outcome.) 2. Competencies would be demonstrated through questions etc. Candidate would have to provide diffs demonstrating them. Suggested categories: editing skills, knowledge of policy, interaction with users, civility and level-headedness during disputes, and similar. Nom and/or candidate would be required to provide examples demonstrating each of the areas. 3. A person who meets minimum guidelines is presumed eligible. Supporters don't have to explain anything, but objectors would be required to state a specific objection and give examples of the problem. Suggested Oppose standards: damage to the encyclopedia, lack of civility, serious misunderstanding of policy, poor judgment, and similar. Objectors would have to identify specific diffs and explain why they represent objectionable behavior. However, guidelines should be broad enough to permit objectors to explain why they believe an individual can't be trusted. 4. Within these guidelines, "concensus" means a supermajority vote as currently, with votes not complying with guidelines (oppose votes which don't state a legitimate reason) discounted. Thus there would be discussion, yet clear standards to discuss by which would permit support, oppose, and neutral declarations as at present.--Shirahadasha 03:08, 23 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

While oppose categories would be worded broadly enough to permit judgment, the requirement to present specific diffs would hopefully get rid of objections such as "no need for tools", objector doesn't like (permissable) userboxes, insufficient experience where guideline minimum is met, and and various others. --Shirahadasha 02:54, 23 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]


Discuss at Wikipedia talk:Requests for adminship/Reform##Proposal by Shirahadasha

Proposal by Carcharoth

How about randomly generating a jury of voters? I'm sure I remember a "random user" generator somewhere. Randomly select 100 users who have been active in the past week, and say they have been granted the singular honour of voting on this candidate's RfA. This is a bit like jury service in the UK, which, with checks and balances, is essentially a random selection of your peers to sit in judgement on you. People selected at random tend to take their duties very seriously. If this idea took off, and if even only 20% of the 100 random users participated, then you would get 20 people carefully picking through the contributions history and giving their opinion on the candidate. Also, in case you get a random selection of 100 trolls, allow the candidate to rebut oppose votes, and still leave the ultimate decision to the bureaucrat. Randomly selecting from the entire pool of users might be a bit much, so instead maybe randomly select from a large of list of those "willing to serve at RfA". Carcharoth 17:23, 23 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Discuss at Wikipedia talk:Requests for adminship/Reform##Proposal by Carcharoth

Proposal by A.Z.

A.Z. no longer supports this proposal.


There is an essay about this here, although this proposal is a bit different.

Discuss at Wikipedia talk:Requests for adminship/Reform##Proposal by A.Z.

Proposal by Wikihermit

Why not have a trial adminship were the people who would like to become admins. are given the tools over a period of time. The first week they could get the ability to protect pages and un-protect pages, and edit full protected pages. A week later, they would have the ability to delete pages, recreate, ect. Finally on the 3rd week they would be able to block and unblock users. After a month, they could go to WP:RfA where users would support or oppose their RfA. This would eliminate people voting purely on edit counts. Even if a user had a high edit count and was irresponsible, mostly likely they would not pass. If they had a lower edit count but used the tools responsibly, then their chances of passing are higher. During their trail adminship, the user would also have to make a certain amount of "admin-only" edits, so we could see how they would react to different situations, instead of that user picking out the easier task to do.

Proposal by ais523

This is based on what I saw in the last two trials (the formats used in the Moralis and Matt Britt RfAs). Instead of sorting comments by support/oppose/neutral, sort comments by the area in which they comment about (e.g. if you oppose someone due to lack of XfD edits, put your Oppose comment in a section marked 'XfD' or 'Deletion'). People could make as many comments as they liked, so they could just make a generic 'Support' comment in a generic section at the top, or if their support was based on something in particular (or the lack of a particular problem that had been brought up) they could place it in that section, or in all relevant sections. With any luck this would help identify the issues involved in that particular RfA and help reduce a voting-like mentality without actually making the RfA harder to close.

Proposal 2 by A.Z.

A.Z. no longer supports this proposal.

1) Allow anyone to become an Admin once they meet certain criteria, such as length of time with an account and number of edits. No utility nor personality criteria, such as "quality of edits" or "difficult to work with" should be used.

2) Allow Admins to desysop each other, but only allow bureaucrats to grant Admin status.

Discuss at Wikipedia talk:Requests for adminship/Reform##Proposal 2 by A.Z.

Proposal by Imdanumber1

The only proposal that I have is to change the passing range, 75% shouldn't be needed, if that's what it is right now, it should be brought down to 67%. I believe this is fair because a "tiebreaker" is usually made with 2/3. If 2/3 supports are made, or close to 67%, the admin hopeful should pass. No big deal, but I thought I'd bring it up. --Imdanumber1 (talk · contribs) 12:23, 27 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Discuss at Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Reform##Proposal by Imdanumber1

Proposal by New England (formerly Black Harry)

I don't think there is much wrong with RFAs as they are currently run. If the idea of trying to reform RFAs is to try to get more admins, we should try to get more people to run for adminship.

To do this, I think a search committee could be formed. The committee would be made up of admins, and they would try to look for good candidates. To help look at who would be interested in going through an RFA, a user could add a template to his talk page, essentially saying he wants to be an admin someday ((User wikipedia/Administrator someday)). The members of the search committee would look through the users who added that template, and nominate them if they feel the candidate is qualified.

Another way to find more candidates could be to have a bot suggest an RFA if a user has been on wikipedia for a certain period of time (6 months) and has made a certain amont of edits (2400).

There are also some minors changes I would make to RFAs.

First, the community needs to realize that RFAs are in actuality votes; few RFAs fall into the Crat's discretionary range. This would help potential candidates because the process would be easier for them to understand.

Second, I think that 67% support should be the minimum for guaranteed passing. 2/3 (67%) is considered to be a super-majority (by US congress, for instance), so I don't see why 75% is needed. The new discretion range would be from 63% support to 66% support. The cloing Crat would also have to explain his decision if the vote fell into the discretionary range.

Third, I would disallow voters from questioning the position of any other voter, except in instances where specific policies may have been broken (Conflict of Interest, Canvassing, ect). This would especially apply to oppose votes, where it seems that in many RFAs support voters try to pester an opposer into dropping opposition.


That's the solution I envision to this "problem". If you have any questions or comments either discuss them at my talk page, or at Wikipedia_talk:Requests_for_adminship/Reform#.23Proposal_by_New_England_.28formerly_Black_Harry.29

Thank You

Black Harry (Highlights|Contribs) 16:58, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Proposal by Wikidudeman

Requests for adminship should be much simpler and easier. By that I mean that those requesting for adminship shouldn't be judged so harshly as if they are being given some great permission. They are simply being given a little more access to wikipedia than other editors and that's it. Administrators should be chosen with much less scrutiny and should have their administrator abilities taken away with much less trouble. As Jimbo Wales has said on the issue "I just wanted to say that becoming a sysop is *not a big deal*."[[3]] Wikidudeman (talk) 01:51, 3 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Proposal By J-stan

This is quite a rough draft of a proposal. I think there should be a commitee which RfA's are brought to. Anyone can nominate someone, including themselves. It's made up of about 30 or so admins, and nonadmins can comment about the Nominee, and the commitee votes on it, and it is successful if it comprises a 70% support vote.

The committee is not made up of the same sysops each time; each RfA has a committee of sysops randomly selected.

Proposal by Android Mouse

"Silence equals consent" is the ultimate measure of consensus

— Wikipedia:Consensus

I feel the above statement should be the sole groundwork of the future incarnation of rfas. With the current method of rfas, it is often possible for concerns raised by others to be literally drowned out by a large amount of supporters.

I propose only concerns (oppositions) be posted. Each seperate concern would initially be created as its own subsection. In those subsections, others would express their thoughts about the concern raised and help determine if the raised concern is both relevant and substantial enough to warrant the candidate not being promoted to admin status. The same contributor would be able to create more than one concern subsection.

When it is time for the rfa to close, the closing bureaucrat would be required to go through the sections and rule each complaint section as one of the following:

based on the discussion in each subsection. If a complaint section is not refuted by any responses (and is not clear vandalism/attack) then the default ruling would be 'Substantial and relevant', according to the Silence=consensus ideology.

If even one of the concerns is maked as 'Substantial and relevant' or 'No consensus reached' then the rfa would fail, else it would pass. If there are no concerns raised by the time the rfa is over, the default is promotion to admin status.

Below are two hypothetical complaints and possible discussions that would take place:

==This user is too aggressive==

I'm concerned that if user FooBar is promoted to an admin they would continue their aggressive behavior as displayed here [4] and [5]. --Some arbitrary user

Those incidents both occurred over 2 years ago, plus the user aplogized here [6]. --Some arbitrary user 2
There is no reason to assume this type of behavior would occur again since user FooBar has never had any other incidents such as those and they were well over 2 years ago when the user was still new here. --Some arbitrary user 3

Concern unsubstantial --Closing Bureaucrat

==This user is alligned with the XYZ political party==

My concern is that user FooBar has openly admiting to being alligned with the XYZ political party. I think that means they will set a bad image of wikipedia if promoted to admin status --Some arbitrary user 4

FooBar's allignment with political party XYZ and their viewpoints on frobnitz and flimflam won't interfere with this users ability to serve as an admin. We don't discriminate against political alignment here at WP. --Some arbitrary user 5

Concern irrelevant --Closing Bureaucrat

If this type of proposal has already been made, my mistake. I've skimmed through most of the proposals but might have missed one that is proposing the same idea. --Android Mouse 06:01, 10 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Proposal 3 by A.Z.

Discuss at Wikipedia talk:Requests for adminship/Reform##Proposal 3 by A.Z.

Proposal by Matt57

The only reform that is really needed right now, is a de-adminship procedure. The best procedure should be copied from other wikipedias. Some have these in place. --Matt57 (talk•contribs) 21:54, 30 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion[edit]

#Proposal #1 by White Cat

  • I would like privileges in dealing with images. As a commons administrator I often need access to deleted images (to see if the one on commons and en.wiki is the same). I'd have read only access (the ability to see deleted images/text without the ability to actually delete them). This proposal is intended to be more of a User++ rather than Admin--. -- Cat chi? 14:53, 8 April 2007 (UTC)
This would work well with a lot of the rfa's that get with the candidates only contribs being to fighting vandalism. --Chris g 10:24, 10 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

#Proposal by Picaroon

#Proposal by TomasBat

So you're suggesting we leave it as is? Hardly a reform, is it...and I'm against this, I think the RfA could do with improvement (as outlined in my responses to other proposals). ~ G1ggy! blah, blah, blah 11:09, 2 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

It´s just that some wikipedians believe, since wikipedia is not a democracy and since we, wikipedians, are supposed to discuss, all according to the guidelines, that RfA should be discussed rather than voted. But, as commented on other proposals, discussion would, eventually, end up in voting; since a user would say that such user would be greate as an administrator and another would not, narrowing everything to saying support and oppose but without the actual words. And, as stated in my proposal, when we vote, we are actually discussing; so no change is needed, we are discussing, even though it is in an indirect behind-the-scenes way; but that doesn´t really matter, I believe. Also, please see Proposal by Durin; stop offering proposals, this proposal is sort of similiar to this one. Anyways, I have seen some interesting proposal here, such as the one that proposes that users should be evaluated by their contributions, and many more... I´ll have to check this out... Maby it could auctually be improved, but to me it works perfectly like it is right now; so, unless it can be made even better, of whom I´m not very sure, I believe that everything should stay as it is; but I´ll check the other proposals, just in case.... Sincerely, ♠Tom@sBat 22:23, 2 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

#Proposal by Kncyu38

  • That's why I propose abandoning WP:CANVASS, so as to encourage people to spread the word. The ability to notify as many users as possible is an essential part of my proposal. The more opinions, the better. And to help keep the RfA page simple for the closing b'crat, no discussion threads there. One user, one statement (which s/he can alter until closure). —KNcyu38 (talk • contribs) 17:30, 11 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
In the present state of WP, this would be an effective way of increasing the participation of everyone who was dissatisfied with the person's edits. And thus there would be even fewer successful requests.00:53, 12 April 2007 (UTC)
I tend to agree, but the success ratio could be lowered from the current 70-80% to, e.g. 60%. At any rate closer to the support ratio of successful actual votes. —AldeBaer user:Kncyu38 11:54, 12 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

#Proposal by Theresa Knott

  • I don't want only family and friends voting. I want "enemies" voting too. Anyone who has interacted with the candidate. But yes I am proposing not to have third parties. My main argument is that people who have not interacted with the candidate should not have a say in whether they are trustworthy or not because they simply don't know. Theresa Knott | Taste the Korn 11:26, 8 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • I disagree. Often, an univolved party can judge the overall behaviour of a candidate better than anyone closely involved with the user on a limited range of pages or for a limited time. Also, "enemies" are far less likely to still be around to throw in their take on the candidate's trustability. —KNcyu38 (talk • contribs) 12:10, 8 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • I think the concept of "voting" is part of the problem. We have created a culture of "democracy" at RfA. A lot of the votes are all about a battleground. People will judge you for your political views rather than your ability to use admin tools properly. -- Cat chi? 14:53, 8 April 2007 (UTC)
  • Yes, that is a failing of RfA, but if the decision is ultimately taken by a vote then any replacement procedure is likely to fall back into the same way of operating. I like your idea of RFAr-type discussion but if it ends in a vote anyway, all this may do is produce a longer process than now. Sam Blacketer 15:38, 8 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • I am merely brainstorming. Votes not based on evidence/workshop can be safely ignored IMHO. -- Cat chi? 15:46, 8 April 2007 (UTC)
  • There's one obvious reason for supposing that RFAR is the wrong model. A request for arbitration has multiple possible outcomes. A request for adminship, whatever the process may be, has only two possible outcomes. There are other reasons to reject an RFAR model, including the glacial speed, the lack of simplicity and transparency, the possibility that it may discourage requests, and the certainty that it's a rather difficult process to manage well. Angus McLellan (Talk) 16:41, 8 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Yep, on thinking about it, you are probably right. It would be nice if we could do it but I cannot think of a reasonable solution to stop people deliberately looking for RFAs and listing them in thier own userpace. Shame. Theresa Knott | Taste the Korn 19:07, 8 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

#Proposal by Sam Blacketer

#Proposal #2 by White Cat

#Proposal by Sbandrews

But outcome of most AfD's is delete. Non-admins can't help in such situations. MaxSem 18:55, 12 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
somewhere around 2/3 to 3/4 yeah, that's true (and I hadn't considered that :) - but I would advocate giving normal users the ability to delete articles, either by adding their name to a list (as per the AWB method) to become trusted deleters or by combined action (2 users with, say, over 1000 edits, both hitting a 'delete' button), sbandrews (t) 19:11, 12 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

#Proposal by ChazBeckett

I tend to agree with the idea of having b'crats evaluate and agree on success/failure of RfAs that have not reached consensus with the community. Personally, I believe that there are more problems regarding RfA than closure of the undecided cases. But your proposal and mine could well be merged, in my opinion. —KNcyu38 (talk • contribs) 13:18, 9 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Yup, agree this is sensible. Looking at the 'pass marks' of admins who have run into difficulties and had the buttons removed, they don't generally have low pass marks. Would suggest that after implementation, we could review after a few months to gauge whether admins passed in the range of 65-75% have more problems. Addhoc 10:33, 10 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I generally think this is a good solution. It retains the voting side of RfA to make strong and weak candidates look clear, but opens up more discussion for questionable nominations. I have one question, what would you suggest for RfB? Would you raise the discussion ground to something like 70%-90%, or keep it the same as RfA? Camaron1 | Chris 17:59, 10 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I think that 60-80 is fine. And I really like this idea. ~ G1ggy! Reply 00:10, 3 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Me? I'd say that is for other people to decide. If it were for me, I'd keep the same corridor of ratios but let only admins vote in RfBs. —KNcyu38 (talk • contribs) 21:34, 10 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I have mixed feelings on if the RfB boundaries should be raised or kept the same. Though, changing RfB to a all users (within reason) discussion to an admin only discussion would be a big change, and I doubt it would get consensus easily. Camaron1 | Chris 15:21, 11 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Just my opinion. I believe admins may be better suited to estimate the fitness of a candidate for bureaucratship. —KNcyu38 (talk • contribs) 17:34, 11 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

#Proposal by Durin; stop offering proposals

What do you propose regarding RfA reform? —KNcyu38 (talk • contribs) 19:42, 9 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I think the RfA reform may take a little longer than a couple of months, especially if it's going to be a big and meaningful reform. A.Z. 19:27, 14 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

#Proposal by Radiant

#Proposal by Sjakkalle

I have thought of this as well. Seems quite a fair suggestion as AfD guidelines do actually specifically say not to separate comments, to stop it looking like a vote. Camaron1 | Chris 18:04, 10 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Just thought I'd add my two cents. This format is intensely confusing and irritating. It's made a mess of Moralis' RfA. mcr616 Speak! 19:32, 16 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with mcr616, the current format at Moralis' RfA is simply terrible (the main problem is the chronological ordering, which creates a lot of redundancy). As regards the "positive outcome" noted above, I think that's just an illusion. Is there really a difference between the two examples below? 

*Oppose. Too few portal talk edits. User:Portals are the future (PATF)
*Oppose per PATF. User:Per user

*Oppose. Too few portal talk edits. User:Portals are the future (PATF)
*Oppose. Not enough portal talk edits. User:Per user

Just because no one wrote "per X" doesn't mean everyone gave a different reasoning. The same can be said of the "support" comments. -- Black Falcon 04:46, 17 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

#Proposal by Mr.Z-man

I was thinking of this myself - a set of community agreed guidelines like WP:BIO is for AFD. Good idea. MER-C 04:14, 11 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

This comes closest to how I believe RfA should work: it's a mixed system where candidates meet certain requirements, but are then discussed. The requirements should be quite simple, & be made public: the criteria I would propose (just so people know what I'm talking about) would be three consecutive months of activity, 1000 non-minor edits, & the person is not currently being considered for sanctions (either from the ArbCom or a Community Ban), or has been so sanctioned. In the case above, where a possible candidate is short of the minimum number of edits, the solution should be simple: go out & make more edits. Yet I would go further than setting definite requirements: anyone who meets or exceeds these requirements & does not explicitly refuse to be an Admin (there are a number of people that I think would be good Admins who have declined), is automatically nominated. This automatic nomination might make the RfA process less of a beauty contest. -- llywrch 19:25, 24 April 2007 (UTC) Z-man[reply]

Agree generally, but disagree with eliminating current sections. This is basically a good idea that we can run with. Bearian 23:41, 9 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

#Proposal by Rackabello

#Proposal by Walton

Same for me. All people. But also, the candidate will obviously inform about their RfA to users which they know will most likely support, either to only those, to them first, or making more of a statement to them; and if they do follow asking all the users they encountered to vote (even the ones they think will oppose, as said above) they will most likely avoid at all coast users they dislike/users with whom they conflicted/users which will most likely oppose and it really wouldn´t be very fair. So keeping up with the "rule" proposed by MacGyverMagic would be hard. Plus, I´ve got a doubt: Would it be ok for some other editor apart from the candidate and nom, say a user who opposed, to also tell people to participate, aiming on users who will most likely oppose; in case the candidate were to canvass? Now, if its only a template in the userpage and the sig, then I don´t see much of a problem with this proposal; I believe this was Walton´s original idea. ♠TomasBat 21:07, 3 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I have to concur with TomasBat. --Tλε Rαnδom Eδιτor (tαlk) 00:21, 12 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

#Proposal by Oleg Alexandrov: Pure vote, 75% cutoff

While I do support having some cut-off points, and a range which is "always pass" and one which is "always fail", I think it is too inflexible to make an absolute cut-off between "always passes" and "always fails". I feel that a vote along the lines of "Oppose. Wikipedia is a waste of time. Why bother?" should never be allowed to break a nomination. A discretion range which is sufficiently narrow to prevent adminship being decided by bureaucrats instead of community, but sufficiently wide to prevent obvious frivolous votes from being the deciding outcome, is needed. I have never yet seen an RFA where blatantly frivolous votes make up as much as 5% of the votes. If a frivolous vote knocks the RFA out of "discretion" to "always fail", there were probably plenty of valid concerns anyway, if it knocks the RFA out of "always passes" to "discretion", I think almost any bureaucrat would ignore the frivolous vote. I just don't like the prospect of those votes knocking it from "always pass" to "always fail". Sjakkalle (Check!) 09:06, 13 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Another issue here is that of socks, trolls, and even well-meaning but clueless editors. With the current system, those can generally be identified, and their views weighted accordingly (or in the cases of clear socks, vandals, or trolls, stricken entirely.) Under this system, we may as well have a "cratbot", which would be totally incapable of identifying such disruption, and without being able to look for frivolous comments (or a total lack thereof), such things can be damn hard to find even for a human. Seraphimblade Talk to me 12:35, 13 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

To answer this and the above, then let's have a range, of 75%-80% for passing. And again, there's always going to be trolls and ill-informed voters, but usually they are a small minority and on both sides. And if you have 1/4 of the users opposing you, trolls and all, that probably means something is wrong with your candidacy. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 15:18, 13 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Oleg, I'll agree with that. Sjakkalle (Check!) 08:12, 16 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Why not give the crats the authority to strike out such votes? --kingboyk 00:25, 25 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I think "votes" is the root of the problem. If we did that, bureaucrats can be replaced with bots. -- Cat chi? 16:00, 13 April 2007 (UTC)
I see no problem with replacing bureaucrats with bots. I would prefer to have the bureaucrats do the job, as long as they are consistent whom they are promote, and well, the've shown that they are not. So perhaps a bot is a better solution? :) Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 00:41, 14 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
The problem with this proposal is that it means that a supposed "decision" on whether to make someone an admin could be made in the absence of discussion. One person who finds out, towards the end of a discussion, that an admin candidate is a socking vandal or intends to use his administrator powers to subvert the copyright policy, outweighs 200 sheep-votes, every time. So this isn't a vote and pretending that it is would not help. --Tony Sidaway 12:59, 16 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
In the scenario above, they were not sheep votes, they were votes in the absence of information. I don't think that you believe that people would support a candidate after such information surfaces.
The scenario you put above is of course hypothetical, and would happen rarely, if ever. What happened, many times in the past, was that bureaucrats closed discussions against community consensus. That's a much bigger problem I think. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 02:34, 17 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
If that happened, Tony, I presume that the crat would close it as a failure anyway. Sorry Oleg, you don't get to program a crat bot just yet! :) --kingboyk 00:25, 25 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Do the cutoff after examining valid votes and related discussions, yeah. But isn't this what we've been doing? AQu01rius (User &#149; Talk) 03:57, 17 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Most of the time, yes. This proposal would make it into an official policy, with exceptions only for extraordinary situations. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 04:10, 17 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I support this proposal with a slight modification: change the range of admin discretion from 75-80% to 70-85%. To address the issue of "votes in the absence of information", bureaucrats could extend an RfA to allow editors to reconsider their positions. -- Black Falcon 04:58, 17 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I think 75% is a bit high, but on the whole, voting seems to be better than all other proposals so far. I don't mind bureaucrat discretion if the bureaucrats can exercise it fairly; so far their willingness to do so has not been demonstrated. Kusma (talk) 10:44, 19 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I oppose this proposal on basic principles. Polling is not a substitute for discussion, and placing a strict, high, and arbitrary numerical support limit on Rfas nullifies any and all useful discussion. On top of everything else, this would make Rfas far more political, far more petty, and far more prone to canvassing than they ever could be under the present system. Doing this would turn Rfas into an un-collegial, likely personal, and decidedly political process. -- Thesocialistesq/M.lesocialiste 19:47, 16 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

#Proposal by Errabee: abolish support and neutral; focus on objections

On the face of it this is quite an attractive proposition, but I think it would adversely affect the atmosphere of requests for adminship. It would make the candidate's experience so negative that I think we'd suffer a dearth of candidates. --Tony Sidaway 13:01, 16 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, that is indeed the risk of this proposal. However, I think the number of objections will be far less than the number of opposers on current requests, because each opposer has to give a different objection. You can therefore have only one objection of too little experience etc. Perhaps this proposal would require more attention from admins and bureaucrats in the beginning to merge and prune objections that have already been stated, until people are used to this format. Nevertheless, it remains a risk. Errabee 14:06, 16 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Oh, and before I forget: there is an obligation on the part of the opposer to document his objection(s). That is of course a major factor in reducing the number of "silly" objections. Errabee 14:09, 16 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
On a similar note, would there also be some sort of guideline for what can be considered a reasonable objection? This would be to avoid objections like "Not enough CfD experience" or "Not enough image uploads." Mr.Z-mantalk¢ 19:28, 16 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
If it were necessary, I suppose something like that could be construed. However, I would first try to do this without such formal guide lines. Errabee 20:52, 16 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

#Proposal by Rebroad: Solid (policy/guideline based) reasons need to accompany votes

I oppose this proposal. Wikipedia policies and guidelines can't cover the factors involved in an RfA. There is no Wikipedia policy that can answer the questions: Does this candidate have good judgment? Is she likely to abuse the tools? Misuse them, perhaps? Is she overly temperamental? RfA is primarily about trust; it's pointless to try to argue whether trust or the lack thereof is "valid". Trust is trust. It exists or it doesn't. -- Black Falcon 04:36, 17 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

#Proposal by Spawn Man

I'm not really liking applying a certain must-have months for attendance. For example, Nishkid worked on the project for 3 months before being sysopped, and he's a fine admin. The second thing I don't like is your mention of "Wikipedia elites." Adminship only entails a few tools, but they're working towards the same goals. What is it that majorly separates us from users like Taxman or Angela? We all work towards a common goal, and we all have the same rights as Wikipedians. bibliomaniac15 03:34, 17 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I really dislike the idea of having set requirements mandated by "Wikipedia elites". Let editors decide on their own standards. For instance, anyone with a justified block in the last 2 months doesn't have a chance of succeeding anyway. Also, the specification of a set number of edits may encourage people interested in adminship to rack up edit counts instead of making quality contributions. -- Black Falcon 04:31, 17 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Reponse to above 2 comments - In regard to the "set number of edits" & "must-have months for attendance"; I only suggested a few things that it may have, for example, it may have completely different things than what I have suggested (My proposal is by no means the set in stone final draft). In regard to your "Wikipedia Elites" concerns; I meant that the final guidelines would be decided on by the likes of Jimbo etc - that does not rule out the chance of a site consensus on the subject, only that the final decision would be made by the higher ups (As I think most things are currently?). By no means would I ever think of suggesting a new guideline where the community didn't have a say - however, Wikipedia isn't a democracy after all, & we've all seen how well the community has worked things so far. If they had, we wouldn't be having this conversation now. IMHO, this sort of large issue isn't ever going to be resolved by handing it over to the community - for anything to ever be decided on in this matter, the "Wikipedia Elite" would have to intervien in any case. "What is it that majorly separates us from users like Taxman or Angela. We all work towards a common goal..." - If you think that, why are you concerned to hand it over to them if they have the same goals as us? I'm going to put in my proposal about the gaining community consensus first on the requirements, but I hope I've answered your questions. Thanks, :) Spawn Man 04:52, 17 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

#Proposal by AQu01rius

The idea of an essay sounds good, but we need to give people time to come and give their opinion. Maybe a length of 3 or so days. bibliomaniac15 01:47, 19 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

#Proposal by Shirahadasha

1. This is opposed by WP:ANOT. No amount of edits will earn you adminship.
2. This is the current process, is it not?
3. This I like...but it seems similar to the current process.
4. I'm fully in favour of this. But it would be hard to agree on.

Only element 4 has my approval/support here. ~ G1ggy! blah, blah, blah 11:07, 2 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

#Proposal by Carcharoth

  • OK, I agree about the spamming, but it would be clear (I hope so, anyway) that this is purely voluntary. Unlike jury service, the message can be ignored. You would have a list of the randomly selected names at the RfA, and those that vote would come along and do so. The "active editors" bit is dealt with by only selecting active editors (active in the past week) - software could easily detect this. At the end of the process, the list ends up split between "support", "oppose", "neutral" and "no vote". Avoiding spam, but pushing the selection pool back towards a self-selecting community, you could randomly generate names from a list of those who have indicated they are happy to do "RfA service". That would ensure higher participation. As for the instruction creep and bureaucracy concerns, I believe this is outweighed by the benefits (clearly impartial and avoids accusations of cliques forming, allows disinterested discussion from "the floor" to persuade the voters). The 'random = seriousness' bit, we will have to agree to disagree. Carcharoth 21:29, 23 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Yes. They would add their opinions to "the floor", a section where anyone could discuss the candidate and add their support or oppose. The "jury" would then effectively be either adding their own opinion, or following the lead of the community, much like bureaucrats do now (though I believe they should, ideally, only follow the lead of the community). The real bureaucrat would be a safety measure to evaluate whether the process has worked. Carcharoth 09:10, 24 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • This is a problem under the pure system - where the random list is generated from the entire list (though filtered to limit it to users active in the last week), but under the restricted system, the random list is generated from those who are active, or are prepared to be active, at RfA, so that wouldn't be a problem there. I don't expect this proposal to magically fix RfA (in some ways I doubt RfA is really broken), but it is an idea I haven't seen before. It might put too much focus on those voting, but the idea is really that this 'jury' form an impromtu panel or committee, and they should be guided by the discussion that the community engages in. Carcharoth 09:10, 24 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Could we try this out on an RfA? Just pick a random RfA and try this proposal out on that one? └Jared┘┌talk┐  23:30, 29 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
When I suggested that, I was thinking that you should probably maybe write it up on a subpage of yours and then link it here, or copy the gist of it here. We pretty much know what it's about, but I think that having more specifics would help. Here are some sample questions you should ask yourself when writing this out (others, feel free to address your opinions on these too!):
  • How many people would be asked to do RfA duty per RfA candidate?
  • What percent of those doing RfA duty must express their opinion for the RfA to be valid?
  • Will bureaucrats do the validating, or admins?
  • Where will these people "deliberate" and will this "deliberation" require the group to come to a single unanimous opinion, or allow them to vote like the US Supreme Court does, with different opinions, or is there another form I didn't mention?
  • How about the electorate: which groups of users would be excluded from the random pick, and how would this random pick work?
There are lots more questions that need to be addressed, and if you need help, feel free to contact me. (I'm sure you're fully capable, though!) └Jared┘┌talk┐  11:13, 1 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

This seems a little anti-wiki to me, what issues is it trying to solve? As the proposal says, people would be picked at random and people picked at random will take it seriously. Even if only 20 editors take part, they will carefully pick through the contribs of a nominee...I don't see how that can be supported at all. Just the concept of a pool goes against how Wikipedia is run, and if you generate a different pool for every RFA the standards will shift with every RFA...at least now the "pool" is the same for every RFA. RxS 15:20, 14 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

#Proposal by A.Z.

  • I agree that I'd go with more edits (maybe 2000 ?), and perhaps an amount of elapsed time, too, to prevent people from editing like crazy just to become an Admin. StuRat 14:02, 2 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • The proposal does include an amount of elapsed time as a requirement. A.Z. 05:56, 7 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Agreed. I could have used less words. :) Acalamari 23:18, 2 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • I'm really skeptical of only 200 edits. As Giggy said, 200 edits is really nothing. We need to make sure that our administrators have sufficient experience, and we have to acknowledge that some users are slower than others to learn. I know I didn't find out about edit summaries and reverting until about 300 or so edits. bibliomaniac15 23:27, 2 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • The idea behind this proposal is: Wikipedia is a wiki, so everyone has the same powers. Everyone has all the tools to make it better, unless there is a reason to take the powers away from someone, because there is no other way to effectively prevent harm. There are good reasons, for example, why not everyone can have the powers to permanently delete content. We don't know any other way to prevent all the content from being lost, since there are vandals who would be willing to delete Wikipedia altogether if they could. But there are no reasons why adminship shouldn't be given to all, since there are ways to take the tools away later, and there are effective ways to prevent and revert abusive behavior and its consequences. The idea is: everyone of us is an administrator, unless stated otherwise. The 200 edits (or 2000, for that matter) required to get the tools are merely a threshold to make it harder for vandals to create many sockpuppets and make all of them administrators. The proposal includes that administrators stop being able to unblock and unban themselves, and here lies its merit. If adminsitrators are unable to unblock and unban themselves, users that abuse the admin tools (whether they have 200 or 90000 edits) can easily be blocked by the community, and won't do any harm any longer. If a user becomes an administrator, and then uses the tools to vandalize Wikipedia, this user will be blocked or maybe banned. They will have to create another account and then make 200 or 2000 edits, only to vandalize Wikipedia a little more and get blocked yet again. If the user wants to abuse the tools again, they will have to go through the same quite tireing process. Of course, those are only the basics, and the proposal can be improved! The threshold can be different, for instance. Does anyone have ideas? A.Z. 05:47, 7 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • That's what this proposal would do, if it were implemented: we'd have much more administrators to quickly block the abusive users. If administrators were unable to unblock and unban themselves, everything would work really well. A.Z. 03:16, 6 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • I'm beginning to see where you are coming from. I think you are suggesting a negative feedback loop will select the admins that can be trusted and so it is irrelevant what kind of edits a user has made prior to getting the tools. The significant hurdle to such a debate is how quickly can a bad admin be shut down. David D. (Talk) 22:09, 7 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • I think that quite quickly. As soon as someone sees the vandalism. A.Z. 05:28, 8 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • I like the variation on this proposal to initially make it quite easy to become an Admin, but to take away Admin status just as easily, for anyone who abuses it. Thus, we would end up with a large quantity of good Admins, just what we want. StuRat 08:47, 8 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • To take away the admin status could be best in some cases, since the user would still be able to contribute as an editor. A.Z. 16:53, 11 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

#Proposal by Wikihermit

Wikiversity has a system like this, see v:Wikiversity:Custodianship. MER-C 09:27, 30 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

#Proposal 2 by A.Z.

The RfAs should not judge the character nor the personality of the candidates. Candidates should not need to be "trusted" by a supermajority of users to have access to the tools.

The implementation of a criterion to give the tools to an user should serve the sole purpose of making it harder to become an administrator than to be desysopped.

The criterion should be something hard to do, just that. By no means should it be something that judges whether the candidate would be a good administrator or not. By no means something that judges whether the person is trustable or trusted.

The tools should not be given only to those that are trusted, nor to those that are popular, nor to those that are intelligent, nor to those that are beautiful, nor to those that want really bad to be an administrator, nor to those that "need" the tools. The tools should be given to all of those who fulfill the criterion: to all of those who made the effort to fulfill the criterion.

The effort needed is something that a person takes time to do. It can be a number of edits, it can be a number of characters typed, it can be an amount of time with the account, it can be a number of sentences that make logical sense and that are pertinent to the pages where they were written.

The proposal is fair so far, but it cannot be implemented unless desysopping becomes easier. Therefore, every administrator should have the ability to desysop other administrators, but not the ability to promote other users to administrator status: this ability will remain with only the bureacrats.

The proposal would work: all users that made the effort would become administrators and it would be easy to get rid of administrator vandals, since there would be a great number of administrators to quickly desysop them. It would not be rewarding to be an administrator vandal, because the effort to create another account and fulfill the requirements again once they are desysopped will be much bigger than the reward of being able to vandalize Wikipedia for one or two minutes.

One example of how things will (or would) work: Vandals who wish to become administrators will have to make the effort, but the effort will be worth nothing if they use the tools to vandalize Wikipedia, or to harm the project, because they will very soon be desysopped by one of the many administrators that there will be. Their actions will be reverted by other administrators (all admin actions are reversible).

Another example: If a vandal desysops administrators without giving a reason to do so, the vandal will be desysopped soon by another administrator, and no other administrator vandal will be able to promote the vandal to administrator status again, because administrators will not have the ability to do that. The bureaucrats will re-sysop the desysopped administrators, and the vandal will remain desysopped. A.Z. 05:15, 13 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

  • It did occur to me. It would be possible, but it wouldn't happen. I did try to approach this on the big text above. It works like this: if a vandal decided to de-sysop Jimbo and all other administrators, the vandal would be de-sysopped by one of the other tens of thousands of administrators so quickly that they could only de-sysop two or three administrators. OK, maybe four. Once de-sysopped, the vandal would do no harm anymore, and the few administrators de-sysopped would be re-sysopped by the bureaucrats. If the same vandal decided to make a sockpuppet to do it again, the vandal would have to make the effort all over again, which would take a few months, only to de-sysop Jimbo for a few minutes, and then be de-sysopped again. Since almost no-one will spend months doing something only to get to de-sysop Jimbo for a few minutes, the project would not be destroyed by vandal administrators. Plus, even if, somehow, a vandal were capable of de-sysopping more than ten and even a hundred and a thousand and ten thousand administrators, the bureaucrats would be able to de-sysop the vandal and re-sysop the other administrators. A.Z. 22:26, 24 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

#Proposal by New England (formerly Black Harry)

Maybe there should be a commitee which RfA's are brought to. Anyone can nominate someone, including themselves. It's made up of about 30 or so admins, and nonadmins can comment about the Nominee, and the commitee votes on it, and it is successful if it comprises a 70% support vote. Then a 'crat officially closes it as successful. The committee is not made up of the same sysops each time; each RfA has a committee of sysops randomly selected. J-stan Talk 02:55, 2 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Not at all what I was going for in my proposal. My idea was to simplify the process and make more users aware of it. You proposed voting committee would turn Wikipedia into the Catholic Church. Black Harry (Highlights|Contribs) 02:38, 3 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Not catholic, don't really know what you mean. I was suggesting a major overhaul. Maybe It's too advanced. I'll give it a try Any way. J-stan Talk 02:01, 4 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I think having a "search committee" is a good idea, you will find that there is such a template and category already (look at my user page for example) for admin hopefuls - which would help a committee get going. Camaron1 | Chris 18:52, 8 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

thanks, I just linked to the template I mentioned, and I've seen the search committee before but don't know the link to it. New England 18:39, 13 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

#Proposal by Wikidudeman

I like your idea in principal - but I would like to know how you intend to achieve these changes to adminship. How do you intend to make adminship simpler and how would you like it to be made easier for admins to lose their tools in the event of abuse? Camaron1 | Chris 18:57, 8 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I made a proposal above that is supposed to help achieving those goals. A.Z. 23:10, 10 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
The entire community needs to change it's perception of what an "Admin" is. An "admin" is not some person of authority or privileged but simply someone who has "higher editing capabilities" than the rest of the people. Simply another editor who has more capabilities, just as a registered editor has more capabilities than a non-registered editor. All admins should be required to submit for "recall" where if someone thinks they aren't doing a good job as an admin they can ask for another vote and if they fail that vote then they have their admin privileges revoked until they change their ways and get elected again. Being an admin should not be a big deal, As Jimbo Wales clearly stated. Wikidudeman (talk) 10:15, 10 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

#Proposal by J-stan

Note that this is very similar to the Proposal by Carcharoth (above). I liked it and it nearly had a trail run which never went ahead. Camaron1 | Chris 19:03, 8 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

They are a bit similar. My proposal eliminates for the most part the possibility of troll voters. I don't know. It might work. J-stan Talk 20:14, 8 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I would object to this plan mainly because its too bureaucratic. New England 18:33, 13 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I like to think of it more as jury duty. J-stan Talk 19:15, 14 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

#Proposal by Android Mouse

This has in fact been proposed before, so I guess you have at least one supporter :-). See this section. A.Z. 23:16, 10 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for pointing this out. Should I remove my proposal then to cut down on the increasing size of this page? --Android Mouse 23:41, 10 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I think you should add your arguments to the thread discussing the first proposal, so the size remains the same, but everything is more organized. A.Z. 15:56, 14 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

#Proposal 3 by A.Z.

I disagree with this proposal. Consensus means a majority agrees with something. If an RfA is split right down the middle, obviously the community is disagreeable. Also, there would be many more passing RfAs with unsuitable candidates. J-stan Talk 02:04, 15 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

You can disagree, but not based on that consensus means a majority that agrees with something. What I'm discussing is which "something" is better. We could require that a majority agrees that an user is not suitable for adminship in order to stop that user from becoming an administrator, and we would still not be challenging your definition of consensus.
Your true argument for opposing is that there would be many more passing RfAs with unsuitable candidates. Well, the current RfA has a lot of problems. I surely don't know how on earth it's supposed to help picking which candidates are suitable or not. I know that all admin actions are reversible, and I know I get upset when I see the kind of people that become administrators nowadays and all good people (in my opinion) that don't. A.Z. 02:10, 15 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I understand where you're coming from. What I believe is that we should be stricter about which candidates we promote. I don't know how things are done in this respect, but your proposal would be better suited for Admins open to recall. J-stan Talk 02:41, 15 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
You may not be taking into account that openness is a premise of this project, and, by default, everyone is an editor, an administrator, a bureaucrat, a steward, etc. The reason (and it says so on the WP:ADMIN page) why not all people are currently administrators is that there are alleged technical problems that would make this bad for Wikipedia. I personally believe these problems either do not exist at all or are easily solvable or are smaller than the problems of not granting admin status to everyone.
In fact, if people are afraid of vandal administrators, I have solved the problem with my proposal two above, which would make all vandal administrators be de-sysopped quickly. If people are concerned with non-vandal abusive administrators, then, well, it's a lot better to deal with that if you're an administrator yourself, if everyone is one. If someone is really an abusive administrator, they can be de-sysopped. Of course, everyone would have the right to be re-sysopped again after a few months, and given a second and a third and a fourth chance: only to be de-sysopped if they continued being abusive!
I don't know what the current RfA's criteria are supposed to be, but, in practice, they select the wrong people. A minority of users (say 25%) are granted the right to stop an editor from having admin tools for the most stupid reasons. That just isn't right. In this proposal, if those people have a case, they should be able to convince all 75% of voters. In my other proposal, if those people have a case, they'll just have to convince everyone that the bad administrator should be de-sysopped. Since the "technical reasons" do not exist, there's no problem with waiting to actually see what each user will do with their admin tools. A.Z. 15:32, 15 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I see. In theory, this is a good proposal. I am not sure about how it would work in practice. maybe instead of consensus, it should just be a majority. Still, I disagree with this proposal. J-stan Talk 19:57, 16 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Fair enough :) A.Z. 20:08, 22 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
admins need trust. If admin decisions are not accepted by the community, the system breaks down. the only way to do this is to have a fairly high standard of consensus. after all, if there's someone whom 1/4 of the people think is rude and insensitive, do you really want him to be an admin? DGG (talk) 06:12, 26 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Actually, with a 75% support necessary, that candidate could become an admin :) J-stan Talk 14:38, 26 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I want everyone to be an administrator, actually, just as everyone who wishes can be an editor nowadays. I don't mind how rude and insensitive they are. Just as I don't think that there should be kind and sensitive for becoming an editor, I think there shouldn't be criteria like that for becoming an administrator. I wrote about this in the explanation of my proposal 2 above, and I also wrote an essay, User:A.Z./Imagine.
I thought about J-stan's question, that is, how would this proposal work in practice. I think that, in practice, a lot more people would become administrators and the need for an efficient de-sysopping system would become evident, so a system for easy de-sysopping would be developed. To de-sysop someone would, obviously, require consensus. When a person became de-sysopped, and after some time that consensus for their de-sysopping stopped existing, that person would be able to become an administrator again, if they wish. And Wikipedia would be a better place, because much more people would have access to more tools, and be able to improve the encyclopedia in ways other than just editing. Plus, there would be a lot less administrator abuse, since much more people would be administrators. A.Z. 23:49, 26 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
When I asked AZ, if he'd like everyone to be president of a country too, he found my question funny. AZ, no thanks, I dont want rude and insensitive people to be admins. Should rude and insensitive people be presidents too? Therefore. --Matt57 (talk•contribs) 21:52, 30 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
In a democracy, the only reason why not everyone is a president is that this would be unpractical. Everyone's vote is worth the same, though, including that of rude and insensitive people. Wikipedia is not a democracy and administrators are not presidents. A.Z. 03:31, 14 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I'm going to have to disagree with this. While nice to hear it said, it's disastrous to see it done. This proposal will essentially allow two thirds of the community to oppose someone and still allow that user to be an admin. An admin without the confidence of the majority of the community is not what Wikipedia needs. —Kurykh 03:24, 30 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion of where this discussion is[edit]

I just found this page. It's nearly four months old and there's no obvious consensus emerging. Or is there? The format of the page doesn't really help work toward consensus. Could someone with a big noggin find a way to move this on? Alternatively, I move to close. --Dweller 22:24, 25 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, a few proposals found here have actually become proposals that people !vote on. So far, we have no change. J-stan Talk 01:54, 26 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
No consensus isn't a reason for closing it. This is a great place for people to discuss new ideas and discuss what is wrong with the RfAs. Plus, consensus could eventually emerge within the following months and years. I personally am not in a hurry. If we close this discussion, people will just keep discussing the matter on tha RfA talk page, and all the different proposals will not be organized, and they will get archived quickly. A.Z. 04:00, 26 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

OK, those points seem reasonable. Could someone therefore begin tidying this up, because in its current format, it's very off-putting to a newcomer and it's very hard to sort the wheat from the chaff. --Dweller 05:24, 26 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

When you think about it, there really isn't any wheat. It is divided up between proposals, and each proposal has a discussion section. I suggest that if you make multiple proposals, you should create them as a subsection to your previous proposal. I would be willing to organize the proposals like this, if everyone's okay with it. J-stan Talk 02:46, 30 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I don't wish to have two of my proposals as a subsection of my first proposal. I wouldn't mind if you placed them all next to one another, though, but I feel it's better to bring the first and second proposal down, instead of bringing the third proposal up. A.Z. 03:32, 30 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

What is wrong with the way things are now?[edit]

What is wrong with the way things are now?  Tcrow777  talk  00:33, 29 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

It keeps people from becoming administrators. A.Z. 01:51, 29 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I see people constantly being promoted, so your comment is false without further clarification. --Kurykh 02:40, 30 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I'll further clarify it. Even if there were one new administrator per month, you'd still be able to say that people are constantly being promoted. There are only 1,300 administrators, but I think there are many times more active users than that. People usually don't request adminship if they know they don't stand a chance. A.Z. 02:48, 30 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Then that's a problem of confidence. And we need confident admins. —Kurykh 03:19, 30 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
That's what I disagree with. A.Z. 03:22, 30 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Why do you disagree with it? —Kurykh 03:25, 30 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I believe Wikipedia should be open and free, and everyone should have as much technical access as possible. Requiring people to be trusted in order to have admin tools is unjustifiable because those tools cannot do that much harm. All admin actions can be reverted, so we should first give them the tools, and only then start questioning their behavior, and only take out the tools or block them if they start abusing them. A.Z. 03:29, 30 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Egalitarianism is good, yes, until it stretches too far. Misuse of admin tools can actually do a lot of harm even if the actions can be reversed. For example, wheel-warring is one of the most disruptive acts on Wikipedia. Much damage (in the form of lost contributors, horrible articles, and ill will in the Wikipedia community, among others) have been caused by misuse of admin tools. —Kurykh 03:37, 30 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Much harm can be caused by using editing tools as well, and yet no one's suggesting that we give those to just a few trusted users. When editors become vandals, and when they revert war, they get blocked. Administrators that participate in wheel wars should just get blocked as well. I think it's really harmful to prohibit so many users to have admin tools, and this harm is comparable to that of prohibiting a lot of users to edit articles. A.Z. 03:51, 30 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Admins can unblock themselves. Removing this ability is an issue of the developers (since there is no such function yet). —Kurykh 03:54, 30 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
The most harm you can do with editing tools is edit war and launch tirades of discussion. Admin tools allow for actions which have immediate site-wide implications that may leave Wikipedia crippled. I'm speaking from the realistic point of view, and not from the utopian one. —Kurykh 03:56, 30 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
And you really haven't said how it is harmful to not grant admin tools indiscriminately other than "I believe Wikipedia should be open and free," which, put bluntly, is just an ideological statement without substance. —Kurykh 03:58, 30 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I'm supposed to be on a really important wikibreak right now, but I just wanted to say that I recognize the lack of substance of my ideological statement. It is mostly intuitive, actually, my belief that openness is a really desirable thing, and I don't know how to prove or rationally show that it is indeed desirable. I believe, however, that openness is a premise of Wikipedia, albeit unexplainable, just as private property is a premise of capitalism and no one could ever prove that it's somehow better than common property.
That's one reason why this essay is so important. It does not show that openness is important and needed when it comes to adminship, but it does show how people could argue and invent the most convincing arguments against a system that does work in practice. You just have to imagine how would it be if Jimbo Wales had started Wikipedia like in that story: most people would find ludicrous the idea of everyone being an editor, and there would be tons of reasons not to do it.
I don't know why the idea is not ludicrous, but it isn't. I know you have lots of reasons for not grating adminship to everyone. I think it would be a hard thing for someone to convince editors in that alternate reality that Wikipedia would not turn into chaos if everyone were an editor, and it's hard to convince you right now that not giving admin tools to everyone is undesirable. A.Z. 01:14, 31 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Right now, there really isn't anything wrong with the system. We're just trying to change things to ways we think would be better. I posted a proposal up here mostly to try to satisfy those who are looking for a change. J-stan Talk 02:42, 30 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I think A.Z. is basing his view entirely on philosophy without enough of a nod to practicality, and thus takes this to an unneccessary extreme. However, I have to partly agree with him here. I'd be in favor of a system that grants admin rights fairly liberally, but then has a community discussion process for removing them. This answers a couple common objections, such as 1) We can't be too liberal with how we grant admin privs unless we have a lightweight process for removing them when there's trouble and 2) It's too much work to have an anti-RFA-like process. If we remove most of the work of granting adminship, we can do that work as necessary when removing it, probably without a net increase in the amount of time spent. Friday (talk) 17:40, 30 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I agree. I would prefer it if taking admin tools from people required consensus, and if everyone had as many chances as they wanted to become an administrator again, after some elapsed time, even if that time is six months or an year. I believe there would be consensus to desysop the harmful administrators. A.Z. 01:14, 31 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Finally ending this....[edit]

Ok, this page is now 4 1/2 months old now, and I propose that we set a timeline for closure. First would come the basic proposals.... and please do not turn this into another lengthy discussion; limit your vote explanations to 1 sentence please.

Proposal: There is something wrong with the way RfA is set up, and the status quo must change.

Support:
  1. Of course, RfA has really turned into a popularity contest (and this isn't because my own RfA failed). Panoptical 23:49, 19 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Neutral:

Naturally, opposes would vote for the other proposal....

Status quo: There is nothing wrong with the way RfA is set up, and nothing should change.

Support:
Neutral:

Once consensus has been established on these proposals, we can move on to the more specific ones below. Thank you! Panoptical 23:49, 19 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]


The following proposal is not open yet. Please do not modify or vote on it. It will open if, and only if, the status quo passes.

Motion to Close[edit]

This discussion will close and be stored away as inactive. Discussion can be raised again if there is enough support for it.


The following proposals are not open yet. Please do not modify or vote on them'. Some will open if, and only if, the above proposal passes.
Note: These proposals are based off of the ones made above, eliminating the redundant ones and, may I add, some of the stupid ones.
Note: These proposals may be combined with one another, meaning that you can support more than 1 proposal, when they open up.
Finally: More generic versions of these proposals may be opened up. These proposals are a summary of what has been proposed above.
1. RfA should be a vote, with a definite pass/fail line[edit]
1.1 RfA should be a vote, with the discussion section similar to AFD, where support and oppose votes are mixed together.[edit]
1.2 RfA should be a vote, but only people opposing should vote, while allowing the nominee to respond to the oppose votes.[edit]
1.3 RfA should be a vote, but all votes must be based on voting guidelines.[edit]
1.4 RfA should be a vote, but bureaucrats, when closing RfAs, must list whether they accepted an oppose (or support) vote and why.[edit]
2. Everyone should become administrators once they meet certain criteria (to be defined later) and/or an edit count threshold.[edit]
3. RfA should be more like RfC, using this as a basis.[edit]
4. "Trial adminship" should be given to people who meet certain criteria (to be defined later), and full adminship would be confirmed later, after a preset period of time.[edit]
5. WP:CANVASS should be abandoned, allowing nominees to leave messages on user talk pages requesting a nomination or comment for his/her RfA.[edit]

Note: This would probably have to be confirmed by the community as a whole on another page.

6. The discretionary window should be widened (to a predetermined percentage), and RfAs in this range would enter a bureaucrat discussion period.[edit]
6.1 The discretionary window should stay the same, but RfAs in the current discretionary window (70-75%) would enter a bureaucrat discussion period.[edit]
6.2 A bureaucrat discussion would begin regardless of where the RfA falls percentage-wise.[edit]
7. A "jury" of voters, which would rotate at a predetermined rate, would vote on the RfAs.[edit]
7.1 A "jury" of admins, which would rotate at a predetermined rate, would vote on the RfAs.[edit]
8. RfA stays as it is, but requires consensus for an user not to become an administrator. A page for Requests for De-Adminship is created, which will require consensus.[edit]
9. A page with Requests for De-Adminship is created, functioning as the current RfAs.[edit]

This is dead; tag as historical

The reality is this page is dead. In the last three weeks, just eight different people have contributed to it. Contrast with WT:RFA in the same time period; 102 unique contributors (not including anon IPs). There's no consensus, no ongoing discussion, no progress towards something conclusive. With such a lack of participation here, to conclude this page has support for reform of RfA would be a serious mistake. This page has had its day in the sun. It's been advertised on WT:RFA for weeks now, and the attention to it has fallen dramatically. There's no point continuing here. I'm marking this page as historical. If someone wants to generate a new page using this page as a supporting reference, that's fine. But, using this page as a means to the end of RfA reform is improper. --Durin 14:10, 20 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed; I don't think this page is working the way it's supposed to. It may still be useful as source of possible ideas, though. --ais523 16:30, 20 August 2007 (UTC)
I think this page has served its primary purpose - to come up with ideas to reform RFA and see what initial responses are to them. Given activity levels I do not think consensus is going to be reached here on a final path RFA should take in the future. I agree with marking this as historical - at least for now. Camaron1 | Chris 20:14, 20 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
OK, so the page is dead, so there are few people participating, so to conclude that this page has support for reform of RfA would be a serious mistake. But why marking it as historical and stopping us eight people from continuing our entirely non-harmful discussion here? A.Z. 03:24, 21 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
If you want to continue to make proposals do not hesitate to remove the tag and continue as normal. Camaron1 | Chris 10:11, 21 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
OK, thank you. I would like to continue discussing proposals, though, not making more of them. I don't have anything to say about a proposal now, but if I remove the tag someone may start adding posts again. A.Z. 03:29, 23 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • One editor tried to turn this into the next step. I strongly disagree with that move and the way it was conducted. In fact, at the top of this page, it says "Please avoid initiating any kind of poll on this page. There have been plenty of those in the past." This page is just meant for discussion, and that's what we're doing. I'm not trying to gain any consensus as of now. I just want the discussion to remain open. It may be that people read it and get entirely new ideas from reading it and eventually, one day, in the future, this inspires a reform. A.Z. 04:48, 23 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

snowball RfA[edit]

Moved from Wikipedia talk:Requests for adminship to prevent disruption there. —AldeBaer 13:09, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

How about this: Has there ever been a "Sadie Hawkins" RfA, i.e. a "nomination to stay a normal editor"? —AldeBaer 16:57, 28 August 2007 (UTC)

HA! what a great idea. then after the comments, one just quietly gives user the admin tools. --Rocksanddirt 17:29, 28 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah well, only if there aren't too many supporters. —AldeBaer 17:30, 28 August 2007 (UTC)
hmmm, yes or maybe the quality of the support (i.e, lots of user is great writer, don't distract with admin tools vs. user is pov pushing nut job no additional encouragement please)...--Rocksanddirt 17:38, 28 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I do remember that there was an admin who decided to list themself at Rfa for promotion from admin to normal user. They requested that people support this promotion. Most people didn't really understand the request, since any admin can give up the position at any time simply by making a request at meta, but a majority supported the request on the grounds that this was what the admin wanted. I think this might have been in 2005, and I've looked around but can't find the page or remember the name.-gadfium 21:26, 28 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I see, but I meant an inverted RfA for a user without admin rights. It's not a just-for-fun idea though. Having such an RfA every once a while may help people to stop and consider what RfA is about. Normal "opposing" is really nothing else than supporting the unformulated counter-proposal that the candidate stay a normal editor, while a normal "support" is opposed to that. —AldeBaer 22:22, 28 August 2007 (UTC)
Nice idea, but you'll instantly get 50 people with no sense of humor jumping on you yelling that you're making a WP:POINT violation. I wish it weren't so. — Hex (❝?!❞) 22:44, 28 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
If you did it on April Fool's Day, you'd have a bit more leeway in telling people to relax. EVula // talk // ☯ // 23:03, 28 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not intending to do such a thing myself. That's why I posted the idea here instead. —AldeBaer 23:04, 28 August 2007 (UTC)
Somebody should poke Kim Bruning at this point. Titoxd(?!? - cool stuff) 23:01, 28 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I think that it's a good idea...somebody should try it. Neranei (talk) 23:26, 28 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

What's the point other than getting attention for oneself? It's a useless process. You can just request desysopping the way everybody else does without making an event out of it. --W.marsh 00:34, 29 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I'm talking about sysopping, not de-sysopping. —AldeBaer 08:15, 29 August 2007 (UTC)

Y'all 're lookin' for Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/silsor. Splash - tk 08:54, 29 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Have to say that was the funniest RfA I've seen in a long time, even though it was meant to be taken seriously... --DarkFalls talk 09:24, 29 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
RFE you mean (Request for Editorship) ;) -- Anonymous DissidentTalk 09:30, 29 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you Splash. silsor is not listed at Wikipedia:Former administrators (he was resysopped in May 2006), which is why I couldn't find the page.-gadfium 09:53, 29 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Interesting RfA, it's not what my idea was about though. From the comments here I gather that the idea of formatting a real RfA for a non-admin user as a request to stay a normal user is regarded as a joke, at best? —AldeBaer 13:19, 29 August 2007 (UTC)
I think many people here are treating your proposal as a joke. I think many people probably haven't quite understood that the result of failing your proposed system would be to be made an admin, as Rocksanddirt said near the top. I realise that you are suggesting this to make people reconsider the Rfa process. I suggest you start a new section and try to explain your idea in a little more detail, since this section has become confused, in part because of the discussion of silsor's Rfa.-gadfium 19:31, 29 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I think it's an interesting idea but I'm not sure how this would be any different than taking an ordinary RfA and switching the support and oppose sections. Plus, how do we start these things? It seems pretty rude to nominate someone for non-adminship. "After careful consideration, I've decided to nominate user JoeX for non-adminship because I believe he's clueless"! Pascal.Tesson 19:45, 29 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
You are right! I suppose it would be mostly self-noms. -- Anonymous DissidentTalk 21:26, 29 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
That, or the nom and the candidate could decide on it together. —AldeBaer 23:52, 29 August 2007 (UTC)
But wouldn't it be great to let all the hot air out of the RfA process every once a while? Clearly, it should be the candidate's decision to do this, but I can vividly imagine to have such an RfA result in either "congratulations on stying a normal editor" or an "unfortunately, there was no consensus not to promote you, so you're now an admin. Sorry, don't feel discouraged by this" etc. —AldeBaer 00:14, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

not a joke subsection for clarity

Following gadfium's suggestion, I'm reposting my proposal in this subsection. My idea is simply to occasionally format RfAs —on a voluntary basis only— as requests to stay a normal editor. Not as a request for desysopping for already-admins, but as a usual RfA for non-admins formulated and formatted as going in the other direction, because becoming an admin is not "going somewhere", but merely becoming an admin. I'm not trying to pull a prank or make a joke in any way with this - I genuinely believe it may make a little difference to the better at RfA in general, as it may make people stop and consider that any RfA really can also be regarded as going into the other direction as well. I wouldn't know since I'm not an admin, but from what I hear, it's not all fun and powergames to be an admin, but also a somewhat stressful thing at times. So admins may agree that adminship is not a "prize to win", but rather only one of two possible outcomes of an RfA. Staying a normal editor after an RfA is not "failing", becoming an admin is not "winning".
So here is the basic premise: To have an inverted RfA, where failing would result in promotion while succeeding would result in staying a normal user. —AldeBaer 23:52, 29 August 2007 (UTC)

It is an interesting thought. If the consensus on the request was along the lines of "no, we think you'd be an asset to the project to have additional tools to make a better product." --Rocksanddirt 00:09, 30 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
It's interesting, but it's very superfluous when you think about it. Adminship is definitely not a prize; it is quite stressful. One of the reasons why we have an RFA is to raise the heat. If somebody is to be prepared to become an admin, they should use their experience to overcome a sort of trial, which we have in the form of an RFA. To have an inverse RFA really wouldn't help in any awareness of this. bibliomaniac15 Tea anyone? 00:19, 30 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I believe that any candidate who can be taken seriously knows this, but do the people commenting at RfAs who give the candidates unnecessary and unuseful additional heat or mindless support? —AldeBaer 00:23, 30 August 2007 (UTC)
It's my pet peeve to see an RFA where people oppose with rather offensive sarcasm. bibliomaniac15 Tea anyone? 00:31, 30 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I usually oppose with very offensive sarcasm, mostly because I don't like the candidates. Being able to do it while mischievously writing "support" would just be the icing on the cake for me. —AldeBaer 00:46, 30 August 2007 (UTC)
So you are using sarcasm here to criticize sarcasm? Captain panda 02:43, 30 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
No, I'm indirectly stating my agreement with bibliomaniac. —AldeBaer 09:16, 30 August 2007 (UTC)
To be honest, the idea sounds exactly the same as editor review... Although I am not opposed to the idea, it might be seen by some as some useless process... --DarkFalls talk 09:21, 30 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not proposing a new process. This would be quite an ordinary RfA, just inversely formulated. —AldeBaer 10:55, 30 August 2007 (UTC)
The thing is, being an admin isn't just staying as a normal editor, you're being entrusted with tools. I think we've all seen editors with thousands of edits that we don't want anywhere near the mop, even though they're helping Wikipedia. As mentioned above, a normal editor doesn't have to worry about dealing with conflicts or understanding policy, just how to right gud and follow our core policies. --lucid 09:26, 30 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
No, Lucid, being an admin is staying as a normal editor. Admins aren't a special class of people. We're editors who have been granted a few extra tools because we've usually done enough to show we are neither evil nor really dumb. It's just a few buttons. There are plenty of editors without sysop buttons who barely edit articles; this is no different amongst those who do have the extra buttons. I don't edit articles as an admin, I edit them as an editor, in the same way I always have. Normal editors can, and do, get just as involved in conflicts and understanding of policy - the only difference is the can't themselves click the "block", "delete" or "protect" buttons (which is pretty much all these supermagical admin tools allow one to do). Neil ム 09:39, 30 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I did not say that admins are a special class, that admins have special powers, or that editors don't get involved in disputes, do not twist my words. You are right, you edit articles as an admin. You don't block people as an editor, though, do you? Admins are editors still, yes, but editors are not always qualified to be admins. Again, I'm sure we can all think of editors with thousands of edits that we don't want anywhere near the mop, because even though they might make fine editors, they'd have no idea how to actually use the tools responsibly, or if they did, they wouldn't anyway. I am not saying that adminship is some special thing that should be awarded to the best editors, it's nothing like that, I'm saying that people that intend to act as admins do not just need to be trustworthy editors, they need to be able to be trusted as admins too. If someone can be trusted as an admin is what's important, and pure editing experience does not necessarily mean that- -lucid 10:58, 30 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Maybe my formulation was suboptimal: What I meant with "staying a normal" editor could, in the context of my idea, be formulated as "being spared the extra stress of being an admin". Of course admins stay normal editors. However, I didn't expect to be told that I may have overstated that point, rather maybe that my idea couldn't do much to counter the overblown perception of adminship. —AldeBaer 10:49, 30 August 2007 (UTC)
I think this might be a little complex AldeBaer... The whole point of the exercise is to familiarize editors on what RfA is all about, right? Not votes, just discussions? Maybe the answer is not to alter the old one, but make a new RfA process... --DarkFalls talk 11:05, 30 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I concur with DF. After several years of running RFA with the purpose of attaining adminship, I'm not sure it would be best to invert the process. I think review is needed, but not a complete switch. -- Anonymous DissidentTalk 11:09, 30 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Ideas to change the RfA process have been floating around for quite some time now, and I did participate there as well. There also have been tests where RfAs were formatted like discussions, and I thought doing something similar, and less drastic at that, may lead to further ideas on how to sensibly reform the process. —AldeBaer 12:18, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

This proposal seems more like a game than an attempt at improving anything. --Deskana (apples) 11:35, 30 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Hmmm. What particular aspect of the proposal makes you say that? The confusion it would cause, or because it apparently doesn't seem to be worth the re-arrangement? -- Anonymous DissidentTalk 12:10, 30 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
It would change nothing, and potentially cause a lot of confusion. I don't see anything worth implimenting. --Deskana (apples) 12:13, 30 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Deskana, it's just a little idea, and maybe not the most brilliant one, but —believe it or not— I did post it here in an honest attempt at improving things. Do you really assume I posted it here with the intention to play games, and without the intention to improve anything, like you said? —AldeBaer 12:18, 30 August 2007 (UTC)
No, I don't think you're just trying to play games. But I do think that this proposal would just be a game were we to impliment it. --Deskana (apples) 12:40, 30 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Ok, I was a bit confused by your choice of words. —AldeBaer 12:50, 30 August 2007 (UTC)
The principal outcome of this is to remove scrutiny of whether an individual should be an admin or not. Thus we would start producing unqualified admins. We would furthermore be turning the worst editors into admins; a nonsensical proposition. And this for the sake of experimentally demonstrating a vague point about adminship having an "overblown perception". A slightly amusing thought experiment, perhaps; a suggestion to be taken seriously? No. Splash - tk 12:16, 30 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I don't know how that would be the case. You'd simply "support" in the "oppose" section basically. It'd still be the same thing, basically. —AldeBaer 12:18, 30 August 2007 (UTC)
If it's the same thing, then it would achieve nothing that is not already achieved. If it does claim to achieve something, then it's not basically the same thing. If it's not basically the same thing, then it is little more than a slightly amusing thought experiment, best conducted in user space rather than here. Splash - tk 12:23, 30 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
(edit conflict, I was just about to extend my comment with this:) But I agree, it is indeed more of a thought experiment, and maybe food for thought, which is precisely why I posted it here for discussion. // It wouldn't change the process, but maybe it would help to make people think and stop for a second. —AldeBaer 12:26, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

FWIW, if you think ideas regarding the RfA process shouldn't be posted here, let me know. I don't want to disrupt this page. Then again, if can live with the proposal itself being posted here and just don't agree with it, post your disagreement. —AldeBaer 12:34, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:Requests for adminship/Reform. Splash - tk 12:39, 30 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Wikipedia_talk:Requests_for_adminship/Reform#Proposal_by_Kncyu38. The idea to have RfAs formatted as discussions was brought up and decided to implement here, not on the /Reform subpage. Also, This is dead; tag as historical. —AldeBaer 12:50, 30 August 2007 (UTC)
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