Wikipedia talk:Requests for adminship/Archive 43

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Edits per day: why does it matter?

I'm confused at the emerging trend of using number of edits per day (or month etc.) as a way of judging the candidate. I notice this for Simetrical and especially EvanProdromou. What does it matter if the edits are good ones? These candidates have both been around for at least a year (3 years in the case of Evan) so I don't feel their commitment to the project can be questioned (Evan is a Developer!). These two candidates want to help the project, so why should we deny them that? Not everyone has the time to contribute for hours a day, but that should not reflect on them as users, nor should it deny them the opportunity to contribute in the way they choose. It's not as if we have a limited number of adminships to hand out or anything. Any reversion of vandalism or clearing of VFD backlog is valuable, however small.

The main thing that worries me about this arguement is that the quality of the candidate's edits is not under question, nor has anyone suggested they are likely to abuse admin tools. We seem to be losing sight of the real issue in RFA's: is this candiate likely to abuse admin tools, or will they put them to good use? Could someone please tell me how frequency of contribution is relevent to this question? Raven4x4x 04:15, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

Actually it bothers me too. There's nothing wrong with being a "part-time" vs. a "full-time" admin. People have lives outside of this web site. Antandrus (talk) 04:21, 12 December 2005 (UTC)
It's also very hard to check 2000+ edits to find out if someone has done something really nasty. Kim Bruning 04:26, 12 December 2005 (UTC)
Editcountitis is something that I honestly dislike and do not take into account when voting. Some feel that it is a measure of how well-seasoned an editor is, though; the more they edit the more they are likely to understand and follow official policy. --Vortex 04:32, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

With respect, there's an underlying philosophical issue at the core of this debate. A number of users hold to the ideal that adminship is "no big deal". A number of other users hold that adminship is no longer "no big deal". I could put forth arguments why edits per day may have a basis in the worthiness of a candidate. In fact, I have in the past. What I have found is the arguments tend to fall on deaf ears, and regardless miss the mark of addressing the core philosophical difference. Before we can come to terms with whether or not edits per day is any reasonable basis on which to judge a potential admin, we would need to come to some agreement on what adminship is today, and what it means on average to the community. But, I doubt such agreement is possible. --Durin 04:44, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

Well, I feel that admins should be exactly what the RFA page says: "trusted users who are familiar with Wikipedia policies", who will use the admin tools to make the encyclopedia better, and who are able to work well in discussions with other users. That's what matters in my mind. By the way Durin, I'm interested in those arguements as to why you feel edits per day does matter, just for interests sake. Also, is there anything in my arguement above that you disagree with? Again, I'm just interested. Raven4x4x 04:54, 12 December 2005 (UTC)
Edits per day might matter, I'm thinking, because policy (however you want to define policy) changes relatively quickly on Wikipedia, and a part-time admin might soon find themselves believing in and enforcing an outdated set of rules. Yes, they'll be pointed to the new rules, and it's not a big deal, but the desire to not need caretakers for the caretakers makes some sense. —Bunchofgrapes (talk) 05:00, 12 December 2005 (UTC)
Indeed. I just fail to agree with many that the yardstick must be the number of edits. It'd be like finding a psychologist. Do you pick someone for the job who has counselled hundreds of people? Or someone who appears to be proficient at it? If you're hiring for a legal firm, do you find someone who's got millions of cases under their belt or who has the skills necessary to win? Both? Neither? You see my point. I rely on edit counts if and only if I can't determine that the user is goig to benefit Wiki by being an admin. As for what adminship is today -- it depends. I think that adminship is taking care of custodial duties but also being a more public face than a regular editor. You decide. --Vortex 05:03, 12 December 2005 (UTC)
[Edit conflict] But adminship is primarily about extra editing tools. Most admins do not choose an administrative role. This isn't what adminship is about. In addition, I don't think that policy does change all that quickly. AfD might replace VfD, formatting might change, but there are clear instructions on the page. Someone who was heavily involved in X (say, VFD) who left for a few months might have some initial shock of re-adjustment, but someone who is only a part-time editor doesn't assume that X is done this way because s/he didn't have such deeply ingrained habits. In addition, of course, someone who reads is not likely to be someone who edits all that much - it takes a long time to work your way through WP:AN or to figure out what's going on in some dispute. Try reading an Arbcomm case - your edit rate falls pretty quickly if you really want to figure out what's going on. Guettarda 05:09, 12 December 2005 (UTC)
I mostly agree; I was just trying to answer Raven4x4x's curiousity as best I could. I do wonder what you mean when you say "but adminship is primarily about extra editing tools", though. Except for the rollback button and perhaps the ability to edit permanently protected pages, every other admin ability — blocking, deleting, protection — is tied up in a vast web of policy. —Bunchofgrapes (talk) 05:19, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

We have extra editing tools that we don't want untested users to have. For convenience, the collections of tools were given names: Administrator (or Sysop), Bureaucrat, Developer. Unfortunately (at least in my view), the title Administrator has taken on a life distinct from the tools. Now if a valuable editor only wants to roll back vandalism on the pages on his watchlist that he has so diligently worked on, we are telling him that because he doesn't visit AfD, contribute to policy discussions or meet some other criteria du jour that he can't have the tools. Counting recent edits is just one more of those hurdles that only make sense if you buy into the notion that being annointed administrator has some special meaning apart from the tools. Personally, I don't buy in. -- DS1953 05:22, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

[after edit conflict] That's a good point Guettarda raises. I've spent three-hour evenings reading and not making a single edit, but those were the times I really learned policy. Edit counts, strictly speaking, remain misleading. For me there is a minimum involvement threshold where I perceive dedication to the project -- I'm not sure if I can quantify it, I just intuit it from the candidate's history and behavior. Antandrus (talk) 05:24, 12 December 2005 (UTC)
I just wanted to point out that your position that there is a minimum involvement threshold and then edit counting doesn't matter is strongly consistent with the past probability of pass/fail RFA. --Gmaxwell 15:20, 12 December 2005 (UTC)
Christopher Parham has it pretty close to dead on when he says "unlikely to abuse admin tools" on an RFA. There's not much else to decide. Rx StrangeLove 05:52, 12 December 2005 (UTC)
I agree with DS1953. It's about the tools. The hurdles do not make a better encyclopedia. Tedernst | talk 06:09, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

(Another edit conflict here. Good grief, maybe we need subpages.)

Let us consider: what factors into the decision to make someone an admin? On the one hand, we have the benefit: how much more will this person help out Wikipedia by being an admin? The answer to that is, to a point, dependent on edit rate; if someone only checks over a few pages once a week or something, he's probably not going to be using his admin powers much. However, the most important factor in this part of the assessment should be whether the user pledges to use his admin powers in answer to Question 1—assuming, of course, that the user has contributed productively for some time, the chance of their lying in answer to that question is low. If a respectable user with few edits says he'll start checking RC ten times a day from work, say, that's far better than if a respectable user with many edits says he probably won't check any of the places where admins are needed.

Now for the second part of the decision: cost. What is the risk that this person will abuse his admin powers? Well, if he's contributed many productive edits, it's extremely likely that he's only out to help the project, no matter what his edit rate. Possibly there are people who would contribute a thousand productive edits for the sole purpose of getting an adminship so that they could to delete all uploaded images, say, for the sake of causing havoc, but these people are going to be vanishingly rare if they exist at all. But the critical thing about this part of the assessment is, anything an admin does can be immediately reverted by any one of hundreds of other admins. The one exception is image uploads, of course; I believe those require a developer to retrieve. But other than that, any abuse of power will result in a brief moment of chaos followed by a reversion, desysopping, and permanent blocking.

So we have two components, cost and benefit. The cost, I say, is negligible for anyone who has contributed extensively and productively, no matter what their edit rate: they're unlikely to do anything wrong, and on the off chance they do, they can be quickly dealt with. The benefit may not be great for someone who doesn't edit much, but it will still exist, and so any Wikipedian who has contributed productively and is even semi-active should be given adminship. This is why Jimbo Wales said it's "no big deal": because the software doesn't allow admins to do much harm. —Simetrical (talk) 06:14, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

Well said. Tedernst | talk 22:50, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

Edits per day is a nearly meaningless metric. We measure it because it is easy to measure and it's fun to bandish about numbers. If you assume it means anything important, you're making a huge mistake. Statistically, edit rate beyond a certian minimum threshold (which most people have) has no correlation with pass/fail of RFA, nor does it appear to tell us anything about how likely someone is to be deadmined. It doesn't do much to tell us about how often will use admin abilities. ... Frankly I think the only hunk of data about adminship and edit rates which is actually interesting is that people who pass adminship on average have a greater decline of edit rate than people who fail... even though some who fail have their edit rate go straight to zero. Some users are high volume editors and demonstrate poor judgement as admins, some users are low volume but always seem to have teriffic judgement. It's the quality of a users actions that count, not their volume. --Gmaxwell 07:02, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

One thing I'd like to point out is, given two candidates with approximately equal edit counts, I'd prefer the editor who'd been here longer, that is, the editor who got their 2000 edits over six months rather than three. That is, if I used numerical standards, which I don't. Demi T/C 08:11, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

  • Agreed. But your volume isn't important concensus is far from correct. In theory, that's what should be the deciding factor in a rfa, but it isn't. Like Mr.Sidaway said on his talkpage, "Its a Aunt Sally bar. Its a coconut shy. Its a duck shoot." The amount of edits is perhaps the best factor we have to go when considering somone for adminship, because it shows how active they are, it shows constructiveness, and most of all, it shows where (and how) they're upholding wikipedia. Just look at the current nominations for instance- WhoKnowsEmperorNorton is failing miserably because of his lack of edits, and that says to the voters he's not qite suited to the position yet. Its because we cannot go by a person's views and thought processes (this is the internet). So "by the numbers" is one of the best deciding factors. Also I quote from Mr.Sidaway: "That's the way it is until we think up a better way to decide who will be an administrator." -MegamanZero 08:15, 12 December 2005 (UTC)
    • It isn't at all a good metric. Are you saying that we would prefer to admin someone who stub sorts 50 articles a day over someone who writes one complete featured article a week? --Gmaxwell 14:37, 12 December 2005 (UTC)
      • You're right. That's exactly what I'm trying to say, and its not fair. But..that's what a large number of voters look at, and there's little we can do to change that mindset. Then there's the second most terrifying problem withh rfa- bandwagoons. It's an undisputed fact that a lot of voters simply aren't thinking for themselves, and merely vote the same position thier friend or aqantince did. Again, I quote, That's the way it is until we think up a better way to decide who will be an administrator.-MegamanZero 15:24, 12 December 2005 (UTC)
        • But how does that make edits per day a good or useful number? ... I don't think people are being quite as stupid as you suggest, but even if they were it would just be all the more reason to NOT provide a count of edits/day. --Gmaxwell 16:58, 12 December 2005 (UTC)
          • It doesn't. But, that's how it is...-MegamanZero 17:04, 12 December 2005 (UTC)
    "That's the way it is until we think up a better way to decide who will be an administrator." Is that so? Then how about this: any Wikipedian in good standing of at least six months with at least 750 edits who expresses a commitment to remain on Wikipedia for the near future and who has read the various relevant policy pages should be made an admin. Now can we toss posts per day out the window?
Yes, posts per day expresses commitment and time spent on Wikipedia per day. It does not indicate any kind of familiarity with Wikipedia policies, necessarily; it does not indicate responsibility. But above all, as noted above, the cost of making someone an admin is negligible if they're any member in good standing. Who cares how much they'll use their abilities? Most will use their abilities at least occasionally, the rest are no harm. If they meet the criteria I mentioned, 99% won't abuse their powers, and the remainder will cause no lasting damage and can be easily dealt with. —Simetrical (talk) 20:45, 12 December 2005 (UTC)
If you're being serious about your conjecture, then there are quite a few people who fit that thesis of yours, Simetrical. If only it were so simple...Unfortuntely, that's not concensus,a policy, or an requiste for adminship, and I quote again, "that's the way it is....", you know the rest. :) -MegamanZero 22:49, 12 December 2005 (UTC)
Nobody is denying that some people do vote based largely on edit rate. What people are discussing is whether they should. And no, my counterproposal is not consensus or policy, but neither is judging based on edit rate. If this discussion is any indication (which it may not be), it seems consensus is substantially against judging based largely on edit rate. "That" is not "the way it is". —Simetrical (talk) 02:47, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

Familiarity with policy

In my opinion, one of the reasons activity level is important for an admin to be successful is, as others have noted, ongoing familiarity with policy. A part time admin who applies policy could cause considerable problems among users who feel they are following policy, only to find they are violating policy as the part time admin sees it. Policy changes, and rapidly. Anybody...anybody...can change policy. Personally, I think this is a shortcoming of Wikipedia. Policy pages should be protected. Let's have a look at how often policies were edited over the last month:

  • Wikipedia:Account deletion: 0 edits
  • Wikipedia:Arbitration policy: 3 edits
  • Wikipedia:Assume good faith: 2 edits
  • Wikipedia:Banning policy: 5 edits
  • Wikipedia:Blocking policy: 34 edits
  • Wikipedia:Civility: 5 edits
  • Wikipedia:Copyrights: 8 edits
  • Wikipedia:Criteria for speedy deletion: 141 edits
  • Wikipedia:Deletion policy: 51 edits
  • Wikipedia:Edit war: 11 edits
  • Wikipedia:Image use policy: 4 edits
  • Wikipedia:Naming conventions: 31 edits
  • Wikipedia:Naming conventions (categories): 23 edits
  • Wikipedia:No binding decisions: 1 edit
  • Wikipedia:No legal threats: 3 edits
  • Wikipedia:No original research: 11 edits
  • Wikipedia:No personal attacks: 10 edits
  • Wikimedia:Privacy policy: 3 edits
  • Wikipedia:Profanity: 4 edits
  • Wikipedia:Protection policy: 9 edits
  • Wikipedia:Resolving disputes: 2 edits
  • Wikipedia:Sock puppet: 22 edits
  • Wikipedia:Three-revert rule: 4 edits
  • Wikipedia:Undeletion policy: 7 edits
  • Wikipedia:Verifiability: 40 edits
  • Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not: 37 edits
  • Wikipedia:Wikipedia is not a dictionary: 0 edits

Of the 27 policies shown above, more than half averaged at least one edit per week. Even if we assume half of all edits on policy were vandalism and reverts, we'd still have more than one third of policy changing on average on a weekly basis. Note that this is just policy as taken from Category:Wikipedia official policy. This does not show Category:Wikipedia guidelines. There is a great deal of material that an admin not only needs to be familiar with, but needs to maintain a familiarity with. As many have, it can most certainly be argued that a conscientious and trustworthy admin will not attempt to enforce policy until they read and understand current policy. However, it can also be argued that due to the frequently changing nature of policy and guidelines, an inactive admin is hamstrung and nearly incapable of applying policy in a conscientious manner because of the frequently changing environment. An inactive admin is thus either going to make mistakes in the application of policy or self-prevented from using admin tools..so why have them? This is just one aspect of why an inactive admin candidate is of concern to some people. There are others. --Durin 14:42, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

While I don't disagree with the point, there are a good few existing admins who don't know up-to-date procedures, and who are probably implementing policy as it was rather than as it is. I'm not sure what conclusion, if any, one should draw from that! The Land 14:56, 12 December 2005 (UTC)
I disagree with this point. There is no reason to believe that someone's edit rate is strongly related to their *reading* of policy discussion. I do agree that people engaged in some admin activities need to say current with our policies and practices, but edit rate isn't a good metric there. Why don't we ask people what admin process related subjects they stay current on and how they keep up with the flood of changes rather than try to guess at their behavior by looking at electronic chicken bones? We also must keep in mind that little of what we do can not be reverted, so if someone does fall behind it is easy enough to correct their mistake and clue them in... We'll have to do that in any case, because people are simple not going to read every single change. --Gmaxwell 15:14, 12 December 2005 (UTC)
  • In response to The Land, the main point is that policy is not dictated by what is written on the policy page. Policy is what exists in the mindset (yes, consensus) of most editors. Of course that's hard to gauge unless you're a telepath, but that's why we write it down. If I were to add to policy that people whose username starts with T may be permablocked, then it wouldn't be policy even if nobody bothered to revert it (and yes, that happens a lot, albeit in less extreme examples than I just stated). So being level-headed is far more important for an admin than knowing policy pages by heart. Radiant_>|< 22:43, 12 December 2005 (UTC)
Most admins stick to one or two areas so they don't need to know every bit of policy. On top of that not all policy is about admin actions.Geni 11:01, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

Admin actions can be undone, so?

  • In most of these discussions, I feel uncomfortable when people harp on the point that "all admin actions can be undone and so, it is no big deal." However, the last thing that we want to do is spend time on undoing admin actions as we have several urgent and important things to be done. I guess that is the reason why some voters vote "better-safe-than-sorry" the idea being that it is a cost avoidable. --Gurubrahma 05:26, 13 December 2005 (UTC)
    How many admins have gone rogue so far? These are new requirements people are adding, so what problem is being solved? Wearing a football helmet all day might be 'better safe than sorry' too... - CHAIRBOY (☎) 05:31, 13 December 2005 (UTC)
  • Even if fully 1% of users trusted according to my lax criteria stated above went amok, they'd still be outnumbered 99:1 by responsible admins. Sure, undoing their actions would take a bit of time under the current software, but not too much more time than it would take if they went amok in a non-admin fashion (such as by moving pages instead of deleting them). They would just be slightly more harmful, if the admin were truly malicious (range-blocking the Internet, anyone?). But either way, I'm not aware of a single admin out of several hundred who have done any such thing so far, and if we went my way and doubled or tripled the admin numbers overnight, I doubt we'd see that rate increase much. —Simetrical (talk) 02:47, 14 December 2005 (UTC)
There has been one case on en where a missunderstanding resulted in an adminin appearing rogue. There have been two cases on other projects. In all cases the admins was delt with in pretty short order.Geni 09:41, 14 December 2005 (UTC)
  • The idea that everything an admin does (except image deletion) can be undone is also flawed from another perspective. The impact that a well-meaning but errant admin can have on other users is not so easily undone. Whether we have rogue admins or not isn't really something we can state with certainty. We have essentially no feedback mechanisms for admin performance. --Durin 13:41, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

We have the same feedback mechanisms for admin performance as we have for anything else: RFCs, RFArbs, etc. Those aren't 100% effective, maybe, but what could a rogue admin do without being spotted? I still feel that I had a run-in with a well-meaning but errant admin once, but I started an RFC and the community judged the admin to be in the right. —Simetrical (talk) 02:47, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

That's not precisely feedback. An admin can intimidate, bully, or bite subtly without crossing the line into Rfc territory - remember 2 users have to have tried to work the same problem out with the Admin prior to Rfc - and what newbies or even middlebies (yes horrid neologism, late for work humor my bad phrasing) know about it? Feedback implies good as well as bad, positive as well as negative experiences, and does not have to fit such narrow criteria. Once and admin hits Rfc (legitimately) he's often annoyed quite a few people. One puppy's opinion. KillerChihuahua?!? 12:59, 14 December 2005 (UTC)
However it is quite hard for an admin to behave seriously badly without clashing with other admins.Geni 13:29, 14 December 2005 (UTC)
Not quite true. If you take a look at the Deletion log, you'll find dozens of articles being speedy deleted each day for reasons which go well beyond WP:CSD. CSD:G1, for example, is applied very liberally by some admins, and when the article is recreated it is promptly removed (incorrectly!) based on CSD:G4, often by the same misguided admin. Actions like that do not result in clashes with other admins, but I know at least one case where it resulted in a loss of a well-intentioned editor; I have no doubt there were many others. This is one of the reasons why I believe bureaucrats on en-wiki should have the power to de-sysop. With over 600 admins, many of which are new, we need a sizeable group of experienced users to watch over their actions, looking for systematic mistakes or abuse of power. I don't see de-sysoping becoming an everyday event, but the presence of more bureaucrats inspecting admin actions, and having the power to desysop, will surely raise admin standards. Owen× ☎ 03:49, 16 December 2005 (UTC)
It is also the case, I have recently found, that 24-hour blocks commented as "vandalism" are unlikely to receive much scrutiny, if any. If an admin were to ignore blocking policy, defining "vandalism" in a broad manner and blocking new accounts without any warning or discussion, the community does not neccessarily pick up on this quickly. —Bunchofgrapes (talk) 04:05, 16 December 2005 (UTC)


Repeat noms

Just to make sure: If I nominate myself for the second time, do I enter this into the self-nom box: Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Deltabeignet 2 or this: Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Deltabeignet_2 or something else entirely? Deltabeignet 03:58, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

Improper dating/timing of RfAs

Recently, we had a dust up about Hamster Sandwich's RfA being prematurely closed due to clerical error in properly dating/timing his RfA. Well, we've had another RfA that was improperly dated/timed and was closed two days early. This one is considerably less problematic as it closed at 27-0-0. Observe:

  • On 7 December User:Sebastiankessel created the RfA. ([1]).
  • On 8 December User:Pablo-flores accepted, answering questions as well [2].
  • On 9 December User:Sebastiankessel inaccurately added the RfA to Rschen7754's RfA, which had the effect of adding Pablo's RfA to WP:RFA, however improperly. [3].
  • Within the hour, I noticed this had happened and corrected it, and properly posted it to WP:RFA. I further corrected the end time and date to reflect when the RfA was posted to WP:RFA. [4]. However, I made an error in that I left the end day as "Wednesday", though the date and time were correct for 16 December, not 14 December as previously entered by User:Sebastiankessel.
  • On 13 December, User:Sebastiankessel noticed this and changed the date back to December 14th, stating in the edit summary that he did not know how it got there like that [5].
  • On 14 December, bureaucrat Cecropria closed the RfA, promoting Pablo.

Because of the Hamster Sandwich situation, I've been watching RfAs more closely now to make sure that their end dates and times are correct. My general rule of thumb for modifying them has been that if it is off by more than an hour from when it was actually posted to WP:RFA, then I've been modifying the end date/time to reflect when it was actually posted. I would encourage other people to do the same, and to bureaucrats please pay close attention to when an RfA was posted to WP:RFA to determine the proper close time so we can avoid future problems in this area. Thank you. --Durin 14:17, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

  • I came back from my Wikinap to find a considerable number of past-due nominations (successful and not) and did some cleanup, including a few promotions a couple of hours early, which is well established as bureaucrat judgment for successful nominations. I routinely check end times vs. nomination times. Now, I don't really understand the situation with Pablo-flores that you outlined above. It seems to me the nomination was made on the 7th, closed on the 14th. Something happened in between which is not obvious up front, but how was a bureaucrat supposed to know this? And in this case, no harm done anyway.
  • But speaking as a bureaucrat, I have two requests to all: (1) Please make an effort to put and keep nominations in chronological order, newest (even by a matter of minutes) above older ones. In making the last dozen or so promotions/non-promos, a lot were out of order, increasing the chances of promotions not being made in a timely manner. When there are two-dozen-odd noms at the same time, I think you can understand the inefficiency of having to scroll through and check each in chronological order every time there a 'crat looks at the list. Also remember that you don't need a 'crat or even an admin to reorder a mistake if one spots it and knows what he/she is doing. (2) Please please if you see an anomoly that messes up a nomination, please drop a note to one or two or three of the bureaucrats who are active at any given time. An ounce of prevention, etc. etc. Cheers, Cecropia 16:06, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
  • The nomination was made on the 7th, but was not actually posted to WP:RFA until the 9th. Thus, the end date of the 14th was incorrect; it should have been the 16th. This was corrected by me, then later uncorrected. I'm not asserting fault on your part Cecropia; just noting this situation and hope we don't have more repeats. I've reviewed the end times/dates for all current RfAs and their squence on WP:RFA. For now, everything is correct. --Durin 16:18, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
  • Thank you for the watchdogging, Durin. On behalf of the heartless bureaucracy, it is appreciated. -- Cecropia 16:28, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
  • Arf! Arf! You guys aren't heartless by the way, just buried in red tape :) --Durin 16:33, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

It's stuff like this that has made me decide to start living on UTC time. :) Jdavidb (talk • contribs) 17:13, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

Durin...and others who are following this discussion still... In the future, perhaps it would be best to bring this sort of issue to the fore on the project page itself (on the individual RFA's page, as obnoxious as that might seem, sometimes that's what it takes to get attention...just don't use flashing text!)... I don't actually see anything improper in this, since the way I read "the rules", there's no requirement that RfA's actually have to be posted to this page...just that they can't be posted until the nominee has accepted. I would say that your note about the 7th vs 9th is valid most especially if the nominee feels they're being shortchanged by an "early" close date. I realize my unopposed proposed solution to the "close dating" problem in response to the HS thing and the ensuing discussion, was that the absolute 7-day deadline should be determined by when the nomination was listed on WP:RFA, but the fact of the matter is that, while my proposal didn't cause any waves, it also failed to garner thunderclaps of accolades. So. I'm going to make a quasi-policy proposal here and now: when an RfA nomination is accepted, the _nominator_ (I had to list my own) is required to list it on WP:RFA. When that happens, someone or someones, have the duty of determining whether or not the nomination has been properly accepted (I'm assuming someone is already doing this, given that it's a requirement for listing!), and calculating the closing date, at that time. That way, any discussion about the closing date, or any disagreement, can be handled beforehand rather than afterwards. The HamSan thing is old news...I chalk it up to human error. The above-referenced case, however, is something that could have been resolved long before the closing time, if even just by leaving a note "to the closing bureaucrat: there's a dispute about the closing time of this RfA". Comentario? Tomertalk 09:06, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

RFA Summary

I find myself missing out on RFAs that I would care to comment on because the page is just so large that I don't bother to look through it. Because of this, I decided to create a bot to generate RFA summaries. So, once an hour a page in my userspace will be updated with information on open noms. Stop by if you also find the need for an RFA summary. Dragons flight 10:00, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

I hope the bot has been approved at Wikipedia:Bots. --Gurubrahma 12:32, 18 December 2005 (UTC)
It hasn't got a flag (Special:Listusers/bot) but the bot flag is for bots that are making edits every few seconds, not every hour. It is intended to stop RC getting clogged up. No risk of that. [[Sam Korn]] 12:36, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

Another milestone

In case people are interested, we've currently got 743 admins; it's a bit unclear how some votes will go, but one of User:Eliezer, User:Croat Canuck or User:W.marsh will almost certainly be our 750th admin in a couple of days. (This doesn't count those who were admined and have since been de-admined, mind you).

This is a pretty impressive rate - #500, User:FCYTravis, was only made an admin on July 1 this year! Shimgray | talk | 00:12, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

That depends on perspective. Since the size of the editing community is doubling every ~8 months, one could argue that we are still lagging behind. Dragons flight 00:21, 21 December 2005 (UTC)
Actually, if anyone is interested, it would be quite possible to model these things... --HappyCamper 00:23, 21 December 2005 (UTC)
According to Wikistats [6], the total number of users increased 21% (35,946 to 43,531) from July to October (the latest month for which stats are available). The number of users making over 5 edits (in a month) increased 15% (12,713 to 14,434). The number of users making over 100 edits in a month was virtually unchanged (1,821 to 1,854). Carbonite | Talk 00:30, 21 December 2005 (UTC)
So what can we do to increase admin turnout? BD2412 T 03:39, 21 December 2005 (UTC)
Free beer? android79 04:08, 21 December 2005 (UTC)
I mean the frequency of new admins being made, not the existing admins showing up to a party! ;-) BD2412 T 04:10, 21 December 2005 (UTC)
Free beer solves lots of problems. Then it creates more. android79 04:13, 21 December 2005 (UTC)
Free beer has been the cause of 99.3% of my cited incivility. What I need is a few friends to share it with, to keep me from editing while intoxicated. (Unfortunately, I can type better smashed than most people can when they're stone-cold sober...) (For the record, I'm on beer #9 right now...) Tomertalk 09:10, 21 December 2005 (UTC)
Nominate more people? Actively look through the lists of users with lots of edits to see who should've been nominated months ago? ナイトスタリオン ✉ 10:14, 21 December 2005 (UTC)
I think the best way to remedy backlog is to make administrators out of the people causing the backlog on pages. I tip my hat to whoever it was that nominated User:Nv8200p for admin. He's very active on image maintenance, and he would cause so much activity on WP:IFD that it would be backlogged for weeks. Now he still does a lot of work on images, but now he's around to process the listings himself too. I think he's single-handedly maintaining IFD and WP:PUI now. Coffee 15:03, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

We also have a lot of new users (Myself included) trying there luck at the RfA. Of course they failed, but even they seem to covet being a sysop. -- Eddie 07:36, 25 December 2005 (UTC)

OK, now I'm on beer number umpteenth...

but...seriously... What's the obsession with crossing out anon votes on RfAs? Everyone knows they don't count. Why antagonize anons (review WP:BITE)? I would like to recommend that people not strike anon votes by non-"proven vandals", as doing so not only BITEs newcomers, it casts unnecessary aspersions on anon editors' contributions to the process. Yes, we all know anon votes are viewed with extreme skepticism in WP domainspace, but I don't see that anything constructive is gained by slapping anons in the face by striking their votes. Let's just please trust the bcrats to do the job for which they've been selected. They can see an anon vote as such for what it is. That said, I have no problem with people pointing out that "this is X.X.X.X anon's 23rd edit" or "this unsigned vote/comment was made by X.X.X.X", but both of those are immeasurably less hostile than simply striking out comments or votes. WP:CIV applies in WP domainspace equally as it does in article and article_talk space, and this increasing trend toward slashing votes seems to be a violation thereof. Cheers? Catcalls? Tomertalk 13:23, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

  • Go have another beer :) --Durin 13:27, 21 December 2005 (UTC)
  • I agree. Striking out indicates that something should not be read, but we have no policy of discouraging anons from commenting, and their comments should not be struck (except where the comment would also be struck/removed coming from a registered user). It is sufficient to note that the vote was cast by an anonymous user. It would also be fine, I think, to indent the comment so it doesn't appear in the numbered list. Christopher Parham (talk) 17:56, 21 December 2005 (UTC)
  • I agree that overstriking it is not appropriate. -- DS1953 talk 18:01, 21 December 2005 (UTC)
  • Cheers catcalls Rx StrangeLove 01:52, 22 December 2005 (UTC)
  • Support. Don't bite newcomers. Just tell them kindly on their talk pages that their votes don't count. --TantalumTelluride 18:06, 22 December 2005 (UTC)
  • Good Idea, TantalumTelluride -- Eddie 06:12, 25 December 2005 (UTC)

What's the criteria

If You ask a lot of users, 4 out of 5 would like a promotion, even by relatively new users. It's a highly coveted commodity. Knowing what criteria the folks in charge might help those who attempt this in the future. Like, exactly how many Support votes (minus Oppose votes) do You need to get that promo? -- Eddie 06:15, 25 December 2005 (UTC)

75–80% constitutes consensus. That's right there on the main RfA page: "the threshold for consensus here is roughly 75-80 percent support". Problem is, bureaucrats don't just count votes: Wikipedia is WP:NOT a democracy. There can always be mitigating circumstances that allow a 72% support to pass, or a 82% to fail (rarely). —BorgHunter (talk) 06:57, 25 December 2005 (UTC)

Thanks, BorgHunter (talk). BTW, I didn't hesitate to try My luck at the RfA a few days after registering, thinking IP contributions would count, but that's not the case. -- Eddie 07:33, 25 December 2005 (UTC)

If I remember correctly, you were unwilling to publicly disclose what IP you made your contributions under during your RFA, making it impossible for the community to evaluate those contributions. —Cleared as filed. 07:35, 25 December 2005 (UTC)

Actually I forgot the IPs I used. I travel a lot and I don't keep track of the IPs I use. I said that because I was under stress at the time. Luckily I'll have a lot to show on My next attempt. Since then, I put up a future RfA subpage, which I can update to reflect contributions. Feel free to talk about it here. -- Eddie 07:39, 25 December 2005 (UTC)