Wikipedia:Adminship survey

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There are many opinions regarding adminship held by a variety of people, and a number of perennial discussions about adminship or the related procedures. Several issues have been debated to death a number of times already, and there seem to exist good arguments on both sides of the issues. This survey seeks to find out if a substantial majority of editors believes that certain changes should be made to our procedure or precedent. This is in line with the belief that consensus may change over time.

This is NOT a policy proposal, neither should it be treated as pure voting, or/and in any way binding. This is a gauge of public sentiment. However, if public sentiment is that a certain policy would be beneficial, effort can be made towards creating a policy proposal. While some people consider voting to be "evil", measuring public opinion is not. If a public opinion is obvious, people may want to take it into account for their future actions or judgments.

All editors may participate, and are strongly encouraged to explain their rationale behind their opinions whenever possible, to allow for a full discussion and diversity of voices. - Mailer Diablo 11:04, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

Similar surveys : 2004 (informal), 2006

Contents 1 Requests for Adminship (RfA) 1.1 I am content with how Requests for Adminship (RfA) is working now 1.1.1 Yes 1.1.2 No 1.1.3 Other 1.2 I have trust in the judgment of current bureaucrats in determining consensus 1.2.1 Yes 1.2.2 No 1.2.3 Other 1.3 All bureaucrats should stand for reconfirmation annually 1.3.1 Agree 1.3.2 Disagree 1.3.3 Other 1.4 Some types of !votes are less worthy of consideration than others 1.4.1 Agree 1.4.2 Disagree 1.4.3 Other 1.5 Admins should be all-rounders 1.5.1 Agree 1.5.2 Disagree 1.5.3 Other 1.6 I am satisfied with the way de-adminship is currently being handled (i.e. Arbitration) 1.6.1 Yes 1.6.2 No 1.6.3 Other 1.7 My opinion matters in RfA 1.7.1 Yes 1.7.2 No 1.7.3 Other 1.8 RfA has become a popularity contest 1.8.1 Agree 1.8.2 Disagree 1.8.3 Other 1.9 RFA promotion standards 1.9.1 Acceptable 1.9.2 Too high, it's too hard to pass 1.9.3 Too low, it's too easy to pass 1.9.4 Other 1.10 Requests for Bureaucratship (RFB) promotion standards 1.10.1 Acceptable 1.10.2 Too high, it's too hard to pass 1.10.3 Too low, it's too easy to pass 1.10.4 Other 1.11 RFA promotion standards #2 1.11.1 Agree 1.11.2 Disagree 1.11.3 Other 1.12 What are your major factors in support/opposing a RfA candidate? 1.12.1 Trust 1.12.2 Overall editcount 1.12.3 Mainspace editing 1.12.4 Civility 1.12.5 Participation in process 1.12.6 Lack of offense (e.g. 3RR) 1.12.7 Familiarity of candidate 1.12.8 Edit summaries 1.12.9 Mediation ability 1.12.10 Other 2 Existing administrators 2.1 Current performance of admins 2.1.1 Admins are doing a good job overall 2.1.2 Admins are doing a good job, but there are some bad eggs that should be removed 2.1.3 A few admins are doing a good job, but most of them are not 2.1.4 Other 2.2 Admins should be held more accountable for their actions than they are now 2.2.1 Yes 2.2.2 Yes, but only to their admin actions 2.2.3 No, they are sufficiently accountable 2.2.4 Other 2.3 Admins are currently able to cope with their workloads 2.3.1 Agree 2.3.2 Disagree 2.3.3 Other 3 Miscellaneous 3.1 I agree with trial adminship in principle 3.1.1 Yes 3.1.2 No 3.1.3 Other 3.2 Adminship recall should be extended to all admins 3.2.1 Agree 3.2.2 Agree, but only with sufficient suffrage level to keep the trolls out 3.2.3 Disagree 3.2.4 Other 3.2.5 Comment/Question 3.3 IRC should not be used in making admin decisions 3.3.1 Agree 3.3.2 Disagree 3.3.3 Other 3.4 Admins should be sanctioned on-wiki for their incivility/attacks on IRC 3.4.1 Agree 3.4.2 Disagree 3.4.3 Other 3.5 The community should have direct say in IRC operator/Oversight/CheckUser access 3.5.1 Agree 3.5.2 Agree to IRC, disagree to oversight/checkuser 3.5.3 Agree to oversight/checkuser, disagree to IRC 3.5.4 Disagree 3.5.5 Other 3.6 This poll has too many questions 3.6.1 Agree 3.6.2 Disagree 3.6.3 Other

[edit] Requests for Adminship (RfA)

[edit] I am content with how Requests for Adminship (RfA) is working now

Points to think about :

• RfA's ability/inability to adapt to changes in community and withstand times of "crisis"?
• Is RfA currently the best method for promoting editors for adminship?
• Do you consider RfA to be "broken"?
• Do you feel that RfA is fair in determining whether to give/not to give the mop to editors?
• Is there room for improvement in RfA? Please specify what changes you think may make RfA a better one.

[edit] Yes

1. I am, yes. I have not yet seen any single better suggestion for how to run it, nor can I think of one. There are always going to be complaints about different methods. I do expect this survey to be very strongly (and possibly misleadingly) against RFA in its present form, because the people that feel strongly about how RFA is "broken" are most likely to contribute. Proto ► 16:05, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

   That's because this adminship survey is a voluntary response sample, and only people who have strong vocal opinions on this issue will actually participate in the survey. Nishkid64 22:24, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

2. Yep. As opposed to adminship based on: edit count, years here, limited group decision, or a combination of them, I think community decision based adminship is the right approach. Saying the community, or certain members are incapable of making up their mind could be considered mildly arrogant. Discrediting someone’s !vote for clarifying it with a silly reason is irrelevant. Putting your gut feel into words isn’t always easy, it’s their !vote, their reasoning, their opinion, and their tiny part of the community’s input on giving someone some extra buttons. The fact that a !vote is sometimes joined with a reasoning you don’t agree with, can at max prompt to talk a bit. Besides, the fact that a bureaucrat is allowed to interpret a !vote is supposed to solve the "silly reason" problem. The only problem I see is that even with 300 !voters, they are potentially not an average cross section of the community, but people with an special interest. I agree that that is not ideal, but hard to solve. --Van helsing 16:48, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
3. Best way of all the suggested ones--strikes a good balance between quality and general approval, which are not quite the same. The main problem I find is the unfortunate affect effects of negative criticism on future discussions between the parties. DGG 18:51, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
4. Yes, in considering whether or not I am "content" with the present system and I certainly do not think it is "broken", conceeding that no system is perfect. There is far too much subjective opinion put forth to support the proposition that it is the system that is not working, broken, or at fault. Too much is made of people being opposed for the "wrong" reasons. I agree that some opinions, both in support and in opposition, can be based on irrelevant factors, be frivolous, ill-thought out, or vexatious, but it appears those responses are in the minority and the bureaucrats can put as little weight as they want on those opinions in making their decision. In any event, an important part of the discussion is trust, and I cannot accept that a person can be told their ability to trust or not to trust is wrong. It has been said a number of time in RfA Talk that "good" or "worthy" candidates fail to get promoted. I have to take that with a grain of salt. No candidate is a guaranteed shoo-in, and I assume that all (or the vast majority) commentators posting an opinion are stating their opinion in good faith on criteria that they think are relevant. I have supported candidates who have failed, and opposed candidates who have succeeded, but despite my opinion I can respect the opinion of those who thought to the contrary and did not see the opinions contrary to mine as an indication that the system is broken. Agent 86 19:10, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
5. I am generally supportive of the way RfA is currently run. I think some tinkering about the edges may be appropriate, but the process seems rather hard to replace with one better. Αργυριου (talk) 22:05, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
6. Yes, I think there is much hand-wringing about RfA, but I don't see a broken process at all. —Doug Bell ^talk 23:30, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
7. I am content currently, because on 90% of situations (in my opinion) the outcome is the best one for improving the encyclopaedia. It could be tweaked, but the current method is better than most other proposed methods. Daniel.Bryant 04:05, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
8. "Content" is a rather strong word for what would be better described as toleration. I am not thrilled with RfA but don't see a better system on the horizon and certainly don't see any way to get consensus to switch to a new system even if it is better. Eluchil404 05:10, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
9. Essentially agree with Eluchil. While there are always pathological cases, the current system basically works, which is more than I'd predict for any of the alternatives I've seen proposed. General satisfaction with the system, however, does not necessarily amount to satisfaction with the culture of (some of) the participants. In particular, the insistence that the system is essentially 'not a vote' contrasts with the common view that opposition should not be disputed or even replied to; I would rather see acceptance that individual comments - in any section - may generate discussion of the particular point being made. Correspondingly, one should not make a comment that one is not prepared to defend, and 'don't badger the opposers' should not be a flag to wave in lieu of explaining oneself. Opabinia regalis 05:19, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
10. Until someone presents a viable alternative, and RfC-like methods aren't it, the imperfections of the current system are a necessary evil. There are indeed some bizarre reasons given for opposing candidates, but these come in all shapes and sizes. Some of the "RfA is broken" people aren't backward at coming forward with their own shrubberies. When the system fails to promote apparently suitable people, it usually works eventually. I don't see any way to produce a system which will not be unpleasant for some: we are asked if we trust the candidate with the tools. If it turns out that, actually, no, you aren't trusted, that's unlikely to be an experience you'll enjoy. Angus McLellan (Talk) 11:28, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
11. I don't think there is a problem with the process, rather, some people's standards are too high. I think !votes should be based on whether the user would misuse the tools through either malicious deletions/blocks etc or inexperience. Other than that I think there should be no other criteria. Of course people need evidence that the person understands policy etc but some people's standards are too high. James086^Talk 14:04, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
12. RfA is the most scrutinized and over-discussed process on Wikipedia. People's standards could use work, yes, but I don't see that as something that can be changed by a change in the process. Grandmasterka 08:22, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
13. The high standards in RfA are a function of the difficulty in removing the sysop bit to the bad apples. All other processes will have the same issue, defensive editors and rising criteria, until the other side of the equation is addressed. Titoxd^(?!?) 23:20, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
14. I see no problems in RfA that would warrant a redesigning of it. Though the votes tend to disaggree, changing RfA will not change the disaggreement in votes. Captain panda In vino veritas 23:35, 2 March 2007 (UTC)
15. This process has withstood many trials relatively unscathed and in full bloom. The concerns regarding silly reasons for opposition are irrelevant to the RfA; those are problems regarding the person voting, not the process of voting. We do not blame the initiative process for crappy measures and propositions; you blame those that came up with said crappy measures and propositions. --²¹⁰physicq (c) 20:27, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] No

1. People are opposed for silly reasons such as not enough image experience, while others are supported for just as silly reasons such as lots of AWB edits. And we're reaching the point where we don't have enough admins (or at least not ones who regularly use their tools). -Amarkov moo! 15:15, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
2. Seconding the above. Hipocrite - «Talk» 15:31, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
3. Too many good candidates don't get promoted or don't even dare to run. Kusma (討論) 15:33, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
4. Too many decent candidates who would make great admins are opposed because they aren't PC enough, or are willing to take contentious decisions (and I'm not thinking about me, I'm thinking Moreschi). Other RfAs snowball on the basis of one diff because many voters can't be bothered to consider all the qualities of the candidate. I would say that it's getting to the point where people simply pile in from what they've read on the RfA, not from their own investigation, which can lead to horrible bias. Dev920 (Have a nice day!) 15:42, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
5. That it's probably easier for a long-established editor to do the "right things" with a sockpuppet and gain adminship than someone who's gotten into policy debates and talk page disputes speaks volumes. --badlydrawnjeff talk 15:44, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
6. The one thing everyone agrees with is we're not happy with RFA - hence this survey I suspect. --Mcginnly | Natter 15:44, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
7. Candidates these days cannot make one tiny mistake without being hounded by opposers. Some oppose reasons are just bizarre and don't consider the user's ability as an admin. --Majorly _{(o rly?)} 15:48, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
8. Per the above reasons, as well as the silly oppose reason "must have at least one FA" - pardon me, but we need more admins, and writing well is not an admin function - admin functions are primarily housekeeping, mentoring, policy, etc. Perhaps if we promote more admins, those who do write well will have more time for it. As it is, I never saw that blocking vandals, protecting pages, deleting articles, and closing Afds require ability to write to FA standards. If we promote only those who do write to that level, then we're losing valuable writing time for them - they'll be too busy with housekeeping to write, and then why are we here? Its absurd. KillerChihuahua^?!? 16:02, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
9. Good people are opposed because they don't jump through the right namespace balance hoops and far too many people just vote for whatever looks like the popular choice rather than applying any critical thinking. --BigDT 16:37, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
10. Far too high a reliance on irrelevant metrics that look just at the numbers and not behind them. MLA 16:56, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
11. RFA works at the moment, but only in the clear-cut situations where the same result would result in any reasonably sensible situation. It fails in the more complex or controversial cases, because it can't sensibly take reasons for or against into account. --ais523 17:06, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
12. No. Opposition is often for invalid reasons that won't matter if the user is promoted. ST47Talk 18:09, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
13. Though it is doing a good job in weeding out potential problems, far too many good candidates are being rejected. Christopher Parham (talk) 18:38, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
14. Tyranny of the majority seems to occur during RFAs, with many people just jumping on the bandwagon and saying "Oppose per (name)". Grudges and factional wars (deletionists vs. inclusionists) seem to bog down the whole process and prevent any meaningful discussion of the person being considered for adminship. GhostPirate 18:44, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
15. per Ghostpirate Geo. Talk to me 18:48, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
16. RFA is currently problematic: users take their personal dislikes to RFA: what is more: "OMG! He's an inclusionist! All inclusionists are evil trolls out to wreck Wikipedia's credibility" and "OMG! He's a deletionist! All deletionists are evil maniacs out to destroy Wikipedia" are currently especially prevalent. I agree with GhostPirate greatly in that RFA needs to move away from the current format, which reeks of supermajority, to one that will truly give us consensus. Purely from a practical point of view, we need more admins, particularly given that large chunks of our current admins are either inactive or only semi-active. A reluctance has arisen among the community to promote more freely because certain admins go bad, and it takes ArbCom to stop a broken admin. In my opinion, this is perhaps because editors, including admins on occasion, have used Wikipedia as their batttleground, either on a personal or on an ideological level: in particular on a personal level. This has led to overmany blocks of established users and following wheel wars. For that to be fixed, a culture change at Wikipedia needs to take place: WP:NOT#BATTLEGROUND needs to be more rigorously enforced and a culture of "work with" needs to be installed in place of "war against". Even without this, however, which is not really an RFA problem, RFA is still broken. While supreme perfection is an unattainable goal for mankind, RFA is so badly broken that it needs to be fixed. We are getting good admins, the right admins - but not enough. Moreschi ^{Request a recording?} 19:21, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
17. I echo others' concerns about opposition because of, gasp, imperfection. The need to be counted, considered, or influential causes people to oppose when a comment and a "I'll keep that in mind and will not do it again" would suffice. This oppose !voting causes support !voting in an attempt to cancel the opposes out, and this makes Wikipedia way, way too much of a battleground. Furthermore, I think that comments/votes should be centered around individual issues rather than a pile of votes, in the manner of an RFC, although I'm not sure how this could be implemented. Perhaps if the system were closer to User:Kim Bruning/rfatest? Gracenotes^T § 20:26, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
18. I feel RfA is broken. Editors and users who would make great admins are opposed "because of lack in mainspace", "not enough XfD participation", "tagged an article with db-band instead of db-bio" (exaggerating on that one). It's also a problem because the good admins are not necessarily the popular ones. Yuser31415 22:12, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
19. There are some good things, but there are a lot more negative things about RfA. I personally prefer a discussion-oriented RfA, instead of a vote-based RfA. It would be more productive, and would remove the need for keeping tallies and such. Nishkid64 22:20, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
20. Arbitrary demands for shrubberies. Guy (Help!) 23:03, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
21. We have a major issue of a non-standard set of criteria for what constitutes A Good Administrator™, which leads to people opposing/approving based off of other people's opinions, not on their own, and the case of a pile-on oppose from one diff from 26 years ago. Also, it's absolutely absurd that we call it a discussion. It's nothing more than a popularity contest based on a VOTE. Just because you put an exclamation point in front of the word vote in a vain attempt to negate it doesn't make it any less of a vote. The fact that we say "70%+ approval is required" further proves that the content of people's comments matter much less than the overall percentages for/against. In my opinion, a single editor bringing up a very valid point for opposition should be able to negate 100 support (!votes, of course). However, I personally cannot think of another way to do it better right now. ^demon^{[omg plz]} 23:09, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
22. No, it's current method isn't the best it could be. I suggest it be more discussion oriented rather than 70% majority-crap. This would also stop the Oppose per User X comments which are just there to pile on whenever someone made an opposition. They aren't productive and don't give anything back to the nominee who may wish to come back one day. — Moe 23:22, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
23. RfA has become a popularity contest. No matter how Jimbo and other keep saying that "being an admin is no big deal", it obviously is. Reading through the opposers arguments (if they even have any arguments) makes you think one is running for president. Adminship is (or should be) about volunteering. Therefor, all that is needed is enough editors supporting the adminship; let's just do away with the opposers. --Edokter (Talk) 23:28, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
24. Many adminship requests fall victim to personal feuds.Bakaman 04:16, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
25. People are opposed for the silliest reasons (ex. too little image edits when thr candidate doesn't even plan to help with images). A lot of the criteria are too high. We have too little admins. There's no need to not promote a trusted user.--TeckWiz^Parlate Contribs_@ 19:08, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
26. We seem to have moved away from the ideal that adminship is "no big deal" to some sort of system where only the most over-qualified stand a chance of succeeding. To illustrate: I was promoted with unanimous support two years ago, two years, and 10000 edits later, I doubt I would pass a RfA now for one reason or another, despite having used the tools without controversy, if a little sparingly. Rje 19:42, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
27. If I ran now with the same credentials as I ran with in July (2,200 edits, no XfD, self-nom) I would fail summarily, probably with 35-40% support, and perhaps even have my nom closed early by a bureaucrat, despite the fact that I have been an active admin, with no incidents, for 7 months. RyanGerbil10(Упражнение В!) 19:49, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
28. Expectations are way too high. I'd love to have admin privileges to assist with moves and other maintenance but I know that if I RFA, I'll be told that I'm not involved enough in the encyclopedia work. Only 500 of my 4000 edits are in the mainspace (second only to the Wikipedia namespace with 2200). I don't think that this should be a valid criteria for RfA oppositions since there's plenty of admin work to do in the WP namespace too --froth^T 21:40, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
29. Bureaucrat-as-robot mentality, silly oppose reasoning, fruitless assaults on silly oppose reasoning, pointless defense of silly oppose reasoning, WT:RFA lethargy, voting bloques, and voting itself all come to mind as things wrong with the RfA process. It is hard to define when a system is broken, and not just backward, but RfA is one or the other, and not too far from the line between the two. Many good candidates aren't promoted because of arbitrary standards which have nothing to with their trustworthiness, and, occasionally, bad ones are promoted - with flying numbers - because they've somehow become popular. Picaroon 21:43, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
30. Same reasons as froth; if we promote those with mainspace edits, not only is it inefficient, it is a waste. Abeg92contribs 16:39, 18 February 2007 (UTC)
31. I have 3 points. Point 1 - I am not content with the current system of RfA's. My biggest pet peeve is that they have come rather a popularity contest. Editors who I call social editors (Who normally hang around talk pages & make small gnommish edits to articles occasionally) with little or no article achievements make adminship far too often based on a cabal of wikifriends which admire them. Editors which are less liked & have many more achievements are left out completely or struggle terribly to make it past a RfA. I know of one editor, can't remember his name, who had like 8 FA's & many articles under his belt (Rama's Arrow?) & he only just made adminship & after his second time. However, despite being close friends, Riana Dzasta, Phaedriel & others have little to none in regards to article writing & they made WP:100 & WP:200. Forget the fact that the social, policy editors need the sysop tools more, an editor should be well rounded no matter what. Point 2 - In addition to this point, there are a frenzy of other reasons that I am not happy with RfA's & I'm sure some of you agree too. Too often have I seen a good editor be totally destroyed or broken after a failed RfA - myself included. This usually ends in a leaving or a self destructive wikibreak ending spiral of edits. It is literally like being on trial. You are being told that you are not good enough. Despite this, I can see little other way to appoint admins. - New way of appointing admins? - The only other way I can think of is if a committee set up a tight set of rules. To become an admin you have to fit the criteria that they set up. I'd sayit would be something like:- "Must have edited for more than 1 year. Must have over 3,600 edits. Must have over 1,500 main space edits. Must have X number of Wikipedia edits. Must have 1 FA or FL. Must have uploaded 5 pictures. Must have participated in X number of Xfds." Then you could have 3 or 5 beurocrats or admins sign off on the request. Also, you could have a section where people could cite any uncivil behaviour & provide evidence. If there was none & the editor had all the points above & got the sign off from the admins/beuros, then they would become an admin. With this system there would be no popularity contest nor a long discussion process & adminship would be decided on editing merits not how many people you know. It would save time as all a beurocrat would have to do is check if the user had all the requirements & if any people had cited any uncivil behaviour. It would also excluded the whole "You're not good enough for us thing" as the user would know that prior by checking if he had all the requirements. Point 3 - Oppose votes are very discarded nowadays. Since it's not a vote (Geez I hate that annoying bloody "!" before the vote) whether or not a person makes adminship should be decided on reasons. However this is not the case such as in the following example. A person has 100 support votes & 3 opposing votes with excellent arguments. In theory, those 3 votes should be able to topple all the support votes in the world if they are legitimate & valid. However this is not the case & in the example, the person would make adminship & get rewarded by making WP:100. This is wrong. Blame the beurocrats if you will, but they would get a load of crap if they ended a RfA because of only 3 well put oppose votes. My above process of only citing uncivil or bad behaviour would rule out this common action too. Anyway, I've gone on long enough & should probably leave it there. As you can tell I'm passionate about the subject.... Spawn Man 01:22, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

    Just a note, but Rama's Arrow passed 159 unanimously the second time.

32. One or two oppose !votes sometimes lead to pile-on oppose voting. Takes a brave person to open themselves to critical appraisal. Candidates who defend themselves against unfair criticism look bad, even if they're right. However, I don't know if we can devise a better system. --Dweller 09:22, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
33. As mentioned by Amarkov up top, one of the biggest draw backs with the current system, is that good editors are blocked because they do not work in a certain area. The criteria should not be whether they are active in a particular area i.e. Images, or XfD, or stubbing, but whether they understand the policies and structure of wikipedia so as to find the relevant information if they are requested to help out. My other concern is the people voting on RfA's it becomes clear that after around 20 votes or so the pile on phenomenon starts. I'm sure there are a few editors who religeously investigate the candidates background, but I have a sneaking feeling that this is the exception rather than the rule. Some editors I feel start voting on the RFA's as a means of getting themselves noticed. Unfortunately reading through some of the votes, every now and then I see a name I don't recognise, look up and they have a handful of edits to their name. An RfA almost should be a vote by one's peers, this would never be excepted as it could lead to more cabal theories etc, but we must have a clearer set of guidelines and the editors voting must understand in detail of what they are voting for, and what isn't excepted reasoning. ^Khukri 12:07, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
34. I always stay away from RfA, because of the objections also raised by others above me(silly comments like "does not meet my admin standards, to few Image talk posts"). If being an admin is really "not a big deal", then any trustable user, who has shown a reasonable effort to improve Wikipedia (in whatever way) should become an admin when no serious objections are raised. --Cpt. Morgan (Reinoutr) 12:58, 21 February 2007 (UTC)
35. I can't believe that anyone would think RfA was a good process. People get opposed for low editcount when they have over 1,000 or even 2,000 edits. The threshold for adminship needs to be dramatically lowered - I don't see why any reasonably experienced and trustworthy user can't become an admin. Walton monarchist89 13:26, 22 February 2007 (UTC)
36. The standards are arbitrary and often meaningless. For example, edit counts have nearly no bearing on whether someone's a good admin (well, excepting people with maybe 20 edits.) .V. _[Talk|Email] 14:36, 22 February 2007 (UTC)
37. RFA is broken because too many people seem to believe that you have to know how to be an admin before becoming one. If there is a great editor, who has done a lot of article editing and Wikiproject work (i.e. activities that don't need the tools), he or she should be promoted simply on the basis of being a trusted user. Clearly someone who has worked among others on WP for months or even years is unlikely to go berzerk upon receiving the tools. However, such a user will never become an admin, because only people who are already overly involved in admin activities will receive support.--Danaman5 07:53, 28 February 2007 (UTC)
38. per Reinoutr. The only criterion should be "not likely to fuck up". Having a checklist seven pages long is antiwiki. Grace Note 09:17, 3 March 2007 (UTC)
39. No, question only has 99% minor edit summaries to WikiProject talk block protected centralised pages. Luigi30 (Taλk) 16:00, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
40. No - editcountitis combined with outright polling (even when Voting is evil) is not a good combination; a lack of consistensy, combined with no reliable prior input (ER is backlogged to hell and back again) from the wider community means that an editor pretty much has to toss it all into the bull ring, and wait for an ever-varying, never-recorded checklist to rule. anthonycfc ^[talk] 01:57, 9 March 2007 (UTC)
41. No. For quite some time now RfA has been dominated by a small handful of users. Many of these frequent voters have very little (if any) participation in the encyclopedia outside of RfA. Go to any RfA from the last year, and you'll find any number of voters whose talk pages are an unbroken string of "thanks for your support on my RfA" messages, and whose contribution histories are one-dimensionally focused on the adminship process. These users tend to exhibit wildly variable RfA standards and convoluted or just plain fallacious logic in their arguments. Admins like myself who were promoted pre-2006 would certainly not have been promoted by the current crop of regular RfA voters. I can assure you that I never would have accepted a nomination for sysop back then if the climate at RfA had been what it is now. RfA *must* become a less venomous place. A wider variety of users needs to find the time to participate in the discussion there, and everyone who votes (and don't quibble - that's exactly what RfA is) needs to bear in mind that admin actions are always reversible and that adminship is neither trophy nor honorific. A Train ^{take the} 15:05, 14 March 2007 (UTC)
42. I have to say that editcountitis is ridiculously rampant on RfAs. Any editor who has worked on Wikipedia and without blocks or signs of problem editing for 500-1000 edits is obviously familiar with the basic policies and the way Wikipedia works. The !votes "per other user" are also somewhat problematic, as are !votes with short, pithy but shallow statements. !votes like that should simply be discounted from the total. I also tend to oppose the one-FA standard, since being an admin and a great writer are not mutually inclusive. Supposedly, it is to show that an editor understands the goals of Wikipedia/article standards, but wouldn't someone who's participated in GA reviews, FA reviews, RfCs and the like have an obvious grasp of such standards without being a top shelf writer? In essence, I think a lot of good users are discouraged from seeking an RfA, or nominating another good editor, because of these perceived hurdles and flaws. I also believe some editors decline to participate for similar reasons, myself among them. If adminship is "no big deal" as repeatedly stated, then why so many hurdles and why such a big deal? Rather than another system replacing RfA, I think the current one just needs a solid overhaul. Vassyana 17:13, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Other

1. I'm not exactly content, but I've generally quite sceptical of the proposals for significant change. I guess that makes me tolerant of the current process, as the best available method, even while thinking that some of what happens at RFA is dumb. I'm open to improving RFA, but I will take some conving that a given set of changes will actually be a good idea. Dragons flight 15:59, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
2. I agree with Dragons Flight. RfA isn't perfect, but it generally works, meaning that there aren't too many false positives or negatives (IMO, at least). Changes will introduce new problems and I've yet to see a proposal that comprehensively identifies the problems with the current RfA process and details how to solve each while maintaining the good aspects of RfA. ChazBeckett 16:07, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
3. As above. Haven't seen any better ideas yet. --AnonEMouse ^(squeak) 16:58, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
4. The rate of promotion is too slow. I don't think you can blame RFA itself for that, though. The fact is that the community as a whole is still reluctant to significantly increase the number of admins, and whatever system is used will reflect that. Chick Bowen 17:29, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
5. I think that RFA could be improved greatly, and I think that it will need work for complex cases, but I think that there are no better alternatives currently. Ral315 (talk) 17:34, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
6. Agree with Dragons Flight. It's not perfect but it's not all that bad. Without an alternative that is clearly significantly better, I don't see the need to switch. Rossami (talk) 18:11, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
7. I tend towards a view of it being broken, but I can't actually tell you how it's broken. People I see as good candidates don't get promoted, people who I see as poorer do and that's what I guess I'm really complaining about, you don't all agree with me. Since we aren't frequently running to arbcom do desysop people (or stewards for emergency desysoping), I guess it's actually working OK. --pgk 19:19, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
8. RFA is not working well. The problem is not the process of RFA but the state of adminship on en.WP. Since there is very little feedback towards existing admins (and none of it positive) the people in RFA don't know what to look for in a potential admin. They end up using metrics which have nothing to do with adminship. Admins themselves seem to have no system of priorities or evaluation (except for specific complaints). They seem to run about dousing flames (or setting them) in groups that forms by happenstance and seldom vary with no effort to really organize in an efficient way. Adminship is what is not scaling not RFA. Fix adminship and the RFA process will fix itself.--BirgitteSB 20:01, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
9. I think that making RfA much more reason-based would be beneficial, as the bureaucrat will be able to look at all the users' research and come to a rational conclusion. However, if there are like 100 votes for and 2 votes against, such as in Blnguyen's case, the bureaucrat can quickly come to a decision. {Slash-|-Talk} 22:52, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
10. It's tough to answer this question because it seems to proceed from a paradigm that doesn't have much relevance to me. Yes, the people who get through RFA usually succeed as administrators. No, the voters' priorities aren't necessarily ones I consider necessary or beneficial - but structural changes to RFA wouldn't change that. Two aspects have me very concerned. First, as I outline in the opening of User talk:Durova/Admin, I consider the low and declining admin to user ratio to be a serious systematic problem at this site. We ought to be recruiting and mentoring more good editors into adminship. Second, there's a specific shortage of administrators to do the work I specialize in (complex investigations) and that shortage is rarely recognized or prioritized at RFA. In my opinion that's why WP:RFI and WP:PAIN both got discontinued. Problems that don't get timely attention can fester and turn into ArbCom cases. Durova^Charge! 00:56, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
11. I haven't seen anything else better. That said, people who are expecting potential admins to be active in every single part of the project and still be prolific editors are stopping us gettting some fantastic niche who concentrate on small parts of the project and do that well. Viridae^Talk 07:24, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
12. RfA is the worst form of government, except all others--Doc^g 16:33, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
13. RfA is doing an okay job, but I don't see any other satisfactory method. bibliomaniac15 22:37, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
14. RfA is very good at preventing bad candidates from getting promoted (which is the most important criterion), but not so good at getting good candidates promoted. Too many people are opposed because of "inexperience" (i.e., the editor voting just happens not to know the candidate). --N Shar 21:34, 20 February 2007 (UTC)
15. I think that the procedure is good and works for the most part, however I have seen RfAs opposed (and supported for that matter) for really inane reasons. The most recent example was an RfA being opposed to because the applicant used the AWB on a page when the project that associated itself with that article decided they didn't want people using AWB on their articles. If votes like these can be weeded out I would say the system works fine. Koweja 16:21, 24 February 2007 (UTC)
16. RFA does a good job weeding out bad admins, but the cost has been weeding out some good users to. ---J.S (T/C/WRE) 05:09, 27 February 2007 (UTC)
17. Of course RfA isn't perfect. Nothing's perfect. But, as several people have mentioned, I haven't heard of a better system. Any problems it has, I feel, arise less from the system itself than from some - not all, not most - !votes being made for trivial and/or questionable reasons. Crystallina 23:11, 27 February 2007 (UTC)
18. I see a lot of good points on both sides. My main issue with it is that it is incredibly easy for one disgruntled editor who doesn't like the candidate for some personal reason, or a single sockpuppet upset that their spam article was AfDd, to derail an RfA; nasty accusations that sound plausible cause a snowball effect of "Oppose" votes, because few if any oppose voters will actually do any legwork to verify claims of badness, meanwhile candidates are often crticized for responding argumentatively to "Oppose" votes, leaving blatant lies often unchalleged. Another problem with it is that oppose votes are usually longwinded and rancorous, citing all kinds of real or imagined slights in great detail, while support votes are usually one-liners, effectively giving a lot more weight to oppose votes. — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 22:30, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] I have trust in the judgment of current bureaucrats in determining consensus

Points to think about :

• If the bureaucrats were to stand for RfB again, would they make the cut today?
• Do you agree with their judgments? At times of disagreement, do you accept their rationale/explanation(s)?

[edit] Yes

1. I can't say I would always agree with bureaucrat decisions, but at the same time, I've never seen a controversial case where the admin was actually bad. -Amarkov moo! 15:18, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
   • User:Freestylefrappe was promoted 38/14/4 with controversy associated with the discounting of late oppose votes (i.e. after the "deadline" but before the close). He was subsequently desysoped by ArbCom for consistent abuses. Dragons flight 16:10, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
     • True, but that was in the fall of 2005, an eternity ago in wiki-time, and the non-prescient bureaucrat who made that decision hasn't done an RfA promotion for months. Newyorkbrad 17:21, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
2. Proof is in pudding. Pudding seems fine. Perhaps the bureaucrats could be a bit more agressive in ignoring people who are not contributing to consensus, but no serious complaint. Hipocrite - «Talk» 15:54, 16 February 2007 (UTC) Bad pudding. Hipocrite - [[User talk:Hiplaquo;Talk»]] 12:09, 21 February 2007 (UTC)
3. The job of a bureaucrat is to interpret consensus, and I think they do a fine job of that. In the case of a bad admin, that's the fault of the people voting, per my comments above, not the crats. Dev920 (Have a nice day!) 15:46, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
4. Apart from Ryulong's RFA, yes. Proto ► 16:06, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
5. Yes. Even with Ryulong's RFA, I think what was done was something that needs to be done, but it was the wrong RFA to pick for it. Several users that everyone 100% completely and totally agrees are trusted users have failed to get promoted because they didn't jump through the right hoops. This is where the bureaucrats need to exercise their discretion. If someone is 60/40, but every single one of the opposes is for namespace balance reasons, then a bureaucrat needs to consider promoting that user. See Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Gay Cdn, for example. --BigDT 16:43, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
6. I do have faith though I would prefer for a far greater discretionary range to be available. Again, its just a metric that itself doesn't make sense as the range is determined by a proportion without looking at the overall total. A higher total number is also an indicator and that is never considered by the proponents of a particular % figure. Perfectly happy with Ryulong. MLA 16:58, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
7. I'm confident in the current set of 'crats, for the time being. I suspect most of them would fail RfB if renominated, but that would be due to shortcomings in RfB rather than with the current set of 'crats. --ais523 17:08, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
8. If anything, bureaucrats should be more willing to take specific arguments into consideration, not less. Chick Bowen 17:31, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
9. I have absolute confidence in the bureaucrats, and I want to express my opinion that I support their use of even more discretion than is currently used. Ral315 (talk) 17:37, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
10. I trust the crats to make the right promotions, but (as below) don't think that has much to do with consensus. Kusma (討論) 17:56, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
11. Put me here. AN and ANI have been on my watchlist for quite a while and I have not seen anyone criticize Carnildo's actions once that I can recall, so it seems as though the crats called that one right. Ryulong was promoted on a bad rationale but I think that one will turn out OK as well. Moreschi ^{Request a recording?} 19:25, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
12. Yes I trust them. However I think they should be more proactive in sheparding difficult disscussions toward consensus, rather than standing by while people become more and more entrenched. Determing consenssus should not simply mean reading a page after X number of days and making a choice.--BirgitteSB 20:07, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
13. I do trust crats to make the right decision, which should be determined by consensus from discussion, not from merely numbers. Using percentages may have seemed like a good idea when it was first introduced, and probably still does, but we need to be weaned off of addiction to them. Gracenotes^T § 20:31, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
14. I haven't seen any recent bad calls. The fact that the b'crats respected the lack of consensus on Gay Cdn's RfA is encouraging. I would not want the b'crats to participate in the discussion, except possibly to move replies to people's !votes onto the talk page. Αργυριου (talk) 22:12, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
15. Of course. Yuser31415 22:13, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
16. Yes, the few occasions where they have gone against numbers show clear evidence of the application of Clue. Guy (Help!) 23:06, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
17. yes, per BigDT Agathoclea 23:19, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
18. I think they are doing as well as can be expected within the framework of the current process. Christopher Parham (talk) 23:29, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
19. Despite having been involved in one of the more infamous disputes regarding the closing of an RfA by a bureaucrat, I think they do a fine job. It's actually not as demanding as closing contentious AfDs. —Doug Bell ^talk 23:32, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
20. I agree the bureaucrats generally do a good job. Durova^Charge! 00:58, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
21. I think they do a good job. Occasionally there is an error of judgement or action that is controversial but overall they do well. James086^Talk 14:11, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
22. I have no issue with any of the decisions taken by the bureaucrats, I feel that they have always acted in the best interests of the project. Rje 19:44, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
23. Absolutely. I support them even more after the Ryulong and Carnildo affairs. Those were both difficult and controversial promotions, which were done to benefit the encyclopedia, not to make people happy or show draconian devotion to percentages. RyanGerbil10(Упражнение В!) 19:54, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
24. ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 20:31, 18 February 2007 (UTC)
25. Yes. The system's not great. They do their best with a bad lot. --Dweller 10:51, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
26. Yes. But I'd like to see them being bolder still.--Doc^g 16:34, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
27. Aye. — Nearly Headless Nick ^{C} 10:35, 20 February 2007 (UTC)
28. With the occasional slipups, yes. --Cpt. Morgan (Reinoutr) 13:00, 21 February 2007 (UTC)
29. I'm sure that there are occasional mistakes/malicious problems, but for the most part they are doing a good and honest job. Koweja 16:23, 24 February 2007 (UTC)
30. The vast majority of cases are handled properly. There's a small room for improvement (having more bureaucrats participate in a closure, for example), but still, they're doing a good job. Titoxd^(?!?) 23:22, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
31. No complaints, but few dealings with them anyway. ---J.S (T/C/WRE) 05:10, 27 February 2007 (UTC)
32. In my experience, bureaucrats generally seem to know what they are doing, and provide smart explanations for doing it. They sometimes stray from rigid supermajority definitions of consensus, and that is a good thing.--Danaman5 07:55, 28 February 2007 (UTC)
33. I have yet to see a bureaucrat's decision that I have disaggreed with. Captain panda In vino veritas 23:39, 2 March 2007 (UTC)
34. Yes. Nobody is perfect, but I haven't seen a bureaucrat's decision that I thought was unreasonable. skip (t / c) 02:08, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] No

1. The carnildo thing wasn't really addressed by the resultant arbcom case - other than to determine the independance of bureaucratship. They let us down there. The point is, if you get desyssoped - that's usually for a good reason, if the community make you come back 3, maybe 4 times to RFA to get your tools back, well that's just tough you should have minded your P's and Q's a little better. Arbcom should also perhaps more fully consider the consequences of desysopping.--Mcginnly | Natter 15:11, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
2. Nope. They don't take into affect blatant falsehoods and the reputations of editors in compiling true consensus. --badlydrawnjeff talk 15:45, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
3. Nope, this, this and this immediately come to my mind. And since it is near impossible to become a bureaucrat these days, the current ones will not be changing with new and fresh ideas and influence. --Majorly _{(o rly?)} 15:51, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
4. While some probably would make the cut again, some also probably would not. I've seen at least one recent contentious close where the bureeaucrat offered a rationale that was orthogonal to the issue of consensus, so couldn't be accepted. GRBerry 15:56, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
5. No confidence. El_C 16:34, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
6. I do not trust the current system, which allows for single users with bureaucrat rights that have only been marginally active to step in and make a personal decision, which is essentially not reversible. However, most (if not all) of the bureaucrats actively performing bureaucrat duties are trustworthy. -- Renesis (talk) 17:04, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
7. No. I do not believe that bureaucrats are doing what is necessary, as they should, such as weighing arguments. ST47Talk 18:12, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
8. No. Agree with above comments. It is also disturbing that they are making efforts to prevent other editors becoming bureaucrats for spurious reasons as in Wikipedia:Requests for bureaucratship/Nihonjoe. Catchpole 19:17, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
9. No. There should be a formula for consensus, not a person that can be swayed by any number of potential things. Just H 20:02, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
10. No way. The Carnildo incident immediately strikes me as something the 'crats had poor judgement on and it only escalated from that point on resulting in poor behavior from editors and admins alike. — Moe 23:27, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
11. The Carnildo thing was a slap in the face. CanadianCaesar Et tu, Brute? 03:50, 17 February 2007 (UTC)t
12. I accpeted Danny's explantion for Sean Black's promotion but felt that Carnildo's was clearly against consensus (which is oddly enough the opposite of my own oppinions of the candidates). Bureaucrats should not use their own judgments on a candidates accetability but rather consider the feelings of the community. If a substantial minority feels that admins must have attribute X then they must have it to have the consensus support of the community. Eluchil404 05:15, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
13. Decisions should not be left to one bureaucrat. They should be discussed in a place such as the b-crat noticeboard, where multiple crats will determine a consensus of the consensus.
14. If I can't trust the system which they were spawned from the foul creatures ;) (Kidding of course...) then how can I trust them? As I said above, 1 oppose vote should in theory be able to negate an army of support votes. This is not the case & bureacrats are partly to blame. Why I say they are partly not to blame is becuase if they ended a RfA because of one really valid oppose despite the 100's of supports, then they'd be ousted from the community... Other wise yes I trust them, but overall I don't. They can't win basically... Spawn Man 01:33, 19 February 2007 (UTC) P.S. And after seeing the links Majorly gave, I trust them even less...
15. I totally agree with what the guy above is saying. Every time someone is made a bureaucrat, their screenname should be modified (all of them) so that anonymity might be maintained. Obviously, this shouldn't be complete anonymity - they should be held accountable, but they shouldn't be able to be dogged by 100s of users. Alternatively, my proposal shouldn't be enacted but something else done instead... --Seans Potato Business 19:33, 25 February 2007 (UTC)
16. No, but then again, I don't trust anyone. .V. _[Talk|Email] 14:36, 22 February 2007 (UTC)
17. No. Unless tyhe decision is unanimous or near unanimous, it should be discussed between multiple bureaucrats and members of the community. Jorcoga ^(Hi!/Review)11:06, Friday, 23 February '07
18. Consensus of whom? The readers? The editors? No: whoever happened to show up. The whole notion is ridiculous. -ac
19. No. The high profile incidents mentioned above (Sean Black, Carnildo, Ryulong) suggest that determining community consensus is not always what is going on. Bucketsofg 00:13, 28 February 2007 (UTC)
20. Sorry no. Sean Black and Carnildo promotions made a mockery of our bothering to vote in the first place. Yeah, okay, someone note that we don't have votes and enjoy the sound of my mocking laughter. Grace Note 09:20, 3 March 2007 (UTC)
21. Absolutely not. Take a look at this RfA - the closing bureaucrat did not promote the candidate, even though there were 41 votes in favour and only 14 against, making it a clear consensus. IMHO the current process gives bureaucrats too much dictatorial power - once SPAs and obvious trolls are discounted, the RfA should be decided on a majority vote. It's not the role of a bureaucrat to decide whether someone would make a good admin, or to disregard consensus. Walton ^{Vivat Regina!} 17:54, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Other

1. What do you mean by "consensus"? There is rarely consensus in non-unanimous RfAs these days. Bureaucrats often decide by supermajority, and only rarely dare to stray from the old 80% definition. I don't understand how people can believe a 73/27/7 RfA to be "no consensus" but a 165/35/27 RfA to have reached "consensus". In both cases, there is not really consensus to promote the candidate, as sizable minorities are opposing. However, what is important is not consensus, but whether the candidate should be promoted or not (which can be decided by taking into account the arguments provided). As there have been no complaints about Carnildo and Ryulong since their promotion, the bureucrats acted correctly in their decision to promote even though they ignored the supermajority requirements others think they should have used. Unfortunately the Carnildo promotion resulted in a lot of other bad things (none of which were related to Carnildo's admin actions since repromotion), which the closing crat might have anticipated better. Anyway, the bureaucrat's job in my opinion is not to determine whether consensus has been reached, but to make the decision whether to promote or not to promote in cases where there can't be any consensus due to the large number of participants in the debate. Kusma (討論) 16:10, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
2. It’s not a matter if I trust them; I accept the system how they became crats as long as there’s no system that’s considered to produce better crats. --Van helsing 17:19, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
3. I agree with that--I do not necessarily trust the way they are given the office, but the decisions made in RfA seem to be sensible, which means that we should not really tinker with this part. DGG 18:53, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
4. It's a tough job, as some of the other questions here demonstrate. I haven't seen a huge amount of decisions made where I disagree with the reading of the result, and as elsewhere we aren't constantly running to desysop (even in the cases I've disagreed), so they can't be going that far wrong. --pgk 19:23, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
5. I do, however I wish there was a better system for dealing with disputes over a Bcrat action. Daniel.Bryant 04:07, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
6. In view of the extremely idiosyncratic usage of 'consensus', then yes. Whether consensus can be measured by percentages, or what those percentages should be, is a question separate from that of whether to trust the bureaucrats as individuals. Opabinia regalis 05:26, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
7. What Daniel.Bryant said. Viridae^Talk 07:25, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
8. In general I trust them, but I do think there's been a lack of collaboration and transparency in some cases. ChazBeckett 13:27, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
9. In general, yes. My somewhat flawed first RfB notwithstanding, I wish there was a way to bring fresh new views to the bureaucrat staff. I'm starting to think there should be one-year terms for bureaucrats. No, it would be nowhere even close to causing the same problems as reconfirming administrators, so don't tell me it won't work for the reasons reconfirming administrators wouldn't work. Grandmasterka 08:31, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
10. I trust the crats, but I think that standards have gone up so high that an RfB is nearly impossible. I also believe that an exact measure for consensus is contradictory to what RfA is all about. bibliomaniac15 22:40, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
11. I have lost faith in the bureaucrats regarding User:Gaillimh. Hipocrite - «Talk»
12. I think that they generally do the best they can with the system in their hands. However, I'd like to see them take Neutral !votes into greater account, rather than discounting them. I'd also like to see them throw out !votes than are essentially meaningless such as Oppose/Support per X user. Again though, they are simply working with the system at hand. Vassyana 17:31, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] All bureaucrats should stand for reconfirmation annually

This should confirm that their judgment is still trusted by the community. There are only a few dozen bureaucrats so this produces no real overhead (unlike reconfirming all 1000+ admins yearly).

[edit] Agree

1. Seems sensible --Mcginnly | Natter 15:12, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
2. Definitely, with bureaucrats sat back not using the tools given to them years ago, I see no benefit in them having them. --Majorly _{(o rly?)} 15:54, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
3. There really is no reason anyone should not, if they have the faith of the community they will easily be reelected to that position. There is no reason to lock anyone into a position for no reason. For those that believe 100% in those for election, it should only take 5 minutes of your time to state why, once a year. Doesnt seem like asking much to maintain a sense of community control. --NuclearZer0 16:35, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
4. I support this product or service. I would support fresh new voices as bureaucrats... Given all the problems, real or imagined, with RfA, it would be very beneficial I think. But it's evident from this survey and from previous discussion that it's unlikely to be implemented in the future. Grandmasterka 08:35, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
5. I think that bureaucrats are powerful enough that extra accountability should apply. There's been one incident last year that left a sour taste in my mouth. We re-elect the top layer of government every year in the expectation that the accountability will filter down. - Richardcavell 04:54, 21 February 2007 (UTC)
6. Absolutely. This keeps individuals accountable of their own actions. .V. _[Talk|Email] 14:38, 22 February 2007 (UTC)
7. Support per above. --GHcool 18:17, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Disagree

1. The issue I have with admin reconfirmation is only partly the overhead, it's more that you can't make controversial decisions well if you have to worry about maintaining enough support to keep your adminship. It's no better for bureaucrats, especially since bureaucratship requires a nearly impossible percentage of support. -Amarkov moo! 15:23, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
2. I think we should have fewer procedures and rules. This is a procedure and rule to change what is not broken. Hipocrite - «Talk» 15:32, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
3. I trust our bureaucrats. We should only take their tools away if they abuse them. Kusma (討論) 15:38, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
4. Look at politicians. Those who need to be elected make stupid, populist decisions that only work for the short term. Those who don't fear the voters can take contentious but needed actions without fearing for their bit. Dev920 (Have a nice day!) 15:48, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
5. Useless instruction creep. Proto ► 16:07, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
6. I'm opposed to mandatory reconfirmation as this isn't a democracy. Also, concur with Hipocrite. MLA 17:00, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
7. This is a solution in search of a problem. I also second what Dev920 said above regarding how the spectre of re-election affects actions. - CHAIRBOY (☎) 17:09, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
8. Per Chairboy and Dev920. Not really a problem at this point. Ral315 (talk) 17:52, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
9. No. Unnecessary at this time. ST47Talk 18:12, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
10. No. Amarkov's point about independence is very important. We also need to keep the old hands around (with their authority) to be points of continuity for the project. I wouldn't object to a more formal recall process but restanding for election is a bad idea. Rossami (talk) 18:16, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
11. It would just provide another place for quarrel. The best way to administer WP is to have one which minimizes the opportunities for the expression of negative feelings--something we have in great excess. But there perhaps does need to be a way of removing inactive ones.DGG 18:57, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
12. Can't see it as achieving much, potential detriment in making some decisions more political, the standards people expect of RFB candidates would probably mean we end up with none/or few remaining... --pgk 19:26, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
13. Process creep which provides no appreciable benefits, and as noted, would potentially result with populist b'crats. KillerChihuahua^?!? 20:30, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
14. No, but would switch to support if RFB standards were lowered significantly. Gracenotes^T § 20:33, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
15. Ridiculous. Are we implying that the judgement of the bureaucrats decreases over time, when it probably increases? Yuser31415 22:14, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
16. Why take these tools away? {Slash-|-Talk} 22:53, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
17. What problem is this supposed to solve? Guy (Help!) 23:07, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
18. Although 'crats have made mistakes in the past, and they may in the future, this is not the solution. — Moe 23:30, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
19. No crats have yet acted in a way that would warrant their removal, so this seems like a solution without a problem. Christopher Parham (talk) 23:31, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
20. Pointless. —Doug Bell ^talk 23:33, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
21. Not only unnecessary but counterproductive. I want bureaucrats who are willing to make tough calls without worrying whether a coterie of edit warriors will try to skew consensus during election time. If there's a serious problem we can handle it on an ad hoc basis. Durova^Charge! 01:00, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
22. Nope - another method of Bcrat actions dispute resolution is needed, as opposed to this nonsensical recall business. It does not address the problems. Daniel.Bryant 04:10, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
23. Counterproductive drama-inducing time-wasting instruction creep. Opabinia regalis 05:27, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
24. What s/he said ^^. Viridae^Talk 07:26, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
25. This "solution" doesn't seem to address any of the issues with bcrat decisions. ChazBeckett 13:28, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
26. Absolutely not. I feel that such a process would affect the judgement of some bureaucrats, particularly those close to their re-nomination. If there is an issue, let ArbCom or Jimbo sort it out. Rje 19:46, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
27. Not reasonable. RyanGerbil10(Упражнение В!) 19:55, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
28. If this happens, we'll have two or three bureaucrats this time next year. Picaroon 21:51, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
29. Horrible idea. If anyone has issues with an admin, they should use appropriate channels. If not, what's the point in making them stand again? --Dweller 10:53, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
30. I would not like to see an annual re-election, but what might be advantageous to examine would be bureaucrats or even admins for that matter who stop editing for 3 months, (or a less arbitrary criteria) have to be re-instated by existing admins or bureaucrats. ^Khukri 12:12, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
31. Hell, no.--Doc^g 16:35, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
32. Just what we need, yet another forum to vote. That means... no!. --Cpt. Morgan (Reinoutr) 13:00, 21 February 2007 (UTC)
33. Why fix what isn't broken? They do a good enough job, so why make it more difficult for them by micromanaging them? Koweja 16:26, 24 February 2007 (UTC)
34. It's more efficient to remove bureaucrat status in the event they do something for which such action is warranted. --Seans Potato Business 19:38, 25 February 2007 (UTC)
35. We don't need a three-ring circus. Titoxd^(?!?) 23:23, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
36. God no. This is not a democracy. We make choices here. We chose our crats and we chose when they go away. Why set a date on it? ---J.S (T/C/WRE) 05:11, 27 February 2007 (UTC)
37. Well that wouldn't be a giant mess... -- Kicking222 00:23, 28 February 2007 (UTC)
38. Per above, this is just unnecessary. Bureaucrats need to have some measure of separation to do their jobs correctly.--Danaman5 07:57, 28 February 2007 (UTC)
39. Because we have only a few bureaucrats as it is, we should not remove them at a whim. Captain panda In vino veritas 23:41, 2 March 2007 (UTC)
40. Per Amarkov. The last thing we need are bureaucrats worried about their future election prospects. --²¹⁰physicq (c) 20:30, 4 March 2007 (UTC)
41. For the exact same reason why U.S. Supreme Court Justices stay up for a lifetime, or until they retire. Besides, if one shows conduct unworthy of their position, it would be up for comment. bibliomaniac15 03:55, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Other

1. Not convinced this is the best answer to a complex question. --badlydrawnjeff talk 15:45, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
2. I think reconfirmation is great and I do not understand why it has not always beeen a part of adminship or b'cratship. Other wiki's have no problems with the idea. That said I do not think saying "Agree" to a reconfirmation question on en.WP will be takien at face value so I am replying here. Since it has not been a part of tradition here it seems to take on a different meaning.--BirgitteSB 20:45, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
3. I don't know that b'crats should have to stand annually, or serve limited terms, as the formal duties of b'crats aren't very many. I do think inactive ones should be dropped after a certain period of inactivity, and if they want to return, stand de novo. Αργυριου (talk) 22:16, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
4. I'm not opposed to the idea, however I don't know if this would solve the problem people have with inactive or controversial 'crats. James086^Talk 14:33, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
5. Instead of reconfirmation, I think it should be simpler. A:Crats may be de-cratted (but not de-sysoped) if they haven't used the tools in two months. B:If there's no abuse, there's no need to for reconfirmation. --TeckWiz^ParlateContribs_@ 19:17, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
6. This should put an end to the silly "we already have enough" opposes, which I think is the only thing this has going for it. GRBerry 22:43, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
7. I don't think they should have to stand for annual reconfirmation. However, inactive ones need to be dropped to make room for those who will use the tools provided to them. This is especially true in light of the limited number of bureaucrat positions and the weight they can bring to bear with their few tools. Vassyana 17:34, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Some types of !votes are less worthy of consideration than others

Points to think about :

• Should certain opinions be disregarded/invalidated by the community?
• Would disallowing certain "reasonings" behind votes simply encourage voters to lie about their reasons?

[edit] Agree

1. B's should use reasonable discresion to ignore votes not grounded in WP:ENC. Hipocrite - «Talk» 15:33, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
2. Without a doubt. Especially ones that show dishonest statements. --badlydrawnjeff talk 15:46, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
3. Unless we turn RfA into a pure vote, irrelevant opinions should be ignored. Kusma (討論) 15:48, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
4. 100% agree. These aren't votes so therefore there's no problem in weighting the strong arguments more heavily than the weak. MLA 17:02, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
5. Agreed, only so long as it remains up to b-crat discretion as Hipocrite mentioned. Attempting to set some sort of definition of a 'valid' vote is more unneeded instruction creep. Might as well replace everything with a Digg style automated voting. It won't make a better project, but it would satisfy wonkists who want an IF/OR/ELSE loop on everything. In the end, is our goal a better project, or satisfying those people? - CHAIRBOY (☎) 17:13, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
6. Agree. I trust the bureaucrats to use appropriate discretion; I've yet to see a case where they discounted votes that should not have been discounted. Ral315 (talk) 17:53, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
7. Yes. Most definitely. ST47Talk 18:13, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
8. Yes. I've seen many votes that gave reasons that really didn't have to do with the criteria of RFA. Also, I've also seen many Ad hominem attacks on people running, i.e. "this person would be a bully as an admin" or "you've made no worthwhile contributions". GhostPirate 18:49, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
9. Votes supported by no evidence should be ignored entirely, and merely stating your agreement with someone else is no evidence. The consideration should not be the number of individuals, but the number and weight of the good arguments. Negative votes expressed over a dispute on a single article--unless the matter was so enormously bad that several people mention it, should not count for much. Opinions based upon multiple major conflicts are another matter entirely, for they show the inability to learn from mistakes. DGG 19:00, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
10. Absolutely. True, and invoked regularly, at AFD, why not RFA? Moreschi ^{Request a recording?} 19:26, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
11. I think some reasons are definately less worthy. Disallowing certain reasons is a bad idea. However, challenging these reasons is often done poorly with much heat. This is an area where b'crats could step in and do better IMHO.--BirgitteSB 20:17, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
12. I would like to turn !vote-based into discussion-based, where an RFA can nearly be a discussion between a candidate and voters. Piling on "I agree!" doesn't help anyone, although both supporters and opposers do it, so I'm not sure about fixing this. Gracenotes^T § 20:37, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
13. Definitely. Opinions such as, "editor AfD'd the article for my favourite band, I hate him", should be discounted. Yuser31415 22:17, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
14. Of course. What matters is the quality of the argument, a crap argument carries no weight. Guy (Help!) 23:09, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
15. Pretty much per all of above. However, discretion must be used. I honestly think that just because someone's an anon doesn't mean they should be automatically discounted as having an invalid opinion. ^demon^{[omg plz]} 23:15, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
16. Not a vote Agathoclea 23:20, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
17. Yes. If there is anything wrong with the process (and I think there is little wrong), it is that bureaucrat's don't exercise the same discretion in evaluating reasons that is done in XfD discussions. —Doug Bell ^talk 23:36, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
18. Absolutely. I think certain arguments should be 'scored'. Meaningfull arguments should get more points then nonsense arguments. --Edokter (Talk) 23:39, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
19. Of course. Socks, trolls, etc. should not be counted and legit editors should. This is common sense. — Moe 23:44, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
20. Of course. The question about lying looks like a red herring: good reasoning carries its own force and impact. Superficial or cursory statements get addressed within the current discussion format. So if an editor makes something up that can't be substantiated, it gets questioned and disproven. If an editor states something their own heart isn't behind, but that's legitimate and sways other opinions, then its own cogency legitimates it. Durova^Charge! 01:04, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
21. Common sense. Daniel.Bryant 04:11, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
22. Obviously. The really dumb ones already get filtered out, but - see my comment in the first section of this survey - I believe that discussion of particular rationales, in any section, should be encouraged, in contrast to the current 'don't badger the opposers' meme. Not only would good rationales be more thoroughly discussed, but a bit of natural selection could be applied to consistently bad ones. Explicitly disallowing certain positions is a terrible idea, as is requiring/expecting every supporter to post his own reasons when he only means 'I agree with the nominator'. Opabinia regalis 05:33, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
23. Short answer: Yes. Longer answer: This is basically the way RfA already works. Someone who opposes because the candidate has only been editing for 364 days won't have their argument taken very seriously. However, I'm strongly opposed to setting any guidelines for which types of reasoning are valid. ChazBeckett 13:38, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
24. Absolutely. A !vote saying that a user is regularly incivil when no-one else can find any evidence should not hold much weight. !votes with diffs convince me more than general opposes. However as per ChazBeckett, I don't think setting strict standards on what is valid is a good idea. James086^Talk 14:39, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
25. Oppose (and support) votes that have no comment should be disregarded and striked using <s>vote</s>. "Per nom" would be acceptable. Votes that accuse someone of something falsely should be stricken also. --TeckWiz^ParlateContribs_@ 19:21, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
26. By their very nature, some votes are of more merit than others (an oppose vote for vandalism is of far greater import than an oppose vote for not having enough Portal edits., for example. The issue here is how this should be taken into account. Generally speaking, I trust the bureaucrats to use their common sense on this issue. Although I would perhaps like to see bureaucrats giving a short justification for their decisions in close cases. Rje 19:51, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
27. I have seen the following: "Oppose. Needs better use of edit summaries." The candidate in question had 94% edit summary usage. When asked, the voter said that he or she would not support any candidate with less than 100% edit summary usage. If that doesn't show how worthless some RFA votes can be, I have no idea what could demonstrate it. RyanGerbil10(Упражнение В!) 19:58, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
28. Support. This user hates America. Grandmasterka 08:36, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
29. Certainly, there are one or two editors currently voting who come up with ridiculous reasoning to oppose, the danger is though they sometimes create pile on votes. Normally these however are picked up by the bureaucrats. ^Khukri 12:21, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
30. They aren't votes, they are contributions to the debate, some contributions will be wise others folly.--Doc^g 16:36, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
31. Of course not all !votes are equal. If they were, they'd be votes, not !votes. We are not a democracy -- reasoning must trump public relations campaigns. --N Shar 21:37, 20 February 2007 (UTC)
32. Votes such as a simple "Oppose" or "Support" without any reasoning are worthless. .V. _[Talk|Email] 14:38, 22 February 2007 (UTC)
33. If we don't disregard certain "reasons" then it becomes nothing more than a vote, which it shouldn't be.
34. Doesn't this reflect current practice? Titoxd^(?!?) 23:24, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
35. Since we don't have "votes" on wikipedia we gotta judge the arguments. No two arguments are ever equal. ---J.S (T/C/WRE) 05:12, 27 February 2007 (UTC)
36. Of course. Just to name a few - blatant trolling, sockpuppeting/meatpuppeting, personal attacks, retaliation, false accusations... The list goes on. Crystallina 23:16, 27 February 2007 (UTC)
37. I only have a small problem with "[support/oppose] per [above user]" !votes. I have a big problem with stupid reasoning, such as the oppose !vote (I don't remember by whom) in an RfA (I believe Kelly's) because the candidate was a woman, or because a candidate's log is tarnished by one out-of-process block when it's clear that the candidate did nothing wrong. In general (though not always), I trust the discretion of B-crats in weighing the opinions of all !voters. -- Kicking222 00:22, 28 February 2007 (UTC)
38. Votes that contain no reasoning should definitely be given much less weight. Bureaucrats should have the power to judge the validity of the reasoning behind a vote.--Danaman5 08:00, 28 February 2007 (UTC)
39. Many votes give no reasons or ridiculous reasons. These vote should have less weight than votes that people do research on the candidate and explain their reasoning. Captain panda In vino veritas 23:43, 2 March 2007 (UTC)
40. Votes, either for or against, which provide no reasoning, or use reasoning which violates Wikipedia guidelines should be weighted less in considering a decision. --Haemo 02:57, 4 March 2007 (UTC)
41. In practice, this is true; however, framing this principle firmly in words may invite pointless debate regarding where the line should be drawn. --²¹⁰physicq (c) 20:32, 4 March 2007 (UTC)
42. Absolutely! I've seen far too many AfD votes in specific that fall down to "I like it" and far too many that are essentially, "I dislike it" and it's permutations, "this is disgusting/unfit for a serious encyclopedia/offends me" It's the same in all discussions. There are also innumerable 'tag on' votes, 'per soandso' that really add nothing to the discourse. Votes of this nature, without substantitive argument to or from a wikipedia policy should be utterly discounted. Someone who puts forth strong rhetoric tied to the core policies, past practices and guidelines of wikipedia should be given more weight than a !vote that simply tags onto another's position. In the same way with admin discussion, a vote considering all factors should be weightier than someone simply saying "this diff says he was once almost rude to someone who started a revert war against his changes." Wintermut3 09:36, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
43. Without doubt. Editcountitis, "as per user X", no reasons given and similar "shallow" !votes simply should not count. They provide no real reason or explanation for why a user should or should not be given the mop. Vassyana 17:39, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Disagree

1. A fruitless exercise. People will put whatever they want to put. RFA votes (let's stop with the patronising "!") seldom reflect the true feeling of the voter. I wonder how often someone decides they dislike another editor, and votes to oppose but makes up something to provide as a reason other than "I think this user is a prick". Proto ► 16:10, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
2. All the opinions should be considered and less weight given to the weaker ones (Isn't this how it's supposed to work anyway). Can't see the problem with people supporting or opposing per X, if X reveals an issue people feel strongly about I can't see why they would all need to try and reword it. --pgk 19:31, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
3. Agree on the condition that I get to pick the standards. Heck no, on the condition that I get to pick the votes that count! More seriously, all the suggestions for discounting vote standards I've seen so far are silly. "Per X" means that X wrote a well reasoned 15 sentence argument that I investigated and agree with, but don't feel like retyping word for word. 1FA is at least a theoretically reasonable criterion (which I wouldn't meet ... yet!) showing the admin seriously knows what good editing is, and has been through the whole process. Mainspace edits, talk page edits, etc., means the admin has participated in that part of the process, which I think is the most important part of being an admin. All these and others are at least potentially as reasonable as any others, and should not be discounted. Maybe discount "blatant troll" opinions, but it's hard to define those. --AnonEMouse ^(squeak) 22:14, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
4. Disagree, mostly. I think that some !voters should be ignored - sock puppets, SPAs, brand new !voters, trolls. But anyone who is a reasonable contributer otherwise ought to have their opinion count, no matter how tersely worded or apparently irrelevant it is. "I think he'd be a bully" is a perfectly valid reason to oppose someone's nomination. Αργυριου (talk) 22:28, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
5. Disagree. Ignoring some oppose votes is a bad idea. Some support votes are not smarter. You can achieve any outcome if you pick and choose. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 16:52, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
6. Will not solve the problem. The only way to get around this, is to overhaul the entire RfA system. --Cpt. Morgan (Reinoutr) 13:02, 21 February 2007 (UTC)
7. Silly. People will simply use "approved" reasons for votes. Grace Note 09:21, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Other

1. Non-qualified votes (ie. just support or even perhaps support per xyz) should be disqualified - even if we get 100 votes that all say "support" because candidate is a saintlike wikipedian, lets make it a little harder to vote than just pushing a button. --Mcginnly | Natter 15:15, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

   Disagree with support per xyz should be disqualified, there is typically a limited number of arguments than can be made during an discussion. Otherwise you would see a significant increase of text being written that is merely a repeat over and over again of what has been said before. And we need less of that. Mathmo ^Talk 12:12, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

2. As above, disqualify votes which have nothing but the word and a signature (only oppose votes though, as below), which might discourage some people who just vote without trying to evaluate the candidate. Telling people that certain reasons for opposition are worth less is ineffective, since nobody will be willing to have their opposition reason count for less, they'll just come up other reasons that are considered valid. -Amarkov moo! 15:21, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
3. Per Amarkov, (ironic) it's not a vote, it's a discussion. People must provide reasoning on the opposing side, and relevant reasoning too. Since it is not a vote, someone's comment can be commented on as much as necessary, and it shouldn't be moved to the talk page. It's a discussion. --Majorly _{(o rly?)} 16:00, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

   I think a candidate should pass by default, therefore support rationales are not necessary. Kusma (討論) 17:12, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

   Totally agree. Updated my comment. --Majorly _{(o rly?)} 18:44, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

4. Yes in theory, no in practice. Often there isn't anything better to say when supporting than 'no obvious problems'. Attempts to control the quality of votes lead to trouble (WP:QAV), but a system in which addressing opposition reasons is more important than vanilla support votes also has problems (Wikipedia:RFA as RFC). The ability of a comment to get other people to change their mind may be a large step in the right direction; luckily that exists in the current process at the moment. --ais523 17:17, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
5. All opinions are worthy of consideration, it's how those opinions are considered that is the issue. The real question is what weight ought to be given to those opinions, and in the proper context. That analysis is part of the discretion that is delegated to bureaucrats. Part of what people are being asked is whether or not they trust a nominee, which is in many ways a very personal matter. You can't tell someone to trust another by saying certain criteria make it so, or that someone is untrustworthy by other criteria. People are entitled to their opinion, and it's not always correct to say an opinion is true or not. It's the facts underlying the basis of the opinion and the rationale of the analysis of those facts that help determine whether or not the opinion ought to carry much weight. I don't think it's fair to disregard an opinion out of hand because it falls any particular category of response. Obviously, with some votes (opinions), it will not take much thought at all as to whether or not the opinion expressed ought to carry any weight or not. Again, this is an exercise of discretion based on the discussion. Agent 86 17:42, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
6. Certainly in the abstract. But the community should do the weighing not the 'crats. This means that all (excluding anons, socks, and joke votes) should count more or less equally in determining community consensus, but not all votes are equally persuasive when a perspectiveparticipant reviews the RfA. In particular, votes with no (or an evasive) rationale or useful neither to the nominee or other participants (whereas per whomever votes show that certain veiws are widely shared which may be very useful. I just dont think they should be arbitrarily excluded from determining the outcome. Eluchil404 05:22, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
7. Pile on votes should be discounted. RfA's are too much of a popularity contest as it is & we don't need this filth. A pile on of votes also drowns out the cries of good opposing votes which are discounted because of the sheer number of supporting votes... Spawn Man 01:49, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
8. Personally, I don't care either way. What bothers me on this topic is that currently, it's not sufficiently clear to !voters, especially newbies. Whatever the decision, it must be crystal clear to all. --Dweller 10:56, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Admins should be all-rounders

Points to think about :

• Is it important for an editor to know both process and article writing to qualify for the mop and bucket? If so, which processes? Or all of them?
• The possibility of future admins getting into problems because an issue is outside their scope of expertise (e.g. content disputes for a vandal-fighter).

[edit] Agree

1. Strongly agree with this - peace and harmony all round might be achieved through understanding the other parties position - This should cut both ways in my opinion "writing editors" should have to do RC patrol, Afd's etc. --Mcginnly | Natter 15:18, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

   There's a lot of parallels drawn about janitors and the 'mop and bucket' - this is all well and good. At the wikiversity I'm happy to have the rubbish removed, the floors mopped and entrust the keys to rooms to janitors. I'm less happy with allowing the janitors the say on who matriculates, who publishes work, who graduates. Great, lets have janitors, lets have specialists, but to maintain that intelligent people can't perform more than one function is more than a little hollow. As wikipedians we have rights and responsibilities - if you want the keys to the lecture theatre, then demonstrate you understand what it's like to sit in the seats. If you want to present a paper, at least show me you know where the waste paper basket is. --Mcginnly | Natter 01:45, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

2. Without a doubt. --badlydrawnjeff talk 15:46, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
3. Agree fully. Having admins who do not have much experience writing articles and dealing with other editors in that process will be creating admins who lack a basic understanding of those they should be helping with those tools. I believe that admins should be prepared to take up the slack on both mop tasks and writing. Getting admin tools should not pull away a great writer and in the same sense should not give a person who solely mops, less understanding of writing and a larger mop. I do not believe you can have a respected understanding without having constant experience, I am sure wikipedia has changed over time, and editing an article on SPAM is probably entirely different from an article on George Bush. --NuclearZer0 16:30, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
4. Strongly agree. Very difficult to understand the issues an article editor faces without having faced those issues personally. --AnonEMouse ^(squeak) 17:07, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
5. I tend to agree here. Admins are forced encouraged to deal with all sorts of situations - 3RR, POV pushing, and other general content issues which lead to behavioural misdemeanours - and to be lacking in this are will not benefit Wikipedia. Daniel.Bryant 04:12, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

   I have to dispute the term "forced to". In almost a year as an admin I've never dealt with a single 3RR issue. I'm just not interested in that area right at the moment. If I were a new admin candidate now, why should I be forced to prove competency in an area I have no intention of entering? Raven4x4x 08:22, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

   Indeed, bad choice of words. Although I don't like it 100%, "encouraged" was the next-best thing (although, to substantiate "encouraged", see User:Essjay/Bureaucrat/Messages/Promoted and Redux's version, which I can't find anywhere). Cheers, Daniel.Bryant 08:30, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

6. Absolutely!!! This is an encylopedia last time I checked? People aren't drawn to Wikipedia.org because of the chance of zapping vandals; no they are drawn because the site allows you to write an encyclopedia & should be rewarded for doing so. Zapping vandals should only be a side activity that you get to do once you've proven yourself doing what the site was intended to be used for - writing. We don't make people admins for talking on talk pages, this is just a side activity like RC patrolling. If suddenly there was a shortage on vandals etc, then I garauntee there would be a load of inactive admins out there. That's why I suppose they get little respect, because people don't really think they do any real writing work. If more admins were elected on writing merits, then they'd be more respected & there would be better articles all round. Alas, this is not to be... Spawn Man 01:58, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

   Are you sure? I would have thought that if admins were elected on writing merits, the quality of articles would go down because our best article writers would be busy closing AFDs, clearing out CAT:CSD, and blocking vandals rather than writing articles. --ais523 09:59, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

   Yes, the term here thoguh is "all-rounders". By that I mean equal staples of both sides. However, my point is, that instead, many admins nowadays only have non-writing achievements. Sure there will always be only article writers & only sysop activity people, but I'd like there to be a better percentage of admins who have both... Spawn Man 01:33, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

7. Agree. Though I definitely don't think they need be "expert" contributors to the writing side. --Dweller 13:33, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Disagree

1. If you trust someone to be an admin otherwise, then you really should be able to trust that they will not plunge into situations that they have no experience with using their admin powers. I do feel that it's necessary to have some sort of process participation, since people who just do article writing really won't know how admin tools are supposed to be used. -Amarkov moo! 15:28, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
2. Admin's should be trustworthy. No more, no less. Hipocrite - «Talk» 15:33, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
3. What for? I'd like image specialist admins to deal with the images, so admins who could write decent articles don't have to waste their time doing it. Kusma (討論) 15:40, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
4. Disagree strongly. I personally never work with images, and probably never will. Doesn't mean I should be opposed for it. Same with opposing comments "little experience in XfD..." So what? If they haven't mentioned they will do XfD closing, there's no need to point out the obvious. Any sensible candidate will do their research before doing something in an unfamiliar area (e.g. today I added some items to Did You Know. It was tough, but I managed it, and no-one's complained yet). Same with lack of XfDs-type opposes - assume good faith they won't do anything stupid. --Majorly _{(o rly?)} 16:05, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
5. Strongly disagree. Admins are trusted in two specific ways: 1) to competently carry out their duties in the areas they're familiar with, and 2) to recognize which areas they're unfamiliar with and to use a lot of restraint when using their admin bits in those areas. As long as they have enough experience to recognize what their limits are, then they'll be a suitable admin. (that said, article writing is the core thing we do here, and most of us from time to time have benefited from getting away from other things and getting back to writing) --Interiot 16:40, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
6. Disagree. No reason for every admin to spread themselves thinly across the entire project. MLA 17:04, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
7. No, it is not important for them to have experience doing everything, but they must demonstrate good judgment as to whether they have the experience to step into certain situations or not. -- Renesis (talk) 17:07, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
8. Strongly disagree. If Wikipedia was a college, this would be akin to forcing janitors to have a Masters degree in Janitorology. We're just gnomes that do the will of the community as documented in the project policies and guidelines. We don't have to be featured article writers to block someone for making legal threats. We don't need to have articles in DYK to delete spamvertisements that meet the G11 criteria of WP:CSD. I know some folks don't believe the mop/bucket analogy is accurate, but none of what we do here is sexy. It's scut work that we do because we love the project and want to contribute, and everyone has different specialties. - CHAIRBOY (☎) 17:17, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
9. People should be given adminship because it will make things easier for them to do something in particular. As Renesis13 says, if they know that they're inexperienced in an area, they shouldn't go jumping in there and doing controversial things without knowing what they're doing. Article writing is only important for an administrator as far as it develops knowledge of content policies (which can be obtained in other ways); but I wouldn't oppose an administrator just because they had no experience with images, for instance, or with interface messages, unless they wanted the tools for that reason. A user who wants admin tools to streamline vandalfighting shouldn't be opposed for a lack of article edits or of copyedits on the Main Page, and an admin who wants the tools to sort out technical problems with templates and interface messages shouldn't be opposed for lack of vandalfighting, for instance. --ais523 17:21, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
10. I rarely do vandal-fighting; that doesn't mean other blocking, page protection, and deletions should be denied to me. Ral315 (talk) 17:54, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
11. No. While admins should UNDERSTAND editors, that can be done through writing, antivandalism, typo stuff, copyediting... ST47Talk 18:14, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
12. Certainly not. No person not spending full time here can possibly be effective in all the aspects of editorship. However, there should be some recent experience with it. For someone with no experiences in AfDs or in policy discussions, it becomes a valid question of just what purpose the adminship is intended. But we need admins who are not WPedians beyond everything in the Real World.DGG 19:03, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
13. If an admin wants to work in a certain area (indicated by Q1), then surely they should have a bit of experience with it, but opposes because of "Wants to do X but doesn't have experience with it" are less-than-ideal. If experience in a process is more important than knowledge of policy and guidelines related to that process, then said policies and guidelines direly, exigently need to be rewritten. To further qualify, it's good for an admin to not be a total introvert, but otherwise, being weaker in certain areas is okay. Gracenotes^T § 20:44, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
14. I disagree with this. Admins should, IMO, have some basic mediation experience, and of course article writing is a nice bonus, but I certainly do not think writing should be a full-blown rule. Yuser31415 22:19, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
15. Admins can do what they're good at. If we took Roger Federer and didn't list him in a Sports Hall of Fame because he sucked at baseball, what kind of Hall would it be? Same applies here.{Slash-|-Talk} 22:55, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
16. Why should admins be all-rounders when few editors are? Guy (Help!) 23:10, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
17. Absolutely not. The fact that people will say "While they're good at reverting vandalism, this person has never helped with backlog, nor have they ever written a FA, nor have they joined a WikiProject..." is stupid in my opinion. Specialization is what makes this thing run. Most of the people who participate in process don't do much article writing, and vice versa. However, both are essential to the running of Wikipedia. ^demon^{[omg plz]} 23:17, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
18. "Jack of all trades - master of none"? Play to your strength I'd say. Agathoclea 23:22, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
19. Why not let people do what they are good at? Some are good at housekeeping, others are good at dispute resolution. We need both, and we don't get enough of them if we keep looking for the magic candidate. --Edokter (Talk) 23:43, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
20. Although it would help in some special situation, no they don't all half to be. — Moe 23:45, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
21. Strongly disagree. Why should we deny candidates the chance to help because they haven't done everything? We should trust good candidates to stick to the things they are knowledgeable about and stay away from the things they are not. Raven4x4x 00:00, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
22. I don't close AFD discussions or clean up CSD. They're important functions, of course, but I specialize in other things. As I recently argued at Hu12's candidacy, an orchestra hires a cello player for being a great cellist, not for also being a mediocre trumpeter. Durova^Charge! 01:07, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
23. Some things are essential, others aren't. CanadianCaesar Et tu, Brute? 03:55, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
24. The more processes the better but noone has mastered them all and picking any particular one as a must will do more harm (by excluding helpful admin candidates) than good. Eluchil404 05:24, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
25. Specialized admins for specialized circumstances. All editors, admins or not, have the personal responsibility to contribute in areas they know, and to recognize their own limitations in areas they don't; if we can't trust someone to do that, then we probably don't want that person as an admin. I do think all admins should have significant experience in content creation; it's a myth that 'a good manager can manage anything'. Opabinia regalis 05:40, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
26. If an admin doesn't know the page protection policy, but doesn't ever protect a page, I see no problems. Everyone does theirown thing, and if a user does only one thing well, they should be allowed to function fully instead of waiting for an admin to do it. James086^Talk 14:46, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
27. Adminship isn't about writing article. Admins should no processes. --TeckWiz^ParlateContribs_@ 19:56, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
28. False. I had never seen TfD before in my life, but somehow it became the area where I performed 95% of my admin actions. RyanGerbil10(Упражнение В!) 20:00, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
29. I don't expect article editors to be all-rounders, and I don't expect admins to be so either. If people stick to what they are good at, enjoy doing, and have the free time to do, burnout rates will be much slower. Also, some areas of policy are very complicated: it is unrealistic to expect admins to have a complete knowledge of, for example, copyright policy/law - people go to law school for years to learn this sort of thing. Rje 20:01, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
30. The more time wears on, the more I realize that Wikipedia is an orchestra. (Someone else came up with that analogy somewhere and I liked it.) Everyone has their own interests and specialties, and they should focus on those. Grandmasterka 08:40, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

    That would be User:Durova. Great job. Grandmasterka 10:00, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

31. Let those who like doing dispute resolution get on with it, same goes for RC patrollers, image sorting, XfD, stubbing or any other area of Wikipedia. The mark of a good admin isn't that he/she is involved in every facet of Wikipedia because in the end their contribution to everything will be minimal. But that they undertand the workings of Wikipedia, where to find the information and more importantly how to use it if they are ever called to work in an area outside their normal comfort zone. We notice editors because of the exemplary work they do in a specific area, you don't then take a large percentage of their time away from that area and make them work somewhere else, which may not be of interest to them, just to fulfill some check boxes. You give them the tools and give them greater ownership of their area. ^Khukri 12:31, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
32. It helps a bit, but pushed too far it is elitist nonsense.--Doc^g 16:37, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
33. It isn't necessary, but they shouldn't act clueless while dealing with certain aspects of the encyclopedia. Knowing the policies and guidelines is the key. — Nearly Headless Nick ^{C} 10:37, 20 February 2007 (UTC)
34. No editor can possibly be good in all the fields Adminstrators cover. They should only be experienced in the processes they will handle. There's no point in requiring something that will have no bearing on an admin's effectiveness.- Mgm|^(talk) 11:07, 20 February 2007 (UTC)
35. Strong no, same reasons as Khukri. Abeg92contribs 21:11, 20 February 2007 (UTC)!
36. Strongly disagree. Too many good candidates are rejected because of "not enough XfD activity" or "no vandal-fighting." Admins should know what they are not good at and not use the tools until they understand the particular area of Wikipedia. For example, I have no experience with images, so if I were an admin I wouldn't delete images until I had gained some experience. It's as simple as that. --N Shar 21:41, 20 February 2007 (UTC)
37. Absolutely disagree. There is a certain faction on Wikipedia that feels admins are here to "serve" content creators and so they must be content creators themselves. I see this POV being pushed everywhere, in RFA votes and elsewhere. The tasks of an admin are actually quite specific and limited, mainly dealing with problem users and evaluating consensus before closing debates. I have tried to nominate outstanding vandal-fighters in the past because I felt they could use the tools; they declined, citing concerns over lack of substantive edits. Admins need to be familiar with policy, effective at fighting abuse, and, above all else, diplomatic. Many admins in the faction I mentioned fail the last test. --Ideogram 22:37, 20 February 2007 (UTC)
38. No, article writing is not important for adminship, as the tools aren't anything to do with editing articles. Jorcoga ^(Hi!/Review)11:14, Friday, 23 February '07
39. Disagree. Many users nowadays are being opposed because they don't know everything. Well, there's hundreds upon hundreds of kilobytes (or is it kibibytes) on Category:Wikipedia policies and guidelines. It is simply impossible to know every single detail of guidance written on Wikipedia. I've never been to WP:UCFD, barely show up at WP:CFD, WP:RFD and WP:IFD, but I go regularly to WP:MFD and WP:TFD. Still, I would be opposed for "lack of knowledge of image policy" in the current climate, just because I don't like to deal with images, regardless of whether I know the relevant image policy or not. The same occurs with others. Admins naturally specialize in tasks; it is human nature to do whatever one finds {amusing | comfortable | interesting}. There are processes that would collapse if one or two users stopped doing them, precisely due to specialization. What matters is whether an admin has the common sense to figure out what he/she is doing before doing it. Titoxd^(?!?) 23:35, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
40. Absolutely not. I'm fine with "It is preferable for admins to be completely well-rounded," but this need not be a should. I certainly prefer an editor that has edited plenty of mainspace articles, but this 1) is not an absolute necessity, and 2) is not as important as having a lot of talk, user talk, and WP talk edits- gauging community opinions and reactions is far more important to being a sysop than writing FAs (or anything). But moreso, why I fall into the "No" category is because I don't feel that every admin needs to know every policy. If an admin does not deal with images, that's fine with me; if someone questions him/her about an image problem, he/she should direct the inquirer to an admin with more image experience. Obviously, all admins should know the ins and outs of Attribution, SNOW, IAR, and other vital policies and guidelines that could theoretically affect any and all debates. However, we don't need every admin to devote their time to vandalism, nor fair use criteria, nor any other single aspect of the encyclopedia. If I was running for adminship (which I have no plans of ever doing), I would be very open- I'd have no problem saying "I think you should support my adminship even though I don't have experience with FUC or on AIV, since I plan on focusing on [so on and so forth]," because I would gladly support a candidate who is strong in some areas when he/she has no aspirations of dealing with what he/she doesn't know. -- Kicking222 23:58, 27 February 2007 (UTC)
41. There are definately good reasons to being well rounded, but this need not be mandatory. Captain panda In vino veritas 23:46, 2 March 2007 (UTC)
42. Not at all. The only criterion should be "not likely to fuck up". People don't tend to get involved in things they're not interested in, so it doesn't really matter that they lack experience in them, and should they get involved and fuck up, well, never mind, someone can undo it soon enough. Grace Note 09:22, 3 March 2007 (UTC)
43. If taken to the extreme, as some may be keen to do (I'm not implying anyone here, much less the people who support this), even Jimbo Wales would not be able to attain adminship if he were to go through RfA now. --²¹⁰physicq (c) 20:36, 4 March 2007 (UTC)
44. In workplaces and sadly on Wikipedia, there is too much emphasis on people being a 'jack of all trades'. In relaity this can be useful if there is a shortage of skills, i.e. a small office, but on something like Wikipedia, there are more than enough people to go round to have focus and concentrate on one area only that they can really become specialists in, and I believe would better serve Wikipedia. --PrincessBrat 11:06, 6 March 2007 (UTC)
45. Some people write articles, some work in the meta. Altough we are here to write an encylopedia, many otherwise good admins are turned down because they have yet to get an article to FA status or somthing silly like that. ffm ^yes? 20:52, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Other

1. All rounded in the sense of knowing what makes a good encyclopedia article and in knowing what the policies for deletion/undeletion, blocking/unblocking and protecting/unprotecting are yes. All rounded in the sense of actively writing articles and actively participating in all those areas, no. GRBerry 15:59, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
2. Per GRBerry. Must be familiar with and understand, yes - must be active, no. KillerChihuahua^?!? 16:06, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
3. Per GRBerry. "Should" is a little strong, but it is preferable for me if an RFA candidate is. Moreschi ^{Request a recording?} 19:29, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
4. Isn't this what RFA decides, if the RFA participants believe strongly in a set of characteristics required in an admin, then they'll be the ones normally promoted. Definitely can't see how any hard and fast rules could be defined for this, the current system allows a certain amount of flexibility to react to current problems/issues. --pgk 19:34, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
5. Preferrably, but not needed if they are willing to listen. However, they should know how articles work and not be shouting their dictates from ivory towers like they do now. Just H 20:25, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
6. Not sure about what this question is getting at. I don't see how many admins can truly understand all the processes of en.WP. They obviously should understand the processes they where they intend to function as admins. Since there is really no neutral feedback or "process leaders" or training I don't how someone could claim to be and "all-rounder" short of simply having very high self-esteem.--BirgitteSB 20:29, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
7. I don't think admins should necessarily be all-arounders, but I do think (and will !vote) that potential admins should have significant experience as contributors, not just process wonks or deleters. Anyone unfamiliar with the difficulties faced by people who try to contribute will not be sufficiently sympathetic to the people building the encyclopedia. Potential admins should spend *some* time dealing with the various processes - XfD, RfC, AN/* etc., also - they're going to need to learn a bunch of stuff once confirmed, but they should learn those things they can before they become admins. Αργυριου (talk) 22:33, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
8. Most of the time I think this is useful. However, there are the occassional trusted nominees that perform useful work in narrow areas where the admin bit makes that work much more efficient. In these cases where the nominee is expressing a narrow area to use admin privileges, I have no problem giving the thumbs up. —Doug Bell ^talk 23:41, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
9. I think it's preferable that admins have some experience in both process and article writing, but I don't see this as a requirement. ChazBeckett 13:44, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
10. Varied experience is a good thing, but it's not a must-have. Because we're struggling to handle the problems, some sorts of specialism are preferable, particularly those related to images and investigative work. I have real difficulty in seeing how an editor can understand Wikipedia without having made some efforts at content building. Everything else we do is secondary to, or supportive of, this main activity. Angus McLellan (Talk) 17:16, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
11. "Allround" is too broad. But an admin should know processes as well as understand the idea behind the encyclopedia. For example, "deletion-only" admin functions will attract people with a deletionist point-of-view, which might introduce severe bias in deletion processes. --Cpt. Morgan (Reinoutr) 13:06, 21 February 2007 (UTC)
12. My main criteria for RFA is if I know the candidate to be trustworthy and have fair reasoning ability. Given that the point of the site is to build the encyclopedia, a potential admin should show these skills in improving and expanding content. I expect some edits that show knowledge of policy, and don't mind if they end up specializing in purely administrative tasks once sysopped, but feel very uncomfortable with the thought of a body of admins whose actions are not mainspace-focused. (Note that I'm not talking about actual edits, but impossible-to-quantify intention.) - BanyanTree 17:13, 22 February 2007 (UTC)
13. The admin should know how to write an article and about policy, but they don't need to be active in everything. It would be a headache. bibliomaniac15 05:04, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] I am satisfied with the way de-adminship is currently being handled (i.e. Arbitration)

Points to think about :

• Is ArbCom doing a good job in handling cases of admin abuse? Are they too stern? Too lenient?
• Is the current method effective in dealing with problem admins? Will it still be in future?

[edit] Yes

1. By and large --Mcginnly | Natter 15:18, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
2. No better proposal yet offered. Note that disgruntled vandals far outnumber abusive admins. --AnonEMouse ^(squeak) 17:10, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
3. It's fine. Flagrant abuse gets handled quickly, and if there are admins guilty of "low level abuse", then they can be Rfarb'd. If they aren't, then it's because the people who feel they're doing wrong aren't taking the time to present a case with evidence. I'm sometimes left with the impression that some people are looking for a way to basically just press a button and 'zap' an admin they disagree with without needing to do anything else. If that's the end result folks are looking for, it's a terrible, terrible idea. Each person who is an admin has worked hard to improve the project in different areas, and has often invested months if not years of work in the project. For someone to casually strip them of the admin bit is not only a slap in their face, but more importantly it's an end-run around the community who both supported them in their RFA and who might disagree with the objector. De-adminship needs to be both A: Possible and B: Something that requires a bit of effort. - CHAIRBOY (☎) 17:33, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
4. Agree; administrators are dealt with appropriately. I'd be open to another proposal, but I don't think you could protect it from tampering, and then there's the "looking over my shoulder" attitude that an admin might be prone to take. The one case I was involved with where an administrator overstepped their boundaries was Freestylefrappe, and he/she was de-adminned rather speedily, I thought. Ral315 (talk) 17:59, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
5. Working fine. Demonstrable pattern of abuse leads to removal of rights, which is as it should be. Christopher Parham (talk) 18:42, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
6. Yes. It takes a long time and a number of incidents for someone to be de-admined. That's as it should be. The difference between a mistake and abuse is the long-term pattern. Chick Bowen 18:44, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
7. Yes seems fine, the recent trend of those who seem likely to be desysopped, doing so "voluntarily" before arbcom get to do so suggests there is a reasonable belief in arbcom showing it's teeth. --pgk 20:27, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
8. If an admin is chronically abusing his or her tools (and even constructing a false sense of superiority to facilitate abuse) after discussion occurs, then an ArbCom case might be needed. It's important, however, that de-sysopping loses some of the connotations that it shares with community bans; evidenced by de-admins leaving Wikipedia permanently. If wikidrama could be purposefully decreased by mediators, then ArbCom seems like a good route to go for such a (usually) drastic action. Gracenotes^T § 20:54, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

   Qualification: total de-sysopping is being handled well, but admin probation (similar to regular probation, just including use of tools) should probably be implemented. Gracenotes^T § 22:51, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

9. By and large, yes. Remember, the majority of admin "abuse" is defined highly subjectively and consists, at root, of doing something I don't like rather than something that's against policy. It should be easier to register an ArbCom case for abuse of admin privileges, given that RfCs on admins as with all editors who do anythign even remotely controversial tend to become a cesspit, and posts of rouge admin abuse are daily fare at the noticeboards; an impartial review and quick accept or strikeout would be useful, but in the end the genuinely abusive admins get desysopped and the ones who have a bad day do not, which is as it should be. The textbook case here is MONGO: ArbCom did the right thing both times, and for the right reasons. Guy (Help!) 23:21, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
10. By and large, yes. I do have some specific instances where I've had strong disagreement, but by and large, yes. —Doug Bell ^talk 23:43, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
11. I just don't see a problem with too many evil admins running amok. It's a rare enough problem that desysopping doesn't need a specialized process aside from ArbCom and emergency desysopping, in my opinion, and "reconfirmation" is certainly the wrong way to go. Grandmasterka 08:44, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
12. I trust ArbCom to make correct decisions as I agree with their rulings on various cases. Captain panda In vino veritas 23:48, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] No

1. No. It's too difficult to remove abusive admins, and the community has not shown the ability to accurately and neutrality judge those situations. --badlydrawnjeff talk 15:47, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
2. I can think of a few abusive admins who really need to have their bit taken away. However, there are no processes by which one can nominate for deadminship - someone has to edit war for a very, very long time before ArbCom take it on, low level abuse is simply ignored. Dev920 (Have a nice day!) 15:52, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
3. Current process is not scalable, which is my biggest concern with it. Current standards are too lenient. (But let's not fall off the other side of the horse either.) GRBerry 16:02, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
4. An incredibly difficult and slow, often frustrating and upsetting process for both sides. In my opinion all administrators should be open to recall. --Majorly _{(o rly?)} 16:09, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
5. I can think of way too many abusive admins, thus the system is not working. thanks/Fenton, Matthew Lexic Dark 52278 Alpha 771 16:40, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
6. Adminship standards should be high, uncompromising, and more rigorously enforced. I agree with Jeff on the neutrality issue. MLA 17:06, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
7. The current process takes much too long, requires an Arbcom hearing. It further then suffers from the complaintants inability to locate others who may have had problems with the admin, without being cited for canvasing. An open transparent community discussion is more in line. The community appoints, the community should be able to take away. --NuclearZer0 17:29, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
8. No. Process is too complicated. ST47Talk 18:15, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
9. It's too difficult to remove them, because it needs too great a consensus on persistent wrong behavior; the standard should be set somewhat lower, because we really have no subsequent appeal over most individual decisions. I agree that all admins should be open to recall, but I can easily see how this can be abused & it would need safeguards, such as not more than once a year. There should also be a way of encouraging inactive admins to give up the position--it should be a working position, not primarily a prestige position.DGG 19:07, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
10. Per multiple voices above. It's a broken process once you get in, there seems to be no oversight of these people or consequences for their actions. Just H 20:00, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
11. No. De-adminship, besides the worst of the worst, is only possible when there is a wronged party who is extremely wiki-experienced, perserverent, and above all innocent of any past wrong-doing themselves. There should be an effort by neutral parties to ensure admins maintain high standards. Or at the least a neutral party should look into admin conduct when there is a complaint. Leaving inexperienced, confused complaintants to file RFC's against admins is a horrible way of doing things. The lack of people commenting on admin RFC's is disgraceful. Dispute resolution is in much worse shape than RFA (and in my opinion more important).--BirgitteSB 20:41, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
12. I agree with Dev920. Yuser31415 22:23, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
13. NO! Beyond what Birgitte says, part of the problem is structural, because admins have life tenure - if admins had limited terms, those who were abusive would be much less likely to be reconfirmed, which would solve the problem of low-level abusive admins, after a time. The current process too often turns legitimate complaints by users into character assassinations of the user, or exercises in stonewalling by a united front of admins protecting their own. Αργυριου (talk) 22:39, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
14. No, per Dev920. Adminship should be no big deal, and LOSING your adminship should be no big deal, if the situation warrents it. ^demon^{[omg plz]} 23:21, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
15. God no! The system isn't working right now. There are admins who abuse their rights every-so-often, but because the way it is set up, unless the abuse is very obvious, long-time members get 'get out of jail free' cards and sometimes ArbCom doesn't except the cases that really need to be reviewed. Thus system is broken. — Moe 23:51, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
16. No blame to ArbCom which is doing the best that it can, but there needs to be a way of remiing admins who have lost the trust of the community without all the time and difficulty of an arbitration preceeding. Someone can demonstrate that they are not an asset to the project as a sysop without the kind of flagrant policy violations that are currently required. Eluchil404 05:27, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
17. I'm not sure I've seen a good decision on this matter yet. Opabinia regalis 05:42, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
18. The real problem area is not abuse - there are recent cases which prove that abuse is quickly dealt with - but negative net value as Eluchil404 says. Not simple to prove to arbcom, and requires extreme measures for something that ideally should be easy to deal with. The current system doesn't correspond with the idea that sysop rights are "not a big deal". I feel that most RfA problems are down to the perceived difficulty of removing incompetent, tendentious, and generally dimwitted admins. We have surprisingly few of these, but they do tend to stand out. Angus McLellan (Talk) 12:33, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
19. Adminship is not tenure. Simple. --- RockMFR 21:15, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
20. Definitely. I have nearly 30,000 edits and no blocks, but admin misconduct - against which in reality there is no recourse for non-admins who do not wish to undergo great stress in a nearly hopeless cause - drove me away for seven months. I would prefer to see non-renewable one year terms as an unacceptable proportion of admins become arrogant about their status. CalJW 00:25, 18 February 2007 (UTC)
21. Certainly not. It's not Arbcom's fault; in the cases they recieve, they do very well in this context; people are desysopped if they deserve to be, and are not if otherwise. The issue here is that you have to be insane to want to be involved in an Arbcom case, and an arbitration process is not friendly to the newcomers who are the most likely victims of bad admins. I'm sure there's at least one admin that should be desysopped, but we don't know about it because the only people affected, for some reason or another, will not initiate formal dispute resolution. -Amarkov moo! 16:25, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
22. If its not a big deal, removing it should not involve the horrible length of processes it does now. If it is a big deal, there should be better ways to complain about abuse. --Cpt. Morgan (Reinoutr) 13:10, 21 February 2007 (UTC)
23. This is a serious issue. It's also one of the criticisms of the Wikipedia system I hear most often. I see quite a bit of admin abuse (or at least, decorum not befitting an admin). .V. _[Talk|Email] 14:41, 22 February 2007 (UTC)
24. No, and that pushes RFA standards up as a result. Titoxd^(?!?) 23:36, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
25. Strongest possible "NO". While I fully respect most every arbitration ruling, it should not take dozens of people and weeks (if not months) of time to desysop someone who is clearly abusing the tools. The fact that there is no way to simply request deadminship via a !voting process similar to RfA is, in my opinion, a big mistake. I know there have been many policy proposals regarding deadminship in the past, and I'm disappointed that none of them have stuck. In short, it is far too difficult to remove adminship, and it is unfair to the community that there is no way to state displeasure with an admin's actions that will have any sort of impact. And then, of course, there are the cases of admins who have themselves been blocked multiple times for disruption or warring, yet still have the mop; this is criminal. I feel that perhaps the single biggest problem with WP is deadminship- that admins can sometimes get away with unchecked abuse, and that there's a fairly good process to allow the community to show approval, yet little if any way to show disapproval. -- Kicking222 00:10, 28 February 2007 (UTC)
26. ArbComm is not a very good way to deal with this. Some other way of review would be better. Bucketsofg 00:20, 28 February 2007 (UTC)
27. Far too difficult to achieve anything like a just resolution. Most complainers are smeared as trolls, even when the admin in question is clearly in the wrong. This needs fixing; it's one of the most clearly broken community issues. Grace Note 09:26, 3 March 2007 (UTC)
28. Absolutely not! There are some very poor admins here who abuse their power and there seems to be no easy way to get rid of them. Crunch 12:41, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Other

1. This "under a cloud" verbiage is nonsense. Stripped of bit, bit gone. Not stripped of bit, bit stays utill competent authority strips bit. No more, no less. Arbcom needs to step up and take a stand - not let people get harassed off the project and then sanction this behavior. How to get rid of an admin in two steps? 1. File RFAR. 2. Harass admin. The step 0, where "admin has a pattern of doing bad things" is not requred if user is good enough at step 2.Hipocrite - «Talk» 16:00, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
2. There needs to be a better way of deadminning admins who abuse the tools without having to drag it through arbcom, whilst still rejecting, quickly, any frivolous requests for desysopping. But that's always going to be a subjective call, and so perhaps leaving it with arbcom is the best way. Proto ► 16:13, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
3. It's holding up at the moment, as far as I can tell, but I agree that it doesn't scale well and it's possible that it will collapse after a while with the increasing load. --ais523 17:23, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
4. ais523 states it well. I also happen to participate at Category:Administrators open to recall - which I think is a very good concept. Durova^Charge! 01:10, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
5. I'm not 100% satisfied, but the current systems are better than any other proposal. Daniel.Bryant 04:13, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
6. The current system works, but the process needs to be streamlined. ChazBeckett 13:48, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
7. I agree with Proto, we need an easier way of de-admining people that easily dismisses improper requests, Unfortunately, I can't think of a solution. Thus I don't think there should be a change until there's a better proposal. James086^Talk 14:59, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
8. The issue isn't so much that de-adminship is handled incorrectly. People who should be removed as admins are, eventually, and if they quit the project, I can't say that I would feel the loss of someone who warranted de-adminship that badly. I don't see any way to make the process faster while still maintaining good decisions. Similarly, I can only think of one case where I even suspect that someone might have been desysopped improperly, and that's borderline. The current Arbcom system doesn't scale, either, but that's easily solved by electing more arbitrators; it's not like there is a deficiency of people who would make good ones. My issue is the same as Hipocrite's; it is far too easy to use the process as a sword to harass an admin who's done nothing wrong. -Amarkov moo! 18:55, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
9. Like others, I am concerned that only the most severe of admin abuses are being picked up by ArbCom. Unfortunately I am not aware of a better system currently available to us: both the mooted admin recall, and request for de-adminship have serious pitfalls. It seems to me that this is just a case of having to make do with what we have until something better comes along. Rje 23:46, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] My opinion matters in RfA

[edit] Yes

1. RfA opinions can have a large effect if they're well-reasoned (although I admit that not all my opinions have been as high-quality as I'd ideally like people's opinions to be, in terms of persuasiveness and clearly explaining the situation). On the other hand, votes have less of an effect, especially if they're support votes (oppose votes have 3 times as much an effect in RfA and 9 times as much in RfB, or would do if 'crats closed by strict vote-count). --ais523 17:26, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
2. I can think of at least two RfAs where the !voting was close enough that my one !vote could have swayed the result. I can also think of situations where my input, or one other editor's input, made a big difference one way or the other. Having said that, I can also think of lots of situations where my input was either cumulative to a lot of other people's, or was on the losing side. That would be true in any system, of course. Newyorkbrad 17:27, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
3. Well reasoned arguments should and do sway community opinion. The people who invest the time to do the research and/or craft said arguments are the ones who will have an effect. That is the way of the world everywhere else, and equally so here. - CHAIRBOY (☎) 17:35, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
4. My opinion always matters. If my opinion is invalid (i.e. I think X should not be an admin because he/she is a member of Y political/religious/educational institution), it may not be given weight toward the RFA's passage, but it does indeed matter. Ral315 (talk) 18:01, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
5. I must think so; otherwise, I probably wouldn't waste my time participating in something I didn't think would matter. Agent 86 19:13, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
6. Since I only participate when I have had personal on-wiki experience with the person I usually have something to say. I would hope even when my opion does not have a significant effect on the outcome it will at least matter to the canidate.--BirgitteSB 20:49, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
7. Ideally, if I want my opinion to matter, then it will. The habit of !voting, knowing that no novel opinion or view is put forth, needs to end, even though I'm guilty of it myself. Sadly, latter may be one of the only ways for the former to currently occur. Gracenotes^T § 20:58, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
8. As much as anybody's, yes. Provided a decent rationale is given. Guy (Help!) 23:23, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
9. Opinions of established editors of this site matter. The only ones that don't are the ones who create fresh accounts to troll or disrupte on RFA. Although some reason should be given as to why an editor is being opposed/supported, it doesn't have to be expressed (although it does help). — Moe 23:55, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
10. I rarely participate at RFA because I like to interact with an editor down in the trenches before I form an opinion. I recently nominated an editor for the first time (what I hope will become the first of many) and was flattered to see several responses that stated my support of the editor was a factor in their decisions. Durova^Charge! 01:12, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
11. My opinion matters in relation to its relevance, as judged by other participating editors. Same as anyone else's. —Doug Bell ^talk 02:10, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
12. To whatever extent anyone's opinion matters. I'm not sure I see the point of this question. Opabinia regalis 05:46, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
13. Sure. I try to present well-reasoned opinions because I want them to matter. ChazBeckett 13:53, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
14. I agree, insofar as a well-reasoned vote will sway other voters, whereas a poorly reasoned vote will not. If my opinion is damning yet is opposed 100-1 I would expect to be "ignored", this is the fundamental nature, and flaw, of having a democratic system. Would an elitist democratic system, perhaps allowing votes only from admins, bureaucrats etc., produce "better" results? Maybe it would, maybe it wouldn't, but is that really a road we want to go down? I, for one, wouldnot want to. Rje 23:55, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
15. I think that my opinion or anyone's provided it is backed up and sensible can turn an RfA or at least sink it if an oppose. It depends more on what the point was than who made it (during discussion, I can't comment on the bureaucrats decision). James086^Talk 11:28, 18 February 2007 (UTC)
16. Very much so. I've become much more of an admin inclusionist over time and I've seen my opinion change the tide in two RfAs that I can think of right now. Grandmasterka 08:46, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
17. Absolutely. And it matters even more if I present a clear reason for my !vote, as I try to do. --Dweller 13:35, 20 February 2007 (UTC)
18. Loaded question. It matters when the opinion has a sound foundation. If I oppose an RFA because the sky is green, I hope it is ignored. Titoxd^(?!?) 23:38, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
19. Yes, but only if I use good reasoning. I have in the past made votes based on reasoning that was proven to be incorrect and I gladly changed my vote when I realized this. Captain panda In vino veritas 23:51, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] No

1. Mavericks are rightfully ignored at RFA unless we discover something previously unknown and relay such. While the encyclopedia would be better if I was the dictator, the encyclopedia would also not function if such were true. Hipocrite - «Talk» 15:36, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
2. If I'm able to accurately demonstrate a lack of policy knowledge, but 60 others ignore it/don't care, that's a problem. --badlydrawnjeff talk 15:48, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
3. Only if you know your WP:ACRONYM's --NuclearZer0 17:32, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
4. The only opinions that matter are the ones that the bureaucrats think matter, and they haven't come down from their bureaucracy dome to tell me or I assume most of us other little people whether they like my opinion. Just H 20:30, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
5. NPOV. My opinion does not matter, but my knowledge does. Yuser31415 22:24, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
6. No. As I said somewhere above, in my opinion, a single opposing user with a good and valid reason should be able to overturn 100 supporting (!, of course) votes. ^demon^{[omg plz]} 23:23, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
7. "One man's trash is another man's treasure", per ^demon. There's room to wriggle, but 100/1 indicates that 100 people disagree with the one oppose, which may mean that the oppose is wrong/invalid/not worthy of blocking an rfA. As you can see from that, judgement is important. Daniel.Bryant 04:14, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
8. This title is a bit of an oxymoron & that only the "Yes" voters will be counted ;). Moving along... As I've said up there, 1 opposing vote in theory should be able to taske on an army of supporting votes. I've opposed a number of times only to see that admin go through & in my eyes be terrible. In my view RfA's are stupid at the moment until they can be fixed to a suitable standard - It's like voting against Bush & having your vote discounted if you live in a certain state... Spawn Man 02:05, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
9. It's a vote. Clearly if you're in the minority, you lose, regardless that your concerns are valid. The problem is that anyone judging whether your concerns are valid is going to have to take into account the many people who don't think so, having voted the other way! Grace Note 09:28, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Other

1. People think more about the opposition reasons than the support, and these have more influence. Offering higher quality support rationales might change this dynamic. GRBerry 16:21, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
2. GRBerry is right, though quite often, stating a well-formed reason to oppose will draw out better support rationales from the supporters. Or it will sink a candidacy which should never have been. Αργυριου (talk) 22:43, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] RfA has become a popularity contest

Points to think about :

• Does RfA give credit to those who are not as prolific?
• Do editors support a candidate just because they like him/her?
• Should adminship instead be bestowed at the discretion of some higher authority (e.g. the bureaucrats) without extensive community vote?

[edit] Agree

1. With extra exclamation marks. This is a result of subcommunities of editors that !vote for the same (bad) reasons. Hipocrite - «Talk» 15:37, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
2. Undoubtedly. It's not about what you've done, but who you know and haven't pissed off.-- badlydrawnjeff talk 15:48, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
3. Completely. There's some severe ILIKEHIM/IDONTLIKEHIM going on - probably partly why people don't bother to look behind single diffs, they just use them to justifying opposing a candidate they don't like. Dev920 (Have a nice day!) 15:54, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
4. Not as much as it used to be, but yes. But, I think the candidate will generally pass for the right reasons. --Majorly _{(o rly?)} 16:11, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
5. Agreed, but what isnt? Everything that requires concensus requires a popularity contest. --NuclearZer0 17:33, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
6. It is, but giving discretion exclusively to bureaucrats is a flawed way to handle this. While I trust bureaucrats to do this correctly, there are candidates who may apply multiple times, and if one or two people are rejecting them left and right, it appears cabal-like (even though there may be legitimate reasons for denial). Vote rationales should certainly be considered- when I stood for adminship, I had 2846 edits (which was 2-3x what some people had going for adminship). Today, people would oppose me for too few edits. Sure, AWB, VF and other automated programs add to people's edits, and should be taken into account; however, if a user has showed dedicated work toward the project and is judged to be trustworthy, there should be no real reason to oppose. Ral315 (talk) 18:02, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
7. per Badlydrawnjeff Geo. Talk to me 18:50, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
8. Yes, and it is only necessary to look at any RfA to see this. There appears to be a considerable amount of canvassing, which indicates that this is a major consideration. I do not think anyone unpopular should be an admin, because the community is unlikely to be satisfied by her/his decisions. But popularity should not be the major positive factor. Quality of work should be the major factor.DGG 19:10, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
9. Yes, Jeff said it best. Just H 20:33, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
10. Clearly, but as said above I think this is just a symptom of a different problem rather a an RFA problem.--BirgitteSB 20:54, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
11. I've repeated myself a lot, but basically, an RFA can degrade into the "friend of my enemy", "enemy of my enemy", or similar combination. A person's integrity isn't entirely embodied by a single diff, although the latter can occasionally indicate a lack of the former. RFA's structure enables such potentially unfair exchanges. And "I can't support you because of you-know-what" neutral comments are worrying, but understandable, because Wikipedians are human beings. Gracenotes^T § 21:05, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
12. Per Badlydrawnjeff. Yuser31415 22:26, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
13. yes, per Badlydrawnjeff and NuclearZero/umpf. Αργυριου (talk) 22:45, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
14. Absolutely and undoubtedly, I really think badlydrawnjeff put it best. ^demon^{[omg plz]} 23:24, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
15. Yes, but that shows in a good as well as in a bad way. Agathoclea 23:25, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
16. To a certain extent, yes. Jeff's is the clasic example; people !voted against on the grounds that he's an inclusionist. So what? He's not oing to delete things that should not be deleted, and if he wheel wars he'd be desysopped. What's the risk? The real problem here is it encourages people to do the thing that makes you popular at RfA (mostly vandal fighting and !voting Delete at AfD) rather than doing what they naturally would tend to do, which might be editing articles on macrame. Maybe the macrame Wikiproject needs some admins. Guy (Help!) 23:27, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
17. Just what I said above. Yes, It seems a candidate needs to be a celebrity, or at least be very well known be a lot of editors in order to even stand a chance in RfA. --Edokter (Talk) 23:55, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
18. Utterly true. The only ones who pass are cabal members, have tons of friends or virtually unknown making absolutely no presense whatsoever. — Moe 00:01, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
19. If popularity always meant what the people in the "other" section say it does, then it would be fine. But in reality, popularity all too often comes down to "How many cabals Wikiprojects can you get to blindly support testify as to positive experiences with one of their own someone they have seen around. I'm scared at the number of people who think such things as "Our Wikiproject needs some admins, so you should support me!", or "Canvassing for support is okay if it's just on Wikiprojects I belong to, they deserve to know if a member is going to be an admin!" -Amarkov moo! 19:10, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
20. RfA has always been a popularity contest, but what democratic system isn't? An elitist democracy, comprised of whatever users you care to mention (admins, bureaucrats, stewards), would be just as susceptible to the cult of the personality. Just look at the cliques that have formed around individuals in the admin-pool over the years if you don't believe me. Rje 23:59, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
21. The admin system is beyond reform and should be scrapped. CalJW 00:26, 18 February 2007 (UTC)
22. I've written the same thing up & down this page - yes they have. If you want more, go look up there.... ;) Spawn Man 02:07, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
23. It's not just a popularity contest -- it's a process that rewards policy wonks who hang out at WP:RFA and WP:AFD and talk about their vandal fighting all the time. It's important to find good admins, to delete crufty articles, and to fight vandalism -- but it's more important to build the encyclopedia in the first place. Adminship seems to be a "reward" for process participation, but nobody sees a reward for writing comprehensive, interesting articles, so people naturally turn their attention toward the admin route. --Elkman - (Elkspeak) 20:21, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
24. I !vote. — Nearly Headless Nick ^{C} 10:38, 20 February 2007 (UTC)
25. Yep... to many, it is a big deal apparently. --Cpt. Morgan (Reinoutr) 13:14, 21 February 2007 (UTC)
26. Indeed it is. Although that might not be a bad thing; editors may be popular because of their AGF, for example. .V. _[Talk|Email] 14:42, 22 February 2007 (UTC)
27. Of course a popular candidate will be the one receiving plenty of votes, however this doesn't mean a person with a lower popularity necessarily isn't going to pass. Michaelas10 (Talk) 17:00, 23 February 2007 (UTC)
28. I agree and I cite myself as an example. Especially when I first started voting on RfAs, I would pick whatever side looked right (i.e. had more votes.) Now I make sure to look into the candidate myself and base my vote on that. However, as I used to be one who would "jump on the bandwagon", there are certainly others who do that same thing. Captain panda In vino veritas 23:54, 2 March 2007 (UTC)
29. Definitely. I wouldn't even try to become one for this reason. Grace Note 09:29, 3 March 2007 (UTC)
30. To some extent, yes, despite naysayers. It's a fact that cannot be denied. Popularity plays a role in RfAs. I've seen some pass with 25 supports and others with 225 supports. However, the results are the same, but numbers do reflect upon one's popularity (or lack thereof) in the Wikipedia community. --²¹⁰physicq (c) 20:41, 4 March 2007 (UTC)
31. It does seem to largely be a popularity contest, but I don't really see how it could be otherwise. If anything it's an unpopularity contest. All it takes is one or two oppose voters with some axe to grind, and the opposes will snowball like mad, based not on the incoming oppose-voters' own experiences with the candidate, but on agreement with whatever (AGF, etc.) that the original opposer raise as something important that the candidate has allegedly transgressed. It's gotten so silly, I just don't bother to participate in RfA any longer. — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 22:42, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Disagree

1. RFA often reflects popularity, but a 20/2/2 result is the same as a 200/2/2 result. Bad votes (positive or negative) generally come up when the voter doesn't know the person--"Support because I ran into the nominator once" or "Oppose per so-and-so." Chick Bowen 18:47, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
2. In a lot of cases, a good administrator is one who knows what to say to improve Wikipedia. Essjay sums it up nicely. Brash words mean brash actions, and brash actions - a-la Giano, all parts - lead to drama. Someone who can say something to improve a situation and make everyone amicable to improving the encyclopaedia is better than someone who can't. The parallels between "popularity" and this kind of behaviour are obvious. Daniel.Bryant 04:17, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
3. Three or four months ago, I'd have voted yes. Currently, it's not. Things change. --Dweller 13:35, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Other

1. This is an odd one - Can you think of a circumstance in which you dislike someone but think they should be given the tools nonetheless? The question might be better phrased "RfA has become solely a popularity contest" - I'm not sure that's true. --Mcginnly | Natter 16:26, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

Definitely can - at least 4 admins come immediately to my mind with whom I find myself in frequent content conflict, whose personalities I think are poorly suited to content editing and talk page resolutions of disputes about content, but whom I trust to do a pretty good job of adminning, just not of article writing. Not everyone who has a deep understanding of Wikipedia policies and guidelines is a good editor, or an agreeable person to virtually be around, etc. — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 22:39, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

1. Yes, popularity matters, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. A different way of saying "popularity" is "trust by the community." I certainly don't want to have bureaucrats appoint people who can't get along with the community. --AnonEMouse ^(squeak) 17:15, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
2. RfA is not a popularity contest overall, but it's certainly clear that some nominations involve worthy candidates who are also popular. I have no qualms about supporting a good nominee who co-incidentally happens to be popular, but it bugs me when there are multiple pile-on co-nominations. In those cases, at best it certainly comes across as a popularly contest , and at worst it comes across as peer pressure or intimidation. Agent 86 17:47, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
3. Usually, I just look at the person's contribs, and I really don't have any problem. {Slash-|-Talk} 22:57, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
4. Popularity at Wikipedia isn't like popularity in high school: here it isn't earned by how much acne exists on your face or whether you dress well. It's about whether you've been an active and productive member in the community who collaborates well. That, by and large, amounts to some good reasons for sysopping. Durova^Charge! 01:15, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
5. And the point is what? Popularity here is based on your participation, demeanor and behaviour. Sounds like reasonable criteria to me. —Doug Bell ^talk 02:09, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
6. To the extent that popular people will get a lot of support and unpopular people won't, sure. But that's not a bad thing; as above, 'popular' here usually means 'well regarded'. There are a few cases where users who specialize in deletion - especially image deletion and fair-use enforcement - get clobbered for their choice of policies to specialize in. Opabinia regalis 05:53, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
7. I agree with Durova that popularity on Wikipedia isn't the high-school, "starting quarterback" type where someone is liked based on superficial things. Someone who's popular on WP is probably a good contributor and relatively active. ChazBeckett 14:01, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
8. RfA isn't entirely a popularity contest. No doubt it does have an effect but a popular user could still fail if they have some recent bad edits. I don't think admins should be promoted purely by the crats. It would lead to distrust and they would be accused of forming a "bureaucrat cabal" who only promote for popularity reasons. James086^Talk 23:01, 18 February 2007 (UTC)
9. Per Mcginnly (#1.) Grandmasterka 08:50, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
10. Mcginnly gets it right. Of course it is easier to support (or oppose) someone with whom one has had previous interaction with; that is not a bad thing. It is human nature. Opposing someone because one has had no interactions with him or is senseless, though. Titoxd^(?!?) 23:43, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
11. I think some of them are (and some are judged more on merit...) but thats not automatically a bad thing. If our community holds up particular standards, and the ones who are popular are those who hold those standards, then making it a popularity contest is positive. However, non-positive standards become more popular then "popularity contests" become a negative. Right now I think it boils down to "person who breaks stuff"="unpopular person"="never become admin". Then again, I'm not particularly popular. I think my RFA was more of a result of my skills and knowledge. ---J.S (T/C/WRE) 05:19, 27 February 2007 (UTC)
12. First, I agree completely with Doug Bell's statement above. Second, while I feel that RfA does have a certain air of popularity contest, I feel that for the most part, those requests that succeed are not because the community likes the candidate, but because it trusts the candidate. -- Kicking222 00:16, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] RFA promotion standards

The standards as currently employed on RFA by the bureaucrats (not the voters!) are...

[edit] Acceptable

1. But they need to be consistently enforced --Mcginnly | Natter 15:27, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
2. The bureaucrats are where they are because the community trusts them to Do What's Right. If the community finds the trust misplaced, the tools exist (RfC, Rfar, etc) to fix the problem. If the community wants to change the standards the 'crats use, then the tools exist to do that as well (policy proposals, etc) - CHAIRBOY (☎) 17:39, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
3. About right. Given the pre-nomination campaigning and grooming which goes on, requiring ¾ to show community trust is about right - much higher would make it too easy for a few malcontents to derail a nomination; ¾ requires enough malcontents to show a real lack of trust. Αργυριου (talk) 22:51, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
4. I'll be a wild card and support this one. I definitely disagree that mere participation at dispute resolution works against a candidate. Some of the people who supported me pointed to my activity at WP:RFC. Any editor who can't answer dispute-related objections persuasively is someone I might not trust with the tools. Durova^Charge! 01:19, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
5. Yes, generally acceptable. Was tempted to put myself under "Too low, it's too easy to pass", because if there's a problem, it's on the too easy side, but only mildly so. I also agree with the view of being too rigid—people need to consider the individual nomination before deciding whether their usual standards apply. —Doug Bell ^talk 02:13, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
6. In most cases. Daniel.Bryant 04:17, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
7. Almost always. A couple of incorrect calls in genuine tough cases but the standard of support should not be far moved. I think voters, on the other hand, are quite often too strict. Eluchil404 05:32, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
8. The standards are roughly where they should be. I would like to see people take a more comprehensive view of a candidate, though. ChazBeckett 14:13, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
9. I have never agreed with this 75-80% thing that seemed to crop up a while ago, it is way too restrictive and only serves to cause upset when someone gets promoted at 74.9%. This said, I have never had too much issue with the decisions made by our bureaucrats, therefore I feel that I can only declare their standards to be acceptable. Rje 00:03, 18 February 2007 (UTC)
10. They are fine 99% of the time. Of course there are exceptions, but overall the standards applied by bureaucrats are pretty good. James086^Talk 23:09, 18 February 2007 (UTC)
11. The voters are the problem, not the process. Grandmasterka 08:48, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
12. The standard is fine. I think there have been times when it hasn't been consistently applied, but that is a separate issue. Bucketsofg 00:22, 28 February 2007 (UTC)
13. I often disagree with many voters, but my opinion on the bureaucrats' decisions are just fine. Captain panda In vino veritas 00:05, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Too high, it's too hard to pass

1. Pissing people off is a byproduct of solving problems. Thus, attempting to solve problems makes one unworthy to be an adminstrator. Only very few adminstrators deal with the hard stuff, and the number of those that do is steadily diminishing as people who are pissed off go around collecting heads. Hipocrite - «Talk» 15:38, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
2. As candidates have to fit into incompatible standards of too many people, many won't fit all of them and we'll be denied capable admins. Kusma (討論) 15:42, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
3. The current standard is entirely arbitrary, and favors those with low dispute-resolution experience. --badlydrawnjeff talk 15:49, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
4. The "somewhere around 70-80%" standard is fine to me, though I think vote rationales make it too hard to pass. Ral315 (talk) 18:08, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
5. Too many people fail; agree with Ral315 that the problem is less in the level of support required than in the standards applied by some participants. Christopher Parham (talk) 18:45, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
6. Far too many people have caught editcountitis, for a start :(. I also agree with Kusma. Yuser31415 22:27, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
7. I couldn't have put it better than Christopher Parham. Really, just because of edit counts, or some inane criteria a user has, entirely acceptable users are being denied. ^demon^{[omg plz]} 23:27, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
8. Too much worth is given to the !votes instead of the arguments. --Edokter (Talk) 23:58, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
9. See my history at RFA and you will see why I am placing my !vote here. — Moe 00:02, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
10. Agree with Ral. Titoxd^(?!?) 23:47, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
11. I would be happier with more admins promoted even if the result was a few more being demoted. Hopefully the drama could be kept under control. *shrug* ---J.S (T/C/WRE) 05:20, 27 February 2007 (UTC)
12. ^demon, Ral315 and Hipocrite all hit the nail on the head. I will again reiterate my deep concern for the dominance of editcountitis in RfAs. I also agree that very often RfAs pass/fail on how good of a "politician" someone is, or rather how many disparate standards they can satisfy. Vassyana 17:46, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Too low, it's too easy to pass

[edit] Other

1. They're acceptable, but too rigid. Witness the controversy when someone dared to promote at .6 percent under the "discretion range". People really need to understand that variations of up to about two percentage points are matters of who happened to get their comments in, not whether or not the community would trust the candidate. -Amarkov moo! 15:32, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
2. They're fine, but are often too rigid. If the "rules" are there to be broken, there's no need for rules. --Majorly _{(o rly?)} 16:14, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
3. I have basically the same opinion as Amarkov. Numbers alone won't indicate community trust. With the current system 75% is about right, as otherwise there'd be too much risk with drive-by voters not understanding what's happening and nobody giving their reasons (it's pretty difficult to distinguish a drive-by support vote from a well-thought-out one, as often they'll say much the same thing.) --ais523 17:29, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
4. The community has to be convinced to change its standards. The problem is not how RFA itself is handled. Chick Bowen 18:49, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
5. If the buetocrats were more proactive in close cases to really develop a consensus the standards wouldn't matter.--BirgitteSB 20:57, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
6. I think there needs to be a uniform standard before we say it's too hard or too easy. Just H 23:47, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
7. I lose faith when candidates who "know the 'crats" slide in with low margins. If the reasoning behind the promotion of Carnildo's and Ryulong's RFAs was extended to every other RFA, I'd be fine with it, but it's a selective kind of "you're in and you're out" spiel with some successful and failed RFAs. Hbdragon88 00:50, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
8. I'm uncomfortable with the appearance of cherry-picking pointed out by Hbdragon. It's important that every candidate gets a fair shake - and that the 'voting' community believes that. In general, there's entirely too much emphasis (by "watchers", not bureaucrats) on beancounting - people seemed to think it mattered that Kafziel's second nomination changed by a percentage point after the official ending time passed. Opabinia regalis 06:05, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

   I don't think I'm cherry picking - it's just been my experience with RFA. I seldom participate - I can count the number of times I've actually voted on one hand (Splash, Newyorkbrad, Ryulong, Carnildo). I dislike supporitng because it tends to be pile-on, and I think that my opposes have more merit than my supports. I opposed on Ryulong 3 and Carnildo 3, and in both instances the 'crat decided to promote. During the discussion after Ryulong's promotion, when I discovered other candidates who had gotten 75% or so and did not succeed, and Ryulong/Carnildo passing with far lower margins, I don't feel like my opinion mattered, only the relationship. Hbdragon88 07:17, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

   Sorry, I guess that wasn't clear - I was referring to the cherry-picking of which users (known, high-profile) get the appearance of special dispensation, and which others (less visible) just get quietly closed as no consensus despite better numbers. Opabinia regalis 01:52, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

9. Not clear enough, particularly to newbies. --Dweller 13:36, 20 February 2007 (UTC)
10. Appear to be nonexistent, as noted by Hbdragon88. Grace Note 09:32, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Requests for Bureaucratship (RFB) promotion standards

The standards as currently employed on RFB by the bureaucrats (not the voters!) are...

[edit] Acceptable

1. The standards here seem to be working fine. There are enough bureaucrats that the work is getting done, no problems with rogue bureaucrats. Where's the evidence of a problem? —Doug Bell ^talk 02:19, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
2. I do not really have an issue with the bar being too high. Whenever there has been an apparently pressing need, we have promoted a qualified candidate. If there are no pressing backlogs and the bureaucrat corps do not ask for an additional pair of hands to help, I see no real urgency to promote just because someone feels it would be cool to be a bureaucrat. Fundamentally, I do not feel it is meritorious to have a large pool of bureaucrats with nothing to do, it just smells of ego-massaging to me. Rje 00:13, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Too high, it's too hard to pass

1. Too high, especially with the mass of "no need for any more" opposes. --Majorly _{(o rly?)} 16:16, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
2. Far too high (although at the moment the 'crats are holding up fine; we don't need any more, but that isn't a reason to prevent extra 'crattings), because numbers as high as 90% fail to have anything much to do with consensus. Think about it; an oppose vote (which might be for a spurious reason) cancels out 9 support votes, so whether someone is cratted or not in a moderately close case will depend not on arguments, but whether the size of a support pileon is smaller or larger than an effectively random number (9 times the oppose count; I consider this to be a random number because there's often a few oddball opposes in any RfA/RfB). This effect doesn't happen so much in RfA because 3 is a sufficiently smaller number than 9 that the spurious opposes mostly don't make a difference. --ais523 17:33, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
3. Way too high. It turns into a straight pileon contest. Considering the limited ability a 'crat has to actually do harm, the 9/1 strength ratio of an oppose to a suppose is ridiculous. Also, in response to the perenial "we don't need any more beaurocrats" argument, keep in mind that this is a volunteer project. None of the 'crats are paid, they are here because they want to. Each time a valid 'crat candidate is rejected on this basis, the opposers are essentially saying "I have no interest in reducing your workload" to the remaining crats. Since the folks who have gotten to that position love the project (as evidenced by their hard work), this creates extra stress that's simply unneeded and shows a lack of empathy. - CHAIRBOY (☎) 17:43, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
4. Not a perfect question to place this thought, but opposes based solely on "We don't need any more" should be disregarded completely. GRBerry 19:46, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
5. GRBerry said it all. Far too much of this goes on :(. Yuser31415 22:28, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
6. <aol>me, too!</aol> Αργυριου (talk) 22:53, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
7. GRBerry is right. Ok, so we don't need anymore. The current workload is fine for each of them. But would it HURT to have any more? What's the downside to adding another Bcrat? ^demon^{[omg plz]} 23:29, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
8. If we ever do need 'crats, it's nearly impossible for one to pass. — Moe 00:04, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
9. 90% support means that you have to have annoyed almost nobody, which is reealy hard for an admin to do. And even if you manage that, you have to pray that everyone agrees with your definitions of policy, and that you're such an overly exemplary candidate that you don't get "we don't need more" opposes, because only 10 of those will kill your chance of passing. -Amarkov moo! 01:20, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
10. It's becoming impossible without being a Wikipedia politician, as Amarkov says above. Daniel.Bryant 04:09, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
11. Quite so. I don't anyone has a reasonable chance of passing, even clearly qualified candidates with excellent records. When we do need more 'crats, will we be able to get them? Eluchil404 05:34, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
12. I really don't know where we're going to get another bureaucrat if we do need one. Opabinia regalis 06:07, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

    Completely agree. Alex43223 ^{Talk | Contribs | E-mail | C} 09:33, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

13. MAiler diablo failed, and he is quite respected.Bakaman 18:19, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

    I think he didn't pass due to his use of 1FA in RfAs. I personally believe, had he not used it, he would be a bureaucrat right now... --Majorly _{(o rly?)} 20:26, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

14. Way too high expectations, we'll never get another bureaucrat if we keep this up. Also, so many users say just because we "don't have a shortage of bureaucrats, we don't need anymore". What crap. Just because we don't have a shortage, doesn't mean we couldn't use them. I think you should look at these, as RfAs, from the standpoint of "Is this user going to abuse the tools?" If the answer is no, then give it to them. They deserve it, after hard-work on Wikipedia, especially if thats what the user was eventually expecting to get when they joined (say, a few years ago), but now that policies (unofficial) have changed, they think they'll never achieve it. I think something really needs to be done here. Alex43223 ^{Talk | Contribs | E-mail | C} 09:33, 18 February 2007 (UTC)
15. I think that "we have enough already" opposes should be discounted, but they obviously aren't. Though I should hope that these opposes disappear when the time comes that we do need more bureaucrats. James086^Talk 09:52, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
16. Way too hard, and we could always do with more. Jorcoga ^(Hi!/Review)11:16, Friday, 23 February '07
17. If either Essjay, Taxman or Redux decreases his level of activity, things get delayed. The "We don't need more bureaucrats" argument is a bit pointless, as there's definitely things to do for bureaucrats (and if VoiceOfAll ever finishes Bitfields for rev deleted, there'll be more). The average RFB has less users commenting than RFAs, so the 10/1 cancel ratio is much more damaging than the RFA 3/1 ratio. In Wikipedia nowadays, obtaining quasi-unanimity is almost impossible nowadays. Titoxd^(?!?) 23:51, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
18. A bit too high... but the power and responsibility crats have demands excellence and it should be a tough vetting possess. The argument that "we have enough" is a flawed argument to start with and should be entirely discounted much as a "ILIKEIT" would be discounted from an AFD. The choice in a RFB is if we trust this person enough to use the tools. ---J.S (T/C/WRE) 05:25, 27 February 2007 (UTC)
19. It seems to me that it's almost impossible. Bucketsofg 00:23, 28 February 2007 (UTC)
20. The requirements drive potential bureaucrats off. Captain panda In vino veritas 00:07, 3 March 2007 (UTC)
21. Those competent for bureaucratship are not willing to go through the process. Those who go through the process rarely, if ever, get 90% support. Those who will get 90% support at this point in time (disregard current b'crats; they are capable and passed RfB a long time ago, when RfB was better) are usually not competent for bureaucratship. Anyone see some problems? --²¹⁰physicq (c) 20:47, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Too low, it's too easy to pass

[edit] Other

1. We don't have a shortage of bureaucrats, so this doesn't really matter. Kusma (討論) 15:44, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
2. Acceptable, with the caveat that I think bureaucrats should be able to judge consensus based on less than a strict 90%; obviously, if a few votes are obvious trolling, I think they can be discounted or be considered less. This is particularly important here, where 2 oppose votes can be the difference between a pass and a fail. Ral315 (talk) 17:43, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
3. Of the three bureaucrat tasks, renaming users, flagging bots and promoting admins. The first seem fairly trivial, the second is determined by the bot approvals group (though I guess a crat could refuse to do so in extreme cases). This mainly leaves the latter which is to most people quite significant and has caused much unrest in some cases. If RFB as it stands is the way to do it, then I think it's only right that a high standard is demanded, but I'm not convinced it's the best way to select them at all (Don't ask I haven't come up with a good and practical alternative yet.) --pgk 19:40, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
4. It is hard to say they happen so rarely. I just haven't observed enough RfB's--BirgitteSB 21:00, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
5. The sample size is pretty small, but I don't see a huge problem with bureaucrat promotions. If/when there is a need for more bureaucrats, the community will lower its standards. ChazBeckett 14:16, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
6. I think users would have more realistic standards for approving 'crats if there were a standardized definition of what makes consensus. That's the issue for me, not promoting 'crats. Just H 18:22, 18 February 2007 (UTC)
7. I'm not sure. There isn't exactly a large body of evidence to go on... Grandmasterka 08:52, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
8. I have not heard anyone complain about a backlog in crat tasks. The constant backlog in admin tasks is why you never hear the "don't need more" argument. One benefit of a smaller number of crats is that it reduces the incentive to pass the buck due to collective responsibility, which may be an issue with the large number of admins. (If it's everyone's responsibility to close AFDs, it's nobody's responsibility.) While potentially hurt feelings are a downside, someone who is experienced enough to go for crathood should know enough about how these things work that it wouldn't be an issue. - BanyanTree 17:34, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] RFA promotion standards #2

The standards as currently employed on RFA by the bureaucrats (not the voters!) are too broad. The bureaucrats can give their own interpretation, which ultimately leads only to strife. Like nearly all other-language wikipedias do, we should have a simple numerical cutoff point. It's arbitrary but at least it's fair.

[edit] Agree

1. This is a toughie but on balance I'm in favour. I'm against spamming or canvassing (especially on IRC) and I think votes that just say support or support per Jimbo should be discounted - other than that, well we elect world leaders this way - why not admins? --Mcginnly | Natter 15:32, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
2. I agree if we continue to have votes. Grace Note 09:32, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Disagree

1. I trust good people to do the right things. Hipocrite - «Talk» 15:39, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
2. Otherwise we may as well go off and code up the 'cratbots now. There's too much of a risk of things like borderline trolling, and I trust the current 'crats to be able to sort out unusual problems in the spirit of WP:IAR (which I believe to be quite close to the spirit of WP:POINT, but seen from a different point of view) rather than following the number of a percentage all the time. --ais523 17:35, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
3. I trust bureaucrat discretion, and numerical has its issues. Ral315 (talk) 18:10, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
4. Thus far I haven't seen bureaucrats apply discretion improperly, so the current system seems fine. Christopher Parham (talk) 18:46, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
5. I just can't agree with this. RFA isn't working well but this isn't why. And if RFA were working well this may not be an issue. Is hard to judge if the standards when the whole process is struggling long before the point conclusion.--BirgitteSB 21:04, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
6. This isn't a problem. With regards to crats, doing a little mental exercise can work wonders, and very often, you may find that you guessed correctly. And for reasons that I stated above, I am against strict numbers. Gracenotes^T § 21:10, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
7. I'd prefer to remove all RfA limits and leave the decision entirely to the 'crats' discretion. Yuser31415 22:29, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
8. See above. I think the 'crats can handle it. — Moe 00:14, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
9. We don't give out bureaucratship lightly. I doubt the current standards augment the inevitable strife baseline. Durova^Charge! 01:20, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
10. An arbitrary cutoff point is not fair at all. People shouldn't fail their RfA just because a few extra people came to oppose, because that does not at all reflect consensus. If it were set at like 65%, it would be fair, but then you have the problem of people who shouldn't get adminship getting it. -Amarkov moo! 01:24, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
11. No evidence of this at all. —Doug Bell ^talk 02:20, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
12. We appoint them via RfB for a reason - so community consensus on whether the user has good enough judgement to close RfA's. Daniel.Bryant 04:18, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
13. While I'm certainly not in favour of unlimited discretion, the current 5-10% window should certainly not be much narrowed. Eluchil404 05:37, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
14. Terrible idea, encourages votestacking. Opabinia regalis 06:08, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
15. Not an especially good idea. Even if we set an arbitrary cutoff, we'd still have endless arguments over sockpuppets, suffrage, frivolous reasoning, etc.. ChazBeckett 14:19, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
16. I have never been in favour of such a numerical system. I trust the bureaucrats to make the calls in the best interest of Wikipedia. If people are going to throw their toys out of the pram because decisions go against them, maybe this project isn't for them. Rje 00:17, 18 February 2007 (UTC)
17. I agree with Yuser31415 (number 7 of this section); the 'crats could have total discretion and I think they would sort things out ok. I'm not suggesting that, but if anything I think they should have more discretion than they do now. Else, why not have a bot to promote any RfA greater than 75% and fail any below? James086^Talk 10:06, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
18. I think I would support total bureaucrat discretion. Grandmasterka 10:28, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
19. Who says that other Wikipedias don't have strife in their RFA processes? Titoxd^(?!?) 23:53, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
20. Like I said before in a previous statement, I trust the 'crats to do the right thing. Captain panda In vino veritas 00:17, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Other

1. That would work if we turn RfA into a vote (i.e. move the discussion to the talk page). Without bureaucrat discretion, pile-on nonsense opposes cause too much damage otherwise. Kusma (討論) 16:17, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
2. I'd be ok with a strict numerical limit, but I think it still takes the b'crats to sift out the patently unqualified votes before counting them. Αργυριου (talk) 22:56, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] What are your major factors in support/opposing a RfA candidate?

• You may support more than one option.

Comment: This list appears to be sorted according to importance in the view of the writer. May I suggest a more objective sort order would be alphabetical. --Ideogram 22:24, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Trust

1. of course the main one. --Mcginnly | Natter 15:26, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
2. Well, duh. This is the criteria I use; everything else stems from "Do I trust this person to be an admin?" -Amarkov moo! 15:34, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
3. No more, no less. Nothing else. Do I trust them to use tools or not? Hipocrite - «Talk» 15:39, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
4. Yup. My #1. --badlydrawnjeff talk 15:50, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
5. Absolutely. Dev920 (Have a nice day!) 15:59, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
6. I normally will only comment if I've seen or heard of the candidate. --Majorly _{(o rly?)} 16:22, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
7. But the other factors are what determine if I trust... GRBerry 16:27, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
8. Of course. AnonEMouse ^(squeak) 17:28, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
9. Obviously, and most importantly. Ral315 (talk) 18:14, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
10. Looks like everyone pretty much agrees on this as a major factor, and so do I.The capability for messing things up by a single admin is so great, and the methods of guarding against this so sparse, that this must be the primary consideration. DGG 19:13, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
11. Paramount. I suspect that if trust weren't an issue, we really wouldn't need the RfA process. Agent 86 19:17, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
12. Primary criteria, but not something that can usefully be debated. A bureaucrat can only go by a vote count or their gut instinct. —Dgies^t c 19:31, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
13. Most important and why I don't participate in stranger's RFAs.--BirgitteSB 21:06, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
14. Extremely important. Gracenotes^T § 21:12, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
15. The most important of the lot. Yuser31415 22:31, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
16. As GRBerry says, the other factors are what I use to estimate trust. Αργυριου (talk) 22:57, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
17. Sure. {Slash-|-Talk} 22:59, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
18. What I ask myself is If I were involved in a dispute, would I want this person making the calls? Durova^Charge! 01:21, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
19. Trust is the number one criteria. Without this, nothing else matters. —Doug Bell ^talk 02:21, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
20. Yes, yes, yes. Daniel.Bryant 04:19, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
21. Obviously. Of course, trust is developed in the course doing the stuff listed below. Opabinia regalis 06:10, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
22. If I don't trust a candidate, I can't support them. ChazBeckett 14:21, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
23. This has always been my barometer when it comes to voting, I cannot support a candidate I do not trust to put the project ahead of their own concerns. Edit counts mean nothing, I know people with over 30000 edits I wouldn't trust with the admin tools. Rje 00:22, 18 February 2007 (UTC)
24. Obviously... Grandmasterka 08:57, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
25. This is my main one which is influenced by other factors. James086^Talk 10:07, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
26. DUH Jorcoga ^(Hi!/Review)11:25, Friday, 23 February '07
27. Yes, but all the other factors (e.g. participation in process, lack of offense) assert this one. Any trusted adminship candidate would also be trusted admin. Michaelas10 (Talk) 17:24, 23 February 2007 (UTC)
28. Per Jorcoga. Titoxd^(?!?) 23:54, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
29. Primarily. ---J.S (T/C/WRE) 05:28, 27 February 2007 (UTC)
30. Yes, this is very important. Bucketsofg 00:25, 28 February 2007 (UTC)
31. Definately. The RfA is all about showing the communiity that they can trust you. Captain panda In vino veritas 00:19, 3 March 2007 (UTC)
32. The only criterion I apply. Grace Note 09:33, 3 March 2007 (UTC)
33. The most important by far. Stefan 02:01, 4 March 2007 (UTC)
34. A crucial factor, but not the only one for me. --²¹⁰physicq (c) 20:50, 4 March 2007 (UTC)
35. Yes, but it's not always easy to judge fairly, and I know I've got it wrong in the past. Angus McLellan (Talk) 21:56, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Overall editcount

1. All depends on the quality of the edits and there's a minor issue about admins on other language wikipedias with low english edit counts. --Mcginnly | Natter 15:26, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
2. Depends on many factors. --Majorly _{(o rly?)} 16:22, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
3. I don't mind comments on edit count, as long as there is a reasoned analysis provided as to why the edit count is relevant to the determination of the outcome of any particular nominee. Agent 86 19:19, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
4. It's not that high edit count is a reason to support, but that very low edit count is a reason to (cautiously, cautiously!) oppose. Gracenotes^T § 21:12, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
5. Low edit count is a good reason to oppose, as it shows lack of experience (though may be overridden by other factors). Αργυριου (talk) 23:04, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
6. Least of all, but it is a good way to indicate obviously unsuitable nominations. For me it is a disqualifier and not a qualifier. ---J.S (T/C/WRE) 05:30, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Mainspace editing

1. See above re. "all-rounders"--Mcginnly | Natter 15:26, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
2. The worst administrators, historically, have been the ones who have little in the way of mainspace editorial contributions. --badlydrawnjeff talk 15:52, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
3. We're here to build an encyclopedia. An editor who doesn't have mainspace edits clearly doesn't get that and shouldn't be given any tools. Dev920 (Have a nice day!) 16:01, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
4. Mainspace should be the user's biggest area, followed by talk pages. People shouldn't be here just to become admins. --Majorly _{(o rly?)} 16:22, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
5. Needs to be able to write articles before administering article writers. AnonEMouse ^(squeak) 17:28, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
6. There needs to be some degree of participation in this area, given the overall purpose of the project. Agent 86 19:21, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
7. If someone is interested in fighting vandals, doesn't that make them an ideal admin candidate? Obviously they should be familiar with the content policies in WP:V, WP:RS and WP:NOR, but I fail to see how an interest in admin-like activities makes a for a poor admin candidate. —Dgies^t c 19:29, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
8. Someone who does not contribute (which is subtly different from mainspace edits) will not be able to convince me that they will be sympathetic to the difficulties which contributors face. Contributions could be images, or possibly even limited to leaving info on article talk pages for other editors to evaluate, but should be additions to the encyclopedia, not just deletions. A dedicated vandal-fighter needs bot-user permission, not admin privileges. Αργυριου (talk) 23:01, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
9. Some participation in mainspace is needed. Not a percentage, and not necessarily article writing either, though vandal fighting doesn't count. -Amarkov moo! 01:40, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
10. Not a hard requirement, but this definitely factors in. Without this, there needs to be some other good reason for the tools than simply vandal fighting and a desire to close XfD discussions. —Doug Bell ^talk 02:28, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
11. See my comments on the other page (prior to L - not sure which) on why I like mainspace editing in a RfA candidate. Daniel.Bryant 04:19, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
12. With a few specialized exceptions, I've come to see mainspace editing as a precondition to productive adminship. Engagement with content rather than with people' provides a defense against burnout, minimizes wikipolitical strife, and puts someone in the right frame of mind for making administrative decisions about content. We don't need 'general managers', and to be honest I don't trust those who are here explicitly for that purpose. Opabinia regalis 06:18, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
13. Article writing is needed to understand the content policies Jaranda ^{wat's sup} 22:15, 18 February 2007 (UTC)
14. See all rounders above. Despite the many other reasons I oppose, this is one of my main ones. Civilty & experience as well as edit counting are also high on the scales... Spawn Man 02:09, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
15. A little bit; I don't think a user needs an FA, or even a GA, but... something is nice. Not critical, but factors in. Titoxd^(?!?) 23:55, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
16. I put this only a little bit above edit count. A user must demonstrate familiarity with article building and possess. ---J.S (T/C/WRE) 05:31, 27 February 2007 (UTC)
17. We are here to write an encyclopedia and administrators should be able to do just that. Captain panda In vino veritas 00:23, 3 March 2007 (UTC)
18. In a broad sense. Articles are best, and it really isn't hard to write decent stubs. However, copyediting, expanding, categorising, creating templates, and finding images, are all essential. Editors who can create good images from scratch are rare beasts. Angus McLellan (Talk) 22:04, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Civility

1. It's more about to whom and under what circumstances the candidate may have been uncivil - if they've told the devil-troll to "stuff it" in a moment of weakness I've got no problem, if they're launching tirades against established users, then this is.--Mcginnly | Natter 15:26, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
2. I expect it all the time really, it's only decent manners. --Majorly _{(o rly?)} 16:22, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
3. The most significant criteria. MLA 17:08, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
4. Most important. AnonEMouse ^(squeak) 17:28, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
5. To a minor extent; I don't mind incivility in some cases (i.e., in the face of obvious trolling, I can forgive angry responses rather easily; doing the same to a newbie is quite bad.) Ral315 (talk) 18:14, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
6. depends on extent-- if they seem to be learning to be civil. Not that an uncivil admin will necessarily do a bad job, but she/he's much more likely to cause resentment. DGG 19:18, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
7. Very important. Losing one's cool is acceptable when it is followed by an apology. Admins should set the tone. No matter how great an admin is when they are uncivl they encourage uncivil responses and incivilty will spread wherever they go. Even trolls should be handled with civilty because you never know when you have misjudged someone or met them on their worst day. It is better to come across as patronizing than incivil.--BirgitteSB 21:16, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
8. Definitely, definitely. Uncivil admins are far more likely to act rashly under stress, even if they apologize afterward. Furthermore, admins are often looked up to as role models. Yuser31415 22:35, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
9. I will definitely rue the day when Morton Devonshire becomes admin. {Slash-|-Talk} 22:59, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
10. Lack of civility = lack of my trust, though my lack of civility bar is set higher (lower?) than many. Αργυριου (talk) 23:11, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
11. Civility is needed, but there are many much more important things. -Amarkov moo! 01:43, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
12. Civility is the number three criteria after trust (#1) and judgement (#2). Basically, the minimum threshold is to be acceptable in these three criteria. —Doug Bell ^talk 02:23, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
13. See my comment at /K. Daniel.Bryant 04:20, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
14. For me this is basic. Rude admins reflect badly on the project and cause too much trouble even when acting in good faith. Eluchil404 05:43, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
15. Not as concerned as most. Persistent rudeness should not be tolerated, but cranky replies to trolls are completely forgivable. It happens too often around here that 'he told me something I didn't want to hear' gets transmuted into 'he's a big meanie and he was uncivil to me!' Opabinia regalis 06:21, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
16. Absolutely. Incivility always makes a situation worse and reflects poorly on the project. ChazBeckett 14:23, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
17. This is heavily intwined with "trust" to me. It doesn't pertain to the direct use of the admin tools (usually) but it is nonetheless extremely important for a wide variety of reasons. Grandmasterka 08:59, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
18. Very important in my opinion. Admins get a lot of crap and if someone can't handle it, I don't think they're fit to be an admin. If someone was in-civil 6 months ago and without any signs since that's fine though, they probably learned since then. James086^Talk 10:09, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
19. This is necessary. Everybody has bad days, so that can be understood if it's isolated, but without civility, there should be no buttons, and they should be taken away if civility goes away. Just H^{editor review} 22:10, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
20. Definitely necessary. Jorcoga ^(Hi!/Review)11:25, Friday, 23 February '07
21. Litmus test. Titoxd^(?!?) 23:56, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
22. I think this is very important. It is my belief that we should even treat vandals with dignity even as we are blocking them. ---J.S (T/C/WRE) 05:32, 27 February 2007 (UTC)
23. I would prefer frank incivility to smug autocratic ignorance. Civility is important in a conflict between equals, but humility (or at least absence of power-fixation and sadism) and competence are more important where one party wields all power. Avoid authoritarian personality. -ac
24. Very important. Civility can sometimes diffuse difficult situations; incivility always inflames. Bucketsofg 00:27, 28 February 2007 (UTC)
25. Since admins deal with disputs, they should not be the sort that enflames disputes. Captain panda In vino veritas 00:31, 3 March 2007 (UTC)
26. Second most important, but Trust is much more important. Stefan 02:02, 4 March 2007 (UTC)
27. Extremely important. An editor can be trusted, but must be trusted to be civil in discussion, not to be trusted to insult anyone that disagrees with him/her. --²¹⁰physicq (c) 20:51, 4 March 2007 (UTC)
28. Fairly important, but my expectations are on the low side. So long as the editor understands that we have standards, and tries to meet them, that'll usually do me. Unrepentant and persistently incivil editors who don't get it won't do, and neither will editors who make a drama out of others' incivility. Angus McLellan (Talk) 22:40, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Participation in process

1. Proving you can make a decision and back it up with reasoned arguments should be a core skill really. --Mcginnly | Natter 15:26, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
2. As above, admins who have no experience backing up a policy decision are going to make baad admins. -Amarkov moo! 15:33, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
3. If you haven't seen it from the frontline, then you'll be hopeless behind the desk. Dev920 (Have a nice day!) 16:00, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
4. Absolutely. Potential admins need to show that they are capable and will understand what they are doing. --Majorly _{(o rly?)} 16:22, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
5. AnonEMouse ^(squeak) 17:28, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
6. Always a good thing, but I don't limit this to XFD; I just look for work in community areas. Ral315 (talk) 18:14, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
7. If there is no participation in process, how can we properly assess the candidate? Part of determining trust is knowing that a candidate displays past behaviour that supports a conclusion that he or she will not only use the tools without malace, but use them in a manner that is consistent with policy and practice. Agent 86 19:24, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
8. since process is what they will be doing, they should show they understand it and use it reasonably. But not necessarily all aspects of process--not every admin is expected to do everything. But if they are not interested in process, they are primarily interested in prestige, and that should not be an acceptable motivation.DGG 19:32, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
9. Important to an admin's daily activities. Gracenotes^T § 21:15, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
10. Important. A candidate who can't be bothered to participate in the process without admin tools does not demonstrate a desire for, much less a need for, admin tools. Αργυριου (talk) 23:14, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
11. Generally has to have enough participation so that their judgement can be assessed. —Doug Bell ^talk 02:26, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
12. Not evey process, but they need to show that they can effectively use the tools. Eluchil404 05:43, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
13. Some experience is obviously good, but since no one can know the administrative side of the process until they're in that role, it's not that big a deal. I have very low standards for tool usage; someone who is completely trustworthy but just wants to make the occasional obstructed page move is fine by me. Opabinia regalis 06:24, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
14. At least a little... This is a large part of what being an admin is, is it not? Grandmasterka 09:02, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
15. Not mass participation so much as they have demonstrated that they understand the policies that apply to that specific area. For example if they want to speedy delete, they shouldn't have loads of (still existing cause they weren't deleted) edits adding speedy tags. James086^Talk 10:13, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
16. YEs, that's what adminship is all about. Jorcoga ^(Hi!/Review)11:25, Friday, 23 February '07
17. This, or an indication that the user can learn the process, and not just ram through it. WP:IAR when misused, is evil. Titoxd^(?!?) 23:57, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
18. Fairly important. Lack of knowledge can be dangerous here. ---J.S (T/C/WRE) 05:33, 27 February 2007 (UTC)
19. Participation in process suggests that the user knows policy and thus gives a reason to support him/her. Captain panda In vino veritas 00:33, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Lack of offense (e.g. 3RR)

1. Again its all about context--Mcginnly | Natter 15:26, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
2. Depends when and what about. --Majorly _{(o rly?)} 16:22, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
3. When and what. During an ArbComm case I won't support even a saint. After a dispute is over, I'll look at what they did in the dispute. GRBerry 16:31, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
4. Only as part of civility. AnonEMouse ^(squeak) 17:28, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
5. To a minor extent; one 3RR a while back doesn't bother me, but three in the last month does. All about context. Ral315 (talk) 18:14, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
6. I'm willing to forgive and forget long-ago offenses. If the prospective admin violated 3RR yesterday, then oppose, obviously. Yuser31415 22:36, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
7. It depends on how long ago it was and how they responded to the offense being pointed out to them. Eluchil404 05:43, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
8. Like everyone says, depends on the context. Obviously. Opabinia regalis 06:25, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
9. As everyone has pointed out, it's all about context. ChazBeckett 14:24, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
10. Context, and the length of time since the last alleged transgression. Grandmasterka 09:03, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
11. As above, it depends a lot on when and what sort of offense or controversy, but yes if there is a recent offense I am less likely to support. James086^Talk 10:15, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
12. Yes, it depends. Jorcoga ^(Hi!/Review)11:25, Friday, 23 February '07
13. I don't believe in scarlet letters and I believe that people can change their behavior, but recent blocks/offenses can indicate that someone isn't ready for the mop. ---J.S (T/C/WRE) 05:34, 27 February 2007 (UTC)
14. You do not want the police to break laws. Why would you want admins to be blocked recently? Captain panda In vino veritas 00:30, 3 March 2007 (UTC)
15. Depends on the particulars of the offense, but unless the block was by an admin known for using blocks to win content battles, or by an admin I have no respect for, almost any block is an automatic disqualification. Αργυριου (talk) 00:03, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Familiarity of candidate

1. Pretty high - the real problem with RFA is the amount of time required to fully research a candidates contribution history - if you don't know the candidate then it's made doubly hard.--Mcginnly | Natter 15:26, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
2. To a point. It isn't a major one, though. --badlydrawnjeff talk 15:52, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
3. I must have heard of them to comment, in general. I often give advice to candidates that are doomed to fail from the start; obviously I don't know these users. --Majorly _{(o rly?)} 16:22, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
4. If I don't already know them, I don't have the time to research whether they would make a good admin, so probably won't opine. GRBerry 16:28, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
5. It helps if I know them. Ral315 (talk) 18:14, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
6. I usually only comment if I know them, or if there is some glaringly obvious reason to oppose. —Dgies^t c 19:32, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
7. I won't comment without this--BirgitteSB 21:19, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
8. This is of little importance to me. Given the number of editors we can't be familiar with everyone. If I comment on someone I haven't heard of before, it's because something in the nomination caught my eye and roused my curiousity about the nominee. I won't comment on a nomination of someone I hadn't heard of without carrying out a careful review of the nomination comment, the "support" and "oppose" comments, the nominee's user, talk and contribution pages, and other sources of info. Agent 86 23:09, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
9. Per Agent86. Αργυριου (talk) 23:15, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
10. I rarely vote on candidates I am not familiar with and never oppose for this reason but am willing to support a qualified candidate based on RfA cliche #1. Eluchil404 05:43, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
11. Not a deal-killer, but I gotta look into someone's past before I can support. Thats why i don't often participate in RFAs. ---J.S (T/C/WRE) 05:36, 27 February 2007 (UTC)
12. Often it helps. Sometimes it doesn't. Bucketsofg 00:27, 28 February 2007 (UTC)
13. Of course, but only since that is the best way of knowing the candidate has my trust and is civil, would never oppose due to not knowing the candidate. Stefan 02:05, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Edit summaries

1. Only if there's an issue regarding misleading edit summaries. Αργυριου (talk) 23:12, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
2. To a point; I don't care if someone doesn't provide a summary when responding on a talk page, or the like. -Amarkov moo! 01:45, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
3. To a small degree... Thought-out deletion and blocking summaries are helpful, and they stem, in part, from this. No prejudice against using your browser's autofill function when a good summary applies to a lot of similar cases. :-) Grandmasterka 09:06, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
4. Only insofar as much as I wouldn't support someone who doesn't make it a habit. 100% isn't required... not even 80%... but it's really just common etiquette to let people know what your doing and it starts becoming very important when you use the admin tools. ---J.S (T/C/WRE) 05:39, 27 February 2007 (UTC)
5. I consider it to be important to be able to what see the editor did in his/her edit by looking at the summary. Also, I believe that it shows responsibility and good knowledge of process to have a high edit summary usage. Captain panda In vino veritas 00:25, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Mediation ability

(Late addition, --Kim Bruning 13:20, 20 February 2007 (UTC))

1. Kim Bruning 13:21, 20 February 2007 (UTC)
2. Somewhat. An admin should be able to not inflame disputes, but I'm not sure how much they need to be able to meditate. -Amarkov moo! 20:36, 20 February 2007 (UTC)
3. I'm not sure I should be even saying this, since I never participate in RFA and I do a lot of work for MedCab so am probably biased, but I do think mediation experience is very important for an admin. The ability to calm people down and resolve disputes is vastly more important than edit count, in my opinion. --Ideogram 22:20, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Other

1. Maturity--Mcginnly | Natter 15:26, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
2. Sanity. Proto ► 16:14, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

   Oh, also, it being close. If it's 150-0, then there's no point to just adding another name to the list. Similarly, if it's 4-26, what is the point of opposing? None. Proto ► 00:09, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

3. Reasoning. If they habitually explain their opinions with sound reasoning, and change those opinions when others offer better reasoning, they are trustworthy. If they don't, in the long run they will be trouble. GRBerry 16:29, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
4. Trivial oppose votes that need to be countered. Kusma (討論) 16:35, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
5. Reasoning per GRBerry. What other people wrote in the RFA, to support or oppose. AnonEMouse ^(squeak) 17:28, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
6. Per GRBerry and Kusma. Ral315 (talk) 18:14, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
7. Logic, reasoning. Given a set of circumstances and required action, can they be expected to reach a sane, sound, conclusion, or will they be a wildcard? Gracenotes^T § 21:15, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
8. Calmness and thoughtfulness. Yuser31415 22:37, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
9. It really depends. As a general rule, I don't vote on RFAs unless I have a for-sure oppose/support opinion on the user. However, any of the above can stand out as a criteria for supporting or opposing. Of course I'll oppose a user with only 20 edits, and of course I'll oppose a user who's consistantly incivil. However, I do think that supporting just because of a high edit count, or opposing just because the user is forgetful with edit summaries shows a lack of perspective at the general picture of them as a potential admin. ^demon^{[omg plz]} 23:35, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
10. Logic. If you consistently make stupid decisions, then you will not make a good admin, no matter what other qualities you may have. -Amarkov moo! 01:46, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
11. Maturity and judgement. Usually, good judgement indicates maturity, so these kinda go together. —Doug Bell ^talk 02:24, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
12. Longjevity and judgement. Daniel.Bryant 04:20, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
13. Time on the project is more important than edit count to me, but my standards are still lower than most. I would also oppose if I felt a candidate badly misunderstood policy. Eluchil404 05:43, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
14. I strongly support content-specialized admins; knowledge of a particular subject area (and knowledge of the editing climate at key articles in that area) is a major advantage in preventing sneaky vandalism and the introduction of misinformation. Also, maturity and ability to communicate effectively in writing. (I'm consistently amazed at how many people who spent their leisure time at an online encyclopedia project fail this latter test.) Opabinia regalis 06:30, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
15. Communication. I would want an RC Patroller to warn the vandals, a speedy tagger to notify the author etc. Discussion is important and being able to get your point across without tone, body language or an instant reply can prevent a lot of conflict. James086^Talk 10:21, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
16. Body language. If they're hitting on me, then I support. (Before I get yelled at – read: Sense of humor. Someone who takes things too seriously will burn out.) Titoxd^(?!?) 00:00, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

    Hay baby... -wink wink- ---J.S (T/C/WRE) 05:42, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

17. Maturity... and I don't mean age either. And I don't mean someone who can't laugh. I mean someone who knows when to. ---J.S (T/C/WRE) 05:42, 27 February 2007 (UTC)
18. Personality. Unfortunately, the type to desire adminship is usually the precise opposite of the correct type, but such is power. -ac
19. It's only a series of tubes, not the real world. If you want to play the tragic hero(ine), join an amateur dramatic society. Angus McLellan (Talk) 22:44, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Existing administrators

[edit] Current performance of admins

[edit] Admins are doing a good job overall

1. Administrators are here to do the things that would cause havoc if everyone could do them, normally on request from other users (CAT:CSD, WP:AFD, WP:RFPP, WP:AIV, CAT:PER, etc.), although of course they can take such actions themselves if they would come across a situation where they'd otherwise request them. It's quite rare that there's a major row on AN/I over admin behaviour, and even rarer that there is actually a problem with the admin. Yes, I know that sometimes admins cause trouble and need desysopping, but that's sufficiently rare that I'm using this section (after all, it says 'overall', which can be treated as 'mostly'). --ais523 17:42, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
2. The main problem isn't the quality of their work, its the fact that there is too vast an amount of work to go around. Overall the number of mistakes made is acceptable. Christopher Parham (talk) 18:48, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
3. Everyone makes mistakes, and no process isn't going to let some bad eggs slip through. Overall, they're doing very well, for being falliable. -Amarkov moo! 01:27, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
4. Of course not every admin is good, but the phrasing of the next option is prejudicial. That phrasing means that a vote here would somehow indicate that there are no bad admins, rather than what it should indicate, which is that bad admins is not a significant issue. —Doug Bell ^talk 02:32, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
5. Overall, yes. Agree with the above that the section titles are not well worded, but in general I don't think that admins as a group consist of a bunch of mostly-okay people and a few 'bad eggs' who would be stripped of their bit forthwith if only we had an effective mechanism of desysopping. It's more like a bunch of mostly-okay people who mostly make good decisions but have a distribution of error rates, and someone has to be in the tails. Opabinia regalis 06:37, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
6. The number of avoidable genuine errors in outcome - as opposed to trivial faults according to some obscure and ill-worded process - seems remarkably low to me. As Opabinia regalis says, the bottom end of the distribution is always going to be populated. Overall I am more than satisfied with performance. Angus McLellan (Talk) 13:32, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
7. I'll keep saying it... Grandmasterka 09:12, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
8. Yes, definately. I'd like to give extra special thanks to User:SlimVirgin and User:Jpgordon. --GHcool 01:54, 24 February 2007 (UTC)
9. On the whole, yes. In particular, I appreciate the work of Essjay, Persian Poet Gal, Mackensen, Jpgordon, JzG, Chris 73, Fred Bauder and Shanel, to name a few. We all make mistakes, no-one can avoid that. But the standard of admins is generally very good. --sunstar net^talk 00:05, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Admins are doing a good job, but there are some bad eggs that should be removed

1. Agree, but it's like any walk of life - the trick is to have the mechanisms in place to remove the bad eggs and an intitutional culture, structure and the will to do it. --Mcginnly | Natter 15:36, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
2. Strongly, especially in the deletion processes. Deletion abuse is one of the major issues we're facing right now. It has gotten better as a whole as some notoriously bad eggs have resigned, left the project, or been deadminned. --badlydrawnjeff talk 15:54, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
3. Agree with Mcginley - possibly Arbcom should have a separate branch to investigate admins accused of abuse? Dev920 (Have a nice day!) 16:03, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
4. Agree with all above. --Majorly _{(o rly?)} 16:23, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
5. Agreed, and the process for removing the bad takes too long. I support the idea by Dev920, maybe we need a special commission in a way, all groups with power have checks and balances specifically for them. --NuclearZer0 17:36, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
6. There are always bad eggs; I would argue, however, that the bad eggs (and I can't think of any in particular off the top of my head) should be taken to RFAr immediately. Many felt Philwelch was a bad egg; he's been taken to ArbCom and has lost his adminship. It's that simple, if they're truly bad eggs. Ral315 (talk) 18:15, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
7. Right, there always will be problems. Some of them are fixable--admins after making bad decisions sometimes say they've been on WP too long & were getting tired. Some are not--even the best of conduct during a probationary period or during pre-adminship does not necessarily mean it will continue. To diminish the odium of desysopping, there should be some way to get an admin not to participate in some particular parts of process--e.g. someone blocking too much, or speedying too much, or refusing to undelete into userspace.--just like there can be a block to prevent someone from editing a particular group of articles. We perhaps need not just a special commission, but an audit--there should be routine visible records kept of each admin's actions, and whether they've been overturned, without having to analyze their very long contribution record every time. DGG 19:42, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
8. This is probably the closest to the the truth. But the corps of admins is not divided into bad eggs the need removal and good eggs that need to be left to their own devices. What is really needed is a some sort of feedback or performance review which allows all admins to improve while exposing the unreformable.--BirgitteSB 21:33, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
9. I feel they're doing a very good job overall, considering they are human. What the definition of "bad eggs" is tends to differ between many editors. Yuser31415 22:40, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
10. Mostly, though many otherwise good admins have become a little too quick to assume bad faith when dealing with anyone who questions their judgement. There are a small number of admins who should be deadminned last year. I have a little list. Αργυριου (talk) 23:19, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
11. For the most part, they're good. We hear overblown cases from like what? Like 1% of all admins? We have over 1000 of them now, and the fact that we've dealt with abuse with what? 20? 30? I'd say that's a damn good statistic. ^demon^{[omg plz]} 16:14, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
12. No process is 100% perfect, least of all the current RfA one. Daniel.Bryant 04:22, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
13. I probably couldn't name anybody at this point but there needs to be stricter scrutiny. Eluchil404 05:44, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
14. I think that admins are doing a good job overall, but there's always going to be a few exceptions when you have over 1000. ChazBeckett 14:28, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
15. I think we have always done a good job as a group, although I am probably biased here. The wheels have kept on turning through hell and high water, what more can one ask for? That said, there are a few bad eggs, but this has always been the case. You try putting over a thousand random people in a room without there being a few ne'erdowells. Rje 00:26, 18 February 2007 (UTC)
16. Although many of them are understanding, caring & easy going characters, a few "bad eggs" are mixing into wikipedia. A couple are even supporting the above option of "admins are doing alright". They strut around like officious peacocks, superimposing their strict rules & talking down to you like one of their children. They delete & block without warning & think they are above the law. I think someone up there knows I'm talking about him. These admins in my view are the ones who are pulled through the corrupt RfA system by their cabal of friends (See my above answers to the questions in this survey). It is these admins that give RfAs a bad name - If all admins were well rounded & perfect examples, then I doubt that we'd be having this survey. The very fact that people are questioning the RfA system shows that there are in fact bad admins out there that should never have gotten through. The funny thing is, is that there will always be bad admins that get through & this means the RfA system will always be under question. The fact is, you can't please everyone. Overall though, admins are much better than they were... Spawn Man 02:18, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
17. There always will be a small number. But overall they are very good. James086^Talk 10:31, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
18. The number of "bad eggs" is very small, and they don't have a significant impact. There's also no way to avoid this entirely; the best option is to desysop them. --N Shar 21:44, 20 February 2007 (UTC)
19. Nothing is perfect, but there are definitely a lot of good admins here. Titoxd^(?!?) 00:02, 27 February 2007 (UTC)
20. There's not a lot of "bad eggs" but when they are seen, they should be dealt with. Captain panda In vino veritas 00:36, 3 March 2007 (UTC)
21. This is probably true. But the "admins can do no wrong" attitude is a bit too entrenched. Grace Note 09:35, 3 March 2007 (UTC)
22. There may be only a few, but a few bad eggs can do a lot of damage. It's not a question of the number of bad eggs, it's a question of the damage they create to the site and to the reputation of Wikipedia. As it now stands, they are allowed to run wild and this is a very dangerous situation. It needs to be fixed and fixed quickly. It is the thing that troubles me most about Wikipedia. Crunch 12:47, 4 March 2007 (UTC)
23. As with any position, this is a sad reality. --²¹⁰physicq (c) 20:53, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] A few admins are doing a good job, but most of them are not

1. I can count on a few hands and feet the number of admins who are more than glorified robots with good text-parsing routines. Hipocrite - «Talk» 15:40, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
2. Likewise. They seem aloof and unaccountable to anyone, and are acting like it. Just H 20:10, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
3. Definitely. I have nearly 30,000 edits and no blocks, but admin misconduct - against which in reality there is no recourse for non-admins who do not wish to undergo great stress in a nearly hopeless cause - drove me away for seven months. An unacceptable proportion of admins become arrogant about their status. CalJW 00:25, 18 February 2007 (UTC)
4. Many admins seem to take their status as an entitlement, rarely acting unless it benefits themselves or their friends in some way. The unaccountability is a serious issue. .V. _[Talk|Email] 14:43, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Other

1. I speak to the deletion processes, as that is my personal "expertise". Overall, I feel the admins are doing a very good job handling deletions. Only about 0.2% of deletions from December make it to deletion review, and only about 0.05% are overturned there by deletion review (not counting as overturns the original admin overturning themself or a contested prod). (See Wikipedia talk:Deletion review#December 2006 Deletion Statistics.) Given that we have human admins and human editors, that rate is phenomenal. Deletion review would get overwhelmed if the dispute rate increased significantly. GRBerry 17:04, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Admins should be held more accountable for their actions than they are now

Points to think about :

• Are admins currently accountable enough for you?
• What is your definition of accountability?
• Should some actions (like wheelwarring or edit warring over a protected page) be cause for immediate sanction or deopping?

[edit] Yes

1. Arbcom currently has two different levels of sanction on admins; nothing or desysopping. There's no sort of temporary desysopping, no admin probation, no bans from using specific powers, etc... So if an admin isn't terrible, they can get nothing more than "Bad admin! We're not going to do anything about it, but you were bad!". -Amarkov moo! 15:37, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
2. Strongly. It's too difficult to have poor admins held accountable in any real way, especially without being accused of a witchhunt. --badlydrawnjeff talk 15:54, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
3. The only current action that can be taken against admins is to desysop them. Consequently, if an admin is good at reducing backlogs but, say, persistently harrasses a user they don't like, that is ignored. Admin abuse is one of the biggest problems on Wikipedia - heavy users leave over it, and we can't afford to lose them. Dev920 (Have a nice day!) 16:07, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
4. Arbcom's a slow and lumbering process, there needs to be some half-way house between full desysopping and lengthy arbitration that can be used to sanction wayward admins. --Mcginnly | Natter 16:19, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
5. Way, way too difficult to get anywhere without being accused of "trolling" and "disruption". --Majorly _{(o rly?)} 16:25, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
6. Agreed, the very first step is "dispute resolution" of which takes time. I am not saying you ignore this process, but lets follow the steps. You tell the admin on their talk page you felt offended, etc. Now if you are ignored or further offended, you need to goto a 3rd party mediator, if they refuse mediation, then you goto AN/I where other admins judge if you have merit. From there you goto RfC, which usually is highly watched by other admins (obviously). If that doesnt turn around on you for every bad thing you once did, and doesnt get resolved, then you goto Arbcom. Arbcom is particularly bad because those making accusation for abuse from the admin, are scrutinized as well. Imagine complaining about a cop and being told that you were being cited for something you did 2 months ago ... leaves a bad taste. --NuclearZer0 17:39, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
7. Absolutely. Admins are the weakspot of Wikipedia to be sure. Just H 20:12, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
8. Yes, and Amarkov's idea for admin probation is a good way to handle it. Immediate de-sysopping is a bad, bad idea, unless an admin blocks all IP addresses with a range block, or goes on a vital articles deletion spree. It should be thought-out and processed, and that's why stewards do it. There should be middle line between losing nothing and losing everything. Gracenotes^T § 21:22, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
9. Yes. Accountabily is much needed. Accountability has not scaled.--BirgitteSB 21:48, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
10. Yes. Adminship is not diplomatic immunity. Yuser31415 22:40, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
11. Yes, per most of the above, especially NuclearZero's comments. Wheel-warring, edit-warring on protected articles, and block-warring should immediately trigger a review which could lead to dead-minning. Αργυριου (talk) 23:40, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
12. Amarkov put it best. We need some way to slap the user on the wrist, much like we do with temporary blocks for normal users, but with the admin tools. ^demon^{[omg plz]} 23:42, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
13. Yes, but we need primarily a way to deal with correcting the minor problems, and some sort of reprimand process as suggested above s--for example, a short block on adminship, would do nicely. But I do not think many admins who would be willing to do this to other admins. An active community discussion about this would also help, but as mentioned above, people are reluctant to do this. DGG 23:57, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
14. Yes. Agree with AMarkov and NuclearZero. Tintin 00:56, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
15. Temporary desysopping/temporary block probation etc. needs to be looked at as an option. Daniel.Bryant 04:23, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
16. Right now they aren't ccountable to anyone for anything less than clear abuse. Eluchil404 05:47, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
17. Major boy-who-cried-wolf situation. There are so many trolls and nogoodniks whining about admin abuse that legitimate complaints - usually framed when the complainer is angry, frustrated, and not communicating as clearly as he would after some distance from the situation - get swamped in the din. At the other extreme, desysoppings have occurred for minor missteps, even those that occurred mostly in the course of editing disputes. I don't have any good ideas on how to fix this without putting out the welcome mat for trolls and perennial complainers, though. Opabinia regalis 06:46, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
18. Definitely. I have nearly 30,000 edits and no blocks, but admin misconduct - against which in reality there is no recourse for non-admins who do not wish to undergo great stress in a nearly hopeless cause - drove me away for seven months. An unacceptable proportion of admins become arrogant about their status. CalJW 00:25, 18 February 2007 (UTC)
19. I want to see the admins shaking in their boots. If I ever become admin, I want to shake in my boots. Why do you think that the revolution was so successful & gave birth to an outburst of democracy? Because the government should be afraid of the people not the other way round! If admins want to go around like officals & think they're holier than thou, thou should be prepared to be reviewed & held accountable for asny mistakes they make. Period. I'll love the day when an admin isn't given slack for incivilty or Jimbo Wales is blocked for 24 hours for acting like God. Don't take it the wrong way Jimbo, but I'm making a point here... Admins should have no different treatment to the layman editor. Spawn Man 02:25, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
20. When admins and editors are actually regarded equally (they should be now, but theres always bias), then there won't be a problem. Accountability for their own actions will never be bad. James086^Talk 10:35, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
21. Per User:Gaillimh, I now find out Admins have the right to vanish and return under new user names, and have those new user names adminstratored, with no links to the old name. There is now no ability for me to do something I can't find and complain about - edit war over an article, vanish, return, and use their admin powers on it. Hipocrite - «Talk» 12:11, 21 February 2007 (UTC)
22. Ideally, yes. But as Opabinia regalis states, the devil is in the details. Half of the complaints of "admin abuse" actually boil down to "He disagreed with me", which wastes everyone's time and causes most complaints to be ignored. That said, major issues need to be addressed without having to kick things to Arbcom or Jimbo. Titoxd^(?!?) 00:06, 27 February 2007 (UTC)
23. In the case of anything but a block, the easiest appeal is to ignore the admin. In the case of a block, the easiest appeal is to create a new account--though some proportion of editors will take a yet easier course, and just leave. In any case, there is practically no incentive but pure obstinacy for a wronged user to attempt to bring the admin to reckoning. Therefore we should expect that most abuse is undetected. -ac
24. I'd say almost all admin actions I see look fine. The scariest thing to see is admins taking a heavy hand with articles and editors where it's obvious they're highly biased about the topic or the editor. Sometimes the admin will wave a "I've never edited this article" flag as if it's some kind of proof of neutrality. Well. As everyone has biases, and some of our most experienced admins are heavily biased, there needs to be a way to say, "Thanks for the work you do, but we're going to make you stay away from this spot here." And incivility by admins needs to be called on more often. Kla'quot 06:27, 28 February 2007 (UTC)
25. There actually aren't all that many "trolls and nogoodniks" stirring up trouble. There are a few but there are some really bad admins who do some rotten things! I think we need to be stricter. Admins should be routinely desysopped for things like protecting pages they are involved in conflicts in, deleting pages in the same circumstances, wheelwarring, committing blockable offences. Grace Note 09:38, 3 March 2007 (UTC)
26. I know an admin who is pushing his POV but I do not wish to name him here. That is why I have started Expressing_lost_of_confidence. As I have written before that We need a new process that is not so hard that one person spends many days writing an arbitration case and that case takes months to finish. It should be a process that gives power to each individual and each individual takes just a tiny step towards removing a bad admin. A good admin should not be worried about annoying other people while taking right decision and only a very large majority should be able to remove a bad admin. --- SAndT^{Lets Talk} 16:07, 12 March 2007 (UTC)
27. Admins are still editors, just with a couple of extra buttons on their screens. They/we should be just as accountable for our actions as regular editors, etc. A higher profile due to vandal-fighting or closing XfA debates doesn't indicate a defensive position on the moral high ground. (aeropagitica) 17:42, 12 March 2007 (UTC)
28. Yes, it's too difficult to get any consequences for admin misbehavior. I think this is a big part of why it's so hard to pass an RfA, and I fear that we're turning away good candidates because folks are concerned that once you're an admin, you're an admin for life unless you do something really horrible. To me the idea that admins have to be free to make unpopular decisions doesn't work because it seems to me that if it really was the right decision, you'd be supported by policy and there would be enough people to back you up. Decisions about right and wrong behavior have to be decided by consensus, not a small minority. delldot talk 18:02, 12 March 2007 (UTC)
29. Admins should not be removed for a mistake with the tools, but they should still have accountability with things that are intentional. Captain panda In vino veritas 02:12, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Yes, but only to their admin actions

[edit] No, they are sufficiently accountable

1. What are they gonna do that I can't find and complain about? Hipocrite - «Talk» 15:41, 16 February 2007 (UTC) Admins have the right to vanish and return as admins? Now there's something. Hipocrite - «Talk» 12:11, 21 February 2007 (UTC)
2. Pattern abuse results pretty uniformly in de-adminship, so there is no problem here. Christopher Parham (talk) 18:50, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
3. Deletions can be reviewed and overturned; blocks can be reviewed and undone; protections can be appealed—just what is it that admins do that there isn't an open process in place, accessible to all, to review and reverse the action? I don't understand the question of accountability since any admin that frequently goes against this consensus can then have their adminship reviewed and revoked by ArbCom. Seems to me that every check and balance is already incorporated into the system. —Doug Bell ^talk 02:38, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
4. Per all of the above. In this case, I'm 99% positive I know who Gaillimh was. :-) Grandmasterka 09:14, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
5. This whole survey is so broadly worded, I don't know what can be done with it once over. There is not a big problem with admins abusing their power, as evidenced by the rareness of people being de-admined. The existing system is just fine. The community can take actions against admins, get their decisions reversed, even blocked. What this seems to be about is a new way to de-admin somebody. ^High_InBC^{(Need help? Ask me)} 15:54, 12 March 2007 (UTC)
6. You haven't laid out any problems that cannot already be addressed by Wikipedia:Requests for comment/User conduct. If there is a problem admin, open a RFC. If concensus agrees with you, either they can modify their behavior or it can move up to arbcom. Avoid instruction creep. —dgies^t_c 16:07, 12 March 2007 (UTC)
7. This is a giant solution for a tiny problem. Every time there's some drama around here, somebody hoists the reform flag. But it rarely (if ever) doesn anything but heap more bureaucracy on our heads. Kafziel ^Talk 16:15, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Other

1. I don't understand what "accountable" means in the wiki context. Every single edit is logged and can be viewed by anyone else. This is the most open administrative system ever devised. Chick Bowen 18:52, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

The information is there but it isn't being accounted for. Supervision is so open no one is actually doing it.--BirgitteSB 21:51, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Admins are currently able to cope with their workloads

Points to think about :

• Should there be more admins than we have now?
• Do we have enough admins to deal with current backlogs in a timely manner?

[edit] Agree

1. Strongly. The backlogs are by choice, and rarely involve anything pressing. More admins would still help, but we're hardly in a crisis. --badlydrawnjeff talk 15:55, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
   1. Ahem. WP:SSP is down to a 1 month backlog. That's by choice? --AnonEMouse ^(squeak) 17:32, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
      1. yes, because no admins actually want to wade into that quagmire. Meanwhile there are enough admins to speedy-delete articles within 15 minutes of being tagged by a user. Αργυριου (talk) 23:43, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
2. Agree, but we can never have enough help. --Majorly _{(o rly?)} 16:27, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
3. I believe they can, and think the influx of admins needs to be met with a removal of admin powers from those not using them enough. This is not a job, but its not something you do once every 3 months when you pop on. The influx of admins should only be taken if they are willing to work in areas that need help. We do not need more admins doing X, if X already has 3 more admins then it needs. How can you have a high workload when you control your own workload? --NuclearZer0 17:42, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
4. Yes, though some admin tasks are rather more unpopular with admins than others; there's an imbalance in the work needed and the help available. Αργυριου (talk) 23:51, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
5. Seems like it to me. I've never seen an admin group cry for help because they can't close AfDs fast enough. This question is more case sensitive. Some admins I know have a tonne of work & manage to do it beautifully, while others struggle with everything. Depends per person, but overall, I see no danger to admins... Spawn Man 02:28, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Disagree

1. Too much repitive work. CSD, most of *FD, could be better done via distributed user processes and bots. See User:Hipocrite/Distributed Hipocrite - «Talk» 15:43, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
2. More active admins would be good. Large backlogs encourage corner cutting, leading to sloppiness and errors. Example error: deleting a vandalized page instead of reverting. Sloppiness wastes more time in later explaining the correctness of an action than it saves in doing it quickly the first time. On 24 January 2007, for 5% of articles deleted, I couldn't tell why from the deletion log (see User:GRBerry/Deletion Log Stats#Reasons). Similarly, we seem to get about a deletion review a day for correct AFD closes with insufficient explanations. GRBerry 16:40, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
3. We are volunteers, not workers. We each operate under an obligation determined by our personal levels of passion for the project. Shortages of admins create extra stress for the volunteers who are here, and it can lead to burnout. There is no cost to having a greater quantity of admins because they are not salary positions. Opposition to new admins on this basis shows a lack of empathy. Opposition should be based on individual merit, not a 'mood' about the entire admin community itself. This is akin to deciding not to accept a woman or man into a volunteer position at a charity because there are "too many" of that sex in position already, without regard to their qualifications. - CHAIRBOY (☎) 17:50, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
4. CSDs should be handled by bot, most XFD could be handled by bot with administrative oversight (i.e. making the decision, telling the bot what to do, and the bot handles the close while the admin moves to his next XFD), many Prods could be handled by bot (if no edits have occurred since the prod was added, and it's been the required number of days, it's a clear case where deletion can be done), etc. If the community would let this happen, I think it'd lessen a lot of the backlogs. Ral315 (talk) 18:19, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
5. No, and there are two solutions: promote more admins, as Chairboy says, and improve the processes by which backlogs are handled as Ral315 says. Chick Bowen 18:54, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
6. Substantial backlogs are a problem in themselves, but also encourage people to work too quickly and unthoughtfully in order to clear them out. Christopher Parham (talk) 20:02, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
7. No. It is not lack admins so much as lack of efficieny and priorities. Adminship just isn't oganized to train and divert admins the things they are most needed to do.--BirgitteSB 21:59, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
8. We need as many active admins as we can get. Yuser31415 22:42, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
9. Dragon's Flight's tracker begs to illustrate the backlogs. {Slash-|-Talk} 23:01, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
10. Ral315 is right...more things should be automated. However, we need to look carefully at that...we don't want a bot auto-deleting anything that gets tagged for speedy immediately, as we could see major abuse of it. ^demon^{[omg plz]} 23:45, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
11. Per Ral315 - but we will need to be careful not to over-automate it. Daniel.Bryant 04:24, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
12. Per Ral315 again. Continual backlogs encourage sloppiness and result in overflow of one process into an unrelated area (AN/I, individual talk pages, etc.) —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Opabinia regalis (talk • contribs).
13. Yes, the backlog is by choice. If we forced all our admins to work on backlogs for 50% of their Wikitime, rather than choosing what they wish to do, then we might well not have any. But the fact is, we can't force people do do things they don't want to, so we have backlogs that we will not get rid of without many more admins. While we manage the speedy deletion backlog at times, who knows how many improper deletions have been made in an effort to quickly muck out the category? I suspect it's at least 100 times more than the number we get at DRV. New people who get their articles deleted will rarely challenge the decision; I'm sure that most do not even know how, and it's not exactly easy to find out. -Amarkov moo! 19:23, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
14. Having had a 3rr report sat unwatched for over a day two days, a request for semi-protection sat for over 12 hours, and a watchlist full of vandalism to be reverted, I have to agree that backlogs are not being dealt with. Catchpole 12:01, 18 February 2007 (UTC)
15. This is a voluntary project and until there is more incentive to get down to the backlogs nobody wants to look at they will remain. I think the current number of admins could handle it if they were paid to edit WP (I'm not suggesting it) but if they want to block users and AIV is empty, it doesn't mean they suddenly switch wanting to clear the speedy categories. When given a choice, anyone would do what they wanted to and seeing as there's no obligation, backlogs are inevitable. More admins would mean more people (perhaps the same percentage but a higher number) would see the backlog and tackle it rather than just skip over it. James086^Talk 09:13, 24 February 2007 (UTC)
16. No need to not have more admins. Similar to the bureaucrat situation. Titoxd^(?!?) 00:08, 27 February 2007 (UTC)
17. Per Ral315 and well, even though I so often vote against RfAs, we need more admins. Captain panda In vino veritas 00:38, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Other

1. We can cope with the current backlog. However, as we don't have enough people actively working on cleaning them, a lot of the work is done after only a superficial examination of the merits of a deletion (especially in image deletions). If we could halve the workload on the average admin, there would be more time to actually explain to newbies why their images aren't okay or why their articles were deleted. Right now, the backlogs encourage (at least me) to rather do a mediocre job on 10 articles than do an excellent job on 2. Kusma (討論) 15:53, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
2. I haven't the slightest idea - are then any stats about? --Mcginnly | Natter 16:30, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
3. Some backlogs are coped with fine, others (like CAT:PER, WP:CFD and CAT:CSD) are routinely backlogged. I agree with Kusma; it would be better if administrators had more time to clean out backlogs to improve the accuracy of their judgment, which reducing the workload would help with. --ais523 17:46, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
4. I wouldn't mind more admins if something held them accountable, more hands make the load lighter. However, we need to make sure those hands won't start punching us rather than holding up that load before figuring out whether the load is too heavy. Just H 20:28, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
5. (edit conflict) I was just about to observe that it would not be too much work if more admins participated. (And one way to do this would be to strongly encourage admins who wee not, to either resume, or relinquish the job if they were holding onto it for prestige). But I'm not clear what Just H means by new admins being likely to punch the current ones. I do not get the feeling from the discussion on this that there is radical dissatisfaction with the way the current admins work--the general trend of the discussion seems to be a desire to improve the process not revolutionize it, and to find a way to possibly remove some few, but not the whole body of them. DGG 22:23, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
6. We don't need just more admins. We need more admins that are interested in doing the tasks that are severely backlogged. Just promoting more people at RfA is unlikely to address the backlog issue since the areas with backlogs are not the areas we're likely to see the marginal RfA nominee's tackling. —Doug Bell ^talk 02:41, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
7. We are on the edge now, it seems to me. And unless we change the wiki-culture to promote more (or more active in backlogged areas) admins we will soon have a serious and growing problem. Eluchil404 05:49, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
8. I find myself nodding my head at Kusma (#1) once again, after I was going to enter my opinion in a different section. Although, in my experience, I do a good job when a good job needs to be done, regardless of the size of the backlog. Grandmasterka 09:18, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Miscellaneous

[edit] I agree with trial adminship in principle

Not necessarily the current wording. The idea is to give admin access to somewhat-experienced users for a month upon request, if an existing admin is willing to mentor them; RFA follows after this month. That way people can be judged for what they do rather than for what we suspect they might do.

[edit] Yes

1. It would be nice to be able to judge on how people use admin powers, because having to judge on how we think they will undoubtedly leads to people not passing who should. -Amarkov moo! 15:39, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
2. Meh. Too blocky. List of users trusted to semi pages should be HUGE. List of users trusted to delete things should be reasonable (or we should just use realwikideletion. Blank the page, clean out all pages left blank for more than 24 hours). List of users trusted to block people should be really short. See my proposal at User:Hipocrite/Distributed. Hipocrite - «Talk» 15:50, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
3. Strongly, although not in its current form. --badlydrawnjeff talk 15:56, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
4. Agree, it's the best way to "prove" their worth. --Majorly _{(o rly?)} 16:28, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
5. If a better method can be created, this may also help understand a persons reaction to power. --NuclearZer0 16:45, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
6. Great idea. Why having to make one big leap instead of two steps? --Edokter (Talk) 00:21, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] No

1. RfA is tedious enough as it is without having to research contributions twice. --Mcginnly | Natter 16:28, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
2. Participating in XfD, RfC, etc. is enough of a trial without taking the added risk of giving the bits. Anyone who does that regularly will either demonstrate that they know how to handle disputes or they will demonstrate that they don't know how to handle them. GRBerry 16:51, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
3. No. I think if we were to relax the standards in this way, we would need another level of "administrators" to watch for bad-faith "trial administrators." This solution creates an unnecessary level of extra police-work. Remember, this is about writing an encyclopedia. How many more levels of maintenance work do we want to create for ourselves? -- Renesis (talk) 17:11, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
4. Too much work to investigate. --AnonEMouse ^(squeak) 17:33, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
5. Either give them the mop or don't. Don't put too much ceremony on adminship, it's just a maintenance position. We're not cops, we're not doctors, we're freakin' janitors or maintenance folks who love the project and want to keep it running. - CHAIRBOY (☎) 17:52, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
6. In the one month, they're either going to go nuts and delete the interface messages or play it conservatively and make themselves look good until they can get adminship permanently. This also creates an unnecessary mentorship burden on existing admins. Ral315 (talk) 18:21, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
7. The extra complication does not seem worth the effort. As others have already said, either they're already mature enough to be trusted with the mop or they're not. If you're worried about people abusing their admin powers once promoted, you can be very sure that they won't abuse them during the trial period. This proposal won't give you any new reliable data on which to base the decision. Rossami (talk) 18:24, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
8. Why? Situations in which a bad pattern is visible in the first month are rare. If current standards are too high, I suspect creating an intermediate status will only encourage people to raise their standards for "real" adminship. So what problem is this the solution to? Chick Bowen 18:56, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
9. I see no need to add yet another proceedure and create more bureaucracy, and do not see how it would "fix" any of the perceived problems with the existing process. Agent 86 19:28, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
10. Don't see how that would really help.--BirgitteSB 22:01, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
11. I agree with Chairboy. Yuser31415 22:43, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
12. No. The current process does a better job of evaluating admins. A trial admin process is too easy to abuse. —Doug Bell ^talk 23:53, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
13. No Backdoor for newbies that get friendly with admins isn't how consesus is determined. — Moe 00:19, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
14. Exactly as Moe says - if you're not trusted to get it 100%, you're not at all. Daniel.Bryant 04:24, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
15. Unnecessary, slow, and useless. Opabinia regalis 06:56, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
16. In almost all cases, serious admin abuses have not occurred within the first fortnight/month etc. If we're gonna trust people, let's just trust them - if they go nuts, the cleanup required will be the same as if they're full admins anyway. Such a process seems way more trouble than it's worth. Rje 00:38, 18 February 2007 (UTC)
17. A useless and confusing layer of bureaucracy. If a user isn't ready, they shouldn't pass RfA, much less be granted trial adminship.—Perceval 00:49, 18 February 2007 (UTC)
18. In principle adminship isn't such a big step, so making the process more bureaucratic won't help. feydey 22:25, 18 February 2007 (UTC)
19. Too much bureaucracy and process, too much opportunity for harm before the trial admin is caught, and most of the above opinions have good points. Grandmasterka 09:24, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
20. No - if adminship is no big deal and RfA works reasonably well (which is does, despite the gripes) and there are systems for desysopping anyone who really steps out of line, what's to be gained? --Dweller 13:38, 20 February 2007 (UTC)
21. This is what RfA is for. Captain panda In vino veritas 00:40, 3 March 2007 (UTC)
22. No. Just make everyone with a certain edit count who hasn't been blocked in the past couple of months the bit and make desysopping bad boys and girls a bit easier. No need for the huge fuss. Grace Note 09:41, 3 March 2007 (UTC)
23. There need not be "admin orientation." If you know how to use a mop, if you know that there are two ends of a mop (one for cleaning up after vandals, one for clubbingblocking the vandals), and if you can be trusted with the mop, then by all means use them and use them fruitfully. Adminship should not come with 30-day free-trial subscriptions. --²¹⁰physicq (c) 20:59, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Other

1. I think some sort of trial adminship would be good, but I don't know that the proposal above is the way to do it. I also don't really know what a good way to set up a procedure would be, either. Αργυριου (talk) 23:53, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
2. I think it doesn't make any difference. If there's a process to go through and there still are aspiring admins, they'll do what it takes (I have a strong suspicion that many of our admin candidates, particularly the vandalism reverters, are reincarnations of existing users who start reverting vandalism on their very first edit and whose only aim is to attain adminship, so this should be something they'll be able to cope with).--Domitius 16:01, 22 February 2007 (UTC)
3. A mentorship period after a regular RFA (similar to Admin coaching) would be nice, though. How to actually use the tools is a different issue than whether someone is capable of having them. Titoxd^(?!?) 00:12, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Adminship recall should be extended to all admins

In some form, not necessarily the present form. Consider whether such a system could/would be abused by trolls or axe-grinders, and whether it should be editors requesting the recall, or only other admins, or some combination.

[edit] Agree

1. Very, very strongly. It works, it's fair, and it may be the best chance for a non-ArbCom, lowly-bureaucratic form of removing problem administrators. --badlydrawnjeff talk 15:57, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
2. Limited agreement - the devil's in the detail about how the desysopping should be carried out - 5 wikipedians in good standing is way to low, 50 looks too cumbersome.--Mcginnly | Natter 16:06, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
3. Agree, to all admins, but the number recalling should be a larger amount, and should be either admins or very well-respected users who are neutral in the situation. --Majorly _{(o rly?)} 16:29, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
4. Agreed, having faith in ones ability at a time does not extend forever. There have been cases where admins have been desysop'd, showing the community can be wrong. In the same manner that we worry about "recall" being a feeding ground for trolls, wouldnt that same logic apply to those trolls opening an Arbcom against an admin? A recall would not soley consist of a vote, but people have to provide points and discussion, making it a community decision, no trollish behavior can hide the truth of difs and actions. --NuclearZer0 16:44, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
5. Only scalable solution proposed so far. --AnonEMouse ^(squeak) 17:41, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
6. Qualified yes. Non-recall should be the default, but the requirements to recall shouldn't be too high, perhaps even a simple majority of qualified votes. Term limits with the same standard to requalify as to qualify in the first RfA may be an acceptable substitite, as bad admins would fail their next RfA. That would draw out the length of the problem, but avoid the divisiveness that a dedicated AdR page would create. Αργυριου (talk) 23:57, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
7. While the opposition reasoning is not trivial, it has worked well in practice and I really think that a community based way to de-admin is what is missing from the current system. Eluchil404 05:51, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
8. Definitely. I have nearly 30,000 edits and no blocks, but admin misconduct - against which in reality there is no recourse for non-admins who do not wish to undergo great stress in a nearly hopeless cause - drove me away for seven months. An unacceptable proportion of admins become arrogant about their status. At the moment they are an unaccountable overclass. CalJW 00:25, 18 February 2007 (UTC)
9. Admins are granted their powers by community support, and should keep them for only as long as they maintain that support. It's true that in the course of their duties, admins sometimes upset people. But if an admin upsets so many people that a substantial number of users in good standing question their adminship, something is wrong. Accountability requires not merely that admins earn the trust of the community, but that they keep it. I commend the members of Category:Administrators open to recall for stepping forward in this regard. The greater the category's size and the longer it exists without serious abuse, the more it demonstrates the viability of community-based recall, and the easier it will be to institute a recall process which applies to all admins. Tim Smith 01:29, 18 February 2007 (UTC)
10. Sounds like a reasonable, low-overhead, solution to deal with admins, although it would better work if formalized. --Cpt. Morgan (Reinoutr) 13:22, 21 February 2007 (UTC)
11. Absolutely. With some of the blatant abuses of policy going on now (particularly arbitrarily blocking on a whim and then citing so-called "disruption") it's necessary (what if the community doesn't want to put up with it any more?). If a particular administrator has behaved fairly and he knows it, then there is nothing for him to fear even if trolls do have it in for him. It should be however more than just votes; convincing evidence would have to be presented for a successful de-sysoping and those responsible for de-sysoping would have to take the process more seriously. To set limits on who can participate (sockpuppets excluded) would be unacceptable.--Domitius 15:55, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Agree, but only with sufficient suffrage level to keep the trolls out

1. Yep, that'll have to be part of the detail. "Level of suffrage" needs some explanation - does this mean established users (me) or an admin clique? --Mcginnly | Natter 16:35, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
2. I think this is the only scalable solution to problem admins that also prevents troll abuse. The details on how it works are not clear to me. The easier it is to take away the admin bit, the easier we can be on awarding it. GRBerry 16:44, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
3. I think we urgently need some way of recall, but we will need barriers. What I do not know is what level the barriers should be, and we wont know till we have experience. To discourage single issue trolling, it should perhaps be time on wiki, rather than just edit counts--e.g. unless you've been here for x months, you probably don't know enough about process here to vote. I am prepared to guess that once we o have a provision for mandatory recall, we will very rarely use it. Having it available will be sufficient to deal with most admin problems. 19:56, 16 February 2007 (UTC) .
4. Very, very strongly here. "The faith of the community" gained during an rfa isn't infinite. The community should have the same right to say when that faith is gone, not just some elected arbitrators. Just H 20:06, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
5. The current suffrage is just too low. My personal specification is that recall has to be started by another admin in the category. While one could criticize this as cabalistic, expanding this to the entire body would seem to minimize this - if 1000 admins don't feel that you've done something that merits sanction, then you almost certainly haven't. - BanyanTree 17:46, 22 February 2007 (UTC)
6. Here is not the place to decide the level of suffrage, but I think it's a good idea provided trolls don't get their way. James086^Talk 09:25, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Disagree

An admin simply can not make all the decisions they should if they have to worry about people recalling them. An established user would be able to go wacko, and nobody would be willing to block them, because whoever did would instantly be recalled. If they only went slightly wacko, you wouldn't even be able to bring an Arbcom case against them, because you'd get recalled for that too. -Amarkov moo! 15:42, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

1. Recall is often trolling. Admins who are in the category are worse for enabling trolling. Hipocrite - «Talk» 15:51, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
2. The only recall that ever happened shouldn't have done. Crz went to RfA and was resysopped immediately, which as far as I'm concerned showed up Recall to be the pile of poo it is. Dev920 (Have a nice day!) 16:13, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
   1. Not an accurate description. Crz stepped down without going through actual recall proceedings, and the RfA was rather emotional. --AnonEMouse ^(squeak) 17:41, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
3. 'Delete. Recalling is not the way to redress admin failings. MLA 17:09, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
4. An admin who attempts to deal with a content dispute can piss off a lot of people at once. Recall is too easy, too democratic, and most importantly too fast--an admin should be counseled to improve his behavior by other admins a number of times before serious sanctions are considered. Chick Bowen 17:45, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
5. Recall is too easily gameable. I've always supported relative recall- if you've pissed off so many people that you are no longer trusted within a significant portion of the community, you should voluntarily resign. But this should not be set in stone, it should not be required and it should be revocable. Ral315 (talk) 18:24, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
6. The jury is still out, but so far, the recall category has added drama but no value. Newyorkbrad 18:49, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
7. Recall has performed poorly thus far, so it would be unwise to extend it at this time. Christopher Parham (talk) 18:53, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
8. As per the above. We've seen plenty of incidents flare up over one or two actions, which every bit as quickly are moved on from and forgotten about. Not to mention that some areas (e.g. Image copyright issues) are for some reason much more emotive than others, and therefore more likely to lead to calls of recall, it's generally these tasks where we need more people willing to take tough decisions, not less. --pgk 19:47, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
9. I disagree. Implementing forced recall indicates we are not assuming good faith and trusting our admins to do the right thing. Yuser31415 22:45, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
10. We have an admin recall process. It's called ArbCom. —Doug Bell ^talk 02:43, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
11. Although I agree something needs to heighten accountability, it's not this. Daniel.Bryant 04:25, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
12. Does nothing to actually improve accountability, but does encourage forum-shopping and trolling, and would discourage admins from taking on necessary but contentious tasks. How would the Esperanza MfD have ever gotten closed if recall of the closing admin were in play? Opabinia regalis 06:59, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

    Mailer Diablo, the closing admin for the Esperanza MfD, is, and was at the time, open to recall. Tim Smith 07:47, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

13. What makes you think there are no trolls amongst us admins? I've been around long enough to know that there is no troll that can compare with an admin whith his hackles up - just look at the userbox wars last year. If there really is an issue with the actions of a particular admin, it should at least be resolved by a disinterested party rather than a lynch mob. Rje 00:44, 18 February 2007 (UTC)
14. Delete, for the nth time. Too easily gamed, and too open to abuse. Any admin worth his/her salt will have accrued a long list of disgruntled nogoodniks lined up looking for a chance to take cheap shots. The community already provides existing processes for policy admins, RFC and RFAR, both of which work sufficiently well as recent desysopings attest. FeloniousMonk 02:36, 18 February 2007 (UTC)
15. No, as I have said a dozen times in a dozen places. All admins are open to "recall". This isn't useful. Guettarda 04:40, 18 February 2007 (UTC)
16. Yet another "solution" which causes problems rather than solves them. As has been noted above, any admin who has been active in contentious areas for any length of time has pissed people off - and there are already proceses in place for de-adminning. This would open the door to yet more trolling and politicking, wasting the time of admins as well as the community at large, and resolve precisely nothing. KillerChihuahua^?!? 14:00, 18 February 2007 (UTC)
17. Troll magnet. Would we want give all the POV warriors, disruptive editors and trolls that we have blocked such a tool? No way. ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 20:30, 18 February 2007 (UTC)
18. Disagree, per Doug Bell, FeloniousMonk, and jossi. Musical Linguist 23:16, 18 February 2007 (UTC)
19. I'd like to think it could work, but I don't see it happening. What number of users? What's "experienced"? What's a legitimate gripe? It gives me a headache just thinking about the 30kb ANI discussions that might lead up to and follow one of these. Grandmasterka 09:30, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
20. In-n-Out Burger for trolls. Doesn't actually solve anything, as BrigitteSB points out below. A different idea may help, but not this. Titoxd^(?!?) 00:14, 27 February 2007 (UTC)
21. What good would it do? Captain panda In vino veritas 01:58, 3 March 2007 (UTC)
22. Take a look at Friday's recall ordeal and you will see how horrible this idea is. How can admins deal with problem users if their hands are tied behind their backs with this? --²¹⁰physicq (c) 21:02, 4 March 2007 (UTC)
23. Its hard enough to become an admin why go through it all over again? One bad egg spoil a whole admins contributions I say, these should be very rare. Artaxiad 01:11, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Other

1. I am uncertain as to the need or practicality of this proposal. I'm open to proposals that are workable, necessary, and address real, not perceived, problems. However, absent any new proposals that have not been suggested before, I cannot see how recall, by any process, would solve the current alleged problems and avoid incorporating those same problems. Recall in any form would pretty much be an RfA in reverse, and the culture and behaviour in RfA would likely carry over to the new procedure. Agent 86 21:44, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
2. I don't see how this addresses the real problems of how adminship has not scaled, but I do think it could be part of a broader reform of adminship.--BirgitteSB 22:06, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
3. We need a way to desysop without an Arbcom proceeding; they are far too long, cause too much drama, and many of the people who could provide evidence actively avoid the committee for those reasons. To deal with the issue that recall would be too easily gamed by trolls, I would support a form of recall such that consensus is required to remove the admin tools, not to keep them, consensus judged the same as in an RfA. If you can't get a meager ~25% of people to agree that you should have admin tools, you should not. -Amarkov moo! 05:33, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Comment/Question

If I may, let's try one more question, for everyone but particularly those who voted "agree." Are there any admins right now whom you would seek to recall if this measure were in effect? How many? No admins' names, please, I just want to know whether the absence of recall for all is a potential real issue or just a perennial theoretical one. Newyorkbrad 02:50, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

1. The number has been in the zero - four range for me over the past few months. Right now, one. GRBerry 22:54, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
2. Even though I didn't agree, I do have one admin who I'd like to recall, but I have no interest in being involved in an Arbcom case, so I'm not going to subject myself to one. I really do wish that someone came up with a form of admin recall I think would work, but I can't imagine any. -Amarkov moo! 03:57, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

   Never mind, I imagined one. -Amarkov moo! 05:34, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] IRC should not be used in making admin decisions

Points to think about :

• Possibility of Cabalism/Groupthink?
• Is there a need for the use of IRC to make decisions? Is it necessary?
• Is it a superior method compared to alternatives?

[edit] Agree

1. I agree IRC should not be used in making admin decisions - We've an on-wiki forum for that called WP:AN and if it's secret you guys can sort it out by email pretty quickly in my experience. --Mcginnly | Natter 15:42, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
2. IRC has broken culture. If it had non-broken culture, it would be ok. Hipocrite - «Talk» 15:52, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
3. We keep them logged here for a reason. --badlydrawnjeff talk 15:57, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
4. Better, in the long run, to keep this stuff out in the open. I can see IRC being used for a quick extra pair of eyes on something, but not for full admin-level decisions. EVula // talk // ☯ // 16:13, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
5. We are a wiki. We should use it. Dev920 (Have a nice day!) 16:14, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
6. Absolutely and totally agree. No need for silly little secret discussions. Anything you say should be put onto the RfA itself, or another suitable page where everyone can use it. --Majorly _{(o rly?)} 16:32, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
7. Agreed, there has been growing talk of cabalism and a closed community with no oversight in communication has only fueled that further. There has been times where it is said "it was discussed on IRC", which means its discussed in a manner that you do not know what was said, who said it, and when. We have such an indepth manner here with "dif's" to keep track of discussions, there really is no reason decisions should be made outside that scope. --NuclearZer0 16:40, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
8. Agreed per the comments above. Rossami (talk) 18:26, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
9. Certainly not, in most cases. There will be some where the matter really cannot go on record because of breech of privacy or possible libel--and there's no way of discussing in WP space without going on record. There should be very few of them, and when this procedure is used, it should be declared--as it sometimes has been. It is an obvious violation of the basic principles to have closed discussions--first, there will be cabals; second, it diminishes trust by the community in the decisions; third, it arouse a certain degree of resentment by those excluded. DGG 19:28, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
10. Since apparently IRC logs aren't published, there should be no Wikipedia IRC Channel...period. The temptation of using it for smoke filled room deals is too great. Just H 19:57, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
11. Absolutely not. Not everyone uses IRC, so it makes it more difficult to watch the watchers. Decisions about and affecting wikipedia by admins should be open and transparent. I love the allusion to smoke-filled back-rooms by Just H, it provides an excellent expression of the concern. Agent 86 21:47, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
12. Definitely not as per Agent 86. Yuser31415 22:47, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
13. Shouldn't be a factor. I could have swore that IRC logs were supposed to be private, if that is true, then we may have a problem if people are using IRC as excuses. — Moe 00:23, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
14. Definitely agree. Process needs complete transparency on Wikipedia, not elsewhere. —Doug Bell ^talk 02:44, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
15. I can't even access it; I'm underclass. CanadianCaesar Et tu, Brute? 03:58, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
16. Per my comments/response to questions at my RfA. A sanity check for basic things are borderline, but most of the IRC horror actions should be avoided. Daniel.Bryant 04:26, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
17. Off-wiki stays off-wiki. On-wiki actions get documented here. This is not hard. Opabinia regalis 07:01, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
18. Agree. Nobody should ever say "per IRC discussion" or "this was discussed on IRC" or "[important person's name] said this on IRC". --- RockMFR 21:12, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
19. Comments on IRC are not available to all those that may wish to see them and disappear once they scroll of the screen, comments on Wikipedia are viewable by all and remain forever. These IRC decisions really conflict with the notion that all admin decisions should be carried out with the utmost of transparency. While we're on the topic: I really do not like IRC at all, it is cliquey, it is divisive, and it really accentuates the oft repeated claims of cabalism. Rje 00:49, 18 February 2007 (UTC)
20. I don't really use IRC very much (if ever) & therefore would hate to hear something has happened on IRC that affects me. Spawn Man 02:30, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
21. God, I hate IRC, and I've never even used it. Grandmasterka 09:33, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
22. It escapes me why IRC is even necessary. The discussions behind admin decisions should be open for all to see. YechielMan 20:24, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
23. IRC might be useful for contacting people quickly. But any discussion and decisionmaking that has direct implications for the wiki, should be on the wiki. --Cpt. Morgan (Reinoutr) 13:20, 21 February 2007 (UTC)
24. Wiki related discussion should be visible to all, not just select admins. Jorcoga ^(Hi!/Review)11:27, Friday, 23 February '07
25. All important decisions and especially admin decisions should be documented inside Wikipedia. We are purposing to encourage publicly of messages, and we aren't trying to "hide" anything. Referring to an IRC discussion when deciding things would often cause confusion. Michaelas10 (Talk) 17:10, 23 February 2007 (UTC)
26. Anything that reduces accountability is bad IMO. It is great for asking help, almost instant responses but only for actions which are non-controversial. That means things like "How do I block" are ok as opposed to "Should I block". James086^Talk 09:30, 24 February 2007 (UTC)
27. Agree. Decisions made on IRC need to be ratified on-wiki, or otherwise they do not constitute community consensus. Titoxd^(?!?) 00:15, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

    Decisions need to be ratified on-wiki?? What proportion of indefblocks do you suppose receive community discussion? Surely under 1%. -ac —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 204.213.176.11 (talk) 07:59, 27 February 2007 (UTC).

    How many of those are controversial? How many of the "so-and-so ganged up on me on IRC" cases are controversial? Titoxd^{(?!? - cool stuff)} 04:43, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

28. Agree. Transparency is just all-around better. Crystallina 23:21, 27 February 2007 (UTC)
29. No reason to have secret discussions on voting. Captain panda In vino veritas 02:02, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Disagree

1. IRC should not be used to determine blocks without an on-wiki discussion or record of the IRC discussion. But for a borderline deletion or protection, it's a benefit to get an extra opinion or two. Chick Bowen 17:48, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

   Quick request for qualification: I assume that you would approve of asking to block a purely vandal-only account, vandalbot, or vandal-move-bot via IRC, yes? How about IPs vandalizing past last warning? I'm wondering if you mean no blocks at all, or merely no blocks of users with any good faith edits, or something else. Gracenotes^T § 02:46, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

2. Per Chick Bowen. IRC is not a bad thing. To get a quick reality check, it's great, and doesn't clutter up AN with something relatively useless. For blocks of established users, it should obviously be on-wiki. Ral315 (talk) 18:25, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

   Why is it "great"? You should elaborate more on that point. Just H 19:59, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

   Sure. I can go in and ask a simple question like "hey, look at the history of this page, not a ton of IP vandalism, but someone's complained about it to me; anyone think it's worth semi-protecting?" Maybe it's worth it; maybe someone points out that it's just one single IP range adding false statements, and a small range block would suffice. It's a relatively minor issue, but it's good to get input on something like that. It also is a quick way of reaching many admins quickly; in the case of a serious BLP issue, Jimbo Wales, myself and about 6 or 7 other admins set up a quick channel to talk with a non-admin who was trying to help with the issue (which was ultimately resolved). I'm not saying by any means that IRC should be the ultimate source of judgment, but it can help in minor situations. Ral315 » 23:08, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

   Thanks! Just H 23:45, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

   What's the matter with asking the quick question on WP:AN/I? Isn't that what it's there for? —Doug Bell ^talk 04:03, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

3. This is ridiculous. IRC is a technology. You don't solve a social problem with a technological fix. Everything done on IRC can be done with a conference call. Secretive back room dealings have existed since the dawn of time and they will always exist. The real issue here is that binding decisions have to be made transparently and receive approval from the full commmunity. Issues can be discussed and clarified in private before being presented to save the general community from drowning in details. This is how every social system works. --Ideogram 22:46, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Other

1. Off-wiki communication is perfectly fine to make decisions, including IRC. So long as people understand that consensus on IRC does not count when you have to defend your actions. "We decided it on IRC!" is not sufficient justification. -Amarkov moo! 15:44, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
2. Off-wiki communication is reasonable for discussing a situation. But it should never be offered as an explanation of an action. The reasoning behind the decision is the only explanation that should be offered. If the person making the decision can't explain the reasoning, they don't understand it well enough to act on it. GRBerry 16:48, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
3. What they both said. We're human, we can talk; but decisions should be based on Wiki stuff, and explained there. --AnonEMouse ^(squeak) 17:43, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
4. Many blocks etc. never get discussed on wiki, some since they are obvious and some because they need prompt action. The immediacy afforded by IRC or the like can add for at least a sanity check. But as above, ultimately the person who blocks makes the decision and takes the responsibility for it. Regardless, to try and outlaw it would be unpoliceable, make such a decision and any discussion which does happened gets pushed further away from a more general gaze and so is subject to less independant review, not more. --pgk 19:55, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
5. Off-wiki communication channels are useful and should not be banned. Any decisions that people may find contraversial need to be aired on-wiki.--BirgitteSB 22:10, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
6. Uncontroversial blocks or speedy deletes are perfectly fine for IRC, when a non-admin needs admin assistance. I'm less fond of admins deciding something on IRC unless their explanation of the action transcends the medium through which it was communicated. Wikipedia is, by etymology and in practice, quick. No harm in quickening if it's not abused. Gracenotes^T § 23:21, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
7. What GRBerry said, except that I'm probably more skeptical than him about the usefulness of IRC. Αργυριου (talk) 00:00, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
8. Agree with pgk and Gracenotes, with the addition that it's probably not a good idea to discuss blocking experienced users off-wiki (except for in arbcom-l). --Interiot 14:54, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
9. Comments on IRC must not be used to build consensus or to hide information from users. However, it is acceptable to use IRC to coordinate admin activity (as in dispatching troops to problem zones) or to decide on emergency actions. Emergency actions should always be discussed on-wiki afterwards, but coordination need not be. --N Shar 21:49, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Admins should be sanctioned on-wiki for their incivility/attacks on IRC

[edit] Agree

1. What at the end of this very long, survey we sneak this little nugget in? Absolutely support - you are wearing a wiki hat that day you punch jimbo at a meet-up - think you'll come back on-line and it will be all sweetness and light? Really? IRC should be just the same. --Mcginnly | Natter 15:39, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
2. Not limited to admins, not limited to IRC. Major contributor to a website that purports to reveal personal information about wikipedians with intent to harass them? Not welcome here. Hipocrite - «Talk» 15:52, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
3. Yup. --badlydrawnjeff talk 15:58, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
4. If someone is talking in their capacity as an admin offwiki, then they should be treated in tehir capacity as an admin. Dev920 (Have a nice day!) 16:16, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
5. Yes, should apply to everyone. The things I've seen some people say about other users is disgraceful. --Majorly _{(o rly?)} 16:34, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
6. Yes because its an extension in some purposes of Wikipedia. You should not be absolved of civility simply because you went from the web page to the IRC server. --NuclearZer0 16:41, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
7. I have no problem with this. Incivility or abusiveness done as a Wikipedian should be addressed by Arbcom. Chick Bowen 17:50, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
8. Absolutely. Catchpole 19:25, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
9. Essentially, yes. And i would consider extending it to some off-wiki discussions about things usually discussed on-wiki--but I am not sure about this part. We want to encourage open discussion of WP, and knowledge about it.DGG 19:52, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
10. Admins shouldn't be on IRC. Just H 20:08, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
11. Personal attacks are never acceptable, no matter where they are. I worry about waht people may lump into incivility, but it could be taken into account as part of a pattern.--BirgitteSB 22:14, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
12. Admins should be civil in real life, in emails, on IRC, onwiki. Period. Yuser31415 22:49, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
13. Yes, and limited to admins. I've had an admin tell me that I should discuss complaints about another admin off-wiki rather than on; same admin deleted the on-wiki discussion as an attack page. People with more power should be more restricted. Αργυριου (talk) 00:05, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
14. Yes. I would expect admins to hold themselves to the highest regard and not make personal attacks, although thats becoming a growing fad. I would expect also that if another admin say another acting inappropriately, to say something rather than blow it off. — Moe 00:26, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
15. Of course. IRC is part of wikipedia. Just like I think if an admin has been blocked for incivilty on another language wikipedia he/she should be held responsible... Someone may not attack someone on Wikuipedia, but then attack on IRC, hoping not to have their wiki account punished. Admins should be like the Queen, imagining there are paparatzi everywhere & that the slightest incivilty could be published on every magazine from here to Antartica. PR crew is not needed for admins thoguh... ;) Spawn Man 02:33, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
16. Actions relating to Wikipedia (especially personal attacks on editors) are blockable/bannable offenses, even if they occur off-wiki. This applies to admins as well. --N Shar 21:51, 20 February 2007 (UTC)
17. Off-wiki behavior that has on-wiki implications should be dealt with on-wiki. Note that two people in a private conversation doesn't qualify; if it doesn't get back to the wiki, it doesn't have to be dealt with. --Ideogram 22:52, 20 February 2007 (UTC) Addendum: I agree with the comment below that this should apply to all Wikipedians, not just admins. --Ideogram 22:53, 20 February 2007 (UTC)
18. Actions that have a direct impact on the on-wiki collaborative environment (e.g. saying that so-and-so is a fucking dumbwit that should be banned from Wikipedia for utter stupidity) in an off-wiki forum populated by members which frequent Wikipedia poisons the editing environment in the same way as if they were made on-wiki. Titoxd^(?!?) 00:20, 27 February 2007 (UTC)
19. Admins must be responsible and that should not end when they are absent from Wikipedia. Captain panda In vino veritas 02:04, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Disagree

1. It's a slippery slope, which I don't say often, but supporter #2 is already using this to propose banning all users who participate in another web site, that's just silly. --AnonEMouse ^(squeak) 17:47, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
2. The only off-wiki communication that should be regulated is that which negatively affects others (including, for example, the publication of another user's personal information, attack sites, etc.) Personal attacks and incivility off-wiki are perfectly acceptable, in my opinion; while I don't condone such actions, they do not affect any parties directly, and it helps keep a civil atmosphere on-wiki. Ral315 (talk) 18:28, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
3. Whilst I strongly disagree with the use of IRC, and the disgraceful behaviour by a minority of those that use it, it seems bizarre to me that anyone should be held accountable on Wikipedia for actions that take place off it. It is statistically certain that there are prominant editors and admins who have criminal records, should they be punished too for "letting down the Wiki"? One would hope not. Rje 00:56, 18 February 2007 (UTC)
4. IRC is like Vegas. What happens there, should stay there. Of course, I wish it didn't exist at all, but that's a different survey. Grandmasterka 09:35, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
5. It's my belief that nobody should be held accountable on-wiki for what they do off-wiki. Wikipedia has dominion over Wikipedia and nowhere else. If someone is incivil over IRC, they can be kicked/banned (and I've seen it happen.) That's the way it should be handled. .V. _[Talk|Email] 14:45, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Other

1. All Wikipedians, wherever they identify as Wikipedians. If their conduct their would be sanctionable if done here, and actually causes a disturbance here, has disrupted Wikipedia. GRBerry 16:54, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

   I don't consider this descriptive of our processes here as they currently stand. I do, however, support it as proscriptive advice for how things should work. Are you of the same, or different, opinion - asking as a clarifing question. Hipocrite - «Talk» 16:56, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

   As it ought to be, not as it currently is. GRBerry 17:12, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

2. Why just admins? If we are saying it's unacceptable, then it's unacceptable for everyone. I can't say I condone such activity, as elsewhere I can't see IRC behaviour as easily policeable, and I also see there is a whole lot of contextual difficulties when seeing bits of discussion etc. We also deleted things like WP:PAIN and the civility noticeboard (or whatever it was called) didn't last that long. What "sanctions" are being proposed? --pgk 20:00, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
3. I'm not sure that people should be sanctioned just as if they said it on-wiki, but people who think we should pretend that incivility on IRC never happened are weird. -Amarkov moo! 01:35, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
4. I agree, but this needs to be rephrased to include all editors, not just admins. —Doug Bell ^talk 02:45, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
5. Indeed, everyone and not just admins. Daniel.Bryant 04:27, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
6. I don't care what's said off-wiki as long as it stays there. I'm much more concerned about people using IRC as an echo chamber for like-minded wikipoliticians than I am about bad manners. Opabinia regalis 07:10, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
7. Per GRBerry and applicable for non-admins as well. Tangentially, I think the argument I heard a while back boiled down to "There is no formal relationship between IRC and the wiki, so wiki standards don't apply to IRC, but IRC rules on log privacy have to be enforced on the wiki", which is just insulting. - BanyanTree 17:25, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] The community should have direct say in IRC operator/Oversight/CheckUser access

In principle; there is no proposal on how to go around implementing it.

[edit] Agree

1. Strongly - It's a must. --Mcginnly | Natter 15:40, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
2. This had to happen months ago. --badlydrawnjeff talk 15:58, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
3. Absolutely. There's too much temptation to falsify evidence. I don't care either way on the ChanOps thing though since there should be no Wikipedia IRC Channel. Just H 20:21, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
4. We are a wiki, not a cabal. The community should have a say in anything regarding Wikipedia. Yuser31415 22:51, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
5. Yes, or alternatively, we could have Jimbo do all decision making for us....(kidding) Jorcoga ^(Hi!/Review)11:09, Friday, 23 February '07

[edit] Agree to IRC, disagree to oversight/checkuser

1. IRC Op yes, Oversight/Checkuser have real legal implications to the foundation so no. Hipocrite - «Talk» 15:55, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

   If you could, please explain these real legal implications. Just H 20:22, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

   Oversighted revisions have implications for the GFDL, while Checkusers are required to not-violate the privacy policy of the wikimedia foundation located here. Hipocrite - «Talk» 15:28, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

2. Same. Arbcom know what they're doing. Dev920 (Have a nice day!) 16:17, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
3. Yes, but oversight/checkuser can be handled by ArbCom I think. --Majorly _{(o rly?)} 16:36, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
4. Agree completely. The Checkuser access is a touchy subject due to legal implications. However I believe the IRC issue, though the community is so small on IRC, I would not be surprised if it turns into a buddy vote situation. --NuclearZer0 16:37, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
5. Yes, then it would actually be a branch of Wikipedia. --AnonEMouse ^(squeak) 17:48, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
6. If we decide IRC is still necessary, this is how it should be managed.--and it might get more people involved in it. DGG 19:49, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
7. checkuser/oversight has leagal implication, therefor a Foundation matter. IRC is an added means of communication. Agathoclea 23:29, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
8. Agree per above. —Doug Bell ^talk 02:47, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
9. Yep, seems good per the recent instructions given to ops. Daniel.Bryant 04:28, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
10. Agree, IRC has become a locus of abuse. Oversight and Checkuser, not so much.
11. Oversight and Checkkuser per above. However, IRC is not as necessary and is not a legal system. Captain panda In vino veritas 02:08, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Agree to oversight/checkuser, disagree to IRC

1. The community should have a direct say, but not necessarily a deciding vote, on oversight and checkuser, similar to arbcom. There should not be a dedicated IRC channel which has a necessariy and sufficient qualification for joining "being an admin". As that's the only IRC channel which seems to cause trouble, there's no need to change the other channels. #wikipedia is not Wikipedia. Αργυριου (talk) 00:09, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
2. IRC has technical issues relating to it that oversight and checkuser do not. You have to be worried about, let's say, a user even being on IRC at a given time, registered nicks, etc. As for oversight and checkuser, it would be nice, as requesting privileges from the ArbCom is an intimidating task. It would be nice as long as it were not done in an RFA-like venue. Have an actual discussion on the Village Pump or similar. Titoxd^(?!?) 00:22, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Disagree

1. I don't see the big deal about chanops. If arbcom had jurisdiction over IRC (see above) than they could simply instruct a chanop to remove someone (they never institute blocks themselves, even though they're all admins). As for checkuser and oversight, the current system works fine, and since these are highly technical procedures general community trust is not the only issue. Chick Bowen 17:52, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
2. I admittedly am not in channel 24-7, but I have never seen chanops ever used in the admins channel. Ever. #wikipedia- 99% of chanop actions I've seen I approved of, and the 1% were minor blocks that I think were probably acceptable, but a bit harsh. I don't mind ArbCom adding a few ops, but direct community input wouldn't make any sense, because many of the voters don't go on IRC, have no idea who's active in the channel, and in some cases, have no idea what ops do (#wikipedia ops, for example, mainly deal with kicking trolls spamming lines about administrators' sexual orientations- nothing where I'm particularly worried about abuse). Oversight and checkuser are obviously foundation issues. I also want to strongly endorse pgk's point that those who want oversight and checkuser often shouldn't have them. Ral315 (talk) 18:30, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
3. Can't see the big deal for IRC Ops, Oversight is only a stop gap solution and checkuser has privacy issues. I've also generally been of the view those who would actively seek out checkuser access are probably the last people I'd want to have checkuser access. --pgk 20:03, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
4. I don't see the issue here or any need to change the current set-up.--BirgitteSB 22:18, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
5. Oversight and Checkuser are extremely technical tools, and there are potential legal issues, as such I do not believe it to be either desirable or necessary for their use to change. As for the IRC stuff: I do not believe Wikipedia should be legislating on activities that take place outside of Wikipedia, as such it is really a moot point what happens to the IRC operator stuff. Rje 01:01, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Other

1. I disagree with IRC; that's not part of Wikipedia, so we don't need control over it, any more than we need over Wikipedia Review. As for Oversight and Checkuser, the community should be able to overrule a decision to grant access, but not the other way around. Oversight is fraught with legal issues, and Checkuser requires much more technical knowledge than I think most people realize (plus, again, legal issues). -Amarkov moo! 20:46, 3 March 2007 (UTC)
2. A decision should be made on whether IRC is 'self' or 'other'. No, the community should not have the power to grant oversight/checkuser; I don't have a problem with how those are currently handled. Opabinia regalis 07:13, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
3. Actually, Amarkov makes a lot of sense here - the community should have a way to say that certain individuals should be removed from having Oversight and Checkuser priviledges. These are positions of high trust, and if the community doesn't trust some incumbents there will be better candidates to hold the position. GRBerry 04:37, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

   If it isn't too late, I'd like to point out that the Essjay incident would probably have been significantly less toxic if we had an established, functioning process for removing people from these positions other than "raise so much stink that Jimbo can't ignore it". GRBerry 21:01, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

4. Per Amarkov. Grandmasterka 09:39, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
5. I agree exactly with Amarkov. --N Shar 21:54, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] This poll has too many questions

Points to consider:

• No consensus can be determined from answers to this many different questions

[edit] Agree

1. No doubt. —Doug Bell ^talk 23:49, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
2. Polling is evil. That doesn't mean that it won't be a fruitful basis for further discussion, just that it won't make any clear decisions (binding or not) on its own. Eluchil404 05:53, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

   Why does everybody say that "voting is evil" all the time? If anything, trying to use buzzwords to subvert the discussion process is evil. Both qualitative and quantitative input should be taken into account when making a decision on something here, and quantitative input means those little "#"s you put behind your comments. Just H 18:30, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

   For the record I don't disagree with the substance of Just H's coments, though I deeply resent the implication that I am trying to subvert the discussion process. I think it would be better served by more focussed discussion rather than trying to do everything at once. My point was that as an initial step in the decision making process polls like this can over define the debate (a couple of concrete proposals are included above, but others might be worthy of discussion as well). Maybe I should have included a smiley. I appreciate this poll and support what it is trying to do, but I think that it is worth pointing out that it won't solve anything by itself. Eluchil404 22:10, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

   My apologies, Eluchil. That definately wasn't my intention. It just bothers me when discussion is sidetracked by distractionary dogma such as "voting is evil" or "polling is evil" instead of just explaining why it's "evil", which was apparently the point of that essay. Just H^{editor review} 22:06, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

   Thank you for the apology. No harm done. As I implied above, I was trying to be funny, and that often fails in text communication. Polls in general (and this poll in particular) have both strengths and weaknesses and a discussion of those is certainly potentially fruitful. Eluchil404 10:37, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

3. Polling is evil, and the questions are special pleading. ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 20:34, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

   If polling is evil, why are you here? Just H^{editor review} 22:06, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

4. This poll has exactly one question too many. --Ideogram 22:59, 20 February 2007 (UTC)
5. Definitely. .V. _[Talk|Email] 14:46, 22 February 2007 (UTC)
6. I'm with this one. Stifle (talk) 21:04, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Disagree

1. This is it? --Edokter (Talk) 00:28, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
2. Why would we try to lump all the questions together? -Amarkov moo! 01:36, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
3. I made it! This was a good idea, and 20 specific questions > 10 general questions. Daniel.Bryant 04:28, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
4. Nope. If people didn't want to answer them, they wouldn't. Good job on this survey. The consensus of the community has been clarified greatly by it. Just H 18:26, 18 February 2007 (UTC)
5. This was very refreshing, and I enjoyed it. I answered every single question. I can see the will of the community at a glance! Kind of. Grandmasterka 09:41, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
6. You can't get enough information by just asking "Admin process: Good or bad?". Specific issues can only be addressed by asking specific questions. Koweja 16:33, 24 February 2007 (UTC)
7. Actually, it's nice to have things like these every once in a while, to provide some baseline data for future discussions. Back when WP:AAP was created, there were some decisions made by interpreting that data. Titoxd^(?!?) 00:25, 27 February 2007 (UTC)
8. I think this was pretty much the best possible way to run such a survey. I'm quite happy with both the set-up and the responses I've read. I was originally going to say that the only superfluous question was this one, but even that is untrue, as this question could be useful in creating further surveys. -- Kicking222 00:32, 28 February 2007 (UTC)
9. This poll needs to have as many questions as it needs to get the information it needs. Captain panda In vino veritas 02:11, 3 March 2007 (UTC)
10. We're here to give our opinions. If you think polling is evil, don't come here. Simple as that. --²¹⁰physicq (c) 21:04, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Other

1. It takes too much time, but breaking down the various issues makes it easier to obtain consensus on specific, narrow issues. Αργυριου (talk) 00:10, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
2. This poll has the wrong questions, or rather I'm sure we can all think of questions which may have reflected a differing view and other questions which maybe we couldn't see the point in. --pgk 08:14, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
3. Not really, but it took a long time & many of the questions "overlapped", making you write the same stuff again & again until you can't stand it any longer & the constant buzzing sound of the computer becomes unbearable & you feel forced to do something very very bad to your computer!!!!!! Ah, so yeah maybe the survey did have too many questions for me.... ;) Spawn Man 02:35, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
4. If reviewers take the time to count the total number of participants in the survey, and note for specific questions that N people chose to skip this question, having more questions may help reveal the size of the "I don't care" population for a specific point. (Of course, it would be understated by leaving out the "I don't care about any of this" group.) GRBerry 17:24, 26 February 2007 (UTC)