Wikipedia talk:Requests for adminship/Archive 76

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Contents 1 Wikipedia Admin vs. Wiki-X Admin - transferable skills? 2 Question about RfA standards 3 Proposed change to template text 3.1 Initial discussion 3.2 "voters" - in, out, or other? 4 Practice Vs. Policy 5 WIkiProject Requests for adminship? 6 Malber's age question 6.1 Malber's response 6.2 Rephrase the question 6.3 Diversity among admins 6.4 Disruption, disruption, disruption 6.5 Malber blocked 6.6 Questions 6.7 What it all comes down to 6.8 Malber's continuing disruption 6.9 YUser31415's opinion 7 What... the... heck? 7.1 And what is it with canvassing? 7.2 Wikipedia:Unsuccessful adminship candidacies 8 Voting pages over 30 kilobytes 9 Time for new questions 10 A question 11 Asking about education level 12 Statement of Purpose 13 RfA closure 14 Okay, we need to make it clearer what is expected. 15 Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/BlackJack 16 More bureaucrats? 17 New questions 18 optional question - alternative approach 19 Canvassing and Good Points Raised 20 Ooh, two nominations at the moment 21 RE: Request for Adminship

[edit] Wikipedia Admin vs. Wiki-X Admin - transferable skills?

Seed for a discussion: This contains reference to a current RfA - therefore, if you feel it is inappropriate to discuss this matter until that RfA has run its course, please let me know.

There is a current RfA in which a candidate for Wikipedia adminship has experience as a Wikinews admin. The question I have is what the general thought is on the transferability of skills between Wikimedia projects with respect to adminship. The only other Wikimedia project I've worked on to any degree is Wiktionary, so my experience is too limited to have an inkling of what being an admin in other Wikimedia projects might entail.

--User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 22:43, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

I remember a RFA where the user had relatively little experience here (3k or 5k edits, can't remember now), and many were refusing his request, until someone pointed he was an admin in another Wikipedia language with over 20k, and then most negative opinions turned positive. Personally, I think administrator status in other Wikipedia languages can be used to demonstrate experience in dealing with users and responsibility, but unless the user also demonstrates knowledge about our "local" policies and guidelines, it should not be "transferable". -- ReyBrujo 22:47, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

I really don't know why many people call 5k edits "not a lot". To me, that's definatly enough edits to support, as long as the user is knowledgeable and in good standing. TeckWiz^TalkContribs_@ 22:51, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

Another data point, from my analysis of November 2006 RfAs: the only candidate with less than 2000 edits who was successful had been an admin on the Simple English Wikipedia. John Broughton | Talk 23:00, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

ReyBrujo, I think you mean Kpjas. Titoxd^(?!?) 05:01, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

Maybe it would be good to add an optional section to the RfA format entitled something like 'Prior Admin Experience' in which a candidate (or nominator or anyone so knowledgable) could summarize experience in adminship on another Wikimedia project if such experience exists. That would help to encapsulate input from that axis upfront rather than having it come out during the discussion period. --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 23:28, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

Users should most certainly mention that they're admins on other wikis. However, I don't think we need to add another RfA section to denote this; there's already a "General Comments" faux-heading that it could go under quite easily (and is used as such in the linked example). As for whether those skills are directly interchangeable, I think ReyBrujo summed up my opinion very well; a knowledge of the MediaWiki system is shown by being an admin (well, ideally...), as is the trust of the community, but there still needs to be evidence that the editor is familiar with Wikipedia's... quirks. EVula // talk // ☯ // 23:46, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

IMO this comes up infrequently enough that an additional section is unnecessary; most candidates who have relevant previous experience do point it out. A 'previous experience' section is only going to get people talking about that one time they were on Student Council for a semester, no matter how clearly it's worded. Opabinia regalis 23:50, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

Being an admin on another project goes to trust, ability to remain calm, and presence of common sense not to policy knowledge. While being an admin on another project can be a positive the candidates must have understand .en policy. JoshuaZ 23:56, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

There are certainly benefits from being an admin on another project: You already know what you're doing, know many of the "tricks of the trade" (that is, how to handle some of the stranger aspects of the software), gnerally have experience dealing with other users in an admin role, and you aren't as likely to succumb to the "Ooh! Shiny buttons!" problem. (Kidding!) There are, however, vast differences between most projects and en.wp, so demonstration of local-policy/proceedure knowledge is essential. I'm an admin on four wikis (En.wp, En.wq, Meta, & Commons) and each is it's own uniqute community and has it's own way of doing things; I find every once-in-a-while that I step on a toe or two over on Wikiquote because of my "en.wp" way of doing things. So, certainly, adminship elsewhere speaks to a certain familiarity with the role, but a demonstration of *local* understanding is very, very important. Essjay (Talk) 01:35, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

As Essjay said, it removes their need to "test" the new tools because they have experience but it is important that they know the wikiPEDIA policies on blocking/deletion/protection etc. I think I would be more likely to support a user if he/she were an admin on another project, it shows they are trustworthy for a start. James086^{Talk | Contribs} 03:36, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

• I think in general transfer of trust works well the other way. We are the largest Wikiproject out there with the most evolved (one might say convoluted) procedures and guidelines and such, and to my knowledge the most stringent standards for admins. Although it is not for us to decide, I believe that any capable admin here would also be capable on most of the other projects, except of course for language barriers, and excluding Meta itself. On the contrary, I would consider adminship in another project to count for much only if it was one of the other large projects, such as dewiki. (Radiant) 15:01, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

As an admin on the English language Wikipedia, I oppose automatic adminship on other Wiki-X projects, and vice versa. All Wikis have their own community standards, and if someone has little experience on a particular site, they shouldn't be granted adminship without having the proper experience on that site. User:Zoe|(talk) 22:22, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, Titoxd, it is Kpjas's RfA. I remember Firsfron made a push in the middle of the RfA and contacted all the people who opposed Kpjas (such as myself) and we all ended up changing our votes to support. Anyway, back to the topic...I believe that if a candidate is an admin on another WikiProject, that shows that he/she clearly has the qualities as an admin. However, all WikiProjects are different, and like Zoe said, if they don't have a sufficient amount of experience here, then I don't think they can truly handle the responsibility on the English language wikipedia. Also, take in account that the English language Wikipedia is the most popular and most-visited WikiProject, and the experiences a user may experience at another wiki may be totally different than the ones he/she may experience at en.wiki. Nishkid64 22:33, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

• Adminship is not transferrable, have never been, should never be. We don't even accept adminship from other language Wikipedia projects as a reason to obtain one here. - Mailer Diablo 16:59, 17 December 2006 (UTC)
  • People are not advocating transferable adminships. They are talking about the notion of tranferable skills. --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 17:11, 17 December 2006 (UTC)
    • Make it skills then, I'm referring to that as well. - Mailer Diablo 22:55, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Question about RfA standards

are you supposed to have a special amount of contributions to be requested for Adminship? IWishIWasASuperstar 9:20, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

No, there are no official standards, but no one with less than 1,000 edits has made it in a long time. 2,000 is a more common minimum, and 3,000 puts all the edit counters to rest. That said, there are other factors that are more important than an edit count.--Kchase T 10:29, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

I recall reading here some time ago that once a user had 2000 edits, whether they succeeded or not on RfA was unaffected by their edit count, statistically speaking. --ais523 11:15, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

That was one of the conclusions from Durin's stats. There was no correlation between edits and success rate once you got over 2000 edits. --Tango 16:37, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

PS: see Image:SuccessRatevsEditsatRfA.png--Tango 16:40, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

My number crunching (above) for November 2006 found that the success rate for those with under 2000 edits was 7% (one out of 15 candidates), and even that was a special case of sorts - the person had been an admin at the Simple English Wikipedia (that would be you, Tango). Above 2000 edits, the sample size was too small to draw much of a conclusion, except that it appeared that edit counts weren't a factor (for example, 3 of the 5 candidates with between 2000 and 2500 edits were successful). Certainly, as KChase says, once you hit 3000, people focus on what you've edited (AfDs, CfDs, user pages [warnings], etc.), not how much in total.

My sense, both from reading RfAs and the charts that Tango has pointed out, is that the number of edits that successful candidates have is rising. In November, the average (mean) number of edits for the 33 successful candidates was almost 9,000; the median was 6,880 (the mean was pulled up by a candidate with 22,000 edits and another with 30,000). That compares to an average of around 6,000 for February and March 2006. (Durin charted these figures by week, which increases the fluctuation, but the trend is clear.)

To me the most surprising thing about Durin's figures (for June 2005 through March 2006) is that candidates with between 900 and 1500 edits had a success rate of around 40% (around 30% at the low end, near 50% at the high end), compared to 0% in November 2006 (my figures). That's quite a difference, so perhaps November was unusual in some way. But I do think that as the average edit count rises, the minimal expecatation rises, at least for a sufficiently large number of editors who will prevent lower-count candidate from getting anywhere near the 80% or so support that is considered (admittedly, not in concrete) to be a benchmark of consensus here. John Broughton | Talk 19:36, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

If November was unusual it was in that people were more willing to support borderline candidates (how else could a user with less than 2000 edits (ie. me) pass unanimously? Even with the adminship on simple.). 40% does sound quite high, but not enormously - once you get over 1000 edits, you stand a good chance. Maybe it's just a difference in who's standing during the different time periods - we used to get good candidates with low edit counts, we don't any more. Maybe we've scared them all off with the strict standards (I almost didn't stand because I expected my edit count to stop me succeeding). --Tango 23:38, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

Perhaps not "scared them off" as much as "delayed their candidacy"? Eight edits per day is 250 per month; four months equals 1000 edits at that rate. Someone who wants to be an admin should certainly have enough time to do 8 edits a day; they'll get to 2000 edits soon enough that way. John Broughton | Talk 17:46, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Proposed change to template text

[edit] Initial discussion

The boiler plate RfA text the introduces the standard questions reads:

Dear candidate, thank you for offering to serve Wikipedia in this capacity. Please take the time to answer a few generic questions to provide guidance for voters:

Since we're always pointing out that this isn't a vote, how about we change the language to something like:

Dear applicant, thank you for offering to serve Wikipedia in this capacity. Please take the time to answer a few generic questions to provide guidance for evaluation:

—Doug Bell ^talk 16:32, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

I currently like the way it stands. I think applicant sounds too much like I am applying for a job, or appling to grad school or an internship. That is not what being an administator is. According to wiktionary, candidate means

1. A person who is running in an election or who is applying to a position for a job.
2. A participant in an examination.

I see RFA as kind of an examiniation of somebodys intentions, experience and capabilities should they be promoted. (I do think the term promoted is improperly used but that is a conversation for another day). I think in this case, the 2nd defintion fits the process perfectly and overall, I think candidate is a well chosen word and should stay. -- Chrislk02 (Chris Kreider) 16:36, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

I agree. Voters → Evaluation is fine, but Candidate should stay. -- Renesis (talk) 16:53, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

Yea, I will agree with the changing Voters → Evaluation, I missed that change when looking at it the first time. -- Chrislk02 (Chris Kreider) 16:56, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

• Agreed with changing "voters" but not "candidate". --Durin 17:19, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

As long as we're tinkering with wording, may I suggest "standard" rather than "generic"? Or even dropping the adjective entirely; "few questions" might be fine. (One reason for suggesting "standard questions" is that perhaps we can go to a section for "Standard questions" and a section for "Additional questions".) John Broughton | Talk 19:11, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

I'd certainly agree with getting rid of "generic". Either suggested alternative is fine with me. —Doug Bell ^talk 19:18, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

How about we just drop the qualifier entirely? Clarifying the sentence further: Dear candidate, thank you for offering to serve Wikipedia in this capacity. Please spend some time and answer the following questions to help provide some guidance for evaluating your request: - jc37 19:35, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

I like that. EVula // talk // ☯ // 19:50, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

I also approve Jc37's wording, seems to best state what the process will involve without envoking it too much as a vote.¤~Persian Poet Gal ^(talk) 20:52, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

Me three on Jc37's wording. —Doug Bell ^talk 21:23, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

Agree with getting rid of "generic" and switching "voters" to something less... well, !vote-based. Candidate seems fine, though. -- nae'blis 19:48, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

I have no problem replacing generic with standard. -- Chrislk02 (Chris Kreider) 20:45, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

Okay, with have consensus, except on one word - I've put a new subsection heading in, below, to separate that discussion from this one. To recapitulate, we're at:

• Dear candidate, thank you for offering to serve Wikipedia in this capacity. Please spend some time and answer the following questions to help provide some guidance for evaluating your request:

And if consensus wishes to retain the word voter(s), then simply:

• Dear candidate, thank you for offering to serve Wikipedia in this capacity. Please spend some time and answer the following questions to help provide voters some guidance for evaluating your request:

We can substitute just about any noun clause for "voters", such as "your fellow Wikipedians":

• Dear candidate, thank you for offering to serve Wikipedia in this capacity. Please spend some time and answer the following questions to help provide your fellow Wikipedians some guidance for evaluating your request:

I'm fairly neutral on what the actual noun clause should be. - jc37 20:53, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

The discussion got a bit split. I added a suggestion below: Dear fellow Wikipedian. Thank you for offering to serve Wikipedia in this capacity. The evaluation process is now open. Please spend some time and answer the following basic questions. These will give editors evaluating your request a starting point to [understand / learn about] your views, interests, contributions, and understandings of Wikipedia.

This seems to cover most of the points raised, and also is more direct about what is being asked for, and why, in a friendly manner. See below. FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 20:28, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] "voters" - in, out, or other?

Not that it matters but I continue to oppose changing "vote/voters" to more confusing and awkward terms for the sake of political correctness. --W.marsh 21:03, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

Of course it matters. Why do you feel "voters" is the best option, though? In real-life settings I've used "participants" and "members of the group" for consensus discussion, though that's a bit of a misnomer here. -- nae'blis 21:11, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

Because RfA is very vote-like and what we do when we comment corresponds very closely to any definition of voting. Expunging any use of the word "vote" does more to confuse new users than it does to make RfA not vote-like, despite popular opinion. --W.marsh 21:27, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

Let's face the truth: without any codified standards or process to becoming an admin, an RfA is a popularity contest and Support or Oppose is a vote. We might as well drop all pretenses about voting being bad and be honest about the current process. —Malber (talk • contribs) 21:38, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

Okay, why not just drop the last five words? If a candidate thinks he/she has the option of not answering the generic/standard questions, then he/she is virtually by definition unqualified to become an admin, due to lack of understanding of the process, as I'm sure one of the first evaluators/voters/commentators/whatever will be sure to say. We could even consider it a little test. John Broughton | Talk 22:59, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

I have to agree they may be unqualified, but I do not think it would be proper to make it, "a test", I think we want the instructions to be clear as possible and removing the last 5 words would not help with that. -- Chrislk02 (Chris Kreider) 23:09, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

The answers aren't so much "guidance", they're a starting point and some standard basic questions, for others to get insight into the would-be administrator's understanding and hopes, especially for those people who would like to participate and express a view but don't know them yet.

Maybe a better wording is: Dear fellow Wikipedian. Thank you for offering to serve Wikipedia in this capacity. The evaluation process is now open. Please spend some time and answer the following basic questions. These will give editors evaluating your request a starting point to [understand / learn about] your views, interests, contributions, and understandings of Wikipedia.

(I'm sure the language could be improved a bit, that's what collaboration's for.) FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 23:22, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

The flow of this discussion is almost impossible to follow, so I'm not sure where to reply, but I disagree with making the intro statement longer. It doesn't offer anything else, and it was simple and to the point before. We only needed some minor changes, and I think the original proposal of changing "voters" to "evaluation" is enough. I also dislike the phrase "spend some time and answer" as opposed to "take the time to answer". The second one is less colloquial and makes more sense. -- Renesis (talk) 23:46, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

("Take your time" can sound a bit like "you are being judged on this"; "spend your time" doesn't have quite that flavor. Its a minor difference though. That's why, anyhow.) FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 00:04, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

Oh, ok, I didn't realize the purpose in the change. I can see what you mean if it did say "Take your time", but with "Please take the time..." it doesn't seem to have that connotation to me (it just seems like a simple request). But that's just me. Either way, I think we need to back up and not inflate this introduction unnecessarily. -- Renesis (talk) 05:38, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Practice Vs. Policy

The RfA instructions read:

Only bureaucrats may close or de-list a nomination as a definitive promotion or non-promotion. In the case of vandalism, improper formatting or a declined or withdrawn nomination, non-bureaucrats may de-list a nomination, but they are never empowered to decide on whether consensus has been achieved.

This is clearly not practice, obviously failing RfAs are removed somewhat often by non-b'crats. I count 4 times in the past 2 weeks alone, [1], [2], [3], [4] . None were particularly controversial as far as I know. So my question is, should practice change? E.g. more actively encourage admins to wait for b'crats like the page says to do? Or should we change the RfA page to specifically allow non-b'crats to close discussions in some cases? Or just keep it the way it is, and continue to allow admins to ignore what the page says in the spirit of IAR? --W.marsh 01:15, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

If it's not causing any problems, leave it as is to avoid Wikipedia:Instruction creep. --tjstrf talk 01:22, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

I guess... but a policy that needs to be ignored a 4 times out of 100 edits to a page might be due for review (I looked at the past 100 edits to find the examples). --W.marsh 01:24, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

You have a point about instruction creep, tjstrf, but leaving the wording this way has the potential to cause problems. All we need is for a (0/6/2) candidate revert a non-crat's closure, defend his/her re-opening with some wikilawyering, and we have a problem that could be pre-emptively defused if only the rules were modified. Because of this possibility, I support changing it to reflect practice. (And if anyone asks for firm guidelines about when non-crats can perform speedy closes, I'd say simply direct him/her to Wikipedia:use common sense, as opposed to actually setting guidelines about when this can happen.) Þicaroon 01:36, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

Until that happens, this sounds like a solution looking for a problem. Most of the candidates who get removed by admins can see the writing on the wall. I think the more experienced admins who do this discourage them from relisting the noms, as well, which implicitly tells them they're not forbidden from doing so.--Kchase T 02:26, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

All the candidates above had less than 50 edits. Unless they were posting FAs in one edit, I'm not seeing a problem.--Kchase T 02:30, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

"Solution looking for a problem" isn't all that persuasive. If the problem is likely to come up, then if there are no bad results of the solution, it should just be implemented so that there doesn't have to be a problem. -Amarkov ^blah_edits 03:13, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

Even if someone did use wikilawyering to reopen an obviously doomed nomination, all that would happen would be a crat coming along and closing it per the previous admin's decision. Or at worst, someone getting a few extra piled on opposes while it ran the full week. No major harm done. Making a note that says "except when common sense dictates otherwise" is unnecessary, because that caveat applies to every policy in existence (except maybe some of the foundational and legal ones).

Explicitly detailing what are meant to be universal exceptions to process is exactly the sort of thing WP:CREEP is against. This suggestion is effectively a policy disclaimer, and I believe all the normal arguments against disclaimers apply here as well. --tjstrf talk 03:25, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

I neglected to check... if all of these people had fewer than 50 edits it shouldn't be that big of a deal. But the best policy is still one that we don't really find ourselves needing to ignore much in the first place. --W.marsh 04:08, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

I have no problems with non 'crats closing obviously failed RFA, (but not *failing*). They should, however at least keep us informed either here or on WP:BN so we can verify the decision and give our approval. =Nichalp «Talk»= 04:48, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

Adding a section here or at WP:BN to notify you guys of every close would clutter up these discussion pages significantly. A good edit summary when removing an RfA from WP:RFA should be enough, the history is not so active there that you can't easily see what has happened. Only if someone thinks an RfA was removed improperly should they bring it here, so it can be discussed - such instances are quite rare. NoSeptember 05:37, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

I don't think it would be too much of a clutter to add a small note on BN. That page is anyways archived weekly. =Nichalp «Talk»= 12:34, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

I've been following RfA for about 5 months and recall only one instance (Everyking) when a closure by a non-bureaucrat threatened to become controversial. Lately though we have had non-administrators doing closures; that ought to be (and pretty much has) been reserved for clearly unhappy situations. Newyorkbrad 05:04, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

Actually, I don't think it's generally a good idea for non-bureaucrats to close failing RfAs. In particular, I recall Wikipedia talk:Requests for adminship/Leotolstoy where the candidate repeatedly stated their desire to keep their failing RfA open, but which was closed early by Steel359. The user was not happy about the closing given their repeated request to keep it open. —Doug Bell ^talk 05:55, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

Rare cases are not the thing to base a general practice upon. If a user strongly objects, then it is certainly proper to bring it to the attention of a bureaucrat, even in a snowball case like the one you cited. I have seen Raul reopen an RfA at the request of the candidate, but this is a rare thing. The closing you cited was not unreasonable, it was open for more than a day and the result was clear. NoSeptember 06:09, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

• Closing RfAs early for being doomed to fail has been controversial for quite a while. Many arguments pro/con have been put forth before. User:Durin/Withdraw policy has some more information about this. Feel free to edit that if you like. --Durin 06:12, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

• That final suggestion on that sub-page, leaving a message on the user's talk page suggesting they withdraw, has worked well in my experience. Most RfA's that fail due to the contributor being "too new" or "inexperienced" have little to do with their actions indicating inexperience or lack of policy knowledge, but rather that they are simply unjudgeable.If you kindly explain this to them and suggest they wait a month or two, a mature user will probably see the truth behind it and withdraw themselves, saving a potentially difficult argument and a bit of the community's time. As an additional positive factor, any subsequent RfA's they go through can have an opening of "I recognized that I was too early and withdrew my own nomination" rather than "an administrator was forced to close my nomination due to my inexperience", so it's good for them as well. --tjstrf talk 07:27, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

Trouble is, some of the community is much too quick to say "Insufficient Experience" but there are admins out there with just 2 or 3 months experience of being a regular editor, and there is no way to prove any admin who has been about for 2 years is any better suited to the job than someone with 2 months experience. Just another case of Wikipedia shooting itself in the foot. Kind Regards - Heligoland | Talk | Contribs 02:52, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

No, there is not admin with just 2 or 3 months of being a "regular editor", whatever that means. Extended time on Wikipedia is good for allowing enough time for a person to flame out or trust issues to otherwise be revealed, and a certain amount of time on Wikipedia is necessary in order to gain experience and understanding of Wikipedia. Editors who have been on Wikipedia for 6 months may still not have that understanding just by reason of their time on Wikipedia, but editors who have been on Wikipedia for only a month certainly do not have that understanding. —Centrx→talk • 03:28, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

OK, I'll explain what I mean and I'm going to go away from the 2-3 months bit for a moment. There is far too much emphasis placed on numbers, numbers can be manipulated and it's at the expense of Wikipedia. Just recently it's AfD experience, now if I wanted to go for another RfA again tomorrow, I could go through every single AfD from the last 5 days not already closed, and just merrily vote away and that would keep quite a few people quite happy and bag me a few more votes, going by my last RfA, quite possibly enough to pass an RfA. Sadly, to do this, it would mean not actually researching whether the AfD is in good faith, whether the article does meet Wikipedia guidelines for notability and/or references and therefore voting accordingly. That's why every single candidate needs to be assessed on their ability to help run Wikipedia rather than just numbers and I'd much rather have an admin with 100 AfD contributions where they've shown they've looked through evidence and voted for a good reason rather than just voting for the sakes of it, than someone with 1000 AfD contributions where they've not shown once that they've checked the evidence, and are just voting in agreement with the nomination, what's worse is that AfD regulars can often fall into two distinct categories, each voting the same way 95% of the time. At present RfA is encouraging potential candidates to take part in AfDs purely to bulk up one type of edit as a pre-requisite to becoming a admin, rather than encouraging and training potential admins to actually review items on a case by case basis. It's working contrary to the requirements of Wikipedia, rather than generating users who will be able to use the tools, we're creating users who can't use the tools. --Kind Regards - Heligoland | Talk | Contribs 01:00, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

Yes, it should not be determined by numbers, and one needs to look at what the person says in those AfDs—whether they are mindless empty votes or show that the person considered the article and demonstrates their thinking on the issue. Note though: you can reasonably say that someone who has 0 contributions to AfD does not have experience at AfD, but for people who do have the edits, the evaluation must go beyond that. I think a larger problem is that people are voting "support" without having evaluated the user's contribs at all or having much of an idea of what adminship is. Someone may be opposed on edit count, but should not be supported on it. —Centrx→talk • 01:06, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

I agree with you on that, it's OK to Oppose when there is a tiny number of edits which, unless there are mitigating factors such as experience on a sister project, are likely to show inexperience, but when users start getting upto 100+ edits in a particular namespace (and it does appear to be Wikipedia namespace that is the be all and end all of RfAs, perhaps quite understandably) then nobody should Support or Oppose based on edit count at all, but wholly on the quality of the edits. From personal experience you could vote 10 times without checking stuff properly, or you could go through Google, Google News, the newspaper sites and Internet Archive and vote properly and correctly. Sure, there's a lot of crap that doesn't require much in the way of research, stuff like original research, defamation stuff dragged through to AfD but they don't really need to be voted on unless, a good admin should be deleting anyway because they should be doing research before closing. What really needs editor attention is stuff claimed to be non notable or non verifiable because often stuff like this is brought to AfD as part of a grudge or through laziness and inexperience and can quite easily be deleted. And I'd much rather have admins that have experience in this field, than admins with the common sense to delete the crap needing deleted but an inability to check that decent stuff or stuff with potential isn't being trashed. --Kind Regards - Heligoland | Talk | Contribs 09:57, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] WIkiProject Requests for adminship?

Given the fact that there is a lot of material related to RfAs (mainly essays but other things as well like Esperanza) I propose a WikiProject to better maintain the process. We could maintain WP:GRFA and maybe (if it's practical) suggest a formal standard for requests for adminship (similar WP:WIAFA, for example) Perhaps we could go as far as writing a page on how to do an RfA thanks.

Thoughts? -- Selmo ^(talk) 05:33, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

It seems like a good idea, but keep in mind that every discussion on the subject has determined that formal standards don't work. -Amarkov ^blah_edits 05:36, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

There's this: Wikipedia:WikiProject on Adminship.--Kchase T 05:39, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

That is pretty much what I had in mind. Thanks. -- Selmo ^(talk) 05:45, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

• Wikiproject on Adminship had a goal of revising the RfA process, not maintaining it status quo. --Durin 16:09, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

Consolidating things like Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Statistics, which is simple, factual information, and Esperanza's admin pages into one page would, in my opinion, be rather a bad idea. That material does not have the support of the full community, and should not be presented as if it does. If you have thoughts about RFA or links you want to compile, the best thing is to put them in user space, as NoSeptember has done. Chick Bowen 01:43, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Malber's age question

is totally inappropriate. We cannot be asking candidates to reveal personal information. I attempted to talk sense into him before, but no response was ever received. Do people agree that asking this question is reprehensible? If so, does anyone have any ideas on how to stop this behavior? - crz crztalk 15:38, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Um... why can't we? It's not as if anyone is required to answer. -Amarkov ^blah_edits 15:40, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

NVM... I see there's been discussion of this previously... No, they're not required to answer. But that doesn't make it appropriate to ask. - crz crztalk 15:42, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

I just don't see the point in asking to be honest. Most other factors will be taken into consideration before the age issue (if there is one) - you don't tick all the boxes and then suddenly change to "oppose" because they reveal their age. Bubba hotep 15:45, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

To be perfectly honest, I'd be pretty tempted to !vote "oppose" if they said they were a fetus... EVula // talk // ☯ // 16:08, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Hey, I'd be inclined to concur. However, they haven't made a fetus-friendly keyboard yet. The placenta sticks the function keys... nevermind! Bubba hotep 16:12, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

• Age is not a restriction on adminship. The question is irrelevant. It is akin to asking what eye color the nominee has. --Durin 16:09, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
  • My opinion too. So if it's irrelevant, why bother restricting it? -Amarkov ^blah_edits 16:10, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
    • I think age is plenty relevant, but it's not appropriate to request its disclosure. - crz crztalk 16:16, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
      • What? If it is indeed relevant to adminship, then not knowing it would make a judgement ill-informed. So why is it appropriate to not request its disclosure? -Amarkov ^blah_edits 16:18, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
        • What is so hard to understand? I think ageism is appropriate in RfA's. Age could have been disclosed on the user page or apparent from other disclosure. However, I think that requesting personal info such as name, age, address, sex, HIV status, social security number, and sexual orientation is not appropriate. - crz crztalk 16:24, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
          • So, if someone chooses not to disclose their age on their own, people have to make uninformed decisions? Huh? -Amarkov ^blah_edits 16:26, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
          • [edit conflict] I think that age is largely irrelevant; an editor who is 15 can be more mature than an editor who is 25 (I'm assuming that some vandals are adults). I think that the truly immature who seek an RfA will get weeded out, either through their answers or their edits, making the question unimportant. EVula // talk // ☯ // 16:29, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
          • This is what I was trying to say. If someone is a prolific vandal-fighter, holds themselves well in general discussions, contributes well to XfD and all kinds of policy talk: finding out they are 16, say, should not then count against them. I suppose it is the context in which the question is being asked. Bubba hotep 16:33, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
          • {edit conflict} IMO personal questions such as age have no place in RFAs and even though the question is considered optional many others will oppose since it wasn't answered. — Seadog^Talk 16:30, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
  • There are no restrictions on adminship. There are no standards. So by that logic, all questions are irrelevant and it's just a popularity contest. However, the one standard we have is consensus and since everyone is allowed to develop their own standards on what qualities make a good administrator, any question is relevant. —Malber (talk * contribs) 18:29, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
    • • • • crz - I totally agree. What I'm about to say on it's own would sound really stupid, so I'll clarify my point before I start, I detest RfAs where numbers come into play, whether it be age, length of time on project or edit count, candidates should be judged solely on the ability to do the job, although I can understand edit count and time on project being a little more relevant to ability to use the tools correctly, age is totally irrelevant. Anyway, onto my comment. I think it should be acceptable (if somewhat frowned upon) for a !voter to revise their criteria and vote according to whether or not the candidates age is displayed on their userpage and if the age is displayed, vote according to the age stated. I fully support any proposal to prevent any editor from asking the age of a candidate openly on their RfA page. If a !voter is really determined, it would, I suppose, be acceptable to ask in private through e-mail the age, but not to disclose the answer on Wikipedia. Age should also cover school or college grade/form which would give an idea as to age. Ideally, the 'crats will ignore any votes made regarding age, but there should be no explicit rule as this is always going to cause !voters to find another random and probably equally pedantic reason to oppose. We're only trying to sort out candidates who might make good admins from candidates who might make bad admins through the RfA process, age has nothing to do with that process. --Kind Regards - Heligoland | Talk | Contribs 19:41, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

It is inappropriate for an employer to ask a prospective employee what their age is. The prospective employee can choose not to answer the question if it is asked, but it is STILL wildly inappropriate to ask in the first place. Above, I see a number of fine editors asserting that _because_ the candidate can choose not to answer the question, the fact that the question is inappropriate in the first place is somehow resolved. It isn't. Frankly, asking the question in an RfA places an implied obligation to answer. Just as a teacher cannot proselytize in a public school because they operate in a position of authority, a question about age in an RfA is imbued with an implied authority and places an implied burden on the candidate to answer, whether or not the burden is real. The question is inappropriate and the community should clearly state such and be undivided on the matter. - CHAIRBOY (☎) 16:35, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

I agree that it's irrelevant, but IMO it's due to privacy issues. An editor should never be chastised or treated to any negative backlash for not revealing personal information. For some editors, the disclosure of age could be the final piece of info that enables RL to intersect with Wikilife in ways they don't want, and, in the case of underage editors, it could put them at risk. Anchoress 16:36, 20 December 2006 (UTC) (signing in agreement with Anchoress: --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 16:45, 20 December 2006 (UTC))

The inappropriateness is another issue I have with it. I mean, sure, I can walk up to a random woman and ask for a blowjob, but that would be very inappropriate (and, worse yet, probably wouldn't work). But, between appropriateness and relevance, the fact that an editor's age is irrelevant is, in my opinion, the stronger reason to oppose the question. EVula // talk // ☯ // 16:47, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Hmm, I think you may have killed the conversation whilst people digest that piece of information (with pictures!) ;) Bubba hotep 16:57, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

• The previous discussion that Crz recalls seeing can be found here. Malber uses a template for his de facto standard questions. As it is user space, rather than delete the last question I've asked Malber to remove the last question. I see that Malber applied the template to Asterion's RfA and left off the age question, but it's still in the template. While I've spilled a few electrons on the topic, the two main reasons I find the question unacceptable are privacy and that it is ageist. If a person wants to volunteer this info without prompting, that's their choice, but they ought not feel any pressure to do so. I'm somewhat concerned that one nominee may have felt so (see here). Agent 86 18:24, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
  • Actually, it was there, Crz removed it. -Amarkov ^blah_edits 18:26, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
    • Yes, I just found that now in the edit history. Thanks!Agent 86 18:28, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
      • The thing is Malber did not actually check my userpage, I reckon. I have an age userbox clearly stating my age. Regards, Asterion^talk 20:10, 21 December 2006 (UTC)
• Crz is right. One thing wiki has taught me is that very young editors are still sometimes capable of leadership roles. RfA candidates should be judged by their on-wiki (and wiki-related) actions, nothing else. I think "optional questions" are not really "optional" in the eyes of many as well. Grandmasterka 18:33, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Just responding to a couple of points made above: (1) "I'm assuming that some vandals are adults" - no need to make an assumption like that. Vandalism is not correlated with age. All ages carry out vandalism, though it does seem to be more prevalent among younger people. Vandalism might help here. (2) "in the case of underage editors, it could put them at risk" - revealing personal information can put editors of any age at risk if someone targets them. No need to emphasise younger editors over older editors.

As for asking the age question, I don't think it is needed. There are times when I am discussing something with someone on-wiki, and they don't quite seem to get something, or they seem to be persistently flippant and immature, and I find myself wondering (how old are you?). As a principle I always try to avoid saying that, as it doesn't help. Judge the actions and the words, not the man (or woman, or boy, or girl). Carcharoth 18:39, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

I was just pointing out that one need not be a teenager to be a vandal. Nothing more was meant by it, though I could have phrased it a bit better, I suppose (for example... I could have phrased it like I just did...). EVula // talk // ☯ // 19:07, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Yes, it is inappropriate, for 2 reasons. 1. It encourages voters to vote against people that do not reveal personal information. 2. It encourages voters to vote for a candidate based upon an irrelevant factor, rather than the candidate's degree of responsibility. HalfOfElement29 05:07, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Malber's response

There are no restrictions on adminship. There are no standards. So by that logic, all questions are irrelevant and it's just a popularity contest. However, the one standard we have is consensus and since everyone is allowed to develop their own standards on what qualities make a good administrator, any question is relevant.

Is this an invasion of privacy? No, because no one is actively investigating this information without the nominee's consent. The nominee can simply decline to answer or come up with some pithy answer. Or they can answer truthfully if they are not bashful.

Is it illegal? I don't think so. Someone stated that a potential employer asking for the same information is inappropriate which is, at least in the United States, incorrect. Any job application will ask for an applicant's date of birth and any HR department records this information. Using this as a basis for making an employment decision is also generally in many circumstances not against the law, at least in the US. Besides, this is a volunteer project and not subject to employment law. And anyone voting Oppose or Support can choose whether or not this question has any relevance on their decision. —Malber (talk * contribs) 18:29, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Agreed. I wouldn't ask the question, but I will defend your right to ask it. Do you add a disclaimer making clear that people really, really don't have to answer the question? Carcharoth 18:40, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

I may do so, but I would prefer not to pollute the potential answer. —Malber (talk * contribs) 20:47, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

You are mistaken, Malber. Federal law allows an employer to ask your age or date of birth if there is a legitimate reason for them to ask for that information -- such as to perform background checks or for identification purposes. [5] Asking for an applicant's age so that it may be used in the hire/don't-hire decision is illegal. (And FWIW, I oppose Malber's RfA question.) | Mr. Darcy talk 19:39, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

Still the problem with the question is that it has nothing to do with administrative action, I would rather support an eleven year old wikipedian who is a very clever vandal fighter and all around good candidate than a 30 year old who isn't. In my opinion it doesn't help and it puts the younger editor in a little bit of a worry that he has to answer this personal question or his/her RFA will fail. I do not support asking personal questions on an RFA at all. — Seadog^Talk 18:43, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

I think this would shed some light on Malber's views on teenagers – [6], [7], [8], [9], [10], [11], the last diff on WAvegetarian's comments. — Nearly Headless Nick 18:54, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Eh.. thought he was a teen him self.. anyway those diffs. presented distress me alot. thanks/Fenton, Matthew Lexic Dark 52278 Alpha 771 19:01, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Um... I agree with him word for word, and I am a teenager. -Amarkov ^blah_edits 18:54, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

I'm with Matthew Fenton on this one, those diffs really shocked me. There is a serious civility problem going on there. --Kind Regards - Heligoland | Talk | Contribs 19:50, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Me too, the scare me. — Seadog^Talk 19:54, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

I see the question on par with questions such as, "what color is your hair," "what is your gender," "what is your nationality". None of those questions would be asked, why ask the age question?

Actually, I believe nationality has been asked once or twice, and I remember an oppose because the user in question was Romanian. Stupid, but... -Amarkov ^blah_edits 18:59, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Not to be negative, but it does not suprise me, lol. It just seems a little absurd to me? -- Chrislk02 (Chris Kreider) 19:01, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Of course it's absurd, there is no concievable way in which country of origin could impact how good of an admin you'll be. But there's no real reason to make an explicit provision to prevent the question, because some people might consider it important, and if the bureaucrat thinks it's absurd, it's within their discretion to discount a few opposes. -Amarkov ^blah_edits 19:04, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Yea, after thinking about it a little more, I started thinking that. I still stand by my claim though that it hink it is pointless. -- Chrislk02 (Chris Kreider) 19:16, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

I'm inclined to agree. The question is inappropriate and irrelevant, but you can't take away people's right to ask foolish questions and inappropriate questions. Let each person the question is asked of either respond or ignore it, as they see fit. Briangotts (Talk) (Contrib) 20:05, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

• Malber's reasoning leaves me wanting. It is very much an invasion of privacy to ask someone their personal information. The statement, "no one is actively investigating this information without the nominee's consent", is incongruous. By posing the question, Malber is indeed "actively investigating this information". The "consent" is not in the asking of the question (which should not be done), but in the answering (which is unnecessary to answer in any event). There is a complete failure to address how the question is not ageist.

As for the "illegality", I have not suggested that it is illegal per se. As I stated in the earlier discussion, the issue isn't entirely about legal standards. However, those standards (which go beyond employment law) are useful to illustrate the matters at issue. Agent 86 19:15, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

So the question is ageist. Why does that matter? We're vandalist, we're POVist, we're civilityist, and we're usually intelligenceist. (Yes, I KNOW those aren't real words). Yet nobody seems to care about those. Why? Because they're recognized as being important for an administrator to have. I don't see why discriminating using standards that everybody doesn't happen to agree with is worse. -Amarkov ^blah_edits 19:18, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

I just picked up a quote from Jimbo that I feel is fairly relevant: "To me the key thing is getting it right. And if a person's really smart and they're doing fantastic work, I don't care if they're a high school kid or a Harvard professor; it's the work that matters." I think that sums up the opinion of several editors in regards to the age matter quite well. Let an editor's actions speak louder than their age (and the easiest way to do that is to not ask about the age at all). EVula // talk // ☯ // 19:23, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Seadog applauds. — Seadog^Talk 19:35, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Hey, if anyone wants to ask me how old I am: I'm old enough to buy a pack of cigarettes, but young enough to play naked Badminton on a packed beach in the middle of winter. Bubba hotep 20:00, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

HAHAHAHA, out of curiosity, exactly HOW old is that? lol. If those were requirements for being an admin, I think the age question would be perfectly valid. (thank goodness those arent requirements.) lol. -- Chrislk02 (Chris Kreider) 20:15, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

To EVula: Jimbo was talking about editors, not administrators and the context of the question was about the importance of having experts as editors as opposed to laypersons. My question relates to who we give the mop. Would you want someone who can't drive, can't vote, or can't drink having the capability to block you or delete your articles?

To Agent 86: we're not investigating through a third party, looking into a nominee's permanent school record, or calling their doctor. I'm asking a direct question which can easily be evaded. Plenty of people have cribbed other people's answer to my WP:IAR question. I'm certain anyone uncomfortable with the age question will do the same and crib someone else's pithy answer.

To Nick: Nice research on my diffs, but I stand by what I said. Someone else might be concerned about how you've been keeping track.

To all: This question is designed mostly for other people if they consider it a standard. I've responded on someone else's talk page that I don't normally participate in Support or Oppose discussions unless the answers to the questions move me strongly one way or the other and especially don't if the vote is a landslide in either direction. Otherwise I remain neutral. I wouldn't base my decision solely on the age question. I appreciate a truthful answer but wouldn't oppose if someone didn't answer candidly. However someone else might have stronger misgivings about granting the mop to someone who hasn't gotten out of grade school. —Malber (talk * contribs) 20:45, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Malber: I've been following this discussion without commenting in this thread, though I've stated my opinion in similar discussion in the past. You ask above, "Would you want someone who can't drive, can't vote, or can't drink having the capability to block you or delete your articles?" In New York where I am located, one has to be 16 or 17 to drive, 18 to vote, and 21 to (legally) drink. Are you really suggesting that there is a credible view that being under 16 or 18 or 21 is a negative toward being a Wikipedia administrator? And are you really suggesting that there is a significant class of RfA candidates who "ha[ve]n't gotten out of grade school"–yet would appear qualified to the !voters unless they were induced to state their age? I see that lower down you say that you "wouldn't base [your] decision on the age question" but I'm still not quite following exactly what you feel the relevance of the age criterion is. Regards, Newyorkbrad 20:59, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

To answer your questions: maybe and possibly. I haven't queried every participant in an RfA. But there is a perception outside of Wikipedia that it is run by adolescents with too much time on their hands. I don't base my decision on the answer to one question. Because I don't have the time to research edit history and dig through diffs on talk pages, I put most of the weight on how a nominee answers all of the questions. —Malber (talk * contribs) 22:12, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

I understand that the quote wasn't directly applicable, which is why I prefaced it with "I feel [this] is fairly relevant". To answer your question, no, I don't have a problem with someone who can't drive, drink, or vote being an admin, as the three items are entirely unrelated to administering Wikipedia. EVula // talk // ☯ // 22:53, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Why ? - There is the discretion of allowing optional questions to allow !voters to decide how they are going to vote. Your abusing the system asking an irrelevant question and not using the result to !vote each time you ask a question. In light of your answer above stating there is a perception outside of Wikipedia that it is run by adolescents with too much time on their hands I think your question about age could well be a violation of WP:POINT, I genuinely think your asking your question to try and prove a point. Why, I don't know but there you go. --Kind Regards - Heligoland | Talk | Contribs 01:57, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

In my opinion, it doesn't matter how old you are to be an admin. It doesn't matter if someone asks "how old are you?" All that matters is how you answer the questions. A mature teenager is preferable to a childish adult. And I don't know why you have to fret so much about the reputation of Wikipedia; we're here to build an encyclopedia, not to defend its honor (well, we sort of do). Full disclosure: I'm a 16-year-old admin, and I've been deleting articles and blocking people without much problems. --²¹⁰physicq (c) 22:17, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

I am sure that I'm in the minority, but I think that asking an admin candidate for their age is a fair question. As with all questions, responses are optional. -- Samir धर्म 22:30, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Fine ... but ... if the applicant answers the question, what does a !voter then do with the answer? (Frankly, I find the issue of the propriety of the question less critical than some, simply because most younger applicants have enough information on their userpage to give the answer or at least a close range away anyhow. But I still don't see what a reader would do with the information to translate it into a comment or a !vote.) Newyorkbrad 22:36, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Until I read through this lengthy correspondence I had thought that there might be some merit in setting a lower age limit on qualification for admin status, although I would have been uncertain as to what the limit should have been. Very early teens, I guess. Having read User:Malbers correspondence with a teenage editor, I now feel that any opinion which he holds is one with which I do not wish to be associated. I am aware that it is being suggested elsewhere that a suggested answer to the age question, if asked, is "Old enough to apply for Adminship" and I would recommend this answer in all cases. I will use it myself if asked in the future. I am 63.--Anthony.bradbury 12:20, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

As another 63 year old admin, I concur. My age had nothing to do with my qualifications for adminship, and that should apply to everybody. -- Donald Albury 20:10, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Rephrase the question

Why not rephrase the question? Something like:

• Do you think an admin's age is relevant to the tasks they may need to carry out on Wikipedia? Are there cases where an older or younger admin might be more suited to a particular task, or to interacting with particular users? Do you think admins or editors should give an idea of how old they are?

This would be less intrusive than the current form of the question. In all cases of intrusive questions, my thought is that the way the user responds is actually more revealing than the actual content of the answer. If a user gets upset over a question like this, then you start to think to yourself: how would this candidate handle themselves under real pressure? Though any question can be designed to do this, not just an age question. In the recent ArbCom elections, I saw one of the candidates (and only one of the candidates) respond rather bruquesly to an 'age question' that someone else had asked. I followed up on this and found that the responses to my follow-up told me more about the candidate than reading pages and pages of questions and answers. See here for details. I also liked that candidate's response to the age question, that they were under 65, neatly turning the usual implied "are you really young" into an answer that implies "I'm not someone doddering around on a zimmerframe". Carcharoth 23:38, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

• Echoing Newyorkbrad a bit, how does that help us assess the candidate up for nomination? His or her opinion on a generic admin's age is really irrelevant to whether or not the candidate would make a good admin. The only way the answer could help is if the candidate "volunteers" their own age in the context of answering the question. It's a bit subversive - the only way for the answer to be relevant to the nomination is for the candidate to divulge their own age. Agent 86 01:08, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

Yes. On the other hand, the rephrased question does implicate some interesting issues, deeper than "should User:Foo be made an administrator?" I wouldn't mind a bit if someone asked me that question on an RfA, although you'd have to sit through some philosophical ramblings to get to the answer. Newyorkbrad 01:35, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

Write the essay - you now have me intrigued. KillerChihuahua^?!? 01:46, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

It's already here scattered in a dozen threads all over the site, but I will have to collect it sometime soon. Newyorkbrad 02:04, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

Getting away from the admin question briefly, there are plenty of examples of editing where age does matter. I know that the science pages often have to remove 'helpful' stuff added by schoolkids who have learnt something at school, but who will, in a few years time have to unlearn that stuff and learn what current, mainstream science says (rather than the school textbooks). The reverse is always true, in that years of experience and knowledge in no way stops someone from being completely and utterly wrong. And the really good idea that completely changes things can come from anyone of any age. My feeling about the age question is along the lines of: don't make a big deal out of it, but don't totally ignore it either. Carcharoth 10:39, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Diversity among admins

Another thought. It would be reassuring to know that we had admins of all ages. Just as it is good to have editors of all ages (providing they know how to edit), it is good to have admins of all ages (providing they know how to handle the tools). The editor diversity can be seen by randomly visiting userpages, and you soon see the diversity of editors. Randomly visit admin pages, and enough give some idea of their age that you can see the same spread. So again, I support Malber's right to ask the question, but I agree it is generally not relevant. I would, though, ask everyone to consider the next time they make an off-colour joke with another user whose age you don't know, that they really could be anyone, of any age. Carcharoth 23:38, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Disruption, disruption, disruption

... and that is what I see. Malber is setting a classic example of how to disrupt Wikipedia to illustrate a point. I would support a block, in case he continues or does not rephrase his question in a better way. — Nearly Headless Nick 07:32, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

Frankly I would too. The persistent personal information stuff is just not cool. Extra not cool when the userpage states the age clearly. - crz crztalk 09:09, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

Removing discussion questions is disruptive. —Malber (talk * contribs) 14:00, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

Me too - Glad it wasn't just me who thought Malber was disrupting Wikipedia to illustrate a point.--Kind Regards - Heligoland | Talk | Contribs 10:51, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

In what way is Malber disrupting Wikipedia to illustrate a point? --Centrx→talk • 10:53, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

Read the comments above, and specifically the diffs I have provided. — Nearly Headless Nick 11:16, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

Strongly agree that this is disruptive and would support a block if he refuses to remove/rephrase the question. – Chacor 11:22, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

Let's not get ahead of ourselves. I am strongly opposed to Malber asking the question, and he should stop asking the questions now while this debate is still ongoing but we should get someone external to the discussion to read it and if a block does occur, I would sincerely hope nobody who participated in this discussion does it. Then again, Malber may stop asking the question. James086^{Talk | Contribs} 13:06, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

Does anyone not see this suggestion as being punitive? I suggest a de-admin for Nick. WP:POINT is not policy and can't be used as the basis for a block. Such a block would be contrary to the blocking policy and shows a severe disregard for process on Nick's part. Plus there is no logical argument that asking questions is blockworthy. —Malber (talk * contribs) 13:50, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

"I suggest a de-admin for Nick" - a typical response from a typical troll. – Chacor 14:19, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

If people are allowed to have their own criteria, why can't age be one of them, and why can't the option to answer the question be offered? I honestly don't see the big deal here. --badlydrawnjeff talk 14:02, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

Jeff, look at the diffs I have provided above. Malber possesses a unreasonable bias against all teenagers. I fail to see how he would not make it a point to oppose every candidate when they say they are minor. — Nearly Headless Nick 14:28, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

And so what if he does? Why is this an issue? Is he not allowed to have his own criteria for adminship? The diffs above have nothing to do with the subject here - if he's incivil toward younger editors, then deal with that, but don't punish the guy for having standards you disagree with. --badlydrawnjeff talk 14:30, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

Taken from the top of WP:POINT

This page in a nutshell: If you think you have a valid point, causing disruption is probably the least effective way of presenting that point � and it may get you blocked.

However if blocked (especially by anyone here) it may be punitive. I think a block would be neither neccessary nor constructive. However I still remain firmly opposed to the question. I can see that if people don't remain calm, WP:CIVIL is going to come into play. Discussing the blocking of Malber and the de-admin-ing of Nick will lead to "nasty" comments if people don't calm down right now. James086^{Talk | Contribs} 14:10, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

/me deadmins himself, wait – that didn't work. Ask the question one more freakin' time and there are a few things that are still working. — Nearly Headless Nick 14:23, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

I strongly oppose you blocking someone for asking a question like that. His feelings on younger editors are completely irrelevant to whether it's a viable optional question here, especially given the specific lack of general criteria. --badlydrawnjeff talk 14:26, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

/me deadmins Jeff. *w00t!* — Nearly Headless Nick 14:30, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

Aw hell. That'll leave a mark. --badlydrawnjeff talk 14:31, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

I suggest a de-admin for Nick, another recall for myself, a decapitation for Malber, and earl grey all around. - crz crztalk 14:52, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

...and a partridge in a pear tree. --badlydrawnjeff talk 14:53, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

Glad we're all having fun here. Mimsy has an axe to grind, so any block by him would be punitive. His muddying of the discussion with out of context talk page discussion is particularly in-civil and unbecoming of an admin. —Malber (talk * contribs) 15:20, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

Well yes. We are all unbecoming and stupid sometimes. But some people never learn. There will be no punitive blocks handed out. The block is subject to the condition when you will further disrupt and ask another candidate *the question*. Period. — Nearly Headless Nick 15:23, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

Just out of interest, is this the longest discussion topic ever on this talk page? I mean starting with crz's original post yesterday down to here? And mine's a Lapsang suchong, btw. Bubba hotep 15:29, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

Um... Has it occured to anyone to just drop this? Desysopping isn't going to happen here, and as much as anyone can pretend it will, neither will blocks due to asking a candidate's age. Nothing will come out of this. Wider discussion than four or five people would be necessary to do anything. Move along. -Amarkov ^blah_edits 15:50, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

I think it would be best to stop asking about people's ages until there is a consensus one way or the other. I'm not sure this is the best forum to work that out. Tom Harrison ^Talk 14:02, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Malber blocked

Just so everyone's aware, Mimsy blocked Malber for 48 a few minutes ago... - crz crztalk 15:53, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

And I've removed the offending question. --Kind Regards - Heligoland | Talk | Contribs 15:58, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

I hope everyone has enough common sense to not remove it from RfAs where people have already answered it. And not to edit war to keep it out. -Amarkov ^blah_edits 15:59, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

Question was unanswered. --Kind Regards - Heligoland | Talk | Contribs 16:37, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

And I hope nobody thinks it was somehow justified by asking a candidate "the question". He was blocked loong after the last time doing so. -Amarkov ^blah_edits 16:00, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

And... I didn't see his recent contribs. A block is absurd. -Amarkov ^blah_edits 16:04, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

If this was because of the question, I hope an admin has the good sense to unblock, if not Nick himself. If it was due to soemthing else, ignore this, but there's a good case that Nick shouldn't have been the blocking admin here regardless. --badlydrawnjeff talk 16:05, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

Um... Nick's replies to Malber are just... weird. "Unwilling to yield to consensus"? What consensus? It must be hiding, because I don't see it. -Amarkov ^blah_edits 16:07, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

Although I was in strong disagreement with Malber on the merits of "the question," based on what I have seen this is an extremely troublesome and problematic block. I will comment further on Malber's talkpage but it really is regrettable that things escalated to this extent. Newyorkbrad 16:13, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

I would say some admins have become extremely hair-trigger in handing out blocks. The one who gave this one in particular. Perhaps that should be a question to RfA candidates. During my 18 month term as admin I only once blocked a long standing contributor, and that was where there was absolutely no choice. Fys. “Ta fys aym”. 19:01, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

The question (albeit it slightly modified) is back, sadly Malber isn't content to let the question go. It's the first thing he did after being unblocked. This is really starting to get out of hand here. I've notified the candidate that answering is totally optional and comments such as "Old Enough" would be fine too. --Kind Regards - Heligoland | Talk | Contribs 19:32, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

This is absurd. I became an admin at 20. I obviously don't agree with letting the question stand, but blocking him for doing it has made this way more of an issue than it needed to be, I'm afraid. Grandmasterka 19:35, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

I'm less concerned about the block, but rather this is playing out in the middle of RfAs and an RfA is a baptism of fire without a disagreement continuing with regards to this damn question.

I certainly think there is enough evidence that shows Malber is disrupting Wikipedia. He has asked the question when the age was available on the candidates user page and their first edit after being unblocked was to add the question back in (I removed the original version) and he also reverted on another current RfA. This coupled with the fact Malber isn't actually asking the question with the intent to !vote is worse. I'd like to see this issue sorted once and for all but I don't really think anywhere near RfA is the place to do it. --Kind Regards - Heligoland | Talk | Contribs 20:04, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

• From what i'm seeing, I concur. It seems Nick didn't act with malice however.Just H 19:36, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

As many parents say, there's nothing wrong with asking questions. There is, however, something wrong with asking questions incorrectly, i.e. in a blunt manner. --²¹⁰physicq (c) 19:37, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

Though I disagreed with the original block, the re-instituted question leads me to believe that Malber is not willing to wait for concensus on the issue. I would strongly recommend that he wait until the community can determine concensus before asking the age question again to avoid causing further disruption.Canadian-Bacon 19:41, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

The problem with establishing consensus on this issue is that is we allow this question, when we have to allow all questions (sans flagrantly inappropriate ones). If we don't allow this questions, then it opens a Pandora's box of what is to be allowed and what is not to be allowed, leaving the definite possibility of chronic gridlock on this page. --²¹⁰physicq (c) 19:45, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

True, once we try to figure out what's appropriate and what's innappropriate as a question, it just gets difficult and very subjective. But there has to be some form of solution that we can all agree on without wiki-drama. Canadian-Bacon 19:49, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

A blanket ban of asking for personal information such as age, appearance, location, religion would be sufficent. Only questions which can be used to directly assess the suitability of the candidate for the roll of admin are really suitable for RfA. Asking personal questions is, in my opinion, slightly abusing the right granted to ask questions of a candidate to assist in deciding which way to !vote. --Kind Regards - Heligoland | Talk | Contribs 20:07, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

Why does he need consensus to ask a question? If you don't like the question, don't answer it at your RfA. What's the big deal, seriously? --badlydrawnjeff talk 19:58, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

Because the question is one which requests the nominee reveal personal information. A lot of editors on Wikipedia take privacy as a very important issue, and there's definately a point where we have to say "this question is just too personal" or else we could end up with an array of very invasive personal questions like "what is your name" or "where do you live". Now I'm not saying that the age question is crossing any sort of line, personally I'm not one to judge what people base their RFA votes on, if age is a factor for them, so be it, I'm just saying that we need to get concensus on where we draw the line for how personal questions can be. Canadian-Bacon 20:09, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

And the question is optional. If we were talking about including the question as a standard, should-be-universally-answered deal, maybe you'd have a point. If privacy of your age is that important (which I'll never understand, but I also don't hide behind anything either), then you don't answer it. Problem solved - let the candidate decide. --badlydrawnjeff talk 20:21, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

Malber: How old are you? - crz crztalk 20:06, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

Old enough to use a mouse and keyboard...so I guess that makes me old enough to be an editor :) In a way I question the intent and good faith of this question and don't see how this relates to the current discussion. Since I'm not up for an RfA I'll decline to answer (however my fellow Hive-Mind inductees know where to find my age.) If I were to be up for RfA and were asked this question I would answer it candidly. I would answer this question privately if asked. —Malber (talk * contribs) 20:38, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

Um...I believe that Crz was being sarcastic, not acting in bad fatih. --²¹⁰physicq (c) 20:40, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

I don't think anyone needs to first ask for consensus to ask a question. Does someone have to ask for consensus before participating in a talk page disucssion? I also feel posting coaching comments on how to answer a particular question is a disruptive action and can pollute the answer. I've refactored to give the nominee some options without altering the original question. Why not just see how the nominee responds? —Malber (talk * contribs) 20:43, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

You're absolutely right, nobody has to ask for consensus before asking a question. In fact, be bold! That is the specific criteria I have employed when I just struck out your age question in the most recent RfA as the candidate had not answered it yet. Best regards, CHAIRBOY (☎) 20:55, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

I think striking out someone else's question is as disruptive and in-civil as striking out someone else's vote because you didn't agree with it. —Malber (talk * contribs) 21:52, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

I think that reverting the strikeout and asking the original question are both incivil, and disagree with your characterization. This is a wiki after all, are you asserting some sort of ownership over the content? - CHAIRBOY (☎) 22:34, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

Obviously ownership over comments on discussion pages is protected, or we wouldn't have the rule about not editing other peoples' comments on talk pages. -Amarkov ^blah_edits 22:38, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

I'm not sure it is obvious. While RfA is inherently a discussion, the questions above seem to be more of a meta structure _to_ the discussion. And if they were, in fact, protected in the same manner that comments on a discussion page are, then Malber's removal of the "You don't have to answer if you don't want to" text that another user posted is inappropriate. Malber, you can't have it both ways. Please reconsider what you're doing, it seems to be intentionally disruptive. - CHAIRBOY (☎) 22:48, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

I didn't delete or strike out the comments. I moved the discussion to the talk page, where discussion on an RfA belongs. —Malber (talk * contribs) 14:00, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

I could just e-mail the candidate and tell them not to bother asking your question, if it'll be disruptive advising them on Wikipedia. All I ask is that you please, please, please stop asking the question and just drop it, surely you've seen there is concern here over the question. --Kind Regards - Heligoland | Talk | Contribs 21:03, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

At the risk of reigniting controversy, is there a reason why Malber is not allowed to ask the question? He can do so as he sees fit; we're not here to mollycoddle candidates. We're just here to note that there is controversy in asking said question, and we ask Malber to tread carefully when asking this question and ask candidates to tread carefully when answering this question. Now can we drop this? --²¹⁰physicq (c) 21:17, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

Phyiscq is quite right, though the question seems highly problematic all optional questions are answered at the discretion of the nominee. Lets not add insult to injury by pushing Malber to yield asking the question or sending a message to avoid answering the question to a whole mailing list of candidates.¤~Persian Poet Gal ^(talk) 22:48, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

Someone had better block him again before I lose my temper and do it myself. --Deskbanana 00:31, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

That is, quite frankly, absurd. It does not justify a block, and I don't believe anyone actually thinks it does. -Amarkov ^blah_edits 00:39, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Which is exactly why I've not blocked him yet. --Deskbanana 00:56, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Shouldn't admins be basing their decisions on policy and not emotion? —Malber (talk * contribs) 14:02, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Can we fricking end this long thread yet? It has gone in circles with no results whatsoever except for making this page absurdly long. --²¹⁰physicq (c) 01:00, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Questions

Considering the "long thread(s)" above, What does everyone suggest that I do with Malber's questions? Considering the controversy surrounding them (apparently to the point of disruption and a block), and (possibly more importantly), since it's been stated over and over that answering questions is optional, would anyone have any issues with me just removing the questions, and just avoiding any further incidents? - jc37 14:01, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Or you could simply answer the best way you see fit. There is no right or wrong way to answer the questions. —Malber (talk * contribs) 14:10, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

I'm not happy about what's happening at the moment but I absolutely do not want the question impacting candidates in any way, so it's really up to yourself on how you answer because I don't want you being penalised for any thoughts I give you on the matter. --Kind Regards - Heligoland | Talk | Contribs 14:12, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

If Malber wants to keep posting the first three non-offensive questions, by all means carry on. On those, I still think their near-blanket application to most RfAs is an end-run around the consensus achieved on the existing "standard" questions and that if any "optional" questions are asked, it might be better to do so in the "discussion" part of the RfA. As for the age question, I'd prefer to see it gone. Asking the question is an invasion of privacy and ageist. I suppose I could always bring the question template to MfD, but I had hoped a discussion would resolve things without that "formal" process, which wouldn't really address whether the question ought to be put or not. Agent 86 20:47, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] What it all comes down to

Malber, I don't think anyone is happy with you taking it upon yourself to add 4 standard questions, making every candidate answer 7 instead of 3. Although I originally thought NHN's block of you was out of line, I think you are treading very close on being disruptive via WP:POINT. If the community wanted every candidate to answer 7 questions, they would be added to the template. This is clearly an abuse of the principle of editors being "allowed" to ask additional questions. Please, stop. Use discretion with the questions instead of applying them liberal to all (or nearly all) RfA's. -- Renesis (talk) 19:21, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

What? That is totally not the issue. There was a discussion on this a while back, and I believe it was decided that it wasn't a huge problem. Regardless, the issue here is the content of one, not the fact of asking everyone more questions. -Amarkov ^blah_edits 19:23, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Hold on, I didn't say that this was the issue. It has just caused the whole question thing to get out of hand. Either those 4 questions are standard, or they aren't. -- Renesis (talk) 19:25, 22 December 2006 (UTC)]

I'm not seeing anyone objecting to the fact that Malber asks the same question of every candidate. The objections are about the content. And including a subsection of "What it all comes down to" implies that it's actually related to the rest of the discussion. -Amarkov ^blah_edits 19:26, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Ok, maybe I am out of step -- does everyone else actually like the same questions being asked of every candidate, age question or not? The reason I say what it all comes down to is because the age question is finally the one that crossed the line in the mind of most people. And, it shows that we have a problem here - we "allow" everyone to ask questions, but the flexibility of that allowance is causing huge problems now, with blocks being handed out and Malber becoming increasingly zealous with the questions. -- Renesis (talk) 19:37, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Amarkov - Hold on now, you know why I am annoyed and why others are annoyed. It's two reasons which combined with Malber's thoughts on Wikipedia are resulting in Malber disrupting Wikipedia to make a point.

1 - The question can be considered invasive. 2. Malber rarely uses the answers to decide what way to !vote. Asking a candidate to disclose personal information is, I consider, unfair. A user has a right of anonymity here, this is Wikipedia and if Malber isn't happy, he should consider leaving Wikipedia and joining Citizendium where they're ageist and refuse to have admins (constables) under 25 and where they want to know every members personal details. Not using the response to the question is an abuse of the privilege of being permitted to ask questions of candidates. --Kind Regards - Heligoland | Talk | Contribs 20:13, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Um... that isn't my point here. My point is that you don't have a problem just because he asks the same questions of everyone, and representing it as that is misleading. -Amarkov ^blah_edits 20:19, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

I have a problem with Malber asking the same questions of every candidate because Malber has himself admitted he will not normally !vote even after asking his questions and they being answered. Excluding the age question, I would have no problem with Malber asking the same questions on every RfA provided Malber intended to !vote in each and every RfA he posts those questions on. --Kind Regards - Heligoland | Talk | Contribs 21:39, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Wait a minute, we're only allowed to ask the questions that you like and now it's mandatory that we vote if we ask a question? If I don't give a vote I'm neutral, I don't need to state that. Do you want me to pat my head and rub my tummy as I edit too? —Malber (talk * contribs) 21:44, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Am I the only one getting the vibe here that there is something else to these questions - something not nice either...? thanks/Fenton, Matthew Lexic Dark 52278 Alpha 771 21:49, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Malber, with the exception of questions which ask the candidate personal information such as age, location etc, I really don't care what questions you ask. I'd prefer if they were helpful to you and to other !voters to decide which way to !vote on the RfA but you could ask favourite fruit or a serious and probing question on admin related actions, I really don't mind. If you think your questions are important enough (and apart from the age question which is a contentious issue, your other questions are good) then why not suggest on this page that your questions are included as part of the standard RfA questions. --Kind Regards - Heligoland | Talk | Contribs 22:01, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

I'm not sure which sub or sub-thread to respond to here, anymore... Among the problems I see with Malber's traditional three optional questions is that they are asked indiscriminately of every candidate. For candidates who won't do new page patrol or manage CAT:CSD, the G11 question is almost totally irrelevant. For candidates who won't block, the question about punitive block has a similar effect: essentially testing a candidate's ability to read the relevant policy page (as noted elsewhere, they seem to be catching on from other RfAs). Even the SNOW question isn't relevant to vandal-fighters. I understand Amarkov's perennial point about candidates receiving the whole toolset and requiring understanding of the full body of policy, but the three present questions are more general than Malber's three optionals.--Kchase T 05:48, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

<unrelated comment>Cool, I have a perennial point.</unrelated comment> -Amarkov ^blah_edits 05:50, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

I've been completely uninvolved so far and want to make a small number of points. First, I don't believe Malber is violating WP:POINT. Second, I think it is fair and reasonable for someone to ask an editor's age in an RFA. Third, I think it is equally fair and equally reasonable for the candidate to not answer or ignore the question. Fourth, to be honest, I have to say you're all making a lot of fuss out of nothing. Stifle (talk) 15:01, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Malber's continuing disruption

I am quite surprised why Amarkov fails to see consensus here. No one, except you and badlydrawnjeff has agreed that Malber should continue asking this question. Privacy is the right of every individual, and on the internet, we should not in any way ask them to reveal their age for adminship. It puts undue pressure on the candidate. As for Malber's recent disruption, he has made it a WP:POINT to stalk my contributions.

• His disruption continues – [12] – Tell you what, I'll drop the whole matter and just get back to editing if you'd drop your pompousness and sanctimony just apologize for the inappropriate and out-of-process block. Here's your chance to be civil. —Malber (talk • contribs) 17:10, 25 December 2006 (UTC) and gets warned – [13] by an admin.
• He goes to a deletion review of my AfD and states – [14] –*Overturn Deletion was out-of-process and contrary to consensus. Suggest that deleting admin be referred to ArbCom for possible de-sysopping due to this and several other abuses of administrative powers within the past few months. —Malber (talk • contribs) 00:22, 23 December 2006 (UTC)
• More trolling on User:Heligoland's talk page – [15] – Pot, say hello to kettle. —Malber (talk • contribs) 20:41, 22 December 2006 (UTC)
• He nominates two categories for deletion which I created for listing the sockpuppets of a troll. – [16].
• He is warned by one of the administrators – [17], [18].
• Every individual on Wikipedia and the internet for that matter, has a right to anonymity and privacy. Privacy increases participation – as noted by the Arbitration Committee – Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/MONGO#Many_edit_anonymously.
• There would be no need in setting up a situation, where a participant feels pressured to disclose his age or anything personal for that matter. Our privacy is our own.

And as for Amarkov's arguments where he is candidly not trying to see consensus, or probably avoiding it, I am listing the names of users who have disagreed as to Malber's asking age-related questions.

• User:Crzrussian.
• User:Durin
• User:EVula
• User:Bubba hotep
• User:Arjun01
• User:Heligoland
• User:Chairboy
• User:Anchoress
• User:Agent 86
• User:Grandmasterka
• User:MrDarcy
• User:Chrislk02
• User:Newyorkbrad
• User:James086
• User:Tom harrison
• User:Deskana
• User:Persian Poet Gal
• User:Sir Nicholas de Mimsy-Porpington

• Who are in support of such questions or don't see any point in stopping them –

• User:Amarkov
• User:Malber
• User:Badlydrawnjeff
• User:HalfOfElement29
• User:Samir (The Scope)

Amarkov, in case you have been in hiding, its time you caught your act up and stopped patronising trolls, in this manner – [19]. Yes, my block was out of process, I am in dispute, I shouldn't have blocked. I left an apology on your talk page. Malber has shown that he is keen to further disrupt Wikipedia; and for those of you, who are not aware of Malber's history; please have a look at his contributions and then comment. His last 500 contributions have been dedicated to testing the system to its limits (notice how he has only indulged in RfAs), making WP:POINTs, trolling – [20], [21], [22], [23], [24], [25], [26], [27], [28], [29], [30] on being warned not to vandalise wikipedia, [31], [32] Journalist's reply, [33], [34] stalking me, [35] gets warned by another admin, and vandalising Wikipedia – [36], [37], [38]. – And I am sure Malber is going to term this as "stalking", this is production of evidence; stalking is what you have been doing. I ask everyone to stop feeding the trolls, and put an end to this. — Nearly Headless Nick 10:24, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

Is Mimsy confusing WT:RFA with WP:RFC? Does anyone else see this incivil character assasination as wildly over the top and inappropriate for an admin? BTW, I've removed the "offending" question from my template. —Malber (talk • contribs) 14:30, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

Brilliant, thanks. — Nearly Headless Nick 07:58, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

Its time to move on and just leave everything behind. We should respect one's privacy and not go into asking for one's age in the public scene. Its not a nice thing to do if they do not feel comfortable of revealing it. Wikipedians may have the choice to edit anonymously and its up to them what private information they wish to reveal. Terence Ong 10:59, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

Nick is correct. Who we are on wiki, should not be relevant to who we are off wiki.Bakaman 19:26, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] YUser31415's opinion

Could I voice my opinion here please? This is how I interpret the question.

The main argument for asking the question at present, I believe, is "because we can; it doesn't harm anything". Okay, so it does harm something. Every time someone asks the question, there is a large discussion on that candidate's RfA discussion page, with some people saying "I don't think this question should be asked" and others saying "we can, we can".

Wikipedia is not an experiment in free speech. The question is unrequired, unneeded, and considered offensive by some. !Voters who oppose based on age are indicating bias against that age group. Do we elect admins just because they are married, live in UK/US, and because they are between 30-40 years old? No. We elect admins because of their skill, their judgement, and their patience. We should continue to uphold this principle.

Thank you. Yuser31415 22:43, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

As an outsider to this conversation, I think it's just the mental age, i.e. maturity, that matters, and it usually shows in the editor's contributions and comments on talk pages. It's not a question of age in years. Admins should not be forced to reveal more (irrelevant) personal information than other Wikipedians. –mysid☎ 11:36, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

---

[edit] What... the... heck?

So far today, there have been four RfAs closed early, three of them within an hour of opening, and two within twenty minutes. What is wrong? -Amarkov ^blah_edits 05:06, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

People vote faster?--SUIT 05:08, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

I count five RfAs if your tally is correct. --²¹⁰physicq (c) 05:10, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

You're sure you're not counting both the time you removed No1lakersfan and the time Essjay closed it? -Amarkov ^blah_edits 05:14, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

No, I'm merely seeing a discrepancy in your post. Or is it just me? --²¹⁰physicq (c) 05:16, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

Oh, I'm counting the ones within twenty minutes for the hour one. The last was closed in three hours. -Amarkov ^blah_edits 05:17, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] And what is it with canvassing?

Both of the nominees that weren't just utter and obvious lack of edits got their RfAs killed off because of canvassing concerns. Is it not clear enough that we really dislike canvassing, or what? -Amarkov ^blah_edits 05:17, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

Okay, so it was actually three due to not having consensus because of obvious lack of edits, and only one due to not having consensus because of canvassing. But still, there's another one that's not going to suceed due to that, and I think there might be a third. Is it not clear enough, or do people not read? -Amarkov ^blah_edits 05:20, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

I myself hold an extremely low opinion of canvassing for votes, especially for an RfA. Apparently the rash of failed RfAs seems like a bittersweet Christmas holiday present to some. Oh, I'm sorry, was I supposed to be politically correct? --²¹⁰physicq (c) 05:22, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

At least we haven't gotten anyone deciding to do something insanely stupid, like responding to every single oppose with flaming. Oops, I jinxed it. -Amarkov ^blah_edits 05:24, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

I've seen one about 2½ months ago. Ironically, the username was an apt representation of his temper. --²¹⁰physicq (c) 05:27, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

Aw man, I discovered RfA about 3 days after that, if I didn't feel comfortable commenting until November. -Amarkov ^blah_edits 05:29, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

You'll find some more soon. I typically oppose candidates who just have to scream at every oppose they get. For reasons why, see my RfA criteria (or rather, they sound like restrictions). --²¹⁰physicq (c) 05:33, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

Well, yes. I think it's pretty obvious that replying to every oppose is bad. On another note, you have too good of a RfA standards page. Mine just says "be good". I mean, I have more content for RfBs (which never happen) than I do for RfAs. -Amarkov ^blah_edits 05:36, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

I need to put this on my RfA Criteria page: This in a nutshell: Don't act stupidly on your RfA. And I do have the right to bend the standards as I see fit. ;-) --²¹⁰physicq (c) 05:39, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

Would just like to point out, for the sake of clarity, that none (at least, none of the ones I closed) were closed due to either lack of edits or canvassing; they were closed because they had greater than 75% opposition with a sufficient amount of votes to make it unlikely they would achieve consensus. It is for the most part academic, but it remains important to distinguish between the reason they were closed and the reason that users chose to oppose. (And I didn't mean for that to rhyme.) Essjay (Talk) 05:40, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

Eh. Same difference. --²¹⁰physicq (c) 05:43, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

No, not the same difference. For the RFA to be closed due to canvasing would require a bureaucrat decision to close due to canvassing; we don't do that. We close early because RFAs cannot achieve consensus; users oppose due to various causes. "Essjay closed it due to canvassing" != "Essjay closed it because it had 75% opposition." Essjay (Talk) 05:46, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

Okay, so it was an indirect cause. For the purposes of deciding why it failed, it makes much more sense to use that than "it failed because it was failing". -Amarkov ^blah_edits 05:50, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

Except that it only takes one person to do so and I start receiving nasty posts on my talk page about biased closures. I'd prefer not to have to sort through 100KB of abuse because someone wanted a shortcut. Essjay (Talk) 05:57, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

The 'crats can close RfA's that have no chance in hell of succeeding; this was the case with the (0/11/0) and (2/9/0) cases. This is mainly done with newcomers (ie. <1000 edits), who possibly don't understand the general standards for adminship. It is a BITE protection, and a good one at that. Daniel.Bryant ^{[ T · C ]} 05:50, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

I've struck the shortcuts and replaced with wordiness. But really, why don't you want abuse? It's funny reading people hurling abuse for no good reason. :P -Amarkov ^blah_edits 15:12, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia:Unsuccessful adminship candidacies

On a related issue about all of these withdrawn RfAs... a fair number of them are not getting added to WP:RFAF. I suspect we are missing maybe 10% of withdrawn RfAs going back many months. If someone wants a project to work on, I would suggest going back through the history of the WP:RFA page to check all the RfAs that were transcluded there and then withdrawn, to see if they made it to WP:RFAF. At an average of about 8 edits a day to WP:RFA, while big, it should not be an impossible task :). NoSeptember 12:03, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

They could be added to your chronological unseccessful RfAs page as well, or have you done that already? Do you work direct from the RfA page, or do you rely on others to update the subsidiary pages? Carcharoth 12:50, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

The priority is to add them to the WP:RFAF lists. I periodically go through the histories of the WP:RFAF subpages to catch them all for my chronological list. I update my list about once every two weeks or so, and always at the end of the month so that I have the statistics I need. Of course anyone else is welcome to update the chronological list if they want to. The fact that no one is checking the history of WP:RFA is the problem, I think we have been missing some. NoSeptember 13:05, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

I might have time over the forthcoming break... Carcharoth 14:59, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

Another place I spot some of these failed RfAs is when I look at the history of the bot pages, which I do when looking for the record RfAs. That misses the very short (30 minute) RfAs, but the versions are a lot easier to load than the whole WP:RFA page versions. And I'll also look into this in January, I'm going on wikibreak shortly :). NoSeptember 15:23, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

I would venture to guess (at the risk of restarting a discussion that went on too long above) that the majority of the 10% are due to non-bureaucrat closures and candidate withdrawals. Someone who hasn't closed an RFA before (which, one would expect, is most of the non-bureaucrat population) wouldn't necessarily know to add it there; likewise, a candidate withdrawing thier own RFA would probably not be thinking about it either. The quick solution for non-bureaucrats when closing an RFA is to make sure you're following the instructions when closing an RfA, and to make a note of the closure here, so others can review it; the more consistent one would be to wait a couple hours for a close-happy bureaucrat like myself to come along and close it. Essjay (Talk) 03:12, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

There is such a desire of many to prevent a pile-on of oppose votes that getting people to wait for a bureaucrat is not likely to work, unless a bureaucrat was constantly monitoring the page (which is unrealistic). Maybe we could remind closers by talk page message, of the proper steps to take whenever they fail to do it properly. NoSeptember 10:00, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

I usually do that, if I see one, but the liklihood that it will be the same user the next time is fairly low. Perhaps they could just put a note here or on BN when they close them, as it's definatley the kind of thing that should be noted somewhere. Essjay (Talk) 00:11, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Voting pages over 30 kilobytes

Some RfA pages are over 30 kilobytes in size, such that text cannot be added to them in the edit screen. How can a user vote on such candidates? HalfOfElement29 05:50, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

You can add text to the edit screen of pages more than 30 kb. Have you seen WP:ANI, at like 400 kb? -Amarkov ^blah_edits 05:53, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

That only works when there are sections (marked by equals signs which create large bold section titles) which are smaller than 30 kilobytes, such that a user can edit a particular section. RfA pages are composed of a single section. HalfOfElement29 05:58, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

It's only some browsers that are a problem. I know that IE has real problems at around the 32k mark whereas Safari and Mozilla don't. I must admit that I've often thought that making the three voting sections (Support/Oppose/Neutral) into proper subheadings rather than simply bold text would be a very useful move. Not only would it make it far easier to vote on larger pages, but there'd be some indication of the way the vote is going if it's listed in your watchlist, simply from noting which is the edited section each time. Grutness...wha? 06:24, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

How old a version of IE are you talking about? This hasn't been a problem for quite a while. Half, you might want to try a more recent browser, which should provide an immediate solution to your problem. The possiblity of adding section headers has been discussed in the past and generally disliked because it quadruples the size of the table of contents. Dragons flight 08:24, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

It happens to me on some versions (but not all) of IE6; I have to switch to the https interface to edit WT:CSD, often (where the sections often get above 30 KiB). --ais523 17:37, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

It doesn't work with netscape either. I second your recommendation. What is the procedure for making such a change? HalfOfElement29 06:35, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

Unfortunately the bots that monitor RfA may require the layout to remain as is for the time being. I would recommend talking to the bot's creators before making any changes. Canadian-Bacon 06:44, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

What bots are those? And who are their creators? HalfOfElement29 06:55, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

The only one I know of is User:Tangobot which produces This report. It's run by User:Tangotango. There may be other bots im not aware of though. Canadian-Bacon 07:15, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

There is also User:DFBot which produces User:Dragons flight/RFA summary. Agathoclea 08:06, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

Bots? Tough. Most people using AfD don't refer to bots. We don't create pages for the benefit of bells and whistles. Splitting the support/oppose/neutral sections makes perfect sense. Let's do it. The bots can catch up when they can.--Doc^g 14:30, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

Unless someone comes up with a reeealy good reason why we need automatic RfA summaries, yeah, the bots can deal. It would hardly be a big tweak for them. Don't split it up until at least the discussion section, though; there's no reason to kill off Mathbot. -Amarkov ^blah_edits 15:10, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

Mind clarifying which browsers are not working? I don't think IE is currently having problem or we would have spotted it very long ago (since majority of users use IE), and Netscape usage is ~0.5% according to the statistics in Usage share of web browsers. Are we going to make such major change for this?

As for the bots, currently bureaucrats use them to perform tasks such as detecting duplicate votes, so their readability have to be taken care of for any changes. --WinHunter ^(talk) 15:17, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

Okay, well then inform the bots. It can't be that big of a change, can it? -Amarkov ^blah_edits 15:19, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

This was discussed before and there is a problem that splitting the individual RfAs makes the table of contents on the main page far too long. I came up with a solution, which various people improved upon, I'm not sure why it wasn't implemented in the end. It should be in the archives somewhere. --Tango 15:23, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

I was digging through the archives and I found this Wikipedia_talk:Requests_for_adminship/Archive_70#Technical_Proposal:_add_RfA_listings_to_a_separate_subpage if it was what you were referring to?Canadian-Bacon 20:42, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

Couldn't we change the headings to this:

<includeonly>
'''Support'''
</includeonly><noinclude>
=====Support=====
</noinclude>

That would make them editable headings on the sub-page itself but not on the main page. -- Renesis (talk) 22:38, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

Don't the bots work off of the source code? -Amarkov ^blah_edits 01:02, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

The bots parse the page searching for determined lines like ; Support. I am not against adding subsections for usability matters, although that is a step backwards in my own eyes. I am sure if we move the discussions and long explanations for opinions to the talk page, the pages would hardly ever reach 20kb. -- ReyBrujo 02:02, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

I have an idea for an interim solution. Add a warning to the top of the main RfA page, that states:

WARNING: If a candidate voting page grows over 30 kilobytes in size, then it can not be editted by many browser types.

That way, at least people will be aware of the problem.

HalfOfElement29 05:34, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Half, what browser version are you actually using? Most versions of browsers actually suffering this problem have long since become obsolete and have very low market share, so I don't really think a specific warning is necessary. Dragons flight 10:05, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

The bots make the RfA process so much easier. Who wants to load WP:RFA or the RFA subpages just to see if there are any new candidates or to see how they are proceeding? Using the bot summaries and having them work properly is important. NoSeptember 10:29, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Lateral thought as the majority of the text occurs due to the number of questions and the size of the responses wouldnt it be more logical to put the "optional questions" on a subpage and transclude them into the nomination. That would also make it easier to identify when a question or response has been added. This option wouldnt disturb the bots and is a simple enough action that any admin or potential adimn should be able to do. Gnangarra 16:08, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

The code suggested above is pretty much what was come up with last time this was discussed (I think it was shortened slightly, but the same basic idea). The issue with bots is a non-issue, the programmers in question can simply alter the bots to understand the new format, as they've done in the past when changes have been made to the template. Oh, and that's not the right archive, try looking under July 2006 - that's when I made my sample page during the discussion. --Tango 17:07, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Time for new questions

For quite some time now, every nominee has been asked their opinion on WP:SNOW and punitive blocking. They boil down to leading questions, in that a wrong answer will probably "sink" your adminship, but they have been used long enough that the "correct" answer is clear from RFA history. Thus I believe they are, at least for the time being, no longer useful in judging candidates, and that we should find some new questions instead. >Radiant< 14:11, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

I agree. I'd drop them or ask new ones. feydey 15:13, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

We need some new questions, the same old thing is very boring. Let's ask something different. Terence Ong 15:15, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Suggestions? — Seadog_MS 15:19, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Find a specific example article, currently in question regarding the policies and ask what they would do in regards to them? I.E., ask about a particular afd and ask what there thoughts in regards to WP:SNOW and the particular afd. Do they think it applies, etc etc. Similarly, for WP:IAR, ask if they have ever used WP:IAR as a rationalization, if so, where, how why, etc. If they havent, find something controversial and ask there opinion on its relations to WP:IAR. I think these are important concepts to make sure an candidate understands, butlets make it more real like a lab , as opposed to an "open book test". Just throwing some ideas around. -- Chrislk02 (Chris Kreider) 15:28, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

How about "Have you stopped making bad-faith edits to Wikipedia?". On a more serious note, now might be a time to reuse old questions or tweak them for new purposes. I still have my very old RFA questions that I used after some discussion (dating back to January 2006) at User:Deathphoenix/RFA questions, though only questions 5 and 6 are useful IMO. Questions 4 (test1-4 vs bv) and 7 (NPOV) will likely get stock answers and question 8 (greatest frustrations with Wikipedia) sounds useless. I think if we start with some new questions, we can use some questions in the same vein as these old ones. --Deathphoenix ʕ 15:42, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

I propose "Are you now, or have you ever been, a communist?" Ah, that's a classic... EVula // talk // ☯ // 15:45, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

"Have you stopped being a communist?" --Deathphoenix ʕ 15:46, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Lets bring back "Is the glass half empty or half full?" :) thanks/Fenton, Matthew Lexic Dark 52278 Alpha 771 15:47, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Too easy, the glass is at the half way point. HighInBC ^{(Need help? Ask me)} 16:04, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

I am sure we have some editors that would propse the question, "How old are you?". Any takers. lol. -- Chrislk02 (Chris Kreider) 16:08, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Bah, that question is so passé at this point. "a/s/l", on the other hand... EVula // talk // ☯ // 17:03, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

In a more serious vein, I really like Deathphoenix's questions 5 and 6; the first one question 5 is tricky (I'm still mulling over what my answer would be), and second one question 6 is an excellent "test your policy knowledge"-type question. EVula // talk // ☯ // 17:03, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

The problem with the first question (question 4) is that there is pretty much a right answer to it. Once a single RFA candidate has answered it correctly, all subsequent candidates can provide the same answer. OTOH, 5 & 6 doesn't have a single correct answer, so those could be used for multiple RFAs. I think we need questions similar to 5 and 6 if we want to add new optional questions for candidates. --Deathphoenix ʕ 17:13, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Sorry, "first" and "second" were in reference to questions 5 and 6. I've modified my comment above to read a bit clearer. EVula // talk // ☯ // 19:07, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

What is your name? What is your quest? What is your favorite color? Newyorkbrad 17:08, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Additional questions should (hopefully) relate to and test the candidate's understanding of policy. This is the intent of my IAR, SNOW, blocking policy, and CSD questions. But I agree: they have become stale and people are cribbing answers. But hasn't my age question been fun? —Malber (talk • contribs) 18:27, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Um ... not especially, no. Are you trying to help !voters evaluate candidates at this point, or just stir up trouble? Newyorkbrad 18:29, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

I say we shove my bureaucrat question on them. Or maybe something that doesn't involve bureaucrat responsibilities, such as "What would you do if Essjay blocked all your Wikifriends indefinitely as sockpuppets of you?". Or "What if Jimbo replied to a comment of yours on the mailing list by spamming "I HATE YOU YOU IDIOT?". Those would be pretty fun to see people try to answer. -Amarkov ^blah_edits 18:34, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Practice answers: (1) I'd find out who's been signing Essjay's name again. (2) I'd give an NPA-2 warning and if it continued post to ANI for advice, but not block him myself. Would I pass? Newyorkbrad 18:59, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

I find Malber's questions about IAR and SNOW, as well as the one about G11, to be very useful. If he were to stop asking them, I would likely continue it. --badlydrawnjeff talk 19:02, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

How about we dont ask all the same questions. Tailor a set of questions against what they do mostly. I.E. somebody like me who always does vandal patrol would probably not be lacking information on that. have a set of questions, and ask the vandal patrollers questions on xfds. So what, there may be a right answer but lets not at least give them one that is easy off the top of there head. Make them research a little and, they may be close to admin status and the research will give them that extra knolwedge after picking up a mop to make effective infomred decisions regarding the use of the tools. -- Chrislk02 (Chris Kreider) 18:37, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

It would make sense to ask about admin area's the user is not familiar with. HighInBC ^{(Need help? Ask me)} 18:41, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Makes much more sense than rubberstamping questions on. -Amarkov ^blah_edits 18:45, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

When I write optional questions, I normally base them on the output of my diff-generator (which often highlights areas that a user is interested in, especially in Wikipedia:-space). Matching the question to the candidate makes more sense then rubberstamping on questions (the answer may be clear from the candidate's history, for instance). --ais523 18:51, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

I like the idea of having different questions for each editor. Maybe have a pool of questions that can get picked from, with suggestions on "groups" of questions perhaps (ie: someone who is good at vandal fighting would get asked 2, 4, and 5, while someone heavy on the XfD would get asked 2, 3, and 8). [question numbers totally made up] EVula // talk // ☯ // 19:07, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

That's still too rubberstamp for me. It seems odd to ask questions in a way such that I could just code a template to put in the appropriate ones, depending on whether the parameter is "XfD", "RC patrol", or "Article writing". -Amarkov ^blah_edits 19:10, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

I will agree, I dont think it should be a template question. A template question would imply that the questions are fixed. With any fixed questions, there would be a fixed answer. I think some certain fixed questions might be good, just to make sure the user answered them good. I mean, how many RFA's probably failed miserable because when asked what they most looked forward to they said something like, "blocking vandals forever" or something? Questions like the punitive block are important. I think it should be a mix of some cookie cutter questions (just to see if the candidate does the work to answer the questions), and some more compelx, thought provoking ones to get an idea how the candidate would do in a real life situation. -- Chrislk02 (Chris Kreider) 19:26, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

It seems to me that RfA candidates answer the standard questions either very competently or quite hopelessly, with very few editors in the grey area in between. given that the answer to any set question will be intensively studied by all succeeding applicants, have we considered dispensing with the set questions altogether? Unless this is heresy. We could make the Candicates voluntary statement, which right now some make and some do not, the starting point, and then depend on answers to voluntary questions based on this statement and on the editor's editing record. This would focus decision-making directly on the wiki- and communication skills of the candidate, and on their involvement in mainspace, namespace, etc.--Anthony.bradbury 19:41, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

No, dispensing them is not heresy, but as you just said, we can judge the candidates' answers to the standard questions to see if the applicant is "either very [competent] or quite [hopeless]." Do note that one applicant did try to dispense with the questions, and note the furor that it caused. --²¹⁰physicq (c) 06:09, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

Did I just contradict myself? --²¹⁰physicq (c) 06:11, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

Our only example of a candidate dispensing with the questions is pretty ridiculous. Earle Martin basically argued he should be trusted pro forma until he screwed something up. If another candidate dispensed with the questions but had a long nomination or a long candidate statement, their RfA might fly better.--Kchase T 06:20, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

I personally almost always get enough information out of the user's contributions (particularly leading up to their RfA), nomination statement if self-nom, and the three standard questions. Policy-quiz questions are pointless -- knowledge of policy can be attained by anyone at any time, prior to or after becoming an admin. The attitude and demeanor of the candidate are longer lasting, and give a better indication of whether the candidate would make a thoughtful and conservative choice if a difficult situation came up where they didn't know the applicable policy -- something that has probably happened to every admin, regardless of how "prepared" they were. -- Renesis (talk) 07:08, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

Totally agree. I think all questions should be scrapped. --Majorly (Talk) 09:00, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

I agree to a point. Questions are nice, but a candidate is hardly going to incriminate themselves. They won't deliberately lie, but they may have forgotten some details, or they may just whitewash what they did. -Amarkov ^blah_edits 15:28, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

We are trying to choose as Admins editors who will be responsible, efficient, effective, consistent and trustworthy. And, I am sure, many other things. The ability to memorise the answers to standard questions submitted by previous successful admin applicants proves none of these characteristics. But a good, thoughtful personal statement, together with a good, balanced edit history and good answers to ad hoc questions specifically tailored to the candidate should be as good a way of selecting the right people for the job as is possible at this time. Of course, this will mean that other editors have to work harder to form their assessments. But that's not really a problem, is it?--Anthony.bradbury 15:48, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

I agree with Tony. As opposed to asking standard questions, we should simply allow and encourage the candidate enough rope to hang themselves an opportunity to comment on their own record. I've noticed that in 90% of the cases the personal statement alone is enough to tell me whether the nominee is admin material (and that is borne out when I do further investigations, of course!) Thus questions that are tailored to the nominee's experience should be encouraged (rather than the current situation where the optional question often tells us more about the questioner than the answer does about the nominee). I'd like to see questioning along the lines of:

"Dear Rockpocket, with regard to this edit summary and the response it elicted from a new editor, do you think you fell foul of WP:BITE and what, if anything, did you learn from that experience?"

I don't think there is a right or wrong answer to such a question, and I also think that instead of testing for policy wonkage, it simply provides us with an insight of how the nominee works, rather than the theoretical "what-if" scenario that is normally trotted out in answers. Rockpocket 18:34, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

I'm guessing a lot of nominees learn several policies during their admin application, that many of the admin nominees only find out about the policy when asked in the question. Of course upon reading the policy they can understand it (usually) and answer the question just fine so it seems as though they know it. I think if we want to find out more about their policy knowledge we should "trick" them into answering a policy relevant question, such as "what do you do?" as opposed to "would WP:WHATEVER apply here?" Because Malbers IAR and SNOW question is being researched in prior RfA's it could be reworded into a situation where the policy would apply (non-controversially), because what's the point of knowing a policy if you can't apply it? Personally I think that question is a good one, but it is becoming less useful when candidates can look up the correct answer. James086^{Talk | Contribs} 04:35, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] A question

Can anybody vote for or against the future administrators? What is the rules, is there a minimum of edits for a user to be able to vote? Thanks. Ajor 20:44, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

There is no minimum, except having an account. However, things like the first edit being a vote on a RfA will probably cause the closing bureaucrat to ignore them, so it's not entirely unrestricted. -Amarkov ^blah_edits 20:57, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Yeah if you have about 100 or even less you should be fine, but if your edits are only in relation with the user and the particular RFA assume that your vote won't count. — Seadog_MS 06:01, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

All right, thanks. Ajor 19:37, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

• Doesn't it say all this at the top of the page? >Radiant< 10:58, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

It does, but it doesn't hurt for someone to ask if they are unsure. Essjay (Talk) 11:11, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Asking about education level

I see people above saying Malber age's question would provide useful information but is not appropriate to ask because a prospective employer can't ask it. What about asking the admin candidate his level of education (e.g. high school, college, grad/postdoc), or just whether he has a college degree or not? --Quarl ^(talk) 2006-12-25 01:58Z

I still happened to have this on watch, so I'm going to throw in here based on my own experience. I think there are already too many artificial "hurdles" to this process-especially given that even admins can't take non-reversible actions. Why not simply look if the prospective admin has contributed constructively (to whatever areas they've chosen to contribute), and has a general lack of losing their mind, and if so why not? These questions about age and experience seem to serve just to create more artificial barriers-a postdoc might make a terrible admin, and a kid in middle school might make a good one. Who knows? Besides, it would be trivially easy to lie on these, and since the vast majority of us here use pseudonyms, there would never be any real way to check. Seraphimblade 02:05, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

Are there actually middle-school-age administrators on Wikipedia? :) --Quarl ^(talk) 2006-12-25 02:14Z

I am one. :) Cbrown1023 02:32, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

Excellent, kudos. --Quarl ^(talk) 2006-12-25 02:45Z

There's probably a few. Maybe even younger than that. I see no problem with it as long as they can handle the job. TeckWiz^TalkContribs_@ 02:18, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

There're administrators on enwiki younger than 11? --Quarl ^(talk) 2006-12-25 02:21Z

The youngest I know of are 14, although there may be some a little younger than that who don't mention their ages (or whom I happen not to have noticed). At one point we had a bureaucrat who was 14, although I believe he's had a birthday since then. Newyorkbrad 02:22, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

(edit conflict) You might be rather amazed. I've seen some kids more mature at 13 than most people are at 30. That's the exception, of course, but it sure does happen. Seraphimblade 02:24, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

I don't think I'd be amazed, and I agree with you. Newyorkbrad 02:28, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

There's probably at least 100,000 IP vandals over 20. There's people less mature than 13 year olds. TeckWiz^TalkContribs_@ 02:29, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

I myself am in middle school, and I don't see how education level can affect how good an admin is. Maybe it would help in writing articles, since college student may write better than people like me, ut the purpose of adminship doesn't require a high education, it just requires an education (ie. being able to read). As long as they are fluent or almost fluent in English, it's fine with me. Anyone who can request an AFD appropriately is smart enough. TeckWiz^TalkContribs_@ 02:13, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

I fear this is discussion drifting into the age metaquestion again. If you were an employer and choosing between candidates of the same age, would it be appropriate to consider whether they have a college degree (even if the specific major is not directly applicable to the job)? --Quarl ^(talk) 2006-12-25 02:30Z

While people like me of a certain age (63) like to think that wisdom and judgement come with age and experience, I would say that it is none of our business how old a contributor is or how much education they have. What should count in choosing admins is the editor's record of contributions to Wikipedia. We are not hiring someone based on a resume and an interview, we are deciding whether to hand someone the mop based our estimation of whether they can be trusted with it and will use it for the betterment of Wikipedia. -- Donald Albury 02:39, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

If the job doesn't require any special knowledge (like a fast food cashier), than I'd say a GED is enough (if the person is old enought to obtain a GED). If they're younger, but still in school, it's fine with me. I don't expect them to ask at McDonalds if you have a college degree. The same goes for Wikipedia. You don't need a college degree to protect pages, block users, and delete stuff. You just need to be trusted and experienced in Wikipedia. TeckWiz^TalkContribs_@ 02:42, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

The principal qualifications for adminship here are a reasonable amount of wiki-experience and good judgment. Age doesn't necessarily correllate with those factors. I will not go so far as to say that age and educational level are completely irrelevant to the work a Wikipedia administrator does: there are specific situations when they can be relevant, not to whether a candidate should become an administrator, but to whether a particular administrator should do a certain administrative task or let another admin handle it. But the good judgment criterion covers that, for a younger admin just as much as an older one.

The question that gets bruited about on this page, though, is whether candidates should be asked their ages. In principle, this is a serious violation of privacy. In practice, though, I think many of the younger candidates are proud of their accomplishments on- and off-wiki and voluntarily mention on their userpages their age or grade or whatever. But I still think that an age or educational background question gives undue weight to that one factor, as well as invading the privacy of those who choose not to disclose, and hence shouldn't be posed, whether couched as "how old are you" or as something more subtle. Newyorkbrad 02:50, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

Good answer, thanks. --Quarl ^(talk) 2006-12-25 02:58Z

I agree with NYbrad. And once again, if you can fill out an RFA appropriately, and speak fluent or almost fluent English, then you're smart enough to be an English Wikipedia admin. TeckWiz^TalkContribs_@ 02:54, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

Just to clarify, following instructions to fill out an RFA and speaking English are necessary but not sufficient requirements. --Quarl ^(talk) 2006-12-25 03:00Z

Yes, it is familiarity with Wikipedia and good judgement in dealing with problems and other editors, as demonstrated in the edit record, that counts. -- Donald Albury 03:12, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

That question is no less inappropriate than the age question, for the same 2 reasons: 1. It encourages voters to vote against people that do not reveal personal information. 2. It encourages voters to vote based upon an irrelevant factor, rather than the candidate's degree of responsibility.

A college degree does not magically confer the essential character trait of honesty.

HalfOfElement29 05:33, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

Just as age is irrelevant to being a Wikipedia administrator, so is formal education. I'm 23 and have only completed two semesters of college; does that make me any less qualified to undelete an article that was axed improperly (which, incidentally, I just did)? Would someone who is 24 and does have an undergraduate degree be more qualified? Would someone who is 22 and does have an undergrad degree by less, more, or as qualified? What about a 35 year-old with a GED?
Remember, we're !voting on being an administrator on the English Wikipedia. Facts that have nothing to do with that are, largely, irrelevant. EVula // talk // ☯ // 05:41, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

Succinctly, all we demand from an administrator on the English Wikipedia is judgmental maturity, not physical maturity. --²¹⁰physicq (c) 05:56, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

Just wondering, why do people put an exclamation point in front of words containing "vote"? Like two comments above it says, "Remember, we're !voting... .". —The preceding unsigned comment was added by TeckWiz (talk • contribs).

I believe it's a convention meant to remind the reader, or acknowledge the writer's awareness, that an RfA (or some other wiki-process like AfD) is meant to be decided on the basis of consensus and the quality of arguments rather than just the number of supports and opposes. Beyond that, the definition of "consensus" in terms of whether the outcome is based on numbers versus more the closing bureaucrat's discretion gets fairly contentious, but the exclammation point (which is roughly equivalent to putting the word "vote" in quotation marks) is a reminder it's not strictly an election. Newyorkbrad 14:15, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

Just to make it clear, I (and I'm sure other 'crats may too) will not consider any support/oppose votes based on a candidate's age when closing a tight RFA. =Nichalp «Talk»= 14:30, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

I think that any votes based only on things beyond a user's choice (age, ethnic origin, etc) should not be considered. Regards, Asterion^talk 14:34, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

Tailor your voting to whether and what optional material is provided by the candidate but don't ask outright. If information is not provided, assume they want to keep this information private and don't !vote if lack of this information bothers you so much. In some places, even quite large towns, there will be just one person called "Dave" who's "23" with a degree in music, so identifying that person wouldn't be difficult for a determined person. --Kind Regards - Heligoland | Talk | Contribs 16:06, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

If I were to remove my age question, I would probably replace it with something like this. Anyone saying education level isn't important is simply being naive. This is a research project. An editor with a 6th grade education level is simply not going to have the same kind of research experience an undergraduate would. I would trust a doctoral candidate to evaluate if an article has been properly sourced much more over a middle school student. If you think this isn't important to being an admin, then you haven't been following WP:AFD. —Malber (talk * contribs) 23:46, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

Asking about education level is almost as contentious, is it not, as asking about age, and certainly as completely unnecessary. An admin needs to have common sense, consistency, a mature approach, an adequate degree of literacy in the English language, a reasonable and balanced degree of Wikipedia experience and a clearly defined ability to understand the full range of Wiki policy and, as appropriate, to implement it. Neither a College degree nor a twenty-year-old birth certificate will confer these gifts. If my suggestion to dispense with the questions and require a detailed personal statement from the RfA candidates were to be implemented, and decisions were based on this statement and on the applicants edit history, I believe that the presence or absence of the characteristics required to make an admin would be easily detectable. As would their absence.--Anthony.bradbury 00:15, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

I agree with Anthony. We should not judge a Wikipedian's potential capability as an admin by their age/education/location, etc, but by their skill and contributions to the project. I would personally prefer a 10-year-old admin than a 110-year-old in the same position. I challenge Malber to give a reply to this question and defend his right to ask the question. Yuser31415 05:16, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

The problem is that while having a college degree is, in a very limited way, somewhat indicative of maturity, not having a college degree is not indicative of anything at all. This makes even an education level question mostly useless, and possibly harmful. Can't we drop it? This really is turning into ageism (a term I use regretably), and I find that sad. -- Renesis (talk) 08:33, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

Since when is proper sourcing a responsibility (solely) of admins anyway? It's anyone's responsibility who places any information in to source it properly, and anyone else's responsibility to check that it is and challenge it if it's not. Seraphimblade 08:42, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

One must ask "Hows does a college/university education bestow on an individual the necessary common sense, maturity and civility required to become an administrator?" While the answer may be exceedingly obvious once the question is asked, not every person has/had an opportunity to attain this level of education. Try considering the amount of petty bickering that occurs across the community(even here), maybe its more appropriate to enquire as to the candidates experience with teenagers, drunken football teams and door to door salesman. Gnangarra 15:00, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

That's simply absurd, there's school kids, government employees, scientists, religious fanatics, patriots and terrorists all editing Wikipedia and trying to introduce vandalism, misinformation, a point of view or whatever, and a potential administrator needs to be friendly and firm to deal with all this. A good admin doesn't need any formal education, but just needs to know his or her limits in a particularly sticky situation and draft in someone more familiar with the subject if necessary. Realistically, a degree isn't going to help in 99.99% of an admins workload anyway, because content disputes that could be resolved if the admin had a degree are probably something like every 1 in 100 edits, and a degree is only going to help on something like 1% of articles on Wikipedia. Aside from the privacy concerns I've outlined above, the need for an admin to have a degree is so minimal it's not worthy of any further consideration. --Kind Regards - Heligoland | Talk | Contribs 15:44, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

As I said above, educational background can be relevant to a specific administrative task but not to whether one is suited to adminship itself. For example, if there is an AfD posted about, say, a complicated article involving vector calculus, it might be that an admin with background in that subject would be best suited to calling and closing the discussion. A good administrator without a background in vector calculus going down the day's AfD list might therefore skip over that particular discussion and move on to the next one. But it doesn't matter whether the reason the admin doesn't feel confident in evaluating the article is because he or she is older and has forgotten all the vector calculus previously learned, studied humanities and never covered vector calculus, didn't go to college and never had the chance to study vector calculus, or is a middle- or high-schooler and hasn't gotten to vector calculus yet. The important thing is that each admin deals with the specific admin tasks he or she feels qualified to undertake. Age or educational level per se are relevant to relatively few administrative responsibilities. I won't say quite none, but few. Newyorkbrad 17:54, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

I have degrees in surgery, medicine, biochemistry and physiology; but not in vector calculus, nor for that matter in Etruscan history or Mediaeval Greek. This is not relevant. If specialist knowledge is needed to close an AfD, which is a fairly infrequent situation, than an admin with this knowledge can do so, and if necessdary can be sought to do so. No, as I have said, we need peple who are, of course, literare, and who have a good experience of and understanding of the policies and principals of wikipedia. As I have also said, intelligence, consistency, common sense and integrity are also needed. Does this really need further discussion?--Anthony.bradbury 19:49, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

I'm fairly certain that your higher education has enabled you to better scrutinize prose and proper sourcing in any subject than an editor with 6 years of public eduction. —Malber (talk * contribs) 02:32, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

So what? Do you imply I cannot revert vandalism on the Black hole page when someone writes "Our teacher has a black arsehole"? Just because I do not have a degree that enables me to edit that page? Your argument is irrelevant, and considered disruptive. If I were you I would stop before you catch the wrong end of the banhammer. Yuser31415 02:40, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

Malber is certainly not worth getting worked up over Yuser. --Kind Regards - Heligoland | Talk | Contribs 02:49, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

Malber, I personally think your wrong yet again. In a couple of years, I'll have a degree in Chemistry, but I've only got a rather basic Standard Grade pass in English. Your not talking about only giving people with English degrees admin tools now, or degree holding Germans that don't speak English. Could you do the decent thing and admit your argument is very flawed please. --Kind Regards - Heligoland | Talk | Contribs 02:49, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, so my immediate reaction upon reading that was "fuck you". Because I've only had two semesters of college, I'm unable to tell the difference between a link to whitehouse.gov and whitehouse.org when reviewing sources in an article? EVula // talk // ☯ // 03:00, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

Well it's a good thing you coached that comment in quotation marks because while saying it up front might have been the braver thing to do, it certainly would be incivil. Of course you don't need an advanced degree to revert vandalism to your Black Hole. You don't even need to be an admin. However, education on proper resarch, citing sources, and readling level to determine POV can help in evaluating the inclusion or deletion of articles. This something that is directly related to being an admin. Again, edcuation level is only a plus. —Malber (talk • contribs) 21:41, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

It's nice to see that Malber now appears to be asking this question. Lovely. I do wonder where he got the idea? --Deskana (talk) 21:50, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

In regards to asking possibly inappropriate RfA questions, I do believe that the questions themselves should be discouraged by all means. However, we cannot penalize users for their continuing to ask them (such as what happened in the Malber situation). The questions are entirely optional and answerable at the discretion of the nominees. If there is more dispute with their being in use, its only best to civily scrutinize the question by bringing them to the RfA talk page (as done with this topic) or Request for comment, rather than blacklisting the users who are asking them to begin with. I would consider bad user conduct to be way more disruptive than asking not-so-appropriate RfA questions.

Anyways, as far as asking the question of one's education or age in an RfA, I believe both are highly unnecessary and do not contribute in a beneficial manner to learn more about the candidate's qualifications. Many users have brought up above that to serve the English Wikipedia you do not necessarily need a whole formal education but simply a good comprehension of the English language and a strong understanding with how Wikipedia works. Contribution history is what really signifies what a candidate is capable of and not what education they received or if they are over the legal age limit.¤~Persian Poet Gal ^(talk) 22:12, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

I answered the question, but having read this discussion I think that it's probably an inappropriate quesiton. A fundamental principle of this community is that it can't matter who you are only what you contribute. savid@n 23:54, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

This is a very silly discussion. I am an admin, a bureaucrat, and a steward. In my other life, I am an employee of the foundation and a published author (popular and academic), I have, in the past worked as an editor of encyclopedias for major publishing houses, a television scriptwriter, a respected translator (including poetry), a museum educator, and a curriculum developer. In fact, the only thing I am missing is a high school diploma and a college degree. Danny 03:19, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

Well said! And hopefully that's the end of this one? Seraphimblade 03:23, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

My feelings entirely. In fact, if Malber continues to violate strong consensus, I would support him being banned from the RfA page. Yuser31415 03:31, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

I think what Danny said was funny, and gives the answer to our question. If he can write books, be an admin, b'crat, and steward, as well as many other non-Wiki things, and not even have a high school diploma, what education do people need for adminship! TeckWiz^TalkContribs_@ 03:39, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

We need people with common sense who aren't assholes. It doesn't matter if you have a high school diploma or a doctorate in history. And a decent understanding of policy and the like, of course. ★MESSEDROCKER★ 04:42, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

Having a high education level would be a plus. Not having it but being a good editor would not be a minus. —Malber (talk • contribs) 13:18, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

If it gives some (maybe less qualified) users an unfair advantage, why ask it? Anyways, as it has been pointed out above, level of eduacation isn't necessarily what makes a good admin. Tennis DyNamiTe ^{(sign here)} 14:24, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

I strongly disagree with the asking of education levels as there are many teenage admins and great editors. I think what matters is the understanding of wikipedia policy not education. — Arjun 14:37, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

Why is it that when I posed the age question I never received any complaints from any of the candidates? The same has held true for my education question. Both participants have answered candidly (the location of the educational institution isn't requested, but I appreciate the candor). Is it me or are people blowing this way out of proportion? Education level isn't nearly as invasive a question as age and if a voter doesn't want or care about this they can ignore the question. It's not as if I'm saying that a high or low level of eduction is a plus or minus, it's just interesting information to know. Like I said before, a grade 6 education isn't a minus if the other factors show that the person can be a good admin. A person being a Doctoral Candidate would just be one more plus for votes to support. —Malber (talk • contribs) 18:32, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

It's the psychological element, the candidate won't actually complain about it because they don't want the questioner to oppose because they complained (etc.) - and so don't. A fair few probably don't even have this page watch listed.

My thoughts on this is that it is irrelevant (just as age is) - the level of education is not important within Wikipedia, should we start asking if a candidate has a disability? (I'd sure hope not) - You don't need an assortment of degrees to qualify as an administrator, the only things I'd say you do need are: Trust, level-headedness and a friendly attitude. thanks/Fenton, Matthew Lexic Dark 52278 Alpha 771 18:51, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

Even you admit that asking that is invasive! As you said, it is not as invasive as asking a user's age, but such personal questions, in my opinion, should be avoided. And again, that gives an unfair advantage to some. Having a higher level of education does not determine how well someone would do as an admin. Yes it would help with the encyclopedia, but you don't need admin tools to contribute. All we're asking is that you refrain from asking such questions. Please, Malber, listen to consensus. Tennis DyNamiTe ^{(sign here)} 23:53, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Statement of Purpose

I like Anthony.bradbury's idea of simply requiring a statement of purpose from RFA candidates (like the ArbCom statements). This would be a reasonable small hurdle/opportunity to show maturity and judgement, letting the candidate disclose as much personal detail as he feels comfortable. --Quarl ^(talk) 2006-12-26 05:28Z

I concur. Yuser31415 06:10, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

(Or she) I also think it's a good idea. James086^{Talk | Contribs} 06:26, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

Definitely would support this as well. Seraphimblade 08:39, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

I like that idea, not too complex, but forces a candidate to put a small amount of work in to show good intention. -- Chrislk02 (Chris Kreider) 15:07, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

And it demontrates what they intend to do as an admin, gives an impression of how they see admin tasks and duties, and perhaps most important, why they actually want to be an admin. Almost nobody asks this question. They ask what you will do as an admin, but not why you want to do it. And they are different questions. A voluntary statement, considered in conjunction with a consideration of the edit history, should in my personal view be the best way so far of determining who will, or will not, make a good admin.--Anthony.bradbury 19:40, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

I will restate my like of the idea, however we should make sure it isent too much like "1. What sysop chores do you anticipate helping with? Please check out Category:Wikipedia backlog and Category:Administrative backlog, and read the page about administrators and the administrators' reading list. " It seems like the answer to anthonys proposed questions could be relaly ismilar to the answers most commonly given to this common question. -- Chrislk02 (Chris Kreider) 19:42, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

As I said above somewhere, I think questions should be removed altogether, and it is up to the candidate, and/or the nominator to write a brilliant nomination. --Majorly (Talk) 19:48, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

No, Chrislk02. I would put, as the only question, something like; "Please say why you have applied to be an administrator?" Or, if the community prefer: "Please make a statement supporting your nomination as adminstrator". In either or any case, I would like the candidate to make a spontaneous and pro-active statement on which the community can judge, together with an assessment of edit history, their commitment, dedication, and skill as it applies to wikipedia.--Anthony.bradbury 19:58, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

I would personally use something like, "Thank you for considering serving Wikipedia as an administrator. Administrators have many additional responsibilities as well as normal Wikipedian duties, and you are requested to make a detailed statement indicating your fitness for the position. Your statement will guide participants in your RfA while they consider you as the candidate, so it is a good idea to disclose as much as is possible." Feedback please? Yuser31415 23:45, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

I wouldn't say responsibilities, more like privileges. But otherwise, I like it! --Majorly (Talk) 23:52, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

More like this? "Thank you for considering serving Wikipedia as an administrator. You are required to make a detailed statement indicating your fitness for the position to guide participants in your request. Since administrators are generally held to higher standards than other users, it is recommended that you disclose as much of your past history on Wikipedia as possible." Yuser31415 23:59, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

It's a great idea. Instead of having to constantly come back to your RfA to address issues that may or may not have any significance, we should just allow a mandatory statement of purpose of why he/she wants to become an administrator. They must address all the points usually covered in RfA's, and by doing so, this will probably cut down on the number of people who wait until a question has been answered, before actually voting. That's my take on this. It's a great idea, and I really hope it will be implemented. Nishkid64 00:50, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

Also, make it into a vote again, with a requirement of having over 500 edits to vote, and 2000 to stand. --Majorly (Talk) 01:02, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

Great. We seem to be building consensus :). Yuser31415 01:10, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

I would say 250 to vote. And would the 2,000 count for just the nominee or the nominator also? TeckWiz^TalkContribs_@ 01:12, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

Well, personally I'd prefer just 200 to vote and/or nominate, and 2000 to stand (easy to remember :). Actually there does not have to be a standard for nominators, since the nominee must accept the nomination first (and basically they OK it). Yuser31415 01:19, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

NishKid, couple of minor tweaks, there needs to be a reasonable limit on candidates statements, and if we're changing the terms of suffrage then it might be an idea to appoint some clerks to check edit counts, remove votes from those without suffrage and update tallies, that sort of thing. --Kind Regards - Heligoland | Talk | Contribs 01:29, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

Good idea. Needs to be limits on who can request, vote and nominate which would all need checking. --Majorly (Talk) 01:45, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

This is why I think it should be up to the bureaucrats to discount votes based on the voter's editcount. When a genuine SPA appears, usually it's pretty obvious - crap reason for oppose, redlinked user and/or talk pages, no-one recognising them. But to weed out people with 200 edits, you'd basically need to check every single participant's edit count, because no-one can tell instinctively whether someone has 150 or 250 edits. That's a massive waste of time for no discernable gain, frankly. --Sam Blanning^(talk) 01:54, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

This is a bad idea, IMO; essay-writing is not a required skill for adminship. To judge an RfA candidate we need them to answer the questions "why do you need admin buttons" and "why can we trust you with admin buttons", which is what we do with the mandatory questions (1 for the first, 2 and 3 for the second). There's no reason why prospective admins should guess what we want to know. The suggestion that people wanting to volunteer as admins should know not just the right answers but the right questions is faintly Kafkaesque.

Remember, we're not doing candidates a favour by giving them adminship; they're doing us a favour by volunteering for it. We want as many as possible, and we should come out and ask the questions we want answered explicitly. Without mandatory questions, a candidate could know policy and be experienced and trustworthy, but fail RfA because in his statement, he wrote 500 words on his experience but didn't know he should say what admin tasks he intended to carry out. That would be a tragedy we could ill afford.

The opening post in this thread mentions the Arbcom elections, but that couldn't be a more different situation; they were a competition for a limited number of seats, so a statement was needed because you had to show not just why you were good, but why you were better than the other candidates. In comparison, RfA is purely about being above a certain standard. For candidates with knowledge, experience and trustworthiness, we should make passing RfA as easy as possible without making it easy for those without it. Removing the mandatory questions in favour of requiring a statement just makes it less easy for good candidates and no harder for bad ones. --Sam Blanning^(talk) 01:20, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

A compelling counter-argument. I would hope people give this serious weight. --Deskana (talk) 01:22, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

Certainly. Hello Sam! I think we have already addressed your counter-argument. The RfA boilerplate will contain a message asking the candidate to answer exactly those questions. Oh, and by the way: as I understand it, essay-writing is a required skill for adminship - one of the reasons I failed my RfA was because I did not contribute enough to articlespace. So article contributions appear to be important. Yuser31415 01:30, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

I'd accept something like "Please write a statement of 400 words explaining why you want the admin tools, and why you believe you should be trusted with them". (400 words up for discussion, of course.) I really don't like this wording you suggested: "You are required to make a detailed statement... it is recommended that you disclose as much of your past history on Wikipedia as possible". With that a candidate could spend a very long and miserable time trying to remember everything good he's done for Wikipedia and finding diffs, without it doing his candidacy any good, because "I've done x, y and z for α months" is usually all that needs to be said to show experience.

Even with that I would still prefer the current system - not sure what problem we're trying to solve here.

As for what you said about articles, true - but writing about yourself is very different from writing encyclopaedia articles. Personally, I find it very difficult to write about how marvellous I am (whether my Arbcom statement, covering letters with job applications, performance reviews at work, anything) to the point of almost hating it. Direct, straightforward questions I have no problem with - perhaps knowing that at least one person (the questioner) is interested in what you're about to write makes it easier. --Sam Blanning^(talk) 01:54, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

How do you like the modified wording Physicq210 proposed?

Thank you for offering to serve Wikipedia in the capacity of administrator. In order to assist other editors in evaluating your fitness to serve in such a position, please provide below a statement of variable length detailing your experiences and your anticipated activities on Wikipedia, which may include, but not be limited to, your editing habits, past achievements, various discussion, past disputes, dispute resolution, and the like.

What we are trying to resolve here is the fact many editors are requesting information that simply need not be answered (ie., the age question above). If no questions are asked, it is up to the admin candidate to demonstrate their writing skills, and say whatever they want about themselves, without releasing additional info. Feedback? Yuser31415 02:02, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

<edit conflict> Compelling indeed. But if we were to go ahead and replace the questions with an "essay" of sorts, we can just indicate what many editors look for in an RfA. Please consider the following:

Thank you for offering to serve Wikipedia in the capacity of administrator. In order to assist other editors in evaluating your fitness to serve in such a position, please provide below a statement of variable length detailing your experiences and your anticipated activities on Wikipedia, which may include, but not be limited to, your editing habits, past achievements, various discussion, past disputes, dispute resolution, and the like.

This is just a hashing together of some ideas from Anthony Bradbury and Yuser31415 above and some of the current wording from the RfA. Many of the current points demanded by the current questions are addressed, though in an essay question format. --²¹⁰physicq (c) 01:34, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

Now that is a fine piece of writing. Yuser31415 01:50, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

What about an either/or situation, those who want to write an essay can, those who wish to use the standard questions can. --Kind Regards - Heligoland | Talk | Contribs 01:37, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

An interesting idea, but for some reason I can't see it working. I'm not quite sure why. --Deskana (talk) 01:40, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

I think I can see it working, but since I greatly value your opinion if you have any ideas why it wouldn't work please tell me/us. Cheers! Yuser31415 01:50, 27 December 2006 (UTC) Ooops, posted in wrong place. Now to avoid an edit conflict ... I just think one or the other, and I would prefer the statement we are debating rather than the questions. Cheers, Yuser31415 01:53, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, thinking about it, we should be trying to make things identical for all candidates. If candidates wish to ask themselves the questions though, or list their achievements in a bullet point list, what would we do though ? --Kind Regards - Heligoland | Talk | Contribs 02:08, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

They may list their achievements in a bullet point list if they wish, as long as no one asks them any questions. Depending on consensus, an exception could be made that editors can ask the potential admin to amend a point of their statement on the candidate's talk page. Yuser31415 02:13, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

OK, it's getting better all the time, just a couple of final points. Will voters be allowed to ask candidates questions such as age or education level on their talk page, or will there be a ban on asking for private information not already volunteered by the candidate on the assumption that if they wanted us to know age, education, location etc, they would have already provided such information ? --Kind Regards - Heligoland | Talk | Contribs 02:19, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

I assume there will be a ban on asking for private information. There appears to be a general consensus that the age question is frowned upon. Yuser31415 02:27, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

(edit conflict)Compelling, yes. Basically, what I meant with "no questions" is the candidate should outline why they should be an admin: describe what they intend to do, how they are worthy of extra priveleges etc. Much like question 1. Doesn't need to be an essay. Question 2 is irrelevant because articles, however much people associate writing with being an admin, are nothing to do with being one. Question 3 can be left off completely, and voters can make up their own minds whether to research the candidate or not. All that we need to know is: will this user make a good admin? If, from what they have given in their statement shows they would be, and from evidence of seeing the user around, then the user should be supported. --Majorly (Talk) 01:41, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

I would certainly agree to that as well. I wish I'd had more chance to state my case in my RfA, and the lack of questions even being asked were rather a difficulty to that! I would much prefer an opportunity to free-write, and I think that would be better for each unique candidate to express why (s)he believes h(im|er)self to be a good candidate and to express this to the community. (Might also help with the nasty case of editcountitis/timeeditingitis that seem to have reached epidemic levels...) Seraphimblade 03:29, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

While a statment of purpose seems to be an attractive idea, the proposed phrasings I've read here seem too open-ended. In my opinion, it's best to ask clear, direct, and fairly non-meandering questions to get the best answers. Furthermore, asking an admin candidate to prepare a 400-word statement gives some candidates inherent advantages over others, as in those 400 words will likely be hints to the candidate's age, educational background, and so forth via analysis of the flow of the text and vocabulary. Posing direct questions will better level the field for all candidates. Also, rather than seeking loquacious admins, we should be seeking those with good judgement who don't skirt issues. An experienced writer can in 400 words espouse every side of an issue, flip-flop, and assert and concede the same points while convincing many readers that he or she actually stands for something.

I think that the current questions 1 and 3 work well to assess whether a candidate can express himself or herself clearly and has a need for the admin tools. If in these questions the candidate wishes to disclose other ideas that he or she feels are salient to his or her RfA, that would be his or her opportunity to do so. I don't think other editors should be allowed to ask the same questions to every single candidate as I have seen some doing. Rather, I feel optional questions should only be posed if an editor is unsure whether to support or oppose a candidate based on a past editing issue. For example, if a candidates speedy deletion experience or AfD voting becomes an issue, an optional question asking the candidate to clarify his or her position would be appropriate. Asking for a candidate's age or educational level is not savory in my book as it might (consciously or not) influence some editors to oppose fine candidates who are young and/or who lack higher education. Fabricationary 03:36, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

The way the candidate writes the statement will obviously reflect that user's ability to write in English, while allowing a free flow of writing. If you don't think the proposed phrasing is good enough, how about providing a draft that you like? Cheers! Yuser31415 03:46, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

Candidates are not required to give a 400-word-and-no-less essay, hence the "variable length" part. If they are true candidates for adminship, they would have lots to write about other than their personal information, and it won't be that hard to go past 200 words, give or take. And candidates are always welcome to elaborate on ambiguous and/or unmentioned points upon request, or when things come to mind in the future. --²¹⁰physicq (c) 03:52, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

Actually, let me take the liberty of modifying my proposed statement:

Thank you for offering to serve Wikipedia in the capacity of administrator. In order to assist other editors in evaluating your fitness to serve in such a position, please provide below a statement of variable length describing your reasons for requesting adminship. Please incorporate in your statement your experiences and your anticipated activities on Wikipedia, which may include, but not be limited to, your editing habits, past achievements, various discussion, past disputes, dispute resolution, and the like.

This may clear up some confusion, and leave for more stuff to write. --²¹⁰physicq (c) 03:58, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

• I think such a statement is much better than arbitrary questions. >Radiant< 15:11, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

Ew, statements. I don't like statements. Some people really do much better at answering questions than just writing a free-form statement. -Amarkov ^blah_edits 16:17, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

I agree with Amarkov. Maybe the candidate should be able to choose which type (statement or questions) he/she wants. And like Amarkov said, some people are better at answering question, so people shouldn't be penalized for copy-edit mistakes in their statement, like grammar and sp. TeckWiz^TalkContribs_@ 17:18, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

I am forced to agree too, though not for TeckWiz's reasons. Everyone makes spelling mistakes, and no editor will be so anal as to nitpick on every spelling error the candidate ever made, lest the picky one be scrutinized also. About grammar issues, one of the requirements to be an administrator of Wikipedia is to have a decent grasp of the English language, so as long as people get easily what you're trying to say without confusion, you're good for. --²¹⁰physicq (c) 19:08, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

Although egregious command of English is sometimes a reason to oppose promotion, no one is even suggesting grading essays on minor grammar and spelling mistakes. Good communication is essential to being an administrator; someone who can't write a simple statement in support of his own nomination would have trouble debating and justifying actions if he became an administrator. —Quarl ^(talk) 2006-12-27 22:56Z

But defending actions requires a specific answer to a specific situation. If you go and write wonderful prose about all your admin accomplishments when defending your actions, we'll all admire the wonderful prose. And then revert your actions, because you failed to explain why you did them. If anything, specific questions is better for showing you can defend actions. -Amarkov ^blah_edits 23:01, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

As will many an English teacher will tell you, if you didn't specify why you advocate said position or action, then obviously you didn't write a good essay. --²¹⁰physicq (c) 23:10, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

Oh man, that reminds me of one "persuasive" essay I read, where the author forgot to actually argue a position on the topic. -Amarkov ^blah_edits 23:13, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

(edit conflict) I agree with Amarkov. It often takes a great writer to be a good editor of the writing of others. However, to be an admin, the most salient skills needed are an understanding of policy and how it applies to varying situations and clear communication that needs not be wonderful, publishable prose with nary a grammar mistake or misplaced punctation mark. Thus, give candidates clear, objective, and direct questions to assess how well they understand policy and can effectively communicate their understanding to the community. Fabricationary 23:15, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

Again, no one is arguing for grading the perfection of punctuation marks (and that could already be done on responses to answers anyway, so it's an irrelevant strawman). People who follow the abyss of drama that is WP:AN and WP:AN/I know that better communication between administrators would have avoided many problems. —Quarl ^(talk) 2006-12-28 00:32Z

Regarding specific vs open-ended, that is a good point that justifying a specified action is easier. That is because there are always many arguments for both sides of a debate and it's easy to pick one side and reiterate that side's arguments. It's harder to present or consider all arguments when there is no right answer and weigh the pros and cons. I do believe "why should you be an administrator", especially with leading wording suggesting past experiences in dispute resolution, etc., is quite specific, and as specific, if not more, than what one faces as an administrator. Ultra-specific questions like "what would you do in [e.g. image-related situation if candidate has no experience with images]" have easy low-entropy answers. —Quarl ^(talk) 2006-12-28 00:32Z

[edit] RfA closure

Somebody has to close Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Asterion as it ended on 12:34, December 27, 2006 (UTC). -- Szvest - ^{Wiki me up ®} 14:54, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

It's been closed. Thanks. Redux 15:49, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

Thanks Redux. -- Szvest - ^{Wiki me up ®} 17:24, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Okay, we need to make it clearer what is expected.

I count five RfAs closed early in the last week, with opposes because of huge lack of experience. Either there's a massive, weird, sockpuppet invasion, or it is not clear enough to these candidates that we expect more than 2 weeks of editing. And there is really no reason to believe sockpuppetry. -Amarkov ^blah_edits 18:45, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

I couldn't agree more. The main RFA page should state that eventhough there is no standards, the community usually doesn't accept users who were only active for a few months, or have less then (roughly) 2,800 edits. // I c e d K o l a 18:51, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

As I have said, we need limits: minimum edit count, time spent here etc. This would be needed for the voters as well, and nominators to avoid sock/meatpuppetry. It might sound like instruction creep, but it's so needed. --Majorly (Talk) 19:00, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

Why not just have the RfA Clerks deal with any WP:SNOW RfA's, that way we don't disqualify any candidates. --Kind Regards - Heligoland | Talk | Contribs 19:42, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

I think the problem is minor, 5 a week is no staggering amount. HighInBC ^{(Need help? Ask me)} 19:46, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

Eh, short of popups and flashing 72 point font, we're not going to stop these from happening. And even then, I bet we'd still see a few every month. A certain type of person on the internet is just going to ignore instructions or assume they don't apply to them. The solution here is to improve our reaction... dealing with the hopeless RfAs in a way that doesn't waste the time of good editors or discourage new users. I guess we are basically doing that right now... though I encourage anyone who de-lists a good faith (but premature) RfA to make a reasonable effort to make sure the candidate understands what happened. --W.marsh 19:51, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

It should be 0 a week. All requests should run the full time. --Majorly (Talk) 19:52, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

That does not seem productive, a user who is brand new has no chance, it would simply clutter up the rfa page and cause week long pile-on opposing. This is actually alot kinder than allowing opposes to gather for the full time. What is needed, if one does not already exist, is a template to give users who have had their rfas removed. A nice encouraging one with kind words. HighInBC ^{(Need help? Ask me)} 19:55, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

Right. And new users shouldn't even be requesting. --Majorly (Talk) 20:03, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

In a perfect world new users would not do alot of things, but new users will apply to be admins. HighInBC ^{(Need help? Ask me)} 20:11, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

Which is why we need set standards for requests, and any requests made below these standards can be removed without warning. --Majorly (Talk) 20:33, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

I don't think it's fair when sometimes a b'crat or admin will close RFA's before it's scheduled to close, though it has already run for a few days, and the user is legitimate. I know mine isn't the only one. I think we should have a rule saying that unless that candidate withdraws their acceptance, or they have under 500 edits, they can't be removed until their request officially ends. I think keeping an RFA open for its full course, even though it looks like no consensus, will help the candidate fix their problems more than one that's closed in 2 hours or a day. TeckWiz^TalkContribs_@ 20:59, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

Yes, but leaving inherently doomed RfAs to the wolves (like me) won't do any good either. Every editor walking by will only rehash overrepeated advice and overindicated shortcomings. --²¹⁰physicq (c) 21:04, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

Perhaps you have some ideas as to why the "wolves" such as yourself act in this fashion, and what we could do to get them to stop? Christopher Parham (talk) 02:43, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

The mentioning of "wolves" was an attempt at sarcasm. I apologize if I wasn't clear. --²¹⁰physicq (c) 02:44, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

Either way, it's not helpful behavior and it would be good to put a stop to it. Christopher Parham (talk) 04:48, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

I'm not saying that we are hounding on helpless candidates, if that's the impression you are getting. I am exaggerating the typical "please withdraw" pile-on that woefully occurs all the time. --²¹⁰physicq (c) 04:51, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

I think it's hard to deny that RfA participants are hounding hopeless candidacies. This seems to happen with a fair degree of regularity. I'm just wondering what motivates people to note their opposition to a candidate who has already been overwhelmingly defeated. This seems like fairly unwelcoming and unfriendly behavior. Christopher Parham (talk) 05:09, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

Well, in some cases, they actually have other problems, so another oppose is justified there. The rest of the cases, I think, stem from the fact that RfA is a voting process, no matter how much it is denied, so people are conditioned to vote, whether or not there is any point. -Amarkov ^blah_edits 05:44, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

(edit conflict)Totally agree. Users with a fair amount of edits who request are usually aware of how RfA works so may be annoyed if theirs is closed early. Any less than 500 edits, well, seriously should do some research before requesting. Or we make standards that are clearly written on the main page. --Majorly (Talk) 21:05, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

Just to make it clear for readers of this entire section, since you were in an edit conflict, you were agreeing with me, right? TeckWiz^TalkContribs_@ 21:10, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

Yes, you can tell by the indentation. --Majorly (Talk) 21:12, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

The thing is, your RfA was not looking like no consensus, there was a clear consensus opposing your request. I would hope crats don't close RfAs with no consensus early, but closing when there is a consensus against seems fine to me. --Tango 21:15, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

Majorly, In the interest of fairness, you'll need to find the shortest serving editor to be promoted to admin and the admin with the lowest number of edits to be promoted and that's your minimum limits. Anything else is unacceptable, for example, you, like many other admins were promoted after less than 6 months, so imposing an arbitrary 6 month minimum period is totally unfair. --Kind Regards - Heligoland | Talk | Contribs 21:26, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

It depends where I start from. Check Angela's contributions (Angela is now a bureaucrat, and is/was a steward). A total of 83 edits, she was promoted without a problem. Obviously, times have changed. I could go back through every successful request, maybe, for this year perhaps and see what the minimums were. --Majorly (Talk) 21:39, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

Would eliminating the ability to self-nominate help? --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 21:30, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

No. There are lots of really hard working editors out there who could use the tools but haven't stuck their head above the parapet for whatever reason and haven't been noticed, but for whatever reason have decided they could use the tools. Hell, pay a visit to the right users talkpage, follow a regular nominator around on Wikipedia or go and use IRC and people will fall over themselves to nominate you. There's a certain stigma about self-noms which is unfair, a self-nom for an experienced editor is likely to be a well thought out and articulate effort, and it requires balls of steel ! --Kind Regards - Heligoland | Talk | Contribs 21:35, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

Wow, this got incredibly sidetracked. I don't think we should do anything other than make something like WP:GRFA more prominent. -Amarkov ^blah_edits 22:15, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

Agree. There shouldn't be any minimum standards, but people should realize that new users are going to continually push for adminship no matter how prominently the WP:GRFA guidelines are shown. It's clear to me from reading some of those RfAs that the self-nominators didn't bother to read anything related to the process (how to format the RfA, how to answer the nomination questions, etc.) so while making the GRFA a bit more prominent might help with some of the ill-fated self-noms, it won't end them entirely.--Caliga10 13:01, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

• GRFA should be more prominent, and it probably doesn't hurt to tell people right at the top that if they're new and inexperienced, they're highly unlikely to pass the nomination. We don't have to define "new" as "less than X months" or anything. >Radiant< 12:24, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/BlackJack

Um...this RfA should have been closed around seven hours ago, as of this writing. --²¹⁰physicq (c) 03:03, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

I say we mailbomb Essjay. :P -Amarkov ^blah_edits 03:32, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

Hahaha... Not funny! Grandmasterka 03:48, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

Yes it is. MEANIE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! -Amarkov ^blah_edits 03:54, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

I don't think you should be expecting that much of efficiencies during the holiday season. --WinHunter ^(talk) 04:57, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

Good thing a couple extra hours (read: half a day) won't affect it much. -Amarkov ^blah_edits 04:58, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] More bureaucrats?

We need more 'crats. The turnover means the ones we do have aren't as active. Redux was right.--Kchase T 05:58, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

Well, I can't run, as I'm not an admin, so that means you're going to have to. I'm not entirely sure why it's necessary that RfAs be closed quickly. -Amarkov ^blah_edits 06:00, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, it's not urgent. —Centrx→talk • 06:02, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

We probably could use a couple more bureaucrats, but it's never easy to select one: the required support level for a bureaucrat nominee is around 90% these days, and most administrators well-known enough to be credible 'crat candidates have managed to step on enough toes at some point that that attaining that support level is complicated. Plus, it's self-nomination, so there's no way of prodding an admin to seek 'cratitude except, I guess, by pushing him or her directly.

Come to think of it, when's the last time a new bureaucrat was chosen, anyway? I've been active on this page since July or August and don't recall any. Newyorkbrad 06:07, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

June 12, Redux's. -Amarkov ^blah_edits 06:12, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

A common problem with elections everywhere. The same reason why members of Congress have a hard time becoming President, because they have too long a voting record where all sorts of reasons for opposition can be found. :) —Quarl ^(talk) 2006-12-28 06:13Z

Hmm... I was pondering running for bureaucrat in the future at one point. I don't think I would pass right now, today, though, even if I decided I wanted to run right now. And I agree, it's not exactly urgent. Grandmasterka 09:28, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

zOMG! GMK for Prez. ^_^ — Nearly Headless Nick 10:52, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

There are something like, what, a thousand active admins? Surely there must be at least a couple out there who have done a lot of routine admin work, and hasn't been involved in any kind of controversy? As I read Wikipedia:Bureaucrats, the most challenging part of the job is judging "consensus" on an RfA. Maybe someone with a lot of (successful) closing experience with AfDs/MfDs? John Broughton | Talk 16:18, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Requests for bureaucratship/Mailer diablo - someone with a lot of AFD and MFD closing experience, but still failing for other matters. AFD/MFD closing isn't all there is, unfortunately. – Chacor 16:29, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

Eh, apparently that's a redlink, anyone got the correct link? – Chacor 16:34, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

Fixed the link (had to change from a capital to lowercase "d" in "diablo"). Newyorkbrad 16:38, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

Am I missing some kind of terrible bureaucrat backlog? Are there RFAs waiting days to be promoted? Namechanges going weeks? Bot flags waiting months? The main thing that is needed is patience, not more bureaucrats; I had to wait two hours to get my first sysop flag, and had to wait a lot longer than 7 days to get my others, so people should be able to wait the hour or two it takes one of us to get there. If there is a qualified candidate who wants to run, they should, and "we don't need any" shouldn't be a valid reason for opposition, but there certainly isn't a "need" for more, we're doing just fine. Essjay (Talk) 03:13, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

And more isn't really the answer. Most of those that are inactive are so because it just doesn't take many people to do it. More wouldn't necessarily help in holiday off times either. As it is now with you being more active Essjay, you do fine with it so I've not been worried about stepping back. Besides, that way we don't elbow each other out of the way to get to closing them. If people really want to help and have the time, m:OTRS is probably a more valuable service at this point for highly trusted users. - Taxman ^Talk 04:46, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

But again, as Essjay said, if anyone out there feel that they are qualified and willing, they should run. Despite the list of +20 Bureaucrats, the number of active ones is really around 6. And that says something about the job: even though it doesn't really take too many people to handle the demand, it's not a glamourous function and it's very easy to burn out doing it. One needs to be very secure about the reasons why they might want to be a Bureaucrat. As Cecropia used to say: this is a job that, if done well will cause you to go almost unnoticed; but if you make a mistake, you will be grilled about it. Being a Bureaucrat means to be prepared to explain yourself at any time in a polite, cool and clear fashion. And you can be certain that you will eventually be questioned on some level. Redux 05:27, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

Absolutely. It means doing a lot of work that goes totally unnoticed (like CHU and bot flagging). It means being held to a higher standard, even if you aren't doing a bureaucrat task; everything you do will be filtered through your status as a bureaucrat, and you will be called on things others would not be. It's not a glorious position and it doesn't come with any real power; if admins are janitors, bureacrats are the sanitation workers. Essjay (Talk) 06:12, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

Point taken about the lack of a backlog; I shouldn't act so impatient. That said, no one seems to be serious about glorifying 'cratship, and I think we can agree the turnover and burnout will eventually necessitate more.--Kchase T 06:23, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

• The only question I currently have is whether Redux's status as a steward will affect his ability to do bureaucratic tasks here. Titoxd^(?!?) 06:42, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

No reason it should. Essjay (Talk) 06:53, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

Policy-wise, I know there's no problem, but there's time issues as well, and those are the ones I was most interested in... Titoxd^(?!?) 06:56, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

Well, I was really intending to address both aspects, but I'll leave it to Redux to respond. Essjay (Talk) 07:02, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

I mght run in about a month if there is a general consensus that it might be helpful to have another 'crat. Grandmasterka 08:42, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

I don't antecipate any problems with my Bureaucrat duties on account of my recent election to Stewardship. The main reason being that I'm not alone in doing either. Far from it. Here, on enwiki, we have people like Essjay and Taxman, who share the workload very nicely, so that nobody has to be overworked. On the Meta-Wiki, I'm in the company not only of the +15 Stewards that were already there before the election, but also the other 11 Stewards who were elected alongside me — and, as it is quite common, have been very active since their election. So I'm quite comfortable, and experienced, I might say, to be able to divide my attention and, (only) if necessary, focus a little more on where I might be needed the most. For instance, if Essjay and Taxman were to both go on a wikibreak at the same time (God forbid!), I'd have no doubts in focusing on my enwiki Bureaucrat work, since I'm confident that the other Stewards will be doing an excellent job. We have a very comfortable situation both in the Bureaucratship of this Wikipedia and in the Stewardship where we all know that we are not in competition with each other, and if one of us has to, or wants to, slow down some for a while, the others are prepared, and ready, to handle the demand without any major issue. Redux 17:08, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

OK, that's fair enough. Just as long as we don't have a situation where we need more stewards and more bureaucrats simulteaneously, we'll be all right. Titoxd^(?!?) 00:29, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

I'd like to point out as well that in times when the bureaucrat load has been more demanding, both Angela and Warofdreams have been quick to jump in and help out. (And since he's not been mentioned, Nichalp is fairly active on CHU on a regular basis.) I don't think we have a problem at all with not having enough bureaucrats, especially what might be called "reserve bureaucrats," though that title may be somewhat misleading; if anything, I think what we have are three of us (myslef, Redux, and Taxman) who tend to get here before the others and "hog" all the work. Essjay (Talk) 23:04, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] New questions

I've tweaked my last two questions. I'm particularly pleased with how I've phrased the last two. Here they are. —Malber (talk • contribs) 13:19, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

Optional questions from Malber (talk • contribs)

1. What do the policy of WP:IAR and the essay WP:SNOW mean to you and how would you apply them?

A:

2. Is there ever a case where a punitive block should be applied?

A:

3. What would your thought process be to determine that a business article should be deleted using CSD:G11?

A:

4. Can you provide examples outside of Wikipedia where you have had to evaluate research and reliable sources? If yes, please provide examples.

A:

5. What is your educational experience with relation to research, proper sourcing, and reading comprehension?

A:

Sadly, the last two are pretty much pointless. It's not just admins who need to know how to research articles, ensure proper sourcing and have an ability to read material. These are requirements for any good editor and frankly candidates don't need to have admin tools to source and verify the accuracy of articles. --Kind Regards - Heligoland | Talk | Contribs 13:25, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

A few fresh ideas for additional questions. Duja► 13:33, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

I agree that the last two questions are not immediately related to admin tools. But I strongly believe that a good sysop has also to be (not just a good but an) excellent editor. I regard these skill as some kind of necessary background. And if a sysop has to handle a complex edit war, where issues such as copy-vios, sources' verifiability, obscure POV claims etc. may appear, the editing and researching skills may be proved very valuable. Therefore, I do not think the last two questions of Malber are redundant.--Yannismarou 13:46, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

The one on Turkish prison and the one on the naked man? They're not indeed, but they're my favorites nonetheless :-). Duja► 14:42, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

I think he meant from Malber's questions. | AndonicO ^{Talk | Sign Here} 14:47, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

Yannismarou, I doubt whether someone's expertise in physics would be of much use in making a judgement about a work in history or vice versa. So this requirement is going to help an admin only in his particular area of expertise. I have often noticed that in RfA people often prefer jacks_of_all_trades than subject experts. Tintin (talk) 14:14, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

I do not speak about subject expertise, but of editing and researching skills. This is another thing. Somebody can be a jack_of_all_trades with editing and researching excellence!--Yannismarou 14:17, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

Duja: :-) —Malber (talk • contribs) 13:52, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

They're actually good questions, but there are admins that aren't article writers (I know, much to the annoyance of many experienced editors) but who do have a genuine requirement for admin tools. There will be candidates who need the tools more to help with housekeeping or to help with developing software and who don't have mass experience of writing articles. Many !voters are focusing on housekeeping ability as it is, with some !voters (admins) requiring 500-1000 edits to the WP namespace. --Kind Regards - Heligoland | Talk | Contribs 14:38, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

I am more of an article writer. In my wiki-life I have had to do quite a bit of research, comparing and judging multiple sources and authors, and often contacted authors for clarifications and questions. I am rarely required to do any of this in my real life, and chances are that I am hardly alone in this. I wonder where this will put us. Tintin (talk) 14:46, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

What if the candidate doesn't want to provide examples of non-Wikipedia reaserch evaluation? | AndonicO ^{Talk | Sign Here} 14:47, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

Then they decline to answer. That's what the optional in optional questions means. GeeJo ^(t)⁄_(c) • 15:34, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

Thanks; I forgot they were optional for a moment. | AndonicO ^{Talk | Sign Here} 15:45, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

We all know it's optional, but someone putting in optional questions and the nominee not answering them makes it look bad to voters. Basically, if someone asks optional questions, your going to answer them. --(trying to get 1,000 edits in 1 month!) TeckWiz^TalkContribs_@ 15:51, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

I'm a big fan of #4. --badlydrawnjeff talk 16:24, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

I don't think I've ever seen a single nomination fail because an editor posed optional question was left unanswered. If you can find one, please let me know. If someone is afraid they won't get a single support vote out of 100 because they didn't answer an optional question, that fear is absurd. —Malber (talk • contribs) 20:17, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

I like #4 as well. Replace #5 with "have you ever been in a Turkish prison?" and you'll have my support. EVula // talk // ☯ // 16:29, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

What do questions 4 and 5 have to do with being an admin? Which of the admin tools needs researching powers to user properly? Hehe after reading a bit more I see this has already come up, I still find them out of place. HighInBC ^{(Need help? Ask me)} 16:30, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

• 1. 4 and #5 imply far higher standards for Wikipedia editors or admins than we actually have. I don't mind #1 and #2 per se, except that they've been done to death and any serious candidate can easily look up what kind of answer will cause people to oppose (obviously, speaking up against the first paragraph of WP:BLOCK isn't all that tactful, and there is at least one editor who would oppose anyone who supports WP:SNOW). >Radiant< 17:00, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

I find questions 4 & 5 irrelevant as any information provided could not authenticated. Then there is also the possibility of a person being identified by the answers to thos questions. Gnangarra 17:31, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

I'm with HighInBC. Heaven knows enough people already think of adminship as something you deserve just because you do good article writing, we don't need to encourage it. -Amarkov ^blah_edits 19:56, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

An applicant can lie about education history an a resume too. But that doesn't make the question irrelevant. I'm not asking about the nominee's ability to research, but their experience with evaluating research. When we have admins closing AfDs against consensus because they personally feel that an article is either well or improperly sourced, this is highly relevant. I don't think higher education is necessary for this. I learned about proper sourcing before I had to write my 11th grade English term paper. —Malber (talk • contribs) 20:17, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

I guess that makes sense. I find it rather funny what some people I know try to use as sources for papers... -Amarkov ^blah_edits 20:21, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

Okay, since I've been lurking around this discussion a little, I will try to voice my opinion. Template:Emot

I think Malber has rephrased the questions better than before, and if anything they are acceptable for asking in RfAs. However, I get the feeling (and take no offense) that questions 5, and maybe 4, are being asked just for the sake of it (I may be completely wrong). Really, on Wikipedia, we have two types of editors:

• The article-writing editors, who tend to work up large numbers of mainspace edits. They help the encyclopedia by adding content, references, and generally help readers.
• The article-filtering editors, who filter out inappropriate content, vandalism, and help the encyclopedia indirectly by monitoring what's inside Wikipedia.

Different people have different philosophies and gifts; some people are going to be better at writing, and some at filtering. In some ways, the better admin would be the one who filters, since admin privileges are not needed for writing articles.

For this reason, I personally don't think being able to write brilliant essays, articles, and references is a sensible requirement for adminship. Instead, users who are good at monitoring content and revert vandalism would probably be better at admin positions.

Feedback? Yuser31415 22:04, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

You read my mind. Tennis DyNamiTe ^{(sign here)} 23:18, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

• Questions 4 and 5 are, in my opinion, irrelevant to a person's ability to act as an administrator on Wikipedia. Over and over and over again we see attempts to raise the barrier which people have to overcome to become admins. This was never the intent of the administrator position. All that being an administrator is is encapsulated by the idea that that person is trusted with a few extra buttons that have completely reversible uses. That's all. You don't need to be a PhD. You don't need to have written research papers before. You don't need to know every nook and cranny of Wikipedia. You don't need to be 18 years of age. You don't need to be a perfect editor to get everything right the first time every time. You need to be trustable, and that's it. --Durin 23:25, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

I think Malber's new #4/#5 are quite applicable and not discriminatory, and I'm happy with how these questions have improved since the first controversial question - they don't strong-arm the candidate into revealing private information, as they can easily be answered without giving away specifics. Durin, you yourself are raising the bar for adminship your own way, with your excellent nominations. Whether we like it or not, the bar is constantly being raised - a look at the trends in editcountitis and months of experience required will confirm this. I would much rather the caliber of admin be raised in terms of qualities like "ability to evaluate research and reliable sources" than some of the barriers currently being used ("not enough image experience"? "not enough edits in User_talk: category", even though user has plenty of Talk:, WP:, WT: edits?!). I agree that there are a lot of good candidates that don't have research evaluation experience, and they'll probably be promoted just the same if their good qualities are shown. Good experience in research would be a bonus, but lack of such wouldn't preclude promotion. I heard complaining of "unfairness" somewhere earlier, but if anything, we should use such questions to help level the playing field when most candidates that do have degrees are advertising such without solicitation, but those without don't know to talk about other relevant research evaluation experience they've had. —Quarl ^(talk) 2006-12-29 00:50Z

I'm sorry, but I, with all due respect, disagree with you. What is your answer to my reasoning above? Why should this question be asked? Your reasoning is that is does not harm anything. You are correct. My reasoning, however, amounts to "What does it help?" What does the question have to do with adminship, per the concerns I raised above? I ask you to consider this carefully. Yuser31415 01:17, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

Yuser, my post wasn't in reply to you, but since you are asking me directly I will reply. I think your editor categorization is a false dichotomy (for example, I do both writing and filtering, using your definitions), and in any case I disagree with your statement that evaluating reliable sources is not a skill that would be useful to the "filtering" type of editor; if anything it is a "filtering" skill rather than an article-writing skill. Also, nobody has said anything about writing essays. —Quarl ^(talk) 2006-12-29 01:41Z

I'm sorry I have to disagree with you again. Take these admin actions, extracted from Wikipedia:Administrators' how-to guide:

• Deletion: Why would an admin need to know how to use references for deleting a page?
• Undeleting a page: Same as above.
• Protecting page and editing protected pages: Why are references relevant to this?
• Blocking a user: Same as all the above.

References are just as essential to normal users as admins, and I don't see any reason the question is relevant to admin actions. Instead, it is relevant to normal editing actions, in which no RfA is required. Yuser31415 02:25, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

See GuildCafe DRV for an example where the closing admin should have evaluated reliable sources more carefully, resulting in a deletion review (i.e. this affects the "delete" and "restore" buttons). I agree that not all actions an admin does, like blocking, universally need any specific skill, and that's why I argued for open-ended statements in the thread above, but there was no consensus for that so we're back to specific questions. As you say, we want a wide variety of skills among administrators, and evaluating research, in an encyclopedia, is an excellent skill to have. No one is claiming the image/category experience questions, which clearly aren't litmus tests for ability to use admin buttons, are disruptive, so why is this question disruptive? The agism and privacy concerns were valid, and have been addressed. I don't see how academism can be disruptive in an encyclopedia. —Quarl ^(talk) 2006-12-29 03:15Z

I'm sorry but your GuildCafe example depends heavily on your personal opinion, and I won't comment on my opinion. So depending on a user's philosophy, the closing admin might have made a good or bad judgement. Your example does not appear to illustrate the point. Yuser31415 03:35, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

The closing admin agreed with the point about WP:RS. There has been a culture shift recently towards higher standards of sourcing for including content. See Jimbo's comments in the thread on wikien-l about the GNAA deletion. —Quarl ^(talk) 2006-12-29 04:52Z

As we are pushing for Wikipedia to be used for academic purposes, we will start to see people who are getting more and more of their research experience through the use of Wikipedia. Wikipedia can, in certain highly sourced fields, now be used as a repository of primary and secondary sources. Also, in many places Wikipedia is being used as a text for reading comprehension. Your, Malber, questions seem to exclude any academic use of Wikipedia. I don't know if this is because you don't feel that there is any legitimate academic use or for some other reason. I also can't see how either #4 or #5 have any bearing whatsoever on being an administrator. One needs to understand policy, be trustable not to try to intentionally screw things up and have good people skills, or at least not be a m:dick. In fact, even if someone did decide to intentionally screw things up, as a certain well known and liked ABCO once did, we can now reverse everything they could do. One does not need to be able to read at a college level as everything that we produce should be understandable by someone without a bachelor's degree. If a source is too complexly written for someone without college level reading comprehension, it should probably be evaluated by a topic expert anyway. I have an extremely high English proficiency, yet wouldn't understand even half the primary sources used in honors theses at my college. I am tempted to start asking follow up questions to these along the lines of: "If you had attained one grade/degree less than you currently hold, would you still be worthy of my support? Would someone with equal maturity, knowledge, communications and person skills, and intelligence as you have be equally qualified if they had the same on-wiki experience as you?" To some this might seem like I was making a WP:POINT. To some degree I would be, though no more of a point than is being made by asking age/education questions in the first place. In fact, asking any further/optional/personal questions at all is making a point. You are saying that you think the answer to your question is relevant as to whether the person is !promoted or not. Personally, I would be happy with doing away with all questions. Let the nominator(s) and the nominee make statements. If someone has a comment to make, let them make it next to their statement of support/opposition. The nominee and nominator should be able to update/modify their statements as they see fit. If you have a particular question you should feel free to ask them, but I see no reason that your personal question needs to go on the RFA. If they think it is important, they can update their statement. If you think it is important, you can modify your comment. There's always talk of how RFA is screwed up/doesn't work. I think that if consensus is that it should change then we should start changing things and see how they work. Changing by adding more questions which even the asker feels are invasive is not a step in the right direction.—WAvegetarian•(talk) 02:33, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

Hi WAvegetarian, I'm not sure what you mean by "[Malber's] questions seem to exclude any academic use of Wikipedia" - would you explain, please? —Quarl ^(talk) 2006-12-29 03:19Z

• There's nothing offensive about these questions; however, I still think that applying them to nearly all RfAs smacks of creating de facto standard questions. That said, while there's nothing wrong with asking these questions, I don't see the point. Number two is a bit misleading and slightly deceptive in that, according to the policy itself, there is no such thing as a punitive block. For number 3, it's too narrow. Why not a broader question on CSD, rather than one of many criteria. Four and five, as said before, go more to editing than use of the tools. Unless there is a compelling reason, or some horrendous gap in the present standard questions, I would think less is more. I'd rather let the candidate do his or her nomination speech, answer the standard questions, and let his or her record speak for itself. I don't want to have to wade through a huge number of essay questions based on someone else's agenda in making up my own mind. Agent 86 06:48, 29 December 2006 (UTC)
  • If you're not going to consider the nominee's answers to the questions in your decision then skip and ignore them. Personally, I'd rather go by how well the candidate does on an interview than wade through a mountain of diffs and contribs. Questions actually make it easier for a nominee; they provide an opportunity to display qualities that they may have neglected to mention in their personal statement, or that the nominator neglected to mention. Unless the candidate answers a question in a manner that diplays a woeful misunderstanding of policy and process, I think any answer to the questions is a positive. —Malber (talk • contribs) 13:30, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

Malber, your free to do that, but I think it's pointless. Time and time again, the answers to question 1 typically have the standard answer "I'd like to be more involved with XfD" but with many candidates, it's bullshit where they've never been near an XfD discussion, let alone closed one. The answers to the default questions are only useful in pointing !voters in the right direction for trawling through contributions and diffs. If a candidate is lucky, nobody will bother checking what they say and everyone will vote on the answers to the questions, and it's easy to find out what to say in order to pick-up Support votes. --Kind Regards - Heligoland | Talk | Contribs 13:53, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

A point that I have made before, some way above on this page; if we have standard questions, either the old four or User:Malbers new ones, it is pathetically easy for any new applicant to look at the answers given by recently successful applicants and paraphrase them. What is wrong with my suggestion, apart from its revolutionary nature, to dispense with pre-set questions altogether and require RfA candidates to provide a statement detailing their qualifications, experience and reasons for wanting admin status. Supplementary questions can be posed thereafter on the basis of the voluntary statement, and decisions then made on the basis of the statement, the answers to any questions asked, and the edit history of the applicant, which is in my opinion the most important aspect of their resumé.--Anthony.bradbury 00:03, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

Yes, great point. Questions could be asked that relate directly to the candidate and their statement. --Majorly (Talk) 00:13, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] optional question - alternative approach

There has been a continuing discussion on the merits of various generic optional questions and whether they actually add any value or provide useful information to a candidates nomination. Maybe the questions need to become more of a scenario.

eg

editor AB makes legal threats against editor BC. editor BC posts to WP:AN/I how should this be addressed.

or

Bio-article A has been edited with false claims about sexual misconduct by a single IP address and a request for protection is posted at WP:RFPP what should happen.

These type of questions can be altered to suit the satement from the candidate in that if the candidate says they want to use the tools for vandal fighting then a scenario about speedy deletion of an image being use to vandalise articles could be asked. The only thing is it takes some thought from person asking the question to frame one that suits the candidates statement Gnangarra 02:26, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

You're free to do that if you think it's a good idea. The issue I have is that anyone with experience in the process for which the situation is can easily go find a precedent which will give the correct answer. -Amarkov ^blah_edits 03:32, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Canvassing and Good Points Raised

I know canvassing is frowned upon, it's a pet hate of mine, but there were some very good points raised about informing users who might like to vote but don't know much about the RfA process. I'm wondering if a simplified version of the Tangobot templates couldn't be created detailing username and RfA closing date (no mention of percentages and such) purely for inclusion on Wikiprojects and userpages, that sort of thing, and bring in a stricter no canvassing policy at the same time. Any thoughts. --Kind Regards - Heligoland | Talk | Contribs 20:47, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

I think it's accepted to include a note on your own user page, so editors who interact with you are more likely to see it. I'm not sure if we want wider advertisement of RFA. ~ trialsanderrors 23:58, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

Yes, a userpage notice is accepted, I believe so that people who interact with the user get to vote, rather than just whoever happens to watch RfAs. The problem with canvassing is that it is selective, so only the people the editor wishes to inform are informed. And I see no reason why the Wikiproject needs to know; that only leads to the absurd mentalities of "Members of a Wikiproject should stick together!" and "This Wikiproject needs to get more admins!" -Amarkov ^blah_edits 00:02, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

I don't think we should ever specifically state that canvassing is allowed in one way or another. I agree with what Amarkov said above about it being selective. I see that as a problem. If a user chooses to advertise, that's their prerogative; stating that it is "allowed" doesn't do anything but attempt to limit those who are deciding whether to support or oppose. And, in my mind, advertising on a WikiProject is a big no-no. -- Renesis (talk) 00:38, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

See also the thread at support #25 and {{Rfa-notice}}.--Kchase T 00:42, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

See also WP:SPAM#Canvassing. If those rules are followed (and not abused - either intentionally, or even unintentionally), then "canvassing" already is allowed. However, "votestacking" (the concern behind the concern) is not. That said, traditionally, RfA is about trust. And as I have said elsewhere, a person's determination of trust is not something that can or should be quantified. It's like asking a gambler what makes one lucky. So while canvassing may be "legal", the community has such a concern about abuse of it towards votestacking or campaigning, that they tend to frown on any notice beyond a simple notice on the nominee's user page (as noted above). (As it could be said that a part of the failing of my first attempt at RfA was due to voter's perceptions of canvassing, I think I may have a bit of experience/insight on this : ) - jc37 09:41, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

Speaking of, I was considering splitting off WP:CANVAS from WP:SPAM, although they might be related they're never really used in the same context. ~ trialsanderrors 21:02, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

Discussion now underway at WT:CANVAS ~ trialsanderrors 09:53, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

What's the difference between spamming talk pages and advertising a nomination in wikipedia related IRC channels? —Malber (talk • contribs) 00:42, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Ooh, two nominations at the moment

I wonder why the number of nominations fluctuates so much these days. I think about a month ago at one time there were almost 20 noms. :) Gizza^{Chat ©} 08:50, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

I keep meaning to register a sock to toss up on RfA for whenever we have so few people, just so it doesn't seem quite so lonely. ;-) EVula // talk // ☯ // 08:56, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

It will be cool if nobody is nominated for the next three days. Then we may have no noms running at a particular moment. Gizza^{Chat ©} 12:17, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

I've seen two nominations several times prior to today, but never one or zero - does anyone recall the last time that happened? Picaroon 18:53, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

In a way, back in the time when self-noms were separated from the other nominations. The self-nom slot would sometimes be empty or have just one or two noms. But that's a different Era in "wiki time". ;-) Redux 19:04, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, that's when the self-noms were separated, aka. "sitting in the back of the bus". Times have changed. feydey 19:23, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

Indeed, even back when I started in the summer of 2004, there was never a single moment I can remember when we had less than two noms. Back then, if you were especially popular, you might get more than 30 support votes. How times have changed, indeed. – ClockworkSoul 19:24, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

It is the holiday season. I'd guess that people are recovering from turkey induced comas or the festivus feats of strength and are getting ready to celebrate the new year. Agent 86 21:13, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

• Wel, everything's going pretty well, so there's not too much need to admins at the moment. Or maybe I should apply just to annoy those who want to see 1 or 0 candidates :P. Actually, I fall under that, I'd like to see very few. --Wizardman 21:23, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

Once everyone from #wikipedia-in is certified as an admin you should see things slow down. —Malber (talk • contribs) 00:45, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

You may want to join in then... ;) --Srikeit 15:03, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

Oh yeah, and see my RfA turn into a RfC by NHN? No thanks. —Malber (talk • contribs) 16:03, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

5 nominations now, so the low number probably won't happen again for a while. --Wizardman 03:28, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] RE: Request for Adminship

Hi,

I would like to know where or to whom I would request adminship. I have been editing since late December of 2006. I now it is not long and if you all feel that my request should hold off for a while until I have put in some longer time in editing on Wikipedia I will be more than cooperative to do so. Anyways, I would like to learn more about adminship, mediating in disputes, and starting Wiki projects. Your advice will be much appreciated. Regards

Wiki Raja 12:01, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

Requests for adminship is the right place, but unfortunately you are still definitely too new to obtain adminship. There are no universal standards, but there is a collection of what various people have considered to be important qualifications. Good candidates often have several months of participation (across various parts of Wikipedia) and a few thousand edits. You may find it useful to read Wikipedia:Administrators and Wikipedia:Guide to requests for adminship. Dragons flight 12:58, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

If you are interested in mediating disputes, you might want to take a look at WP:MEDCOM. --Tango 17:10, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

Thanks. I will keep that in mind. Wiki Raja 22:24, 31 December 2006 (UTC)