User:Mailer diablo/R
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On RfBs and Bureaucrats
1. Social or technical role?
- In terms of power, a steward has more abilities in permissions than a English Wikipedia bureaucrat does. The latter has only three of the abilities (+bot, -bot, +sysop) that stewards have, and notably bureaucrats do not have the ability to undo the sysopping of an editor.
- However, when it comes to appointments it is much more difficult for a bureaucrat candidate to succeed than a steward! RfBs historically pass almost unanimously (~90%, even then the crat has the right to reject), while steward elections are fixed at 80%. Running for RfB has standards comparable to (or even higher than) ArbCom candidates, and the RfB bar continues to raise by the day. In essence, a RfB candidate has to please almost everyone with very differing ideas on RfA in order to pass his/her RfB.
- This phenomenon may indicate that bureaucrats are serving more of as a social role than a purely technical one. In a classical era the consensus of RfAs are determined by voting percentages, notably Cecropia setting the minimum pass at 80%. The job scope in the past was more of a technical role as "counting the votes"; bureaucrats once was considered no big deal.
- Since the consensus/deletion reform (VfD to AfD, July 2005), bureaucrats have set new precedents (some particularly controversial) by defining consensus as at their own discretion - percentages were practically out of the window. Since then, bureaucratship has transformed to more of a social role, with editors very careful to choosing who to determine consensus. No editor was promoted to bureaucratship since June 2006. Several objections on recent RfBs come from arbitrators, and even bureaucrats themselves.
2. RfA ≠ AfD
- Requests for Adminship (RfA) and Articles for Deletion has certain similarities in process, but are not completely homogeneous. Overrides for AfD decisions/consensus has three non-negotiable policies (WP:V, WP:NOR, WP:NPOV) in which they have strict criterion. Neither of these are applicable to RfAs; fundemental consensus of the community on RfAs should not be overridden.
3. RfA reforms
- Only bureaucrats currently have the true power to reform RfA. As they have taken on the social role, the bar can be raised or lowered, or/and the process changed as they wish - the community is at the crats' mercy. Unless there is direct intervention from ArbCom and Jimbo (which is highly unlikely), or there is sufficient community pressure for the bureaucrat(s) to resign, there is no other way to get him/her/them to budge.
4. Admin abuse
- Bureaucrats are the first line of defence against admin abuse. It is implicit that the responsibility shall fall on the bureaucrat should he/she willfully allows this line to be breached, the newly-promoted admin goes on to abuse his tools, and creates a whole bunch of mess that ArbCom would not have to pick up the pieces if the crats' did their job properly in the first place.
- Fortunately all cases of desysoppings so far are circumstances not foreseen by bureaucrats at time of promotion. However, it may be a matter of time before an editor is controversially promoted and admin abuses occur. In such a case, the bureaucrat responsible may well be hanged by public opinion and jeopardize the entire RfA process as it would be seen that the line of defence has failed.
5. What really is consensus, then?
