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Provisional adminship???

OK, I'm probably reinventing the wheel - but I've set down an idea here User:Doc glasgow/provisional adminship. In a nutshell, let's reverse the process, and have the community discussion after we've tried the candidate out as an admin. See the page for fuller reasoning. Please look at the principle - the details are negotiable.--Docg 12:40, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

Read it through the biggest problem I can see is that it would once again just force people to conform to a standard to keep the tools, whatever their true nature will be will come out when they have them properly. ViridaeTalk 12:46, 2 February 2007 (UTC)
Sure, but they'll learn good practice in the interim. As for going bad later - well why would that be more so than with an RfA?--Docg 13:17, 2 February 2007 (UTC)
Looks like a good proposal, except for the question how we deal with people who do not use their admin tools frequently. If we have an edit-articles type guy who only uses admin tools for blocked page moves, will he pass confirmation or will people turn on him for not suddenly becoming a speedy-backlog killer and vandal fighteR? Kusma (討論) 12:53, 2 February 2007 (UTC)
People don't like admins to hack away at blocked page moves? That's one of the main reasons I'd like to have the tools someday. Working on CSD is perfectly fine, but WP:RM backlogs and malplaced dab pages frustrate me on a regular basis. Dekimasu 16:17, 2 February 2007 (UTC)
That would be up to the community at the confirmation stage. If they was not enough use to give the community reason for confidence, they can fail them, or extend the provisional period.--Docg 13:18, 2 February 2007 (UTC)
I can see problems here... my biggest concern however is that the admin flag needs to be easily switched off immediately should they decide to go on a deletion spree. A minor point that the promotions will also fill the rights log with possibly hundreds of users who never actually become admins, and this proposal is expecting a lot of help from stewards to remove the flag from all those failed users... I can't see it happening. --Majorly (o rly?) 12:55, 2 February 2007 (UTC)
I wouldn't worry about the stewards. We have a lot of them and they are here to serve us. We just need a clear policy on who at enwiki has the proper authority to make requests of them so that the stewards don't have to make any decisions themselves (deciding routine things like this is not in their job description). NoSeptember 13:05, 2 February 2007 (UTC)
  • This is an interesting proposal. It would create an influx of more admins, and if we assume that (e.g.) 1% of admins "turn bad" after some time, this proposal will eventually create an influx of bad admins, thus forcing us to finally create a deadminning solution that actually works. However, in reaching that admittedly useful end result, this proposal takes the path of most resistance, and will spawn a number of crises first - and because people anticipate that, they'll likely oppose the proposal. >Radiant< 13:02, 2 February 2007 (UTC)
I can't see how it would produce more bad admins. You'd still have a community debate after 6 weeks, and require consensus just like an RfA. It would not be easier to become a sysop - it is just that the community will have hard evidence to judge to candidate on. If the candidate hasn't used the tolls enough to tell at that stage, then we either fail the RfA, or we extend it for another period and look again. I submit this will actually catch a higher level of bad admins in the saftey net.--Docg 13:15, 2 February 2007 (UTC)
Excellent. An admin who rarely uses the tools would stay "provisional" for a long time but wouldn't "fail" because there is no evidence of abuse. Kusma (討論) 13:19, 2 February 2007 (UTC)
We could tweek it. Someone who hasn't used them a lot could be given an extension. But, not indefinitely. If pople simply go inactive, then the provision status would expire and they would be desysopped.--Docg 13:24, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

Nice idea Doc, I have to say I agree with you. --HIZKIAH (User &#149; Talk) 13:23, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

I like it but it's too instruction creepy. Also, I think that if the same 20 people that would oppose a user's RFA show up to oppose his/her provisional RFA, we're back where we started. In other words, I am having trouble convincing myself that anyone who would fail a normal RFA would pass a provisional one without objection. Take, for example, any of the RFAs that are currently below 70%. The same people opposing them would likely oppose a provisional RFA. How about as an alternative, have no separate process for provisional RFAs. Instead, allow bureaucrats to provisionally promote anyone at their discretion who has at least n support. (The value of n can be discussed.) By making the provisional promotion, this crat agrees to personally keep a check on the administrative actions of the provisional admin. The second RFA would only be held if requested by multiple established users after a month, otherwise, the provisional tag gets removed automatically after two months. This way, there's less instruction creep and the existing processes can be used with little modification. --BigDT 13:30, 2 February 2007 (UTC)
You would not be able to 'oppose' a provisional RfA, so 20 people turning up would be ignored. Numbers would be irrelevant. The only grounds for refusal would be if the user is obvious troll, or has a block log history as long as your arm. At this point the crat's purpose would not to be to gauge consensus (that comes at the confirmation stage). The 'crat's purpose is to give provisional status, unless the candidate is shown to be an obvious no no no. I envisage that anyone who'd currently get more than 40% support in RfA would be given provisional status. It can be revoked 5 min later if abused.--Docg 13:37, 2 February 2007 (UTC)
Admin is a trusted position, paticuarly in the eyes of newbies. The examples you give of "failing" are surely not enough, what about WP:BITE issues, no understanding of policy as demonstrated by reports to WP:AIV or 3rr etc etc. What about those with personal attack issues etc etc - all those do not present a good face of the community if they come from an admin - provisional or not does not matter they will still be treated the same way by those majority who dont know aby better. The more i think about this the more I think it has the potential to cause havoc. ViridaeTalk 13:42, 2 February 2007 (UTC)
(to BigDT) But wouldn't the same people who opposed a user request that second RFA?
(to Doc) True, but how do you define "abuse"? The problem is not blatantly abusive admins. The problem is the subtle kind. Just a threat of a block in a content dispute... it could be argued not to be abusive since he hasn't blocked anyone. Just a handful of speedy deletions that he likes but aren't according to policy... or undeletions, of course. Or just being too much of a hothead that uses the F-word and calls people names. Some people will scream bloody murder, others will say that he's doing an overall good job, and grow some spine. So this idea is going to cause a lot of controversy. >Radiant< 13:45, 2 February 2007 (UTC)
  • If our goal is to test people before they become permanent admins, why can't we do that when they are still non-admins without actually giving them the bit? An example of testing non-admins. NoSeptember 13:46, 2 February 2007 (UTC)
    • That's an interesting proposal. I like it. You don't cover page history restores/merges there, though, but then I guess that that is something that is rare because it can in some cases be horrendously complicated. Ties in with requested moves, which often requires full or partial restoration of a page history. You could also throw in "requests to edit protected pages", and make sure the distinction between semi-protection and protection is understood. And the difference between a block and a ban. And the nuances of dealing with the various types of IP address blocks and range blocks. And protecting against moves. But then the page becomes a rehash of Wikipedia:Administrators. One problem I see is that those taking such a test will, inevitably, make mistakes in their answers. If they had passed an RfA, they would probably be given helpful advice by other admins if they made such mistakes, and they would learn for next time. If they show before an RfA that they would make this sort of mistake, they could get shouted out of the room at RfA for it. The key point here is whether the candidate will (a) learn from any mistakes they make, and (b) the community trusts the candidate to carry on behaving the same way after RfA as before. A candidate could still give 'model answers' to such tests, and then after the RfA they could backslide into displaying grumpy, moderately incivil, and biased behaviour. The key points of community trust and the willingness to carry on learning after the RfA (not just to think "I've made it - no need to be nice anymore" - an attitude I would oppose instantly for) is something that a test will never be able to show. Prolonged interaction over a period of weeks and months is the only way to elucidate that sort of 'character' information. Experience, ability, judgement and trust are separate things, and RfA at the moment tries to assess them all in one go. Your proposal examines the ability and judgement of a candidate. Editcount, spread across namespaces, and length of time here sort of sums up experience. Trust is "will anyone speak up for this candidate and say they are a nice person?". Would separating out these aspects of an RfA candidature help? Carcharoth 14:24, 2 February 2007 (UTC)
      • I don't like admin tests at all. If someone has no intention whatsoever of doing a history merge, why quiz them on it? I have never, for example, edited anythng having to do with the main page, so I don't think it would have been fair to ask me about main page content guidelines. --BigDT 16:04, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

Note about the ability to block

  • In reading this over, it jumps out at me that Doc is obviously concerned about provisional admins ability to block. This comes back around to my previous suggestion that the ability to block/unblock be separate from the "admin package". This would restore the perception that being an admin is merely having "the mop". I also think a great many more RfAs would "succeed", which would create the intended effect that's been discussed ad infinitum on this page ("we need more admins"). - jc37 13:57, 2 February 2007 (UTC)
    • Well, we could tweek my proposal and remove the blocking ability until the candidate is confirmed.--Docg 13:59, 2 February 2007 (UTC)
      • Then we won't find out how a vandal-fighter uses the tools. Blocking vandalism accounts is normal janitorial work. Kusma (討論) 14:02, 2 February 2007 (UTC)
          • Yup, there is no ideal here. But with the present system, we are refusing good candidates, discouraging people from asking too soon, and the result is backlogs. The project is up scaling quicker than the adminship.--Docg 14:10, 2 February 2007 (UTC)
I would be more worried about a provisional admin being able to see some spilled^wdeleted Beans. A recently deleted javascript springs to mind. Agathoclea 14:06, 2 February 2007 (UTC)
So, get it oversighted.--Docg 14:10, 2 February 2007 (UTC)
I don't think splitting up into "partial" admins is such a good idea; it may be confusing and lend fruther credence to it being perceived as a hierarchy. >Radiant< 14:07, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

I think the above commenters missed that I was suggesting the we remove block/unblock from all admins. And make gaining that a separate request process of some kind. That would remove the need for "provisional admins", and a host of other similar suggestions for "limited" adminship. - jc37 14:52, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

My thoughts

Interesting idea, but I don't think I would support that. A lot of admins become very good ones after experiencing the tools for a while, and I'm sure many of those with potential will make bad decisions in the short trial period. I concur with the proposal by NoSeptember, we could always suggest non-admins to write their adminship decisions instead of actually doing them. Afterwards we could have other users review the decisions and compare it with the actual result. Also, it's important to note that some so-called pre-adminship testings already exist on Wikipedia, which include non-admin closing and WP:AIV. Michaelas10 (Talk) 14:17, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

Concerning pre-admin trials ( see also comments two sections above), I would like to say this: The idea of doing pre-admin testing should only be done if there is a specific candidate whose judgement is questioned in an area he will get involved in as an admin. For example if there is concern that someone doesn't understand how to apply CSD policy we can run a test on that only. We pass plenty of admins without seriously questioning their decision making judgement, and other factors involving temperament can not be so easily tested. But in some cases, with a potentially close RfA, a test of a candidate could be useful to the community. But the idea of in-between admin levels is not a good idea (whether it be probation, provisional, or limiting the number of buttons they can use). Either you are qualified to be a full admin, or you are not. I'd preper a test for a questionable candidate to some of the in-between proposals I see. A test in this case is just an extra proof that you understand what you are doing, and may convince some that you can be trusted with the buttons. We need more "full" admins, but we don't need any "half" admins. NoSeptember 17:41, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

Trusted vs Trustworthy

I don't like this idea. Admins need to be trusted by the community, not just be trustworthy, but actually be trusted (very different things). Provisional admins would be exactly the same as full admins in every real way (adminship is just having some extra buttons, afterall), so having a whole load of people that haven't been vetted by the community having the admin tools would mean the whole body of admins would lose the trust of the community, which would cause no end of problems.

Also, a lot of failed RfAs are simply because there isn't enough evidence to base a decision on - another 6 weeks as a regular editor would often be enough to get them through RfA, they don't need 6 weeks as an admin. Some time as a provisional admin would help judge competency, but I don't think competancy is a big issue, the issue is trustworthyness, and not going on a deleting spree for 6 weeks doesn't prove much. And finally, desysoping takes a few minutes at best, a few minutes in the hands of a rogue admin can be very damaging (not irreparable, but still very damaging). --Tango 15:03, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

I'll be controversial here - maybe it's time for the community to have less of a say? After all, a common complaint is that the right people aren't being confirmed, and I could probably pull together an entire demonstration of people's inability to judge poor administrative actions properly if I had the time or inclination. If the community can't be relied upon to promote the right people/enough people, should the community continue to have that ability? --badlydrawnjeff talk 15:14, 2 February 2007 (UTC)
While you make good points, I think removing the community from RfA would do more harm than good. We would probably get better admins, but those admins wouldn't be trusted by the community. --Tango 10:54, 3 February 2007 (UTC)
I said the same thing as your first paragraph up a bit. I strongly agree. ViridaeTalk 21:17, 2 February 2007 (UTC)
Just out of curiousity... if not decided by the community, how would you propose we increase the admin pool? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Isotope23 (talk • contribs) 21:20, 2 February 2007 (UTC).
Goddamn that bot is fast...--Isotope23 21:22, 2 February 2007 (UTC)
I would say that the trial period is only 3 weeks at most, and the person wanting it must have 1,500 edits. This trial would get rid of all the "I don't know if we could trust you" on RFA's. --TeckWizTalk Contribs@ 21:26, 2 February 2007 (UTC)
My main point was that a trial isn't going to prove trustworthyness. Putting a 1500 edit limit is just going to make it harder for people to become admins, not easier... strict edit limits like that have been rejected dozens of times, and with good reasons. --Tango 10:54, 3 February 2007 (UTC)
I don't. I see no problem with the current number, just their focus. RfA focuses strongly on a persons ability to edit the encyclopedia, wheras RfA work is quite often wikigonme style stuff. We therefore need to promote more people prepared to take on the wikignome tasks like speedy deletion etc. ViridaeTalk 21:49, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

Some changes to consider

I think the basic concept is potentially quite worthwhile, but I doubt it can get consensus as currently laid out. Some thoughts:

  • Any editor with (say) six weeks and (say) 500 edits can apply for provisional adminship - this is far, far too little experience for most people to support, I think. Something like 1000 or more edits, excluding welcome notices, and at least five months with 100 edits or more, is much more in line with what the community would agree to, I think.
  • Many RfAs fail because of objections to lack of experience in different areas. Some light requirements here would (a) raise the barrier, discouraging trivial applications for provisional admin, and (b) provide a better basis for a 'crat to evaluate a candidate (as well as for objections by other editors). I think something like doing at least 20 fixes of uncategorized articles (which could test knowledge of WP:N), and partipation in at least 10 RfAs, 10 RfCs and/or third opinions, 20 XfDs, and 2 editor or peer reviews isn't particularly onerous, but would help candidates, the project, and decision-makers.
  • Bureaucrats should be given a pre-defined maximum limit for approval of provisional admins - say, 10 provisional admins per day. This has a number of advantages - it does not result in a lot of failed candidates (bad feelings), but rather only a sense of delay (or bad luck that the other candidates were so much stronger), because 'crats don't have to fail anyone, just not pick them as being the best in the pool; many weaker candidates won't bother to apply; and it reduces the workload for 'crats and those evaluating canddidates, because it's easier to pick the top candidates than it is to do a yes/no for each candidate. (Implementation: There would be an applicant pool for each day, with no limit on the number of candidates; someone not chosen out of the pool would have to wait for 30 days before putting his/her name back into the pool.)
  • One way to avoid "instruction creep" is to not have two paths to admin - provisional and regular. Rather, the standard path to admin would be to become a provisional admin first, then be confirmed by the community. Among other things, this would solve the current problem of obviously unqualified candidates going through RfAs. (As a safety value, an editor who has applied at least three times for provisional admin status and not been chosen might be able to apply to the community for an RfA, as is done currently.) (The number of approvals per day by the 'crats should depend on whether the current RfA process continues as if; if it essentially shuts down - as I suggest - then the number should be increased; if it continues, then perhaps the target should be - say - 7 provisional admins per day.)
  • The period for being a provisional admin should be longer - say, three months. If someone hasn't messed up in three months, then the confirmation would be a formality, which is in keeping with the "being an admin is no big thing" concept.
  • There should be a standard "profile" that a candidate has to fill out, which would include counts of edits in various areas, but would also include things like being a mediator, participation in editor and peer and featured article reviews, participation on various help pages, participation in the cleanup areas most needed, etc. Most editors, I think, have no idea of the number of places in Wikipedia (besides editing articles they happen to be interested in, and doing new page and vandal patrol) where editor participation is both needed and (unfortunately) lacking. The profile would open the eyes of most editors even thinking about eventually being an admin.
  • There should be a lengthier standard set of questions for candidates, but they should be designed so that candidates can't simply copy/edit/paste answers from others: what are two are three articles where you're most pleased with your contributions; have you been in an edit conflict in the last six months, and if so, why and what was the resolution; have you ever be warned or blocked, and why; what are two or three XfD discussions in which you feel you contributed the most; what areas do you think you'd be most active as an admin, and why; etc. A lengthier set of questions is a barrier that someone who will be a good admin should have no problems with, but will discourage trivial applicants, those who can't communicate well in writing, etc. -- John Broughton (☎☎) 15:16, 2 February 2007 (UTC)
    • Damn. I've been here two years and have nearly 13k edits, and I wouldn't meet your standard. Interesting. --badlydrawnjeff talk 15:18, 2 February 2007 (UTC)
    • Your "light requirements" make no sense, especially if you ask for all of them. None of them are related to trusting the candidate, and we want to promote sane admins, not people who want adminship so bad that they jump through several completely arbitrary hoops. Kusma (討論) 15:23, 2 February 2007 (UTC)
      • I agree with Kusma. I am not a big fan of having set admin requirements because it does just promote contributing to meet the criteria. Adminship is a trust issue and I don't think meeting a bunch of arbitrary benchmarks necessarily confers trust.--Isotope23 15:40, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

I don't like the provisorial adminship idea. There are too many rules involved, and it won't be easy to seriously monitor a lot of people being given the tools. The barrier to entry "(say) six weeks and (say) 500 edits" seem too low also, even for a provisorial position. Lastly, when there is a confirmation vote at the end of the provisorial period, it would be quite hurtful for the people who were given the tools to have them taken away. I think the current process works better in the long run. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 16:08, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

KISS principle

I think the above gets way too complex. Let's keep it simple.

  • Any editor can request probationary adminship, if he meets some low suffrage requirement (e.g. one month, 1000 edits, no blocks). No editcountitis please. Enthousiasm is what counts.
  • Probation is discussed for a few days and is passed unless there are compelling reasons not to based on the user's past deeds. Thus speculative reasoning, and 'lack of participation in process X' are explicitly not good reasons.
  • Probation lasts one month. Afterwards, the user gets regular adminship unless (1) at least ten users (per suffrage above) object to that, in which case a regular RFA decides, or (2) the user has barely used the tools at all, in which case he probably doesn't need them.
  • If necessary, probation can be revoked instantly by any bureaucrat (yes, I know they can't demote technically, but they get to make the decision; other users get to convince the 'crat).
  • This applies only once per user.
  • >Radiant< 16:01, 2 February 2007 (UTC)
  • Discussion moved to Wikipedia:Trial_adminship. >Radiant< 17:04, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

Why Not

User:Radiant has found the under lying problem with the RFA process and thats a focus on

speculative reasoning, and 'lack of participation in process X'.

If the process here required oppose votes to focus only on "compelling reasons based on the user's past deeds" otherwise they could be discounted or even ignored at the closing of the RFA. Then to avoid newbie nominations a minimum edit count/time period requirement be established. Gnangarra 00:37, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

Okay then, who judges "compelling"? It can't be the closing bureaucrat, because that essentially gives them the power to decide the RfA completely. -Amark moo! 00:41, 3 February 2007 (UTC)
The community standards decide what are compelling reasons, such that RFA become more of a discussion of the editors past deeds rather than the current support/oppose vote. Gnangarra 01:39, 3 February 2007 (UTC)
Um... that already happens. If a reason isn't compelling enough, then not enough people agree with it to make the RfA fail. If it makes the RfA fail, there was obviously not a consensus that it wasn't compelling. -Amark moo! 05:07, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

Compare to Wikiversity's 'RFA' process

Ok, I don't know if it's been said up there already, but upon seeing this, I think it's similar to how Wikiversity does it. Basically, any administrator (though they call them 'custodians' over there) who is experienced enough to do so, can add them self to a page and become a mentor. When a user requests custodian status, they must find a mentor. Anyone who cannot find a mentor in 7 days has their request archived. (means no more Oppose - only 10 edits type things) Once a user has a mentor they are given a sysop flag, and their mentor is responsible for teaching them the ropes for 4 weeks. After that, there's a discussion about how the user has used the tools, and if there is no clear abuse then a bureaucrat will close the discussion and the user goes from being a 'probationary custodian' to a 'permanent custodian'. Over there at least, 'adminship is no big deal' seems to be working. (but is it scalable?) See v:Wikiversity:List of custodian mentors, v:Wikiversity:Custodianship, v:Wikiversity:Candidates for Custodianship and v:Wikiversity:Support staff. Cheers. --Michael Billington (talk • contribs) 07:54, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

The issue is that adminship is a bigger deal than that. Not having clear abuse does not mean that I want you to be an admin, or even that I can trust you won't do something really stupid. People are cautious during trial periods, so they simply do not do everything they will, and borderline behavior may become clear abuse. -Amark moo! 03:33, 8 February 2007 (UTC)
Aye, that's a big concern. If someone entered the program with the intent to cause trouble, of course they'd keep it cool for the trial period. .V. [Talk|Email] 23:36, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

"Namespace balance" opposes

I've been seeing a multitude of opposes due to "lack of balance in edits" and "too low a percentage of ____space edits" lately. What are the "correct" percentages? Is there a guidebook somewhere? Picaroon 03:34, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

It's people's own opinions. --Majorly (o rly?) 03:37, 3 February 2007 (UTC)
  • There is no guidebook on this. It's a fad of late for people to vote against some based on the balance of edits. It's a convenient way of reviewing someone without having to delve into their actual contributions to see the value of their edits. I personally think it's a poor way to evaluate an editor's abilities. However, I also recognize it is difficult for people to spend the time necessary to really understand a candidate they know nothing of. Thus, falling back on arbitrary balance of edits provides a too convenient crutch to get by with. A person could make 10 edits in Wikipedia space and demonstrate all they would need to vis-a-vis policy and its application here. Another could make 10,000 edits in Wikipedia space and never demonstrate the same understanding. Any "balance" is an arbitrary construct with little or no meaning. --Durin 04:56, 3 February 2007 (UTC)
  • I don't like namespace balance at all. To me, as long as you demonstrate you can be trusted with the tools, that's what matters. There's two parts to that - believing that you won't abuse the tools and believing that you will know what to do with them. To that end, some level of participation in the Wikipedia space is probably going to be necessary - a deletion process, AIV, something - but whether it's 1% or 50%, who cares? --BigDT 05:03, 3 February 2007 (UTC)
  • (edit conflict) I agree with both of the above. I find it distressing that people feel compelled to evaluate "a candidate they know nothing of", as Durin puts it. If people don't have enough experience with a candidate to tell whether the person is trustworthy or not, and they're not inclined to look deeply enough to gain an informed picture, why not simply abstain? Raymond Arritt 05:11, 3 February 2007 (UTC)
  • Yeah, percentages are weird. It's certainly understandable to want a certain number of projectspace contributions, and even maybe article contributions, but requiring percentages looks a lot like "You're not allowed to be an admin because you don't like doing things I think you should". -Amark moo! 05:05, 3 February 2007 (UTC)
    • Everyone should have a 50% of their contributions in article space to demonstrate commitment to the project. Around a third should be in Wikipedia space to show an understanding of policy. A quarter should be in talk space to show you work well with others. Then, there should be substantial work with templates, categories, and images, that together makes up 15% of your total contributions. All of these percentages are absolutely essential and failing to meet any of them will doom an admin candidacy. Obviously, this is a joke, but sometimes, from reading RFAs, I get the impression that a lot of people think this way. Only those who give 120% can be admins! --BigDT 05:13, 3 February 2007 (UTC)
  • I don't particularly subscribe to a hard-and-fast "percentage". I disagree that reference to such a factor is some sort of easy way out of fully considering a candidate. What these references are handy for are giving an initial indication of the candidate's activity. If there is a significantly high disparity, I think it's fair for people to wonder why. I will grant that if there is a huge disparity, one should take the time to review the nominee's contribution history. For me, if there is a lopsided focus, I will delve into the user's contribution history to see what was done in the few edits there may have been in any particular space. If the edits are clearly well thought-out and substantive, I'll overlook the quantity side of things in favour of quality. If they aren't, then it means there is insufficient information available to know whether or not the nominee knows about the policies and procedures we expect an admin to be familiar with. I don't begrudge anyone using these short-hand means of communicating their point; after all, some RfAs can get quite long. While commentators should give an indication of why they made a particular opinion, we don't need everyone citing the full-length version of what these terms mean. In the absence of objective criteria, people will form their opinions on whatever evidence they think is relevant. Unless a criterion is patently unfair or irrelevant, we should accept that individuals will form their opinions on what is important for them. The 'crats can then sort through the discussion and exercise their discretion based on the overall commentary. Agent 86 07:49, 3 February 2007 (UTC)
  • What confuses me is that people sometimes say "Only 200 WP edits, and that's 1% of your total number" as if what improves knowledge of the process is proportion. Whereas someone with 200 edits, which is 10% of their total number might fare better. Surely it's the time spent in these areas full stop, not as a proportion of the rest of your time. (I also agree with the above that you need to look at what they've been doing; I, for instance, spend a lot of time in PR and FAC giving me an inflated WP space edit count for what is, essentially, article-writing.) Trebor 10:13, 3 February 2007 (UTC)
  • Very few Wikipedia space edits is a problem, because it means lack of experience in the kind of areas admins work. It doesn't take many edits to be enough, though - about 100 should be fine. The problem is, 100 is only fine if the person !voting is willing to actually look at them and check they are worthwhile. Requiring 500 Wikipedia space edits means you can be pretty sure there are at least 100 worthwhile ones without having to look at anything more than an edit count summary. As for other namespaces, they really aren't relevant (at least, not directly). An extremely small number of talkspace edits (like less than a dozen) would be a sign of a problem, but that's about it. --Tango 11:02, 3 February 2007 (UTC)
  • The correct answer is that anybody who opposes due to a reason completely unrelated to a candidate's qualification for adminship like "namespace percentages" needs to be beaten with a cluestick and the oppose vote publcily declared as ridiculous. Kusma (討論) 11:04, 3 February 2007 (UTC)
  • I like at least 2,000 mainspace edits, I my self do not have a requirement on Wikipedia space. thanks/Fenton, Matthew Lexic Dark 52278 Alpha 771 11:07, 3 February 2007 (UTC)
    • But mainspace edits are not all equal, making 2000 a fairly arbitrary number. 100 thoughtful contributions of content is worth more than 1000 AWB spelling corrections. Trebor 12:18, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

"Namespace balance" opposes (section break)

      • Yeah, mainspace edit count standards are pretty much useless now that we have AWB to give you 500 edits a day. It's best to look at actual edits, although I admit I don't always do so. -Amark moo! 16:03, 3 February 2007 (UTC)
        • Yeah, similarly, this would mess up the percentage thing; obviously, if you make a whole crapload of edits to the mainspace doing something like stub sorting, reverting vandalism, etc., your WP space edits are going to be a small percentage. It seems like an arbitrary standard to say someone should have a certain percentage given this; why should we expect someone to change their editing style if they're already helping the project and changing is not particularly going to help the project? Therefore, I support Kusma's cluestick proposal: we should be bringing this up when someone !votes based on this (in as polite a way as possible, of course). I know it's sometimes seen as confrontational to reply to opposes, but given that it's a discussion, not a vote, we should be discussing things when they don't make sense. Plus, I get the feeling that some people !vote this way because they see others doing so and going unchallenged, and think it's a commonly accepted norm. delldot | talk 06:23, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
    • 2,000 mainspace edits? What a ridiculous criterion! And talk about editcountitis, too. As Trebor points out, anyone who is semi-qualified with a computer can easily pump out thousands of nothing mainspace edits. Maybe you should just stop using this terribly broken criterion? Not only are you giving people a free pass who probably actually haven't made any substantial mainspace contributions, you're also excluding a lot of people who would be terrific admins because of some arbitrary number they've failed to meet. If there was an admin aptitude test that'd be one thing, and I could see supporting/opposing on those test scores, but number of edits is a complete non sequitur when it comes to judging how trustworthy someone would be as an admin. --Cyde Weys 15:00, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
      • Any number on the mainspace is completely ludicrous. If you spend two hours writing an article, that gets you one edit. On the other hand, 10 minutes reverting vandalism might give you 15 or more article space edits. Both are important contributions to Wikipedia and neither should be discounted, but if you are purely looking at edit count as an indicator of activity, you would draw an incorrect conclusion here. --BigDT 15:09, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

The raw number may not mean much. What matters is the committment to the content creation rather than an exclusive emphasize on policing and telling others what to do. The mandatory question three gives the candidate exactly the opportunity to demontsrate the interest in encyclopedic content and if the answer shows a strong record of content creation, the mere editcontitis distorted by the fact that a significant rewrite may take only one edit will not be able to distort the picture. --Irpen 00:25, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

Why? This isn't editor review. Adminship is not a reward for writing high quality articles. It is a recognition that someone is trusted and will not abuse the tools. If someone spends time working on backlogs and is willing to take on the massive administrative backlogs, why in the world would you deny them that ability? Also, adminship has nothing to do with "telling others what to do." A non-admin has every right to leave a user warning template. Adminship confers the technical ability to perform certain tasks - it does not bestow any additional actual authority (although there is some perceived authority) and it does not designate one user as being any smarter than another. Adminship is purely about having the technical ability to block, protect, and delete. --BigDT 00:32, 8 February 2007 (UTC)
Well, as I explained, I view one of the (if not the) main admin task(s) is providing the content writers with the most comfortable working environment. Some content writers may have a difficult temper, some feel passionate about their work and some are ideal wikipedians and do not need any guidance. The admin who, as you suggest, hits the talk page of the content writer with intimidating warning templates, created for dealing with newbies, uses the block button liberally and overall makes an impression of enjoying being "in charge" of things is exactly the opposite of what will help a content writer to deal with the issues he has to deal with. Only the continuous involvement in content writing by an administrator him/herself can assure that the administrator would understanding well the editor's concerns. A strong record of productive involvement in conflict resolution could be another way of demonstrating the right attitude towards the content writers for an admin who will be in position of blocking them. At the same time, if the candidate would have no interest in dealing with the editors' related issues and would be dealing only with accounts involved in simple vandalism, deletion of typo redirects, other technical backlog sorting and other tasks that require no involvement with live people here (so, purely custodian tasks), than I would say that indeed a record of content writing and/or positive conflict resolution would matter little.
Unfortunately there is no way to know, what would be the primary set of tasks the user would be handling. Deadminning is rare and takes place only in the cases of extreme abuse. Knowing that hitting the established user's talk page with all sorts of warning templates instead of talking personally and patiently is unhelpful requires only a minimal set of interpersonal skills but many users, including some admins, don't have even that. As such, the record of content creation and/or productive conflict resolution is a must for a user who would be using an adminship for anything more than a mop and a bucket. --Irpen 01:16, 8 February 2007 (UTC)
Meanwhile, as I type, right now, CAT:CSD has around 300 pages and for a stretch of about 40 minutes, I was the only one deleting anything out of it. There are two candidates right now whose help would be invaluable for cleaning out this backlog, but are not likely to succede in their nominations. If someone is going to abuse the block button, they're going to do that regardless of whether or not they are a prolific editor. Civility - whether it is expressed on article talk pages, user talk pages, xFD discussions, whatever - is, in my opinion, the best indicator. Restricting adminship to prolific writers doesn't keep out abusive admins - in fact, I can't even think of someone who has been desysopped that wasn't a great writer - I'm sure there has been - I just can't think of any. Rather, being more restrictive on admins just increases the workload for current admins and causes the backlogs to continue to grow. As for conflict resolution ... that's not primarilly a job of an admin. You have every much of a right to resolve a conflict as I do. Admins get three buttons to perform three janitorial tasks. Everything else on Wikipedia - anybody can do. Adminship does not confer any additional authority on a user - it confers power, but not authority. --BigDT 04:43, 8 February 2007 (UTC)
Unfortunately, that isn't true. People will refuse to listen to people who aren't administrators, or give an administrator's opinion extra weight. You can say that administrators don't have any extra authority as much as you like, but the fact remains, in many peoples' eyes, they do. And I'm not going to give people authority they can't deal with because I believe on principle that they do not have it. Having said that, conflict resolution is still irrelevant. -Amark moo! 05:05, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

BigDT, that you perceive a block of an established editor a "janitorial task" is exactly what I have a problem with. As far as abusive blocks go, I cannot think of any content prolific admins who are block abusers while I can name you many abusers who are not interested in content and most, actually, never were interested in content in the first place. And several blocks of good editors by non-writing admins were the events that triggered much of the turbulences that were rocking the Wikipedia since last September. And I don't know of a single block of anyone by a writing admin that caused any significant drama. And the reason why is that the writing admins understand better the conserns of other content writers, are more likely to better judge the situation and, as a result, act reasonably. The backlog is a problem but you underestimate the damage of the wrongful block. The problem is that some see Wikipedia primarily as a social medium just like any other internet forum (amount of time spent outside of Mainspace, that is in space where people mostly chat, is a good, while not a universal, rule of thumb to pinpoint such users). With such perception adminship becomes a big deal, something to strive for, like and hierarchy in a social environment. You stated that it gives "power". That's a wrong attitude. First of all it gives a mop and a bucket but some strive to it specifically for power. No project can succeed when the janitors have power over scholars. There was a proposal a while ago and it is sometimes resurrected about different tiers of adminships, like making it possible to give only some of the buttons to a particular candidate. That might be a solution to solve a backlog. I can't tell. But what I can tell is that the correlation between lack of content writing and viewing Wikipedia a social medium were the power games take place is strong even if it is not universal.

Finally, people would be more comfortable in supporting the candidates who raise some doubts if the deadminning mechanism was real and reasonably implementable (right now it requires a gross abuse and an ArbCom case). I agree with you, though, that RfA is broken and something should be done with it. What I am sure of, is some reasonable deadminning mechanism would need to be a part of any such fix. --Irpen 05:25, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

Well, having a button is, by definition, power. I use the term only to distinguish it from authority. Authority is the right to take an action. Power is the ability to take that action. Power, in this case, is NOT power over a person. Every user has the authority. Amarkov is 100% right that there is a perceived authority of admins, but it is not an actual authority - every user has the authority to take almost any action. My point was that adminship only confers the power - the technical function - the tool. It does not confer the more important thing - the authority. An admin is not a judge. Any admin who blocks an established user in a non-emergency situation for a reason other than 3RR without discussion is doing something wrong anyway. That isn't a legitimate use of administrative tools. I do 100% agree with you on one thing - we need a deadminning mechanism. I am open to recall and will support almost anyone who themselves will be open to recall. If it were up to me, it would be mandatory. If multiple established users can point to an actual abuse of the tools, then there's a problem. --BigDT 05:48, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

Hot Air ?

I've read numerous comments now by numerous users (not just Cyde, above) that Wikipedia needs more admins. What I'd like to know is why people are making these comments but not following through the process and actually nominating editors for adminship. I reguarly notice comments such as "promising candidate for the future" and "would support in a few months" on reasonably successful withdrawn and no consensus closes, why is nobody going back through their contributions and finding users they liked the look of a few months ago and nomming them now ? I know some candidates will have proven to be unsuited to adminship or have stopped editing, but there must be lots of good candidates with their first RfA sitting on your contributions lists, now ripe for promotion, just waiting for someone to nominate them. -- Heligoland 00:45, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

I have a few people I think would be great admins, but I'm 75% sure they'd be shot down. .V. [Talk|Email] 01:21, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
Yep, same. I've nominated a few, with "come back in a few months" and "will support with more project edits", but I'm always on the look out for decent candidates. --Majorly (o rly?) 01:27, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
I think I've seen two candidates of your recently Majorly. If I remember right, they both failed, but I believed they both deserved to be admins. --TeckWizParlateContribs@ 01:29, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
They didn't fail, they withdrew. I've nominated 2 successfully, and I've got one up right now... I may even have another coming up soon ;) --Majorly (o rly?) 01:40, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

There's heaps of good candidates out there, usually not in all the famous places like ANI, IRC, Esperanza etc....Blnguyen (bananabucket) 01:41, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

According to this page, you've nominated six successfully since August... --Majorly (o rly?) 01:49, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
User:Blnguyen/RfA gives about 9, if you include co-noms and such, but there would be a few guys out there. The main thing is the deletion backlog...Blnguyen (bananabucket) 02:04, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
I really should get around to nominating someone, but everyone I see is either already an admin, or gets nominated before I realize they aren't. -Amark moo! 05:50, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
Maybe there should be a Wikipedia:Punchbowl where people that want to get nominated could stand around awkwardly drinking punch and trying not to make eye contact (I was always that kid at the school dance). Of course, the page would probably quickly get inundated with unqualified people and be too difficult to wade through. delldot | talk 06:29, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
I've always felt uncomfortable about people asking to be nominated - we allow self-noms, so why not just nominate yourself? Getting someone to nominate you seems like playing the system to me. Asking around to get an idea of if other people think your are ready (and them nominating yourself) is one thing, but actively seeking nominations is a bad thing. --Tango 10:59, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
Self-noms are generally unsuccessful (probably due to the high number of vastly under qualified new editors who self nom after a couple of days) and I'm convinced that some RfAs that have passed with the candidate being nominated would have closed differently had they self-nommed instead. It's nothing I can prove, but I've got a feeling that editors are quite sheepish around RfA and !vote the same way as someone else they know or trust, and if someone can get a nomination, especially from someone a lot of people who hang around RfA can trust, it seems to break down this sheepishness for the first few votes. -- Heligoland 15:25, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
Oh, Radiant! I do try, honestly... if only people weren't so picky over edit counts, and time here etc.... there's lots of suitable users on my list, but they just wouldn't pass the current process. --Majorly (o rly?) 11:51, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
  • I didn't mean you specifically, but people in general. Keep up the good work, and you might be surprised at times at who is able to pass. Perhaps you should nominate some of those people on your list anyway; at the least, they'd get pointers for improvement, and at best, well, maybe they pass anyway. >Radiant< 12:25, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
  • I've got someone that I have seriously considered nominating for a long time ... he has almost 14K edits and does a TON of administrative stuff. I have no doubt that he would make a wonderful admin and not giving him the tools would be foolish ... but he has under 700 mainspace edits and I was nearly rejected with 1800. This is really the reason we don't have more admins ... if someone is fully committed to doing administrative stuff, by all means, make them an admin! --BigDT 13:00, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
    • Yep, that could be problematic. But you did make it, after all. Editcountitic arguments don't necessarily win the day, especially if you can make a good case on that guy's other merits. >Radiant< 13:10, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
      • I've got someone else, too, who is basically the polar opposite. This individual makes some of the edit counters crash. He has an un-frickety-real 27K edits, but very little participation in deletion processes. He has written numerous featured and good articles and is obviously a trusted user. When I first joined Wikipedia, he had 10K edits and I was shocked when I first realized that he was not an admin. (Now, this second user has declined adminship before, but said he would be open to considering it in the future - just not then.) In both cases, both of these users are invaluable to Wikipedia. Both are trusted and there's no reason not to give them the tools. --BigDT 13:14, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

The problem isn't lack of nominations, it's broken qualifications as used by a large enough number of RFA voters to keep out lots of people who really would do a good job with the tools. There have been a few good candidates I've seen, but just being honest and looking at the silliness that RFA has turned into recently, it was unlikely they would pass, and I know how stressful a failed RFA can be — so why put someone through that? --Cyde Weys 14:55, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

How about, instead of making trial admins or changing percentages, we simply add to the bureaucrat's instructions this suggestion: "It is suggested that bureaucrats give less weight to support or oppose opinions that are based soley on edit counts and more weight to those opinions that offer substantive reasons." I think that with trial adminship or anything else, the problem that we're trying to end is RFAs that are shot down for reasons other than whether or not the person can be trusted with the tools. Maybe just this wording to the crat is all we need, combined with continuing to work to change the hearts and minds of those who oppose purely for extreme editcountitis. --BigDT 15:15, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
  • The problem with that is that it encourages the editcount people to simply give another reason, or no reason, with their vote. This won't stop people from using editcountitis, only from mentioning it. >Radiant< 15:20, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
    • In the short term? No, not really ... but think long term. We're trying to change the culture of RFA. Not everyone who !votes right now, today, is going to change, but the new user who joins and is reading the page will realize, "ahh, edit count is not a good reason to oppose someone". --BigDT 15:34, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
I should hope the bureaucrats use their judgement very carefully and ignore such votes. The question is "will this user having admin buttons be beneficial?" --Majorly (o rly?) 15:24, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

How about trying to develop a culture of providing diffs to back up any support or oppose !votes, physically force people who !vote on RfAs to look through edits, not just at how many edits have been made. How about we start by removing links to the edit counter tool and removing the edit count stuff from each RfAs talk page, replacing it with a link to the editors contributions instead. I know there's a link to the editors contribs up at the top of the page, but at the important bit, underneath the questions and before the !voting, it's edit summary usage and edit count, not edit summary usage and user's contributions. If someone wants to load up Wannabee Kate's tool and type in the username manually, they're showing a little more interest than just going to the talk page. -- Heligoland 15:50, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

I bet there are some good renomination candidates that are gun shy from their first RfA (which could have been a year ago), who are now qualified. We should go through the WP:RFAF lists to find some. NoSeptember 16:03, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

I bet there is. Just far too many to look through. --Majorly (o rly?) 16:27, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
Too many to look through? You just pick a letter and start. Many are easily eliminated because they have become inactive etc. If several of us started looking a bit at a time, we'd find a bunch, and we could coach them a bit if necessary.
Another place to look might be some of the clean up project and Wikiproject participants that don't get much attention outside of their own area of interest. NoSeptember 18:38, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
Yeah it would be hard to sort out the snowballers to the squeakers. ~ Arjun 16:28, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
You know another problem with potential "good" admins is that they have an RFA that fails and the opposers say "come back in 3 months", and then they come back in less than a month and are shot down for overeagerness. ~ Arjun 17:50, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
Well they only deserve it - if you're told to come back in 3 months, you should do just that! Overeagerness isn't good. --Majorly (o rly?) 17:53, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
I know Majorly :p, I was pointing out that overeagerness is what is killing RFA candidates. If they can just wait several months they will have a great chance. ~ Arjun 18:56, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
Not really relevant, but I had someone offer to nom me a week after opposing me for being too new. Just shows it's not only the candidates to blame. Some people accept these nominations and who's to blame for that - let's face it, you don't exactly have to fight off people all wanting to nominate you. -- Heligoland 18:01, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
I've said this before, but it bears repeating: Category:Wikipedia administrator hopefuls has 676 people in it. If even 15% of them can pass muster, that's another 100 people. EVula // talk // ☯ // 19:25, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for pointing that out. Am looking through it right now. But I'm failing to see any that would pass RfA at the moment with the current focus on edit counts. Most of them have number of edits in only in the hundreds, others have been here only a couple of months. One of them that seems the most likely to me hasn't been active at all in recent months which would probably mean a failed RfA. But I've left a note on that user's page to let me know if they ever become active again, because I'd probably nominate them if they do. Anyway, in conclusion 15% passing seems rather optomistic! Mathmo Talk 07:22, 10 February 2007 (UTC)
Well, I'm a firm believer that at least some of the users in there could be worthwhile admins; after all, I was in there for a while. :D
And yes, 15% might be a bit optimistic. Still, even a 5% promotion rate would be another 30+ admins, which would be a nice augmentation to the admin pool. EVula // talk // ☯ // 20:31, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

The problem of too few admins

The problem isn't lack of nominations, it's broken qualifications as used by a large enough number of RFA voters to keep out lots of people who really would do a good job with the tools. -- -Cyde Weys 14:55, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

Exactly. I strongly urge everyone to look at the second graph at User talk:NoSeptember. It shows that beginning somewhere in late 2005 or early 2006, the number of admins being promoted per month started decreasing, and the number of successful admins per month has continued to decrease since then. So - while the English Wikipedia is still seeing exponential increases in edits, new users, and (presumably) vandalism, as well as all the other admin work needed, the number of new admins per month is going in the opposite direction. For anyone who thinks we don't have enough admins (good ones, yes), that graph demonstrates a major reason why - with so many new editors, we should be see more new admins per month, but we're not.

So while I don't want to discourage anyone from urging other editors to find good admin candidates wherever they can, and to work diligently to increase the number of good nominations, I remain skeptical that anything other than a change in process is actually going to make much difference. I'd love to be proved wrong - to see a dramatic increase in successful RfAs in the next 60 days, for example - but I'm not going to hold my breath. Rather, I hope that new proposals - like Wikipedia:Trial adminship and User:Doc glasgow/provisional adminship - get taken as seriously as they deserve to be. -- John Broughton (☎☎) 19:06, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

The chart shown on my user talk page is hosted here, feel free to transclude it, if you like it. I track the 6 month rolling average of admin promotions here (last column) to show the general trend in RfAs, perhaps someone would like to graph it. NoSeptember 19:53, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
  • Actually, the number of admins promoted per month has remained fairly steady over the last two years, with ups and downs happening at various times. December '05 was a record month; 67 promotions that month. It's statistically not a good comparison point. I remember seeing the trend back then and wondering how RfA was going to cope with having a couple hundred successful noms per month. It came down off that high and has settled into a fairly steady 25-35 per month since then. So, I don't view these numbers as great cause for concern by themselves.
  • As for exponential increases in users; we have seen a large increase. But, there was a significant upswing in new users following the decision to require being logged in to create new articles. The number of users is a fairly useless number; how many are active is a better question to ask. Another way to look at this; how many articles are there per admin? In March of 2005, it hovered around 1200. Today, that number hovers around 1450, or roughly a 20% increase in close to two years. That's a slow increase; about 1% a month, and definitely not exponential. Since admins are primarily tasked with using the mop in the main article namespaces, it seems we are seeing a slow decline in the number of admins available for main article namespace maintenance, but not a dramatic decline. The number of edits per admin has also slowly increased as well.
  • However, during the last two years we have also seen a big increase in the availability of tools to combat vandalism, making admins (and other users as well) more effective at combating vandalism. Perhaps the burden of articles per admin is actually less than it was two years ago in terms of relative work.
  • There's no clear way that I know of to gauge just how much vandalism is occurring. We can presume there's more vandalism, and perhaps there is. But, we do not know (failing another IBM study) how rapidly vandalism is being handled on average. That would be a better gauge (in one area) of how effective our admin corps is. --Durin 19:36, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
    • To be honest I think the data of promotion rates is less compelling than actually reading RfA's and seeing the regularity with which candidates are opposed for lousy reasons: the balance of their edits across namespaces, pure edit counting, inactivity (to quote a current RfA: "you should be doing 300(ish) edits per month but you generally do less than 100"), or a few minor quibbles across thousands and thousands of edits. The problem is that in this process, comments that demonstrate defective judgment are to all appearance weighed equally with those that are well-reasoned. The result is twofold -- first, the process fails to do its job, in that it fails to promote a substantial number of qualified candidates; second, the process is felt to be unfair and arbitrary by a large segment of the community, with good reason. Christopher Parham (talk) 22:04, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

I cannot agree with the assumption made at the top of this section, and do not see that the downward trend in the stats observed by John Broughton proves that the process is "broken". There could be dozens of explanations for that trend. I find it a bit dismissive to say that the reasons why one would oppose a nomination are "silly" or that the opinions of those opposing nominations ought to be discounted. There will always be comments from time to time that don't apply relevant criteria or set out a rational reason (both "support" and "oppose"), but for most of the comments, I think that commentators are making comments that relate to what is important to them and express their real concerns. Anecdotally, without doing an empirical count, it seems to me that most "regulars" at RfA will post both oppose and support comments from nomination to nomination, depending on the circumstances. Very few seem to be hard-and-fast perpetual "support" or "oppose" for all nominations. You can disagree with the opinion, but that doesn't make the opinion wrong or "silly" or based on "broken qualifications". While having more admins might be a "good thing", the other issue to look at is the contribution rate of the existing admins. While I don't think we need or ought to expect any real "quota" of admin work from the existing admins, there seems to be a bit of the 80/20 rule going on - the bulk of the admin work is done by a minority of the admins. I just can't think of a way to encourage existing admins with a low rate of performance of admin duties to contribute more in cleaning up the backlogs. Agent 86 20:19, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

  • I don't think there's a good reason to encourage low activity admins to contribute more. We are all volunteers. Each admin does what they can, or want to do, and that is enough. If we're so lucky as to find more candidates who are going to be highly active, then great. But, it should be also noted that a number of the highly active admins burn out. That might not be a good thing either. I've maintained for a long time that we need to work towards solutions that reduce the burdens on admin functions being used. I think we've made strides in that regard, but more needs to be done. --Durin 21:05, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
    • I agree with you on the point that this is all a volunteer thing - that's one reason why I didn't really go so far as to try to think of a "solution" to encourage higher activity (and why I'd oppose a "quota"). My only point is that there are other ways to look at the "backlog" problem. That was just one of them. Agent 86 22:18, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

The number of admins promoted has not "remained steady"

Durin said Actually, the number of admins promoted per month has remained fairly steady over the last two years, with ups and downs happening at various times. ... It .. has settled into a fairly steady 25-35 per month since [December 2005].

I realize that there is always some discretion in analyzing numbers, but the trend here really is clear. From May 2006 through January 2007 (the last nine months), the average has been 26 successful RfAs per month; there was only one month (November) where promotions exceeded 30. By contrast, in the prior nine months, August 2005 through April 2006, the average was 43. The second period included two months with record numbers - October 2005 with 67, and December 2005, with 68.
I'm certainly willing to accept arguments that automation has made it possible for admins and other vandal fighters to be more productive, or that growth of Wikipedia has slowed (I happen to think edits is a better measure of growth than articles, for the record), but it's absolutely indisputable that in the past nine months, the rate of new admins has slowed significantly. -- John Broughton (☎☎) 16:50, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

Why has the number decreased?

Agent86 said There could be dozens of explanations for that trend..

Yes, there could be. But I think there is hard data that shows that editors with low edit counts (under 2000) were becoming admins in the first period above (August 2005 - whereas (for all practical purposes) no one with that low an edit count has become an admin in the past six months, as far as I know. (One known exception: someone also an admin on another Wikipedia project.) So we have two trends: (1) fewer admins per month and (2) a requirement (for all practical purposes, a policy, albeit unwritten) that editors have more edits (that is, have more months of experience) in order to succeed at an RfA than was the case a year ago.
No one has provided an alternative theory that is backed up by actual data that explains the first trend. I continue to believe that the second trend is the one of the major, and quite possibly the primary, cause of the first. -- John Broughton (☎☎) 16:50, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
My RfA stats page gives data for all successful requests since June 12 last year, and eventually I intend it to go right back to the beginnings of RfA. There have indeed been successful requests with under 2000 edits in the past six months: Tango in December with 1596, Christopher Sundita in July with 1957 and Renesis13 in November with 2084, just over 2000. --Majorly (o rly?) 17:12, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
But you know what I have noticed, the number of participation in (successful) RFAs are declining. Just look at Majorly's tracker and look at the supports. If you go down the chart the participation is getting gradually smaller with the exception of "some" RFAs. Just pointing that out :). ~ Arjun 17:20, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
I do believe they were at a peak of sorts then... see this list from 2005. --Majorly (o rly?) 17:31, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

Accepting NoSeptember's challenge above ...

I picked November 2006 from User:NoSeptember/List of failed RfAs (Chronological). It's distant enough in the past that the failed RFA stigma should be fading away. I have not vetted them in any way other than that they appear to be active and their RFAs were not failed because of civility/vandalism/etc.

As I said, I haven't vetted these in any way other than to see that they exist. Several of them, though, barring any shocking revelations, I would wholeheartedly support just from what I know of them in seeing them around - Khukri, Selmo, SB Johnny, and Anthony.bradbury. Anyway, I submit this list as a potential prospect list for anyone interested. --BigDT 19:47, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

Right, boys and girls, time to get busy with the nominations. -- Heligoland 21:50, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
Don't you dare pick the user I do Heligoland, otherwise I will have to co-nom which I really don't like doing... :) --Majorly (o rly?) 22:02, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
I've got one nom up at the moment and it wouldn't be fair to Shadow or the second candidate to nominate them this week, as much as I would like to nominate any of the editors listed above. -- Heligoland 22:07, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

Please be careful with this process. We need to do the due diligence to ensure that this is the right time for the candidate, a bit of discussion about how they have worked to resolve the issues that lead to their failure last time is a good idea. Multiple unsuccessful RfAs can sour some people on the project, we have to be sure that this is what they want. Also, doing this so publicly (posting a list here) concerns me. I suggested sources to find potential candidates, but I don't think we should neglect the need to make our interest in nominating someone a semi-private thing (on their talk page, not here on WT:RFA). NoSeptember 01:13, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

I've copied the list to User:BigDT/List of potential RFA re-applications and turned it into a table. I've looked at your list from the beginning of December back through the beginning of October. I agree ... we don't want to auto-nominate people or anything like that ... this is just a list to help anyone that may find it useful in looking for potential admins. I do want to say, though, that I noticed while looking through the old RFAs that in a great many cases, contributions stop after a failed RFA. We may need to better communicate that an RFA failure is not the end of the world and it doesn't mean that you aren't a valued contributor. --BigDT 01:27, 6 February 2007 (UTC)
Actually it says a lot about the candidate if they give up all editing of Wikipedia after an RfA fail. One of things that is generating a lot of support for Kafziel is that he took his last failed RfA in good spirit and continued editing and improving. OK, it might be that they feel generally under-valued by the community. But on the other hand, the idea that someone is only editing so they can become an admin is a little troubling. WJBscribe 01:52, 6 February 2007 (UTC)
Maybe ... but just because someone is unsuited for adminship doesn't mean that they aren't a valuable contributor. I don't even think it's fair to characterize such users as editing only for adminship - but whatever the reason, I think it's important that we not lose good contributors simply because their RFAs fail. --BigDT 01:59, 6 February 2007 (UTC)
Unfortuneately, I think some people do view it as a big deal and become emotionally attached to the idea that becoming an admin is some sort of validation. Often it is the emotional instability that will cause me to oppose the very candidates who are going to react to a failed RfA by stopping or greatly curtailing their editing. While many of these people are great Wikipedians, I'm not sure they would be good admins. Volatility has not proven itself to be a good mix with the admin bits. —Doug Bell talk 02:08, 6 February 2007 (UTC)
I consider someone declining the first offer to be nominated for adminship as a good sign of a stable personality and a big plus. Too many people jump at the first chance without doing their research (like studying current RfAs to get a feel for the process) and get blind sided by opposition that they could have predicted and taken steps to address had they been prepared. NoSeptember 08:59, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
Is there any way (other than just looking through special:allpages) to find declined nominations? Those would almost certainly be worth looking at as a potential good source of admins. --BigDT 17:26, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
Try Special:Prefixindex/Wikipedia:Requests for adminship. --Majorly (o rly?) 18:16, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
That's got a couple of thousand pages. I suggest a google search - this, for example, produced under 700 results, and one can see text as well before clicking:
 site:en.wikipedia.org "Requests for Adminship" decline
You can also do a "search within results", say, for results with "September" or "2005" (or whatever) in them, simply as a way to get a smaller list to start with. -- John Broughton (☎☎) 14:36, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

No need of tools argument

I've been in and out of looking at this talk page recently, trying to follow what everyone is saying and I've come to a conclusion of my own. It seems that people are complaining that there are not enough admins taking care of work, but a prominent argument I see out there (and I even got oppose votes for it too) is the "doesn't seem like he needs the tools" argument. With this apparent all-time low of admins, I don't really think this should be a viable argument, but what could be done about this?

Now, I feel that telling people what to say and what not to say on an RfA defeats the purpose, but with so many people giving votes that are obnoxiously stupid or without backing, it seems that the current system has a problem. People are not being promoted simply because an abundance of voters believe that the user "clearly shows no need for the tools," etc.

I don't want to propose that anything be done about this myself, but I hope that I'm not the only one who sees this apparent paradox! └Jared┘┌talk┐  02:01, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

"Apparent all-time low of admins"
What? We have more admins now than ever before. —Doug Bell talk 02:11, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

I haven't noticed the no need of tools argument being made much. Is it really that common? WJBscribe 02:19, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

Doug, It's true if it's worked out per articles (and I'd imagine it's the same for edits and images). There's near as makes no difference, 20,000 images orphaned fair use images needing deleted, 320 CSDs, thousands of images and pages needing deletion or at least the attention of an admin, but if saying we've got more admins than ever before will make it all go away, then that's magic. -- Heligoland 02:21, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

Well, then it would be better to say that the backlogs are at an all-time high instead of making an incorrect statement. As to the "no need of tools"...if someone doesn't indicate interest in working on the backlogs in their RfA answers, then how will making them an admin reduce the backlogs? I don't see the connection. —Doug Bell talk 03:33, 6 February 2007 (UTC)
Adminship isn't solely about backlogs though, but it's just one indicator that we might be really rather short of admins, for whatever reason. I know we're also short of admins able to deal with spam, though I dunno about vandalism and such. -- Heligoland 03:51, 6 February 2007 (UTC)
Why do you need to be an admin to deal with spam? Most of dealing with spam anyone can do...at the point that a spammer needs to be blocked, requesting an admin is not a big deal. I would guess that most of the vandal fighting is probably being done by non-admins right now, and spam fighting would be equivalent. I'm not really trying to defend this reason for opposing, but I don't understand the argument that the problem with the backlogs is related to some people opposing giving admin tools to people that aren't planning on using them. The problem to be addressed is getting enough people to combat the tide of inappropriate stuff occuring...this is not something that in many cases requires admin bits. I just don't see the no tools thing being a problem and it's not a completely irrelevant reason to oppose—no more so than edit counts or any of the other yardsticks people use. —Doug Bell talk 04:42, 6 February 2007 (UTC)
Sadly, requesting an admin that will block for spam is a big deal. -- Heligoland 14:00, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

No need for tools, I believe, stems from something written somewhere that to be an admin you must demonstrate the need for the tools, it comes back to admin being no big deal. This was somethime ago, my memory could be playing ticks. ViridaeTalk 03:51, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

The way I see it, if you don't give them the tools, then they definitely won't help with the admin backlogs, but if you do, they might. If you don't actually see any harm in giving them the tools, then why not do it? It's free labor, after all. delldot | talk 03:59, 6 February 2007 (UTC)
To be honest, I have to agree. When everyone was an admin, many people probobly didn't do much of the admin style work, but the occasional helping hand, reduction of a backlog etc etc cannot hurt at all. Thus, as long as they have demonstrated behaviour fitting of an admin, I don't see why they shouldn't be granted the tools. Admin isn't a big deal. (How we are goign to address this as an oppose vote I do not know, possibly challenge people to explain their oppose votes when they use this (in the nicest possible manner of course) or discuss with beuracrats how much credance they give to such !votes. It is a discussion not a vote after all.) ViridaeTalk 05:42, 6 February 2007 (UTC)
I've voted both ways on this. Sometimes, I feel a candidate doesn't really know why they want to be an admin; when their stated reason(s) for becoming an admin doesn't actually require them to be an admin, then I tend to oppose. But I've also voted support even though I thought the candidate would underuse the tools, because I trusted that person not to misuse the tools. Regards, Ben Aveling 11:05, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

It is true that non-admins can do most of the work dealing with spam, identifying deletable pages, etc. But there is a certain redundancy of effort having a non-admin discover and investigate something, determine an admin action needs to be taken, have to report that action to an admin or a board watched by admins, and then the admin has to reinvestigate the situation to see if the non-admin was right, and then use the admin tools necessary. There will always be this redundancy, but if we can find non-admins who are responsible, by making them admins we eliminate much of the redundancy at least for those items that they themselves find (and no longer have to report to someone else to take care of). NoSeptember 13:07, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

I had an interesting conversation with Srose about this. She indicated (quoting myself) that "the reason for such voting is more global: to discourage RFAs from good editors who don't need the tools and thereby encourage RFAs from folks who are more keen to help with our backlogs". Whether that actually works is difficult, if not impossible to determine. Frankly, it might scare away good candidates. I had a need for the tools before my RFA, but afterwards my contributions dramatically shifted towards more handling loads of maintenance at CAT:CSD and WP:AIV. When those huge backlogs are staring you in the face, it's hard not to use the tools to do something about it. Now I "only" have an hour or two a day for WP, but I still try to hit both of those each time I log in. I suspect other new admins would feel similarly about backlogs once they have the tools: a desire to work on them. But my own supposition may be no better than Srose's. That's my two cents.--Kchase T 15:26, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

  • The supposition that you must frequently use admin tools to be worthy of them is not a good direction to go. If an admin performs one admin function per month or 1,000 it is a contribution to the project. The point isn't to deny tools to people who would use them infrequently. The point is to give the tools liberally to those who can be trusted to use them. ~50% of all admin actions are done by 20 admins in each of block, protection, and deletion. If we should deny adminship to people who can be trusted because they won't use the tools so much, then perhaps we should de-admin all but say 50 of the most active admins since they are the only ones that "need" it. The question isn't need. The question is can they be trusted to use the tools appropriately when they find need to. --Durin 15:52, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

I'm glad someone brought this up. One of the comments for my RfA a couple days ago said that I didn't demonstrate need for the tools. This is a backward argument and is misleading. Wikipedia needs admins to do the jobs only admins could do, but how could any particular person really need adminship? Respected editors may want adminship to do jobs they couldn't do before. It seems like an editor saying "I want to clear backlog for CAT:CSD" is sufficient to demonstrate that he needs the tools. - grubber 16:33, 6 February 2007 (UTC) (My RfA is going to be denied on other grounds not related to this comment; I just use it as an illustration of what is bad reasoning, in my opinion)

We can look at related non-admin actions to see if someone is going to follow through with their stated plan once they become an admin. If they say they want to do CSD deletions, we should be able to see a history of good CSD tagging that they are doing as a non-admin. (Well, we would see the tags that have been refused, unless we dig into the logs ;) NoSeptember 16:39, 6 February 2007 (UTC)
But assuming they're good at CSD tagging, its pretty hard to check how often they do it... WJBscribe 16:44, 6 February 2007 (UTC)
Warning the creators of articles tagged for speedy helps with this. The number of deleted edits may also be an indication (why can't we browse a user's deleted edits?) Kusma (討論) 16:47, 6 February 2007 (UTC)
Kusma makes a good point. Do we still have that tool that shows what deleted pages you have edited? NoSeptember 16:50, 6 February 2007 (UTC)
We do, but the functionality has been shut off for security reasons. --Durin 17:11, 6 February 2007 (UTC)
Well, part of the speedy process is to leave warnings, so the inability to see deleted edits is a non-issue. If we have someone who's planning to clean out C:CSD and hasn't left oodles of {{nn-warn}}, etc, templates behind them, I sense a problem. Either they've never done much speedy deletion tagging, or they have but didn't leave warnings. Both of these would be problems for a would-be CSD-cleaner-outer. If they leave warnings, I can check what happened to the articles. Angus McLellan (Talk) 23:21, 6 February 2007 (UTC)
Personally, I've only placed a few speedy tags, and I thought the point was to make it speedy. Having to decide who the 'author' of the page is, and place a template on their talk page, seems to defeat the purpose of obvious speedies. If I felt the author had misunderstood something about Wikipedia, I would talk to them, instead of using templates. The permanent record of a CSD will be in the deleting admin's deletion log, though if I was organised I would make a little list somewhere of articles I'd tagged for speedy deletion, and watch the blue list turn red. Would be like watching paint dry. Similar things apply for PRODs. Do you use a 'warn' template for every single page you PROD? I too wish it was possible to view at least your own deleted edits. The security thing was, IIRC, to stop people viewing libellous edit summaries, or edit summaries with personal information. Carcharoth 03:39, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
With a couple of exceptions, the speedy deletion tags all have a line that says something like "Please consider placing {{subst:sometemplate}} ~~~~ on the User Talk page of the author." Many speedy deleted articles are the work of new editors; how are they supposed to know that they're missing the point unless they're told? If they create an article and it disappears, with no explanation, should they assume that it's been deleted for a good reason, or should they shrug their shoulders, say "Must have been a glitch" and recreate it? The list thing and the personalised message idea are nice ideas, but editors doing recent changes/new pages checking are unlikely to have the time for them. Angus McLellan (Talk) 12:34, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

(Halting the indent-indent-indent...) This has always been the argument that's stopped me from a (non-imaginary) RfA self-nom. Know why? Because the argument's dead-on true about me. Or at least it's real close to dead-on true. I'm hopelessly exo. The reason I'm here is to write articles, and that don't need no stinkin' admin tools. Oh sure, the buttons might come in handy once in a while. But I can't honestly say I'd use them very often. Which also means I wouldn't abuse them very often (or ever), but that probably wouldn't cut much ice on RfA right now.

There are a couple other deterrents for me. I'd have to clean up my user page...get rid of the Cyde quote (which I dearly love - it should be the exopedian's official motto, except exopedians don't have an official anything by definition), stop the stupid comments on Signpost articles, junk the userboxes on how I'm exopedian and inclusionist, dump the imaginary RfA self-nom. Also, I'd have to watch the humor, which would irritate the hell out of somebody sooner or sooner-er. But it's mainly the don't-need-the-tools thing. It's an argument I can't answer, and it would sink me faster than Hillary Clinton at the Republican National Convention. Casey Abell 17:09, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

User Casey states that he/she doesn't need tools because they are here to edit articles and certainly to edit articles you do not need admin tools. I wonder why I've seen RfA oppose votes that state the candidate has done a lot of vandal fighting, but "Hasn't contributed enough" otherwise. Tools would help a vandal fighter but are of little use to a pure editor. I'd like to do more to improve the few article's I've created and to write more, but everytime I look at my watchlist I'm greeted by vandalism galore. I can't see creating new articles when what exists is spoiled. I have no particular desire to be an admin and would never nominate myself though I possibly would not turn down a nomination by someone else. I'm certain though that if nominated, many votes would go against me because for the most part all I do is fight vandalism. Saying:

Why do you need to be an admin to deal with spam? Most of dealing with spam anyone can do...at the point that a spammer needs to be blocked, requesting an admin is not a big deal. I would guess that most of the vandal fighting is probably being done by non-admins right now, and spam fighting would be equivalent.

Is kinda like maintaining that your community doesn't need any professional firefighters because most of the fires are being put out by amatuers. Dan D. Ric 15:49, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

BLP Admins

Contributors to discussions on this page may wish to comment on CyberAnth's proposal to create a special class of admins to enforce WP:BLP. The proposal can be found here: Wikipedia:BLP Admin. WJBscribe 03:41, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

This week's pet peeve

...is that an admin candidate "must" have significant XFD participation (which generally means AFD) because that's apparently the only way an admin can show his merit. Since I believe most of our 1000+ admins stay well away from AFD for a variety of reasons, this rationale seems spurious. Can we perhaps encourage people not to use this particular form of editcountitis? >Radiant< 15:55, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

Point it out on the RfAs where it is used so newcomers to RfA won't think it is a good argument. Kusma (討論) 15:57, 6 February 2007 (UTC)
It's also one of my pet peeves. Especially when a candidate makes no mention of closing them in their nomination, or any kind of deleting for that matter... --Majorly (o rly?) 15:58, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

I see two sides to this one. On the one hand, as noted, there are plenty of good administrators who rarely or never have anything to do with AfD's. For that matter, no administrator (or none I can think of) routinely performs every admin function. For example, dealing with images is an important part of what admins do, but I've never uploaded or tagged one and have no present plans to do so. (I expected some opposes on my RfA based on "lack of image experience," but they never came.) So one can certainly be a well-qualified candidate for adminship with AfD experience, or experience in any other particular area of activity so long as the overall record is a positive one. No administrator uses every tool, and no candidate should need to show that he or she would be immediately ready to use every one.

On the other hand, I can also say that AfD is an important part of projectspace, which I had never really dealt with until I started to be urged to consider seeking adminship. At that point, I will admit, I started reviewing and commenting on occasional AfDs and MfDs and DRVs—not (I would like to think) out of a crass desire to pad my RfA resume, but because I recognized that the community thought this was an important area for admins to be familiar with, both because it's important on its own and because it provides an opportunity to show well one would apply policies. I found some of the deletion debates interesting, and in others was able to contribute to saving a couple of article, throwing in some information that resolved others, and the like. Now post-RfA, I still don't spend the lion's share of my time on deletion debate issues, and I'm not certainly going to specialize in closing them—but it has become instinctive for me to look over the day's list of AfD's every few hours, and contribute where I have something to add, and when I have deletion decisions to make at CSD I have a much broader range of experience to work with. So in my case, at least, the RfA expectation that a candidate should have some AfD experience probably has made me a better administrator. Newyorkbrad 18:29, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

Eh, I don't know. I've always felt that this stuff is irrelevant. I don't really care whether or not someone's going to use the tools a ton, or if they've closed AfDs or wrote in the Portal talk: space. All I care about is whether or not I know them and trust them. I know I don't spend hoards of time cleaning out CSD, nor do I think I should have to in order to stay an admin. Sometimes I need to use the tools, and I'm really glad that I have them and so don't have to bug someone else to do it for me. No one's perfect, and all of these arguments around lack of perfect percentages or too many edits to Pokemon or too few edits to WP:AN strikes me as silly. As far as I'm concerned, I just don't vote on anybody I don't know or don't care about, and if I know them I vote on my experiences with them. In my mind, the only real criteria should be "is the user trusted"? I would certainly fail RfA if these things were applied to me, but as far as I can see the only thing that giving me the bit did was have one more person helping out with maintenance stuff when he feels like it. I don't think I burnt down the project because I can't abide AfD, nor do I feel that I'm a bad admin because I don't put in 50 edits a day. In fact, many of my favorite admins are barely active... Kyle Barbour 18:48, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

I suspect that "does not have enough experience with X" is generally code for "I don't see enough evidence to trust you in a role where you might affect X", where X just happens to be whatever the user cares deeply about. In truth though, one can develop trust even without participating in X. For example, even though Brad has no experience with images, I trust that he isn't going to go messing them up. Similarly, I'm sure there are many potential admins who can be trusted not to start messing with AFD, even though (or especially because) they have no history of participating in AFD. I think most RFA voters recognize it is possible to develop trust generally even without working in specific areas directly, and many of the excesively successful noms (*looks at Brad*) reflect this. Dragons flight 19:03, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

  • AFAIC, looking at XfD participation is a completely valid thing to do; however, it should not be the only criterion. Examining contributions (not just the numbers) to XfD provides some evidence as to the nominee's activity, contributions, knowledge of policy, and trustworthiness. This means looking at them qualitatively, not just quantitatively. I've supported nominees despite low XfD contributions because it seemed to me that the contents of the nominees XfD participation spoke volumes about their knowledge and temperment. I've also opposed nominees with high XfD counts, because of deficiencies in other areas. Since adminship comes as a complete toolkit, it's fair to consider what experience a potential admin has in the various potential areas of participation. It may be a matter of weight - if a candidate clearly expresses an interest in images and copyright, one would expect people to put less emphasis on XfD participation. As long as RfA remains a subjective exercise, as long as commentators are looking at areas that have some admin-like aspect to them, it's fair to comment. Agent 86 19:40, 6 February 2007 (UTC)
  • If people are really interested, I only had 7 XfD contribs before I became and admin in July 06, across a whopping total of 2 separate AfD noms. I didn't even know TfD existed before one day, I saw a notice of its backlog on WP:AN. I looked up the instructions for closing TfDs, and I have been its primary (and often sole) closing admin for months since. RyanGerbil10(Упражнение В!) 21:36, 6 February 2007 (UTC)
Myself tagged hardly any articles for speedy prior to adminship, but quite often delete speedies as housekeeping. Agathoclea 23:52, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

January 06 to January 07 admin function comparison

Due to recent discussions here on this page, I decided to revisit statistics I gathered on admin function use in January of 2006. The results are posted at User:Durin/Admin_activity#January_2007. Of particular note;

  • Of the 20 top most active admins in blocking in January of 06, 30% of them are no longer performing functions as admins due to leaving the project or no longer being an administrator. I've no idea if this is an excessive attrition rate because I have no idea what the attrition rate of all other admins has been. Still, that number rather surprised me and seems high.
  • Blocks increased by 56% over January 2006.
  • Whereas in January of 06, the top 20 most active admins in blocking accounted for 52% of all blocks, in January of 07 the top 20 accounted for just 41%. For January 07, it took the top 31 admins to get to 50% of all blocks.
  • The 80/20 rule noted by others on this page recently seems to apply very closely. The top 20% most active admins accounted for 78.3% of the blocks.

--Durin 17:10, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

  • Another figure to mull; protections/unprotections activity rose an astonishing 177% over January 06 (8015 vs. 2897). --Durin 17:19, 6 February 2007 (UTC)
    Semiprotection was a brand new software change in January 2006 and we weren't using it routinely as we do now, so this increase is not surprising, and doesn't tell us much. NoSeptember 19:04, 6 February 2007 (UTC)
A request, if the data is available, it would be interesting to see what the equivalent percentages of the blocks in each month contained 'username' in the block reason. This might illuminate whether or not username blocks are responsible for the delta. - CHAIRBOY (☎) 18:33, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

I would imagine that as more and more usernames are taken, it's harder to find a good username and more and more new editors are falling foul of the username rules. I dunno if this is the case, but if so, it might be time to reconsider the username usurpation rules which would allow unused accounts (nothing in the logs and no contributions) to be automatically deleted after 30 days. -- Heligoland 18:40, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

There would need to be some sort of exception for doppelgänger accounts used to guard against impersonation. —Doug Bell talk 20:02, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

Well done again Durin. Do you have the deletion stats? That's where the backlog is - it must be about 90% of admin actions. Blnguyen (bananabucket) 00:44, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

  • I haven't done the deletion stats. It's quite a bit of work to develop. --Durin 12:41, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
  • I did do an estimate. The number of deletions for 5 February 2007 was 4722. If (if) that is an average daily rate, then in January there were approximately 146,000 deletions/restores. That's an increase of ~145% over January of 06. If the number of admins as a percentage of the total pool is the same (69%), that's ~192 deletions per admin active in this category, per month. --Durin 14:07, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

Request for a co-nom

Hi all. I intend to nominate User:VegaDark for adminship, though I've not always agreed with him, because I think we need more admins and I think he's a rational person. I'd like an admin co-nominator, however, as I've a dearth of experience in this area. His edits are spread across article, user talk, and XFD, the last of which is where I got to know him. Does anyone here wanna help me/VegaDark out? I will write up the lead nom. Thanks. Xiner (talk, email) 02:41, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

Certainly. I've seen him around plenty so I'll co-nom.--Wizardman 02:45, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
I have seen him occasionally and I am very impressed by his contributions, I will also add a co-nom (was beaten by Wizardman). ViridaeTalk 02:48, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

Wow, that was quick. Here is my statement. Xiner (talk, email) 03:24, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

Nice nomination statement. -- Heligoland 03:25, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
Nice nom statement. Go through the nom stages and I'll submit my nom at roughly 1 PM EST tomorrow. (I'd do it earlier but alas, I can't).--Wizardman 03:41, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
Thank you both. I actually can't do it so soon - Wikipedia is rather time-consuming - but I'll post here as soon as I get my affair in order. Thanks in advance. Xiner (talk, email) 03:52, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

Wait a minute.. people are asking for nominations these days? thanks/Fenton, Matthew Lexic Dark 52278 Alpha 771 08:24, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

People are always trying something new. But sometimes you get bit for doing that. We see oppose votes because someone has multiple co-noms and other RfA procedural things these days. You never know if what new things you try will have a net positive or negative impact. That's part of what makes RfA fun to watch ;)... and frustrating sometimes. NoSeptember 09:04, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
Matthew... it's a request for a co-nom, which is slightly different from posting here saying "Hey, I wanna be an admin! Who'll nominate me?" which would probably make for an "interesting" RfA... (Mind you, I'd guess it's probably happened already) --Dweller 09:50, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

While I'm against co-noms in most cases, this isn't so bad. For a start, it's a genuine co-nom - the nomination statements were prepared and then the candidate is nominated together, rather than adding a support vote after the initial nomination and just calling it a co-nom. Also, it's quite a good reason for a co-nom - having one person who knows the candidate well, and one person who knows adminship well. Most co-noms are done because someone believes their support vote should be louder than other people's. I wouldn't mind if this kind of co-nom became quite common, although this talk page probably isn't a good place to arrange it in future (it's fine for a one off, but if it's a regular thing, it should be done elsewhere). --Tango 13:00, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

Yes, that's the only reason I posed it here. There will only be two nominators, I'm not asking for a pile-on, only an admin familiar with VegaDark. For the record, I don't like too many nominators on one RFA either. But I've voted less than ten times on RFAs, and I'm not myself an admin, so I thought I needed help. Since people don't like it done here, however, I will not do so again. Maybe an RFC is better? VegaDark refused to put an "I want to be an admin" message on his user page, even after I volunteered a nomination for him, so I don't have much choice. Xiner (talk, email) 17:02, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
I don't see a problem with having these discussions here - this is a great place to find a co-nom or get any other help you need with an RFA. --BigDT 18:33, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

Idea for finding good admin candidates

Per recent discussion on this page, I had an idea for finding people who the project would benefit most from giving admin tools. Would there be any way to identify the users who tag the most pages for speedy deletion, and/or make the most reports to WP:AIV each month? I rather suspect there are some with hundreds, if not thousands, of reports every month. But I tend to only look to see who tagged an article/reported a vandal if it was a bad call, so I personally just notice the people who might not be great candidates, thus I think it's fair to say many prolific taggers, who do a good job, might not get noticed very easily. A list of the most active ones would really help fix this, and also potentially seriously reduce the backlog at CSD and other areas in two ways: A) the most active taggers can just delete articles themselves and B) These people would likely become very helpful in dealing with the backlogs they used to add to (NawlinWiki, Clowns, etc. jump to mind). I just think this would be the way to make sure we really get the right people the tools. --W.marsh 18:09, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

In theory, it's one of them good ideas, in practice, it'll have CSD full, wannabee admins tagging more and more pages with speedy tags and people reporting anyone and everyone to AIV. -- Heligoland 18:42, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
I think the difficulty lies in distinguishing those editors who would make good admins from those who want to be seen as editors who would make good admins. And only careful sudy of their edit history, ands equally careful reading of their answers in RfD, can help there--Anthony.bradbury 18:52, 7 February 2007 (UTC).
I don't really think so, it's not like I'm proposing giving out adminship with one's 5,000th CSD tagging or something. Like I said, this is just for noticing people who make good taggings... if this inspires people to identify thousands of articles that need deletion, that's actually a great thing for the project. I don't get how people doing more cleanup work would be a bad thing. At any rate, I doubt there'd be such a surge, it's not like there aren't already tons of ways to "look good" for that future RfA, and some people doubtlessly do exploit those kinds of things already. --W.marsh 19:02, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
If that was the only thing that mattered to being an effective Admin then it could be a reasonable route, in fact it's potentially a first step on the route to totally automating Admin election and avoiding the popularity contest as well!
What's needed are a range of types as Admins, because there are different jobs to do, some nuts and bolts in the main admin areas and the more general perceived leadership role which comes as part of making gaining Adminship a status symbol, as some to treat it.
If you have a clear idea of what you're looking for in a potential candidate then it shouldn't take much effort to go and find them.
ALR 18:58, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
It's not the only thing that mattered, I didn't say anything of the sort. WT:RFA is a great place to have words put into your mouth. At any rate, I just said it would be a way to identify some people, in a direct, non-abstract way, who the project would probably benefit from if we gave them the tools. Do you know who tagged the most articles for speedy deletion in January? I don't, but I'd probably like to nominate them for adminship. --W.marsh 19:05, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
My point is, pretty much as Anthony points out, by making it a way to identify potentials it becomes the only thing that matters in real terms. Mind you, it might be a useful way to move away from the chronic social networking love-in approach (please note irony tagging). :)
ALR 19:13, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
That just seems like wild speculation, sorry... all I'm proposing is a statistic, there's no real way of knowing how people would use it, and I doubt it would really be that important. Even if it did make people tag more articles, that work would be a good thing. This is like saying we should ban edit counters because it might make people try to make more edits so they'll look better at RfA. Anyway, I just don't see how providing an organized look at information that's already out there would be a bad thing. --W.marsh 19:22, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
Sorry, by profession I'm a management consultant specialising in information and knowledge management. I deal in how different motivational methods impact on behaviour on a day to day basis. The classic criticism of any governance or reward system is that you measure what you get and you get what you measure. I will acknowledge that in WP terms there are so many conflicting sets of admin promotion criteria that it's impossible to please everyone. Fashions change regularly enough that it's difficult to pick a trend and do enough of it to assure a promotion, but it's not impossible to get the required majority in the vote by doing enough in a couple of high interest areas but avoiding conflict. What that leads to is weak admins who don't handle managing conflict situations well.
I'd agree that a method of cutting and folding the stats in a meaningful way would be quite interesting, and could indicate someone to take a closer look at, but it still needs that closer look because it's interaction in the broad sense which is important.
ALR 19:50, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
Hmm, personally I see the same problem. I am currently thinking of nominating a good tagger, but I don't see that as a general solution, s I think in most cased s/he should still tag and normally only delete articles tagged by someone else. Agathoclea 19:26, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
So, really, let's be honest here, where do the admins here personally draw the line between speedy deleting "obvious" stuff themselves, and tagging and letting another admin make the final decision? Carcharoth 01:33, 8 February 2007 (UTC)
I would suggest MER-C is one of the most active taggers for speedy deletion, and look how well his RFA is going. Proto::► 10:17, 8 February 2007 (UTC)
Any selection technique based on one heuristic is going to be problematic. You say if you knew who the person doing most CSD tagging was you'd probably nominate him for adminship. Fair enough, but what if in addition to his CSD tagging that person was also leaving abusive messages on people's talkpages? Or adding lots of linkspam to articles? The hypothetical case is an extreme one, but I think it makes my point. --ⁿɡ͡b Nick Boalch\talk 10:23, 8 February 2007 (UTC)
No, it doesn't... I never said it would be the only factor. But it would point towards people who, if basic common sense things checked out about their work here, would be good candidates. Again with the total straw man arguments. --W.marsh 07:02, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

Support the attempt

I agree with everyone who says - no, no automatic criteria that could be gamed. But. If an individual is prepared to go looking for potentially good candidates using any mechanism they can think of, then I'm going to support them in that.

In the unlikely circumstance that I haven't made a dumb mistake somewhere, these are the top contributors, in terms of number of edits, looking at the last 5000 edits (Basically, since 15:11, 31 January 2007).

There are a lot of users with high teens, so I've taken 20 as an arbitrary cut off. Have a look, see what you think, see if you can find a good candidate or two who isn't already an admin. Let us know what you find. Regards, Ben Aveling 11:40, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

Well, I personally don't see any of those bots making it through RfA. Remember what happened the last time? WarpstarRider 11:48, 8 February 2007 (UTC)
Well some of the bot owners are not yet admins, so that could be looked into. NoSeptember 14:07, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

Seraphimblade

Looking at User:Seraphimblade, I think a good potential candidate. One previous RFA which went down because of editcountis (only 3000 edits, tsk) and tenure (1st edits in March, but only really contributing for 3 months, so possibly a fair objection), a mistaken 3RR block and at least one or two cases of what feels like "I've had disagreements with you where you were right and I was wrong so I'm going to vote against you". So nothing really strong, but enough that (AFAICT) the no votes took an early lead and don't-buck-the-trend killed his chances. The user now has nearly 6000 edits and 6 months of solid contributing. Thoughts? Ben Aveling 20:22, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

No thoughts. If User:Seraphimblade would accept nomination, and if you want to, make an RfA nomination. Otherwise, what is your point?--Anthony.bradbury 20:30, 8 February 2007 (UTC)
I don't understand your question. We're agreed we need more admins. We've been talking about who might make a good admin. I've put forwards a suggestion, and you seem to be taking a shot at me for doing so? Am I misunderstanding something here?
I've seen Seraphim around, and they look OK. I can see some good reasons to nominate them. I don't see any problems with the candidate, but maybe somebody here knows something I don't. We seem to have a situation where adminship is no big deal, but RFA is a very bid deal indeed. I don't want to suggest RFA to Seraphim unless there's a real chance of it suceeding. I would appreciate peoples input, so I asked for everyone's thoughts. And if that was wrong of me, I apologise, twice, because I'm about to do it again. Regards, Ben Aveling 21:23, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_adminship/Seraphimblade - last RfA was December 24th. Might be a few weeks too early for a re-nom. -- Heligoland 21:01, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

You're right of course. There are enough people who would vote no on those grounds to shoot down the application - for another 3 months!, and that worries me a little. Not because waiting a few weeks makes any difference to Wikipedia. But because it feels like bureaucracy. Regards, Ben Aveling 21:33, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

User:Persian Poet Gal

Another user I've seen around occasionaly. Lots of good contributions over the last 5 months. Has already put herself up for editor review and been well received. Anyone have any thoughts on her? Regards, Ben Aveling 21:23, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, I've seen her around as well. I have a largely positive attitude about her, and think she'd make a fine admin. EVula // talk // ☯ // 22:35, 8 February 2007 (UTC)
I believe Husond is going to conom since I offered before and thats what she said. ~ Arjun 22:36, 8 February 2007 (UTC)
Ah, groovy. I look forward to supporting that particular RfA. EVula // talk // ☯ // 22:49, 8 February 2007 (UTC)
But I am going to beat you to it :). ~ Arjun 22:50, 8 February 2007 (UTC)
You guys were discussing all this activity on the talk page :P...*rolls on the floor laughing*¤~Persian Poet Gal (talk) 00:58, 9 February 2007 (UTC)
Who said you could join this conversation? We're talking about you, not to you.  ;-) But since you are here, save us a trip to your talk page: what about it? Ben Aveling 02:37, 9 February 2007 (UTC)
Sorry if it is rude of me to impede on the conversation...I couldn't resist, it was just too funny :).¤~Persian Poet Gal (talk) 03:27, 9 February 2007 (UTC)
Of course it's not rude of you. <spinning hypnotic thing> There is no cabal that decides who applies for RFA. </spinning thing> This is the perfect time for you to become involved in this conversation. Would you accept? If so, any preference for your nom? Regards, Ben Aveling 05:46, 9 February 2007 (UTC)
lollollol -Amarkov moo! 05:47, 9 February 2007 (UTC)
OIC. :-) Well, this proves that if there is a cabal, we ain't it! On the other hand, our conversation started before the RFA was lodged, even if it we've been overtaken by events. It does suggest that the stragey of looking for candidates in the contributors to, well, probably a couple of places, might be sound. Regards, Ben Aveling 06:42, 9 February 2007 (UTC)
Well, maybe you aren't in it... ;) EVula // talk // ☯ // 16:51, 9 February 2007 (UTC)
:-P Sad but true.  :) Ben Aveling 23:07, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

User:Darthgriz98

A solid contributor who has been exceptionally active for a year or so. I think she'll pass RfA in a month or so (only reason I say that is to satisfy editcountitis). Helped elevate at least one (or is it two?) articles to featured status. — Deckiller 07:49, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

Looks good to me. Mind you, I've never been one to say no to a stressed girlscout with a chainsaw. Regards, Ben Aveling 10:43, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

User:Qxz

Not yet, I think. A keen vandal fighter with lots of good work. But still learning the ropes. Probably one to watch for the future. Ben Aveling 11:00, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

Mediation Committee members

I hadn't really thought much about how Mediation Committee members are chosen, but in fact it's a vetting similar to an RfA (one has to get a consensus of the existing committee members to be chosen, rather than (say) 80+% of !voting editors here). It would seem to me that if someone has been on that committee for at least (say) 90 days and has no negatives, that ought to be good enough to be an admin. I haven't compared the list of 40+ members (past and present) at Wikipedia:Mediation Committee/Nominations to Wikipedia:List of administrators, to see who's not an admin, but perhaps someone else would? Also, perhaps the list of 40+ failed candidates might be mined for possibilities? -- John Broughton (☎☎) 17:01, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

I think these are the Mediation Committee members who are not admins. Regards, Ben Aveling 11:46, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

  • ^demon (current member)
  • Ambivalenthysteria - she is an admin (under a new name)
  • Armedblowfish (current member)
  • Danielrocks123 (current member)
  • Guanaco (An ex-admin, see /Guanaco)
  • JCarriker - user page says "Retired" (September 2006), but did 30+ edits in January 2007. - former admin desysopped w/o controversy, can reclaim adminship at any time.
  • Sam Korn - Says on user page I used to edit here a lot. I don't any more. It just ain't fun. Hasn't edited since late December 2006. - former admin (and arbitrator too) desysopped w/o controversy, can reclaim adminship at any time.
  • Wisden17 (not a current member; involved in a lot of projects and activities within Wikipedia)

Whole category of those who are eager

I'm one of those people who believe that you should never give privileges to people who want them ;-) Could we find the people marked as *not* wanting to be an admin, and forcibly nominate those, somehow? <innocent, mischivious, but ultimately dead serious look> --Kim Bruning 03:13, 13 February 2007 (UTC) Hey, it worked for me with JRM and Bishonen. The latter was one of our first WP:100 admins, IIRC!

You'll notice that neither of those is exactly vying for the "most active admin" spot, though. (In other words: sure, you can nominate someone who doesn't want the job, and maybe they'll even get it; but they're unlikely to actually do a lot of admin work—particularly the boring types of admin work—if they didn't want the job in the first place.) Kirill Lokshin 03:51, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

Charts on admin activity

Per discussion earlier on this page based on data provided by User:Jim182, here are four charts regarding admin activity from 1 January 2005 to 31 December 2006:








It appears the load per admin has doubled in the time frame. --Durin 20:35, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

Yet more evidence that rfa standards should not, in fact, be getting stricter as time goes on. I assume the deletion spike in mid-October was an image deletion spree. Picaroon 21:12, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
What's so shocking? —Centrx→talk • 21:27, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
That the average admin does twice as much work now as they did a year ago? Although a more plausible explanation is perhaps the super-admins who make 500+ deletions a day and so on. --W.marsh 21:31, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
Oops, I misread those :), sorry about that. ~ Arjun 21:33, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
Even if some of the super admins are still doing those sorts of 500+ sprees the average amount of work an admin needs to do has still doubled. That isn't acceptable. JoshuaZ 21:34, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
Disallow page creation for the newest user accounts. —Centrx→talk • 21:42, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
Your preaching to the converted in here. Just got some data from the VandalProof guys, apparently there's a 30% increase in the amount of diffs vpbot for VP2 is processing since November/December time. Spambot (irc://irc.freenode.net/wikipedia-en-spam) is struggling under the increased workload too, we're having to seriously reduce the size of diffs it goes looking at for external links during peak periods as it's just backing up all the time. We're running close to 10,000 external links being added per day and that's about as much as the bot can deal with.-- Heligoland 21:42, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
Completely ignorant babbling on my part, but could a secondary bot be set up and have them monitor different sets of articles (such as Bot X covers A-M articles, Bot Y covers N-Z) to lessen the load on any one bot? EVula // talk // ☯ // 21:45, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
Freenode specifically disallows such networks, which is a great shame. -- Heligoland 22:02, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
Um, instead of technical fixes, why not promote more admins? JoshuaZ 21:50, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
Please nominate one ... or two ... or ten. Please see User:BigDT/List of potential RFA re-applications if you would like some inspiration. I've started going through NoSeptember's list of unsuccessful RFAs and creating a table showing users who are still active and about whom the primary concern was that they needed more experience. --BigDT 21:54, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
Well, there was one I wanted to nominate. Unfortunately, he was slightly over-eager a few weeks ago, didn't achieve consensus and now I'm going to need to wait at least another month before nominating him. I will however look through that list. JoshuaZ 22:00, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
Instead of throwing more eggs at the wall, why not do something about the wall, so that these people get through the first time? If one finds nothing wrong but a lack of "experience," and they then oppose for this, I think that's being unreasonable. I invite someone, anyone, who has opposed based on experience alone to explain how more experience can help a candidate you see no actual flaws with. Picaroon 22:06, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
Well part of that sort of objection seems to be that without more experience we can't always tell how they will react. JoshuaZ 22:33, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
Throwing eggs at the wall? Oh no. I now have this mental image of RfA candidates being fragile eggs that are being thrown up and over a wall (RfA) to (hopefully) land softly on the other side. Some eggs hit the wall and break. Some fall back down and go splat. Humpty Dumpty anyone? :-) Carcharoth 01:40, 8 February 2007 (UTC)
That's approximately what I was getting at. Picaroon 22:24, 11 February 2007 (UTC)
To do that, you need to make more people aware that there's a shortage of admins. As long as vandals keep getting blocked and random crap keeps getting deleted, few people are aware of the problems lurking on the horizon. Until that changes, people won't be prepared to overlook really minor deficiencies with candidates and will keep opposing. -- Heligoland 22:02, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
Well, one thing that can be done is make sure to support candidates you see who are trusted users and consider informing those who consistently oppose for reasons unrelated to capability of performing administrative functions. --BigDT 22:15, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
There's a real risk that trying to give unreasonable opposers the kick up the arse they need will ruin the RfA for the candidate, and there's nobody here willing to risk screwing up RfAs to try and sort out this problem. -- Heligoland 22:27, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

I think a chart for actions per admin that is based on total admins instead of just those active for that day would be good. We could also show what percentage of the total admin pool are active on any given day. The percentage of admins that are active each day seems to be growing slightly slower than the total number of admins. NoSeptember 21:59, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

I would be inclined to say that the problem with the workload is because our standards for RfA have been gradually increasing. We have become far too picky, in a way. For example, a great admin friend of mine, Deskana, passed his RfA with just over 2000 edits. Now the standard would be at base limit 5000, with 8000 being more desirable. I fail to see why and how standards have grown so much over this time. Yuser31415 (Editor review two!) 22:24, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

Well, some increase in edit count isn't completely unreasonable since semi-bots and similar things are so common now. Part of the problem is that the editors aren't actually looking at the edits in question. If they did, they'd be able to tell how many semi-bot edits there were for a candidate and how many were not. So this might be dealt with simply by encouraging people to actually spend five or ten minutes looking at candidates. JoshuaZ 22:33, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

In my honest opinion there are a couple of candidates on the cards now who would do wonders to help clear backlogs but one of them is going to fail (probably) because of a lack of mainspace experience, even though he says his primary focus is with another area and another is being accused of being an admin (going to be an admin) that deletes first and asks questions later, something we have absolutely no evidence of. How are we supposed to get these people through an RfA if they get shot down for reasons like these, they are specialists in their respective areas so things like mainspace experience/the ability to write an FA are not important. Hell the ability to sit down and write a dozen FAs a year doen't make someone a better admin, though still a fantastic asset to the community. ViridaeTalk 22:30, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

Of course, people who write a lot of FAs will also get shot down due to lack of balance of experience. :-P

My own personal gripe is that little or no people with mediation experience are being given the admin bit anymore. Not much point to nominating them either, the way RFA is running now. :-(

Since the "core cabal" is mostly built up out of people with that background, we're slowly eroding our ability to mediate, work on arbcom, work as stewards, or represent ourselves to the wikimedia foundation. (We're constantly recruiting the same people from a slowly dwindeling pool). --Kim Bruning 23:59, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

Maybe the "core cabal" has been doing a good job, so it's getting another three jobs? But in all seriousness, have many mediators applied lately at all? In the 5 months I've been keeping an eye on rfa, I can recall having seen "Mediation Cabal" or "Mediation Committee" in q2 or contribs twice at most. (And other than ^demon and Essjay, I can't think of any of those people off the top of my head, either.) Is this a sign that Wikipedia-space is developing into islands, or just a coincidence? Picaroon 00:25, 8 February 2007 (UTC)
I think it's a sign that people have stopped treating adminship as something that everyone deserves after being good for a while, which is good. Maybe now we'll get fewer people applying for no apparent reason, meaning that people won't be reflexively paranoid about such things as namespace balance. -Amark moo! 00:44, 8 February 2007 (UTC)
The evidence is quite the opposite if anything. Someone tried to talk me into going for admin, but I declined. I don't want to go through the procedure only to be told "come back when you have at least 6000 edits with a minimum of 832 in Wikispace and not more than 1756 in Talk, and sufficient experience with $ESOTERIC_CATEGORY..." etc. etc. Raymond Arritt 01:39, 8 February 2007 (UTC)
I agree, but that's not really relevant to what I said. My point was that people asking for adminship when they have done nothing but article writing is pointless, because there's no way to see if they will use the tools well, nor will they use them. -Amark moo! 01:41, 8 February 2007 (UTC)
  • What we need to do is convince the people who oppose for inappropriate reasons, that their reasons are inappropriate. If someone says "lack of experience, come back in six months", what we need is several people to tell him (in a nice way) that the average passing nom has only three months of experience, so asking for six is rather silly. If someone says "no experience with images", what we need is to point out the statistic that 90% of all admins do not ever work with images. If it is not pointed out regularly that these silly ideas contradict actual facts, they may spread. Again. >Radiant< 09:11, 8 February 2007 (UTC)
    • Yes, a page with "standard" objections, and rebuttals, would be nice. For example, in response to people asking for adminship when they have done nothing but article writing is pointless, because there's no way to see if they will use the tools well, one could point to a number of (older) RfAs where experience was concentrated in article writing, but there were no problems after adminship. Or one could point out that if the candidate did editing of contentious articles and demonstrated the ability to remain civil and work constructively with somewhat problematical editors, that would give a pretty good idea of how he/she would conduct him/herself as an admin. -- John Broughton (☎☎) 14:18, 8 February 2007 (UTC)
      • I do not deny that a prolific article writer could make a good admin. They may very well, and if they pass despite my objection, I won't care all that much. The issue is that there is no way to determine if they will make a good admin, because good conduct is not all that you need. And this reveals a problem in your page idea; namely, why can people not rebut the rebuttals? -Amark moo! 15:50, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

More fuel to the fire

Last 500,000 Deletions / Undeletions (since mid October)
1 Gurch 35355 No longer active
2 NawlinWiki 27104 Active
3 Fang Aili 13077 Active
4 Shyam Bihari 11925 Active
5 Naconkantari 11391 Wiki-break ?
6 Mailer diablo 10955 Active (lying about wikibreak)
7 Misza13 10373 Active
8 Lucky 6.9 9877 Left Wikipedia
9 Awyong Jeffrey Mordecai Salleh
(previously Kimchi.sg)		 8707 Self-declared active Feb 9
10 Nv8200p 7679 Active
11 Jimfbleak 7404 Active
12 TheParanoidOne 7381 Active
13 Centrx 6884 Active
14 Angr 6642 Active
15 Merope 5906 Active
16 Sherool 5663 Semi-wikibreak
17 Quadell 5600 Active
18 Eagle 101 5415 Active
19 RHaworth 5349 Active
20 Cryptic 4754 Active
21 Tone 4728 Active
Dragons flight 08:40, 8 February 2007 (UTC)
P.S. Remarkably, 840 of the 1108 admins had at least one del/undel in this period. Dragons flight 08:54, 8 February 2007 (UTC)
  • Nice figures DF. Totaling that up, 42% of deletions were done by the top 20 most active admins. That tracks with my figures above, and probably means we're tracking with the 80/20 rule (80% of work done by 20% of admins). --Durin 13:48, 8 February 2007 (UTC)
    • Ooh... can we get a full table, just for the curiosity factor? Titoxd(?!?) 14:18, 8 February 2007 (UTC)
      • Yes, I never get much out of lists of the top 20 or so admins, we all know there is a small group of super active admins. Much more study of active admins who are active an hour a day or a day or two a week (but whose actions still add up over time) needs to be done. A lot of admin actions require some thought and investigation. Just looking at raw numbers gives us only limited feedback. I ask you, how independently intelligent was Curp's bot? That bot was perhaps our most active in admin actions ever. NoSeptember 15:12, 8 February 2007 (UTC)
        • Okay, here is the whole list for the statistics freaks ;-). Dragons flight 16:34, 8 February 2007 (UTC)
          • Heh, it makes me feel like a slacker. At least I have good company... I guess that you have to blame salsa... anyways, is that just for deletion? I wonder how it would be if blocks and protections were included...
          • But more seriously, I don't think that the number of admin actions is the only measurement of admin activity. For example, yeah, some users spend their lives at AFD, but others are going around doing other things that aren't reflected on Special:Log. Also, some of us actually are going around in real life talking about Wikipedia. Last week, I spoke to about three high school professors I know about how Wikipedia works, how they can use it, and how they can help out. That isn't reflected in logs. Neither are the actions of users who go around participating in policy discussions, writing articles, etc. </rant> Titoxd(?!?) 20:19, 8 February 2007 (UTC)
          • Crap, I'm going to echo the slacker comments... .08%? I thought I had more than that... *cracks knuckles* Only one way to improve that number... EVula // talk // ☯ // 22:54, 8 February 2007 (UTC)
          • Maybe we need an admin version of Interiot's tool for the stats obsessed. Woohoo! I made the top 50. =) -- Gogo Dodo 07:43, 9 February 2007 (UTC)
  • So Mailer diablo is "lying" about his wikibreak? ;) But don't you like the wikibreak notice on his talk page? NoSeptember 14:04, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

From the table, it seems as though it is about 4500-5000 deletes per day, so if everybody did the average, that would be 4.5-5 deletes per day and about 450-500 deletes in the whole period. So about 20% of the admins are above the mean deletion rate. Blnguyen (bananabucket) 02:43, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

        • Ooooooooo I'm just out of the top 100, at #109. I was just at CAT:CSD, I'm going right back there... :-D Grandmasterka 04:10, 12 February 2007 (UTC)
          • You know if someone announced that they would be measuring who the top admins are for a specified time period in the future, there would be several semiactive admins who would fight to get themselves onto that list ;). We should try that the next time we have a worse than usual backlog. NoSeptember 12:23, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

Inactive Admins

What should happen to admins who have either left the project or have stopped editing? Should they be desyopsed? For example, please see User:Sango123, who is an administrator, but left the project in October? Real96 03:12, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

Not again. Covered many times before, and it doesn't hurt to actually look, does it? IT's been shot down every time it's been asked. Not many people would support it - these people do return (case in point). – Chacor 03:17, 8 February 2007 (UTC)
Even apart from the problem that they return, why should anything happen? I've yet to see a good reason why inactive admins should be desysopped. -Amark moo! 03:26, 8 February 2007 (UTC)
It's always shot down because the reason for desysopping is always - what if the account is compromised but there's always a proposal that sysop functionality would be reactived upon return. The problem being, if the account is compromised we've no way to tell and we happily return the bit. There's no other good reason for desysopping dormant admins, there might be a perfectly valid reason for their absence, not that they've left the project (active service, illness etc). We're not rationing adminship, and apart from the few dormant admins spoiling NoSeptember and Durin's graphs (if indeed dormant admins aren't removed from the data already) they really aren't affecting anything. It's also more complex to desysop than it is to promote, needing to find a steward to desysop, but just a 'crat to promote. -- Heligoland 03:38, 8 February 2007 (UTC)
Although I don't support the idea, I can think of a reason. Someone who has left is no longer showing the sort of ideological commitment that would preclude coming back and going postal for fun. And someone who has left probably had a reason to leave - for instance, a growing distaste for the project. Dekimasuが... 03:43, 8 February 2007 (UTC)
Like Heligoland said, we'll happily give them back the admin bit upon return if they left in good standing, which means they can just as easily go "postal" with this. -Amark moo! 03:46, 8 February 2007 (UTC)
If we were seriously considering desysopping people due to inactivity, then we probably wouldn't simply give them admin back because they left in good standing. We would probably require another RfA, in which case the lengthy inactivity would (for better or for worse) probably appear in several oppose votes. Dekimasuが... 03:49, 8 February 2007 (UTC)
Okay, well then that introduces a new set of problems. We must define inactivity, and we must define it well, because a good admin is going to do enough things people don't like that they might not pass another RfA. I bet if we ran an RfA right now on all the active admins, pretty much all but the newest would fail. -Amark moo! 03:53, 8 February 2007 (UTC)
Clearly the costs outweigh the benefits, so we are in agreement. Time has also shown that this isn't a problem we are likely to have with inactive admins. However, I thought that to say there were no reasons to consider the idea was incorrect. Dekimasuが... 03:58, 8 February 2007 (UTC)
Worst case scenario: Admin X comes back, deletes a dozen articles, blocks some users, and is then de-opped, the articles are restored, and the users are unblocked. Life continues. Nothing an admin can do is irreversible [to my knowledge]. EVula // talk // ☯ // 03:55, 8 February 2007 (UTC)
This is pointed out so many times... I mean, I personally would support desysopping admins after 3-4 years if for no other reason then it's pretty certain that they're not coming back. At the same time, no real reason to do it if they're not comig back anyway.--Wizardman 03:59, 8 February 2007 (UTC)
  • There really is no point to this. The risk of having an inactive admin account laying around is minimal, and is much easier to hack into an active admin account than an inactive one (I'd say more, but we're entering WP:BEANS territory here). And what happens if the inactive admin is desysopped? If the account is compromised, what is to stop the attacker from requesting the sysop bit back in the name of the inactive admin, then go bananas? Nothing really. Titoxd(?!?) 04:24, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

Here's a modest proposal ;). We desysop any admin who does not cast at least one support vote on an RfA each month (surely you can find one person you like). Let's get rid of those admins who want to hog all the special privileges we admins enjoy, such as <private admin information removed>. Surely we can afford to share these sweet privileges ;). NoSeptember 15:58, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

Help Desk personnel needed

This is a good thing for new admins and aspiring admins to help on. We desperately need to deal with things like the Microsoft-Wikipedia kerfuffle without it becoming a media circus ([1], [2], [3]). So WikiBlue (the Foundation's communications and PR person, Sandra Ordonez) has drafted a simple page at Wikipedia:Contact us/Article problem/Factual error (from enterprise).

What we need now is (1) OTRS volunteers (these are always needed ... they deal with a firehose of crap and can burn out quickly) and (2) Wikipedia:Help desk. The Help Desk NEEDS sensible people, and admins are picked for their judgement.

So please dive in and help :-) - David Gerard 17:24, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

Don't current new admins all suck for that kind of work? :-/ --Kim Bruning 17:38, 8 February 2007 (UTC)
I know I do. Which is a bummer, because a firehose full of crap sounds pretty cool. Kafziel Talk 17:50, 8 February 2007 (UTC)
I hope you're speaking metaphorically. ;) ChazBeckett 17:55, 8 February 2007 (UTC)
I hope you're not. <:x − Twas Now ( talk • contribs • e-mail ) 17:58, 8 February 2007 (UTC)
Those crazy new admins with their backlog-clearing attitudes... when will they learn that bickering in back channels and saying good faith editors "suck" is what made Wikipedia great? --W.marsh 07:11, 9 February 2007 (UTC)
I don't understand you - in what way do new admins suck at that kind of work? --Tango 13:25, 9 February 2007 (UTC)
Last I heard, it was almost impossible for non admins to get OTRS access, has this now changed, if so, I would be interested in helping out. -- Heligoland 18:27, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

I volunteered for OTRS yesterday, and realised that (as far as I can tell) no-one has gone through the list of volunteers selecting those that are qualified since December. If there is a need for more people working the OTRS queues, then those that have volunteered need to be put to work more quickly. --Tango 13:25, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

Random unsolvable complaint

People are too often thinking that the ideal admin has an editing pattern which matches theirs. Someone who does lots of article writing will usually explain "blah blah blah article writing is the base of the project blah blah process wonkery blah", while someone who does lots of deletion discussions will usually explain "blah blah blah I can't give you the tools because you won't use them enough blah blah too involved in disputes blah". And if you somehow manage to find a happy medium between the two, you have vandal fighters with "blah blah blah it's important to defend our encyclopedia blah blah evidence of civility with vandals who feel like posting 'fuck you, {{YOURNAME}}' 50 million times blah". Does anybody really step back and say "Hmm, am I really so special as to have the ideal editing pattern?" -Amarkov moo! 05:36, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

I think we can all agree that Cyde's criteria are the best. I refuse to support anyone who can't meet them, especially #24. That's the most important. --BigDT 07:10, 9 February 2007 (UTC)
I think people must step back from those standards... because many candidates still pass unanimously or close to it. There will still be some token objection if you aren't involved in the pet projects of various RfA people, but it doesn't really sink any candidate so long as they have some presence somewhere. You can still get by just being strong in one or two areas related to the Wikipedia namespace, but you have to have at least one area. Editors, no matter how great they are, without a lot of Wikipedia namespace edits basically have no chance at RfA nowadays. --W.marsh 07:30, 9 February 2007 (UTC)
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