Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/Archive 117

After much discussion on this page about the future of the RfA process, I'd like to propose a new alternative process for granting administrator status. This proposal is the product of discussion

• I dont like the idea of creating more bureaucracy to deal with this. It seems to me that it just bureaucratizes the problem instead of solving it. What I like about the proposal is that the "bureau" also proposes desysopping, presumably with some weight so that it is actually acted upon. I think it would be a better idea to make the process more participatory, but less onerous. The problem is not broad participation in deciding who gets the tools. It is the bar that needs to be lowered. Nonetheless I am pretty much willing to try anything new at this point so I may end up supporting this proposal.User:Maunus ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 01:03, 26 November 2014 (UTC)

I understand the reservations of bureaucracy creep, but, at the same time, creating some sort of board to deal with unforeseen circumstances as they arise could reduce the number of specific qualifications under unusual circumstances which would probably have to be itemized for a broader "automatic" proposal to pass. John Carter (talk) 01:26, 26 November 2014 (UTC)

No, "broad participation" is the problem, because it turns administrators into politicians, a role they should not be playing. Administrators should be technocrats, carrying out tasks necessary for the maintenance of the encyclopaedia, in line with the principle of "no big deal". Technocrats cannot possibly carry out their duties to the extent necessary in a climate where they will be strung up in front of a mob. We don't want administrators who are of a lesser quality, merely we want administrators who can do their jobs appropriately. The present system patently discourages those who are best at doing these jobs from ever running for adminship. Removing the mob from the equation is the appropriate way to solve this problem. We need to put our trust in representatives, elected by the community. RGloucester — ☎ 02:17, 26 November 2014 (UTC)

If that is the reasoning then I cannot support this proposal. The "not politicians" argument makes no sense since you are exactly proposing a board of elected "politicians" to appoint dmins instead of just appointing them directly through election. That simply moves the problem by adding an additional level of bureaucracy. The reason admins get embroiled with "politics" is because by necessity they deal directly with users and exercise power. They can no more be "technocrats" than law enforcement officers can - they are in their very essence a political class. Your proposal solves none of the problems you or I see (which I clearly not the same) and it adds the problem of an other small clique of powerful users who make decisions on the behalf of others. Nothing could be further form the spirit of Wikipedia. Back to the drawing board. User:Maunus ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 02:27, 26 November 2014 (UTC)

That's the point, fellow. We must separate the politicians from the administrators, which is how government does it. Politicians appoint administrators on behalf of their electorate. This is because people that carry out technical work need to be able to do so without being taxed by political manoeuvring. Likewise, that's what we'd do here. Administrators are patently not politicians, nor should they be, neither is a constable a politician. Politicians are those that trade in discourse. Administrators should not trade in discourse, nor should constables. They should carry out the tasks needed to maintain the encyclopaedia, and to curtail disruption to editorial processes. They are trusted by the community to do this. They exercise their power on behalf of the community in this way. When a constable is forced to run for election, however, he becomes beholden to populism, to bargaining, and to politics. No longer will the quiet technocrat do the job well, but instead, the gregarious politician will do the job poorly. We need to return adiministration to its roots, here. Administrators began as technocrats, and they should remain as such. RfA has moved us away from that ideal. This proposal allows us to get back to our roots. It is anything but far from the "spirit of Wikipedia". In fact, it preserves the encylopaedia in away that RfA never can. Being an administrator should be "no big deal", and this proposal enshrines that principle. RGloucester — ☎ 02:36, 26 November 2014 (UTC)

It does entirely the opposite. It makes it a requisite for admins to suck up to a small clique of powermongers. It is this kind of system that leads to Feguson and Ayotzinapa in the real world.User:Maunus ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 03:28, 26 November 2014 (UTC)

No "power-mongers" are involved. Commissioners would be elected by the community, in the same manners as Arbitrators. They'd be trusted, for that reason, just as Arbitrators are. They would not have any power over anyone. The only power they'd have is to accept applications for administrative rights, and to vet candidates for adminship. RfA would continue exist as a venue, concurrently. Democracy is rarely the answer to any problems, not least technical ones. Populism is our a problem, this Commission is the solution. However, I fear you are merely standing on a soapbox, and haven't read the proposal, so I shan't respond to you further. RGloucester — ☎ 03:36, 26 November 2014 (UTC)

I've read it thanks for the confidence. "Democracy is rarely the answer to any problems" describes very well where you are coming from and why you and I will never see eye to eye. I honestly don't know why people with that outlook would even be evolved in this eminently democratic project. Certainly I will stand on a soapbox if that is what it takes to stop people with ideas like yours from removing the singlemost sane and reasonable aspect of this project.User:Maunus ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 03:51, 26 November 2014 (UTC)

I don't consider this project democratic. Wikipedia is not a democracy, as we're oft told. Wikipedia is a compendium of knowledge, and I happen like writing a bit of prose here and there. We have stringent editorial guidelines, and fight we fight for quality, rather than quantity. As guardians of knowledge, we must discriminate. Regardless, democracy is rarely sane. It works as a check on the apparatus of power, but it is not capable of exercising that power on its own. People like to think, these days, that they're special, that they're an "individual" in the liberal sense. They fragment themselves from the totality of human reality, which causes an intense fragmentation of society. This is evident in every part of our contemporary society, and is evident here. People put their own "right to decide" over what's good for the project. This results in the disaster we now have at RfA, and elsewhere on this project. We must reform these processes to remove populism the equation, and focus on the collective interest of our fair encyclopaedia. This proposal does that. RGloucester — ☎ 04:45, 26 November 2014 (UTC)

Sounds like cryptofascist "dark enlightenment" crap to me.User:Maunus ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 05:34, 26 November 2014 (UTC)

I've never heard of either of those terms, but I do know that I am certainly not a fascist in any form. I'm a Marxist, if you will, and I believe that the interest of the collective is of greater importance than the interest of the individual. Working for the common good requires that we recognise our collectivity. That applies here as much as anywhere. In fact, the internet seems to give the individual outsize importance, as so many usual human urges to yield to the collective are suppressed by the computer screen's lack of humanity. However, I digress. RGloucester — ☎ 05:43, 26 November 2014 (UTC)

Then substitute stalinism for the desired effect. The result is the same, a select ruling class of "technocrats" keeps the unruly masses in order for the sake of the greater good. Not something I would ever lend my voice or vote to.User:Maunus ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 05:54, 26 November 2014 (UTC)

The commissioners would be elected. They would not materialise out of thin air, or take control with swords and guns. I liked Mr Stradivarius's suggestion below, which is that one could run for election if one really has such concerns. Regardless, I don't think going on about the spectre of Stalinism is likely to be productive. RGloucester — ☎ 05:59, 26 November 2014 (UTC)

Since this is a major proposal, we should find a way to widely publicize it. Perhaps we could add this proposal to

Biblioworm

02:52, 26 November 2014 (UTC)

I don't know anything about that. I'm now demoralised by the misconceptions above, so forgive me whilst I vacate this forum and allow others to comment. RGloucester — ☎ 02:54, 26 November 2014 (UTC)

Just wanted to note that I've added this discussion to

Biblioworm

03:38, 26 November 2014 (UTC)

• What exactly would be the limits of this ASC? They'd obviously be able to appoint the administrative toolset. Would they be able to revoke access to the administrative toolset if an issue where to arise? What would be their limits in regards to the sets of tools such as crat, OS, CU, TE, etc? I understand there seems to be a rush to offer an alternative to RfA based on the slew of recent proposals and RfCs on the topic, but I want to make sure I have a firm understanding of exactly what such a new "committee" would have authority to do. I'd also like to understand better what the set of board members for such a committee might look like as in representatives for editors with various interests and abilities. — {{U|Technical 13}} ^{(e • t • c)} 03:06, 26 November 2014 (UTC)

Please read the this section, which makes it clear as to what their duties would be. At first, if the establishment was approved, they'd only be able to appoint administrators, and also to search for candidates. The commission would be composed of both administrators and non-administrators, in line with this section. If you read the implementation section, it says that the powers of the Commission could be expanded to include review of administrative action at a later date. This would not be included in their initial duties. RGloucester — ☎ 03:14, 26 November 2014 (UTC)

• Thank you, those links to specific sections was very useful. Couple more questions I didn't see addressed in those sections. What would the thresholds be for various things such as appointment to the committee, the threshold for which requests hold "merit", and threshold for agreement to appoint (or other final decisions). I'm thinking like the minimum 50% required for ArbCom appointment and the 70%ish support for the current RfA system. I'm also thinking the threshold for "merit" should be set relatively low to allow discussion. Would there be any any requirement for a potential grantee for the administrative tools have to accept the toolset (I know it may sound silly to some, but I think this question has merit based on the number of editors who have been given access to other user groups without requesting them and have never used the tools or have quit editing all together)? — {{U|Technical 13}} ^{(e • t • c)} 03:41, 26 November 2014 (UTC)

The elections are meant mimic ArbCom elections, as it says in the proposal. The threshold for merit would be decided by the commissioners, as part of their rules of order. The proposal provides for the idea that the first commissioners would establish rules of order, so that the commission could function. They'd be constrained by this framework, but they'd be free set-up their own workings. Of course, if someone didn't want the tools they wouldn't be made to take them. RGloucester — ☎ 04:00, 26 November 2014 (UTC)

• Thank you for your candid answers to my questions about this proposal. That said, I'm unmoved by this proposal in either direction. I've recently started helping out at
  WP:ANRFC and have found that I really enjoy reading all of the arguments in both directions and closing discussions. That said, I'd be happy to contribute to the closing of this discussion when that time comes. — {{U|Technical 13}} ^{(e • t • c}
  ) 04:18, 26 November 2014 (UTC)

• I sort of like the idea in theory but see a some issues with the setup. Here are my thoughts:
  1. One is that it solidifies the admin vs. non-admin thing with the make up of the board. While I realize I am probably in the minority here for the most part the admin bit is really no big deal even if we make it that way. By setting the makeup to be current admin vs. not an admin we would end up codify that perception. I would think a better metric would be to mostly consist of editors that have successfully nominated someone else for admin. I believe nominators don't necessarily have to be admins, so it still allows "outside" views, but it also would encourage people to nominate good candidates if they want to get on such a board. It also means that people deciding on the board have a better idea how potential members would evaluate successful admins.
  2. Another issue is that thirteen seems like a bit large a group, while an odd nunber is good if straight forward majority voting is used. But given that the group is intended to be an alternative to RfAs and that anyone that tries can still go through an RfA or possibly try again after a period of time, a veto system might work better. Say a much smaller board of 5 with all having veto power. This means that the board can quickly skip candidates as soon as someone vetos and also allows for deeper investigation as board members should be able to prove why someone makes a candidate or what concerns that have to another panelist. If the board deadlocks and fails to promote any candidates in X time a new board should be elected.
  3. I'd suggest such a system start small, with a limited rate of mop hand outs if it is formed so that the community can judge the effectiveness.
  4. I'd also split searching for candidates off from the duties of the board. The board should be able to appoint clerks who would do searches for potential candidates ( besides the self-submitted ones ) and would do some of the grunt work research on the candidates. This leaves a leaning central board that can focus on the issues while off-loading much of the grunt work to volunteers. PaleAqua (talk) 03:50, 26 November 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for your suggestions. I think it is essential that non-administrators have representation on this Commission, to enshrine the principle of "no big deal". Administrators and non-administrators must be considered equal, and this proposal makes that clear. I originally had a smaller group, seven, as the number of commissioners. However, we realised that a larger group is necessary, because there may be commissioners who resign, or are absent, which frequently happens on the Arbitration Committee. For these reasons, I think thirteen is a good number, because it ensures that the smooth functioning of the commission won't be hampered by a few absences. Searching for candidates was the original purpose of this Commission. That's one the benefits of having thirteen commissioners, I'd say. As it says in the proposal, they'll establish their own rules of order, and whatever. They may decide to delegate power to certain commissioners, or to hire clerks. That's for the commissioners to decide amongst themselves. RGloucester — ☎ 03:57, 26 November 2014 (UTC)

• Perhaps this is a little early, but I've gone ahead and created
  WP:MOPCOM. — Mr. Stradivarius ^{♪ talk ♪}
  08:55, 26 November 2014 (UTC)
• Well, I have an idea that I'm kind of half-joking about; how about we just close
  Wikipedia:Requests for permissions/Administrator into a requests page? I mean, the right can only be granted by bureaucrats, and as far as I can tell, one of the major aspects of becoming a bureaucrat is being a good judge of what makes an administrator. Seriously, when I saw this proposal first, that's what I thought if was for... Steel1943 (talk
  ) 23:52, 26 November 2014 (UTC)

I think this idea has merit. Debresser (talk) 10:39, 30 November 2014 (UTC)

• Not sure what to make of this proposal. I do remember Jimbo once said that RfA was a "broken process" or something like that. A logical replacement would be desirable, but the idea of a committee has its ups and downs. The main issue with RfA is that it has become too daunting that even the supposed "best of editors" are afraid to go through the fiery hounds of hell, er, RfA. Putting the decision to give someone the mop to the community has the benefit in that the community is essentially the one that gets served by the sysops, not the other way around. Having a committee that separately appoints administrators, therefore, would seem very bureaucratic and a lot of
  WP:NOTBUREAUCRACY would be hurled across the room, and the community will not be pleased if someone who had the tools capable of damaging the entire website was selected by a small group of people. On the other hand though, it would otherwise keep hater votes and votes cast by people that don't do a thorough check at bay, and I personally think it will reduce the amount of good editors that are scared off by RFA. --I am k6ka ^{Talk to me!} _{See what I have done}
  19:20, 27 November 2014 (UTC)

• Has anyone asked the WMF if they would allow this process, in the past Philippe has said that an editor would need to pass an "RFA or RFA-identical process" (here) before being allowed to have access to deleted revisions so this proposals seems to be a non-starter from the get go. Unless WMF Legal change their mind, I can't see a reason not to close this discussion. Callanecc (talk • contribs • logs) 02:27, 1 December 2014 (UTC)

  This is roughly identical to RfA. Commissioners would be elected, and would represent the community's will. Their votes would be equivalent to the votes of those who voted for them, in line with the principle of the social contract. Your concerns are unfounded. RGloucester — ☎ 02:50, 1 December 2014 (UTC)

  Your claim that the proposed process is "roughly identical to RfA" is preposterous. The WMF might deem it a satisfactory alternative, of course. Are you suggesting that there's no need to inquire? —

  David Levy

  03:41, 1 December 2014 (UTC)

  The only difference would be that commissioners would cast votes on candidates for adminship on behalf of the community. There is no difference, because the commissioners would be elected by that community. It is merely a form of delegation and representation. To be honest, I hardly think that it matters what they think. What's good governance is good governance, regardless RGloucester — ☎ 13:40, 1 December 2014 (UTC)

  The only difference would be that commissioners would cast votes on candidates for adminship on behalf of the community.
  Other than that,

  David Levy

  08:31, 2 December 2014 (UTC)

Support (alternative to RfA)

1. John Carter (talk) 01:02, 26 November 2014 (UTC) - This proposal has a lot of the strengths of one of the other proposals above regarding possible "automatic" appointment of admins while also having the one thing I think that proposal lacked, which is some sort of body to see that there is some sort of review of candidates.
2. It's time that we have some sort of change. Let's not be fooled into thinking that "there is no problem, after all" because of the recently successful RfAs. In fact, we lost a great vandal fighter as a result of RfA just a few days ago. --
   Biblioworm
   01:09, 26 November 2014 (UTC)

   Yes, we lost a prolific vandal fighter (at least temporarily) but that RfA is not a good example of the RfA process failing. The user's reaction to their RfA further underscores the concerns raised by the opposes. The user should not be an admin unless change occurs. We may occasionally lose editors due to failed RfAs like this but administrators lacking judgment and tact can ultimately do more harm to Wikipedia's reputation than their contributions are worth. It seems likely the user may have had already contributed to good faith editors leaving the project merely as an editor. So please, don't use that RfA as the process not working. Jason Quinn (talk) 19:37, 27 November 2014 (UTC)

3. Support as proposer – This proposal will allow RfA to continue. It will not, as they say, throw the baby out with the bathwater. It will allow the community to trial an alternative method of appointing administrators. It will remove the toxicity of RfA from the equation, allowing for candidates who are more technocratic, but less able to handle the political requirements of RfA. Commissioners will be representatives of the community who will work to solve the problems we face, least amongst them the problems of having good administrators. This proposal, as far as I can see, is flexible and worth a shot. We've seen this debate go on for years, and now we have a chance to do something about RfA reform. We need this Commission. RGloucester — ☎ 02:21, 26 November 2014 (UTC)

   This proposal will not "remove the toxicity of RfA from the equation" - it will create new and unpleasant drama. If a user is unsuited to being elected via RfA, but is then elected by the committee, the committee which elected that user will face questions, some of which will be very hostile. This will happen. And it will be very unpleasant for all concerned. This is not a solution, it's the creation of a new (and possibly bigger) problem. If a user is so uncontroversial that nobody would question their appointment, then they would sail through a RfA, and so would not need a committee to elect them. SilkTork ^{✔Tea time} 18:54, 27 November 2014 (UTC)

   OK, but WHAT WOULD remove the toxicity of the RfA process? We can't change human nature or the personalities of the individuals in the WP community. Without an RfA alternative, how can any progress be made? --

   (Talk)

   ☮ღ☺ 20:39, 27 November 2014 (UTC)

   Um, some very good contributors have not "sailed through RfA". In fact, some have had very difficult RfAs. The fact of the matter is that RfA is mob rule, and as the name implies, mobs are not very sensible. —

   Biblioworm

   19:03, 27 November 2014 (UTC)

4. Support - I helped with drafting the proposal, BTW. We will have a lot more good administrators if all they have to do is ask. Oiyarbepsy (talk) 03:33, 26 November 2014 (UTC)
5. Support. This will allow good candidates to become admins without the stress and hostility of an RfA, and should result in many more good editors applying for the position, and in many more good admins. Bad candidates would still not get the position, and there would finally be a way to desysop existing admins without starting an ArbCom case. If editors are worried about the standards that ASC would apply, they can always run for the committee themselves. — Mr. Stradivarius ^{♪ talk ♪} 05:34, 26 November 2014 (UTC)
6. Tentative support I like the concept, though I do have concerns with the details, but they can get fixed later. See my comments above for some detailed thoughts. For example, I do think that the community should have more of a say in the ground rules of such a board and worry that it will find itself bogged down on discussions of perfectly acceptable though less than perfect candidates. I feel a more vetted more streamlined process might better serve the project in the long term even if it rejects some okay would-be admins to the RfA process or a future attempt. PaleAqua (talk) 05:50, 26 November 2014 (UTC)
7. Tentative support but only if this ASC isn't filled with the same old boys club who make RFA so toxic in the first place. Community choice should be an aspect but the community I feel is idiotic and holds absurd standards as who and who cannot be an admin and if anything I want to see that sort of self-selecting removed from the equation, I'm not sure if this new body would do that (and heck knows there'll be some bleating from those who make RFA a hellhole citing a denial of their opinions for objection) but enough with shoving people in front of a board of peers who already failed the candidate before they walked through the door.
   tutterMouse (talk
   ) 09:53, 26 November 2014 (UTC)

8. As others have stated, mob rule does not work; it scuttles RfA, ANI, RFC/U (which is probably soon to be disbanded), and partly also Arbcom cases. Apart from the trolls, peanuts, and regular system detractors who participate on RfA, there is a huge number of one-off voters and I am curious to know what part of the Wiki woodwork they come out of to place a vote on RfA. I am fairly certain that on some RfA a certain amount of canvassing takes place. Anyone who wittingly allows such canvassing is probably not to be trusted to be an admin while anyone who actively canvasses for their RfA (even offline where don’t catch it) is corrupt from the start and should never be a sysop.

   Genuine candidates who have no skellies in their closets should not fear the current system and if they have kept their noses clean through their Wiki careers they will almost certainly pass, with little drama, and with flying colours. Whatever the section however, there are always silly votes that should not be counted. Comments such as “Seems OK to me’’ equate to: ‘’I don’t know the guy. I haven’t done any research, but his user name sound right.’’ I won’t go into providing examples of some of the utterly ridiculous oppose statements, but a completely drama-free RfA is an extremely rare occurrence indeed. Although

   WP:RFA2011 did not realise any physical reforms, it left behind an enormous legacy of research which clearly identified the main single problem with RfA. The individual regular ‘elements’ of that problem have got the message, and a couple of recent RfA have shown that the community is now going to be bold and do something active about unruly or inappropriate behaviour there.

   I therefore no longer believe RfA is the broken place I (and Jimbo Wales) claimed it to be 4 years ago. However, I see no reason why this current proposal should not be tested before the community, so I SUPPORT it in principle, with just a few minor tweaks to be made later (e.g. I year terms, No limit to the number of terms; the WMF will not allow non admins to view deleted content), and it’s now up to the broader community to voice their opinion. --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk

   ) 10:05, 26 November 2014 (UTC)

9. Support Good candidates will get through in any case; but present-day RfAs generate a lot more heat than light, and draw us away from more useful work. Voters can always be characterised as a mob by the losing side, justified or not. It doesn't bother me now if User:Xaelrukfhpaw gets rollback rights without my say-so; well same goes for the remaining admin tools. (Please clarify re elections: 3+4=13??): Noyster (talk), 10:59, 26 November 2014 (UTC)

   That was an error left over from an earlier draft. It has been fixed. RGloucester — ☎ 13:41, 26 November 2014 (UTC)

10. Support - The community has simply grown too large and impersonal to expect that any discussion involving 100+ people will be civil, rational, and drama-free. Delegating this task to a smaller, elected committee may increase some bureaucracy, but the resulting reduction in drama and incivility and making adminship even a slightly-less-big deal makes it a net positive IMO. Mr.Z-man 16:09, 26 November 2014 (UTC)
11. Support.—S Marshall T/C 16:29, 26 November 2014 (UTC)
12. There's room for discussion about the particulars of the committee's composition, but after the recent Andrevan fiasco, this proposal has serious merit.
    Townlake (talk
    ) 16:33, 26 November 2014 (UTC)
13. Support Please don't oppose this over small details like the composition requirement, if you support the proposal otherwise. The details can be changed later. The added bureaucracy of this is a small price to pay for potentially fixing so much that is wrong with the current systems. And if it doesn't work out, I'll be right there with you getting it disbanded. It's absolutely worth a try. We can't keep doing the same thing and refusing to even try something different. Gigs (talk) 17:46, 26 November 2014 (UTC)

    "The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results." -

    Biblioworm

    18:18, 26 November 2014 (UTC)

14. Weak support - I had this in the neutral section, but on the balance I guess I support this.
    Wikipedia is not a democracy, so comparisons to democratic models are basically irrelevant. However, to put this in a democratic frame, Administrators are effectively our police force, and it makes sense to me that they should be qualified rather than elected, and having an elected body evaluate qualifications makes sense in that democratic framework. I see strengths and weaknesses to this proposal. I would prefer if this process were to replace RfA, rather than run parallel, otherwise we will have two classes of admins, those appointed by Commissioners and those elected by the community, subject to different disciplinary processes, and that's bad. In order to work, all admins (even those who endured RfA) must be subject to reviews by ASC. And that's going to be controversial, but in general yeah, it's a good idea for admins to be subject to a common disciplinary process. I'd like to see more in the proposal about the election of Commissioners, in particular I'd like to see a process for the community to express loss of confidence in the Commission, which would trigger a new election. I won't support removing individual Commissioners - either the Commission works as a whole or it doesn't, and if it doesn't then it should be wholly replaced. I'm also concerned that this won't really solve the "no big deal" issue - adminship will be no big deal but we're just shifting the "big deal" onto election to the Commission. Then again, maybe that should be a big deal. This is a step in the right direction, anyway. Ivanvector (talk
    ) 18:34, 26 November 2014 (UTC)

    You are abusing the "not a democracy" policy with this argument. Wikipedia is not a democracy, but our governance and core values are democratic. Specifically a form of deliberative democracy. So yes comparisons with democratic systems are absolutely relevant when someone is trying to highjack the system by turning it into technocratic authoritarianism. Also you seem not to have noticed that we are also

    not a bureaucracy.User:Maunus ·ʍaunus·snunɐw·

    18:48, 26 November 2014 (UTC)

    You seem to have not noticed that we are a bureaucracy, in many ways. Some level of bureaucracy is necessary to administer and maintain a project of this magnitude. What makes Wikipedia somewhat unique is that all of our bureaucracy and administrative process has evolved from community consensus over time, and it continues to evolve. At times that looks like this or that form of existing system, because sometimes that's what's best to serve the community's purposes. Sometimes "consensus" means we come to a community decision that a certain subset of people are best equipped to deal with a particular problem. That looks like bureaucracy, and it is, but that's not inherently bad. We can't always leave every little routine task up to the will of a community of millions, and promotion/demotion of administrators should be much more routine than it is. Ivanvector (talk) 20:36, 26 November 2014 (UTC)

15. Cautious support, on a trial basis only. My initial reaction to seeing this proposal was to oppose strongly, but on thinking about it, I think it is worth a try, as a sort of experiment. I'm uncomfortable with taking the process out of direct community control, especially because the community may discover information about a candidate that a committee might have overlooked, but I also think that the community will have exerted as much control over the composition of the proposed committee as they currently do over ArbCom. I think we should implement it for one year only, and require a followup RfC to determine whether the community will agree to continuing it beyond that. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:39, 26 November 2014 (UTC)
    • Comment: If it isn't explicitly stated in the proposal already, I haven't checked, I think it would be a good idea if perhaps it had a sort of suggestion or pending period before confirmation built in, between the time of a potential candidate being suggested and the time of actual confirmation, which would allow other editors to contact the committee with their concerns, and possibly discuss them, publicly or privately, at some length if needed, the concerns raised. FWIW, and I think some kind of clear statement here might be useful, I myself hope that the committee winds up being one which in a sense is predisposed to approve pretty much all candidates who don't obviously disqualify. I know that would of course be dependent on the personalities of those who actually get on the committee, of course, but still think some clarification might be useful. John Carter (talk) 22:47, 26 November 2014 (UTC)

    Please read the full proposal, specifically the implementation section. This proposal is only for a trial period, to be followed by a new RfC. RGloucester — ☎ 22:56, 26 November 2014 (UTC)

    Yes, I did read that. What I said goes a little further in terms of making it a trial only. --Tryptofish (talk) 16:12, 27 November 2014 (UTC)

16. Conditional Support only and only as a supplementary processes and not for replacing RFA in foreseeable future. Currently the lede states it's for supplementing or replacing it. If it is clearer that a later consensus would be needed to discuss a possible replacement and there's no implication of replacement without another discussion at a later stage, I would change to 'support'. --lTopGunl (talk) 23:22, 26 November 2014 (UTC)

    Please read the implementation section. RGloucester — ☎ 23:24, 26 November 2014 (UTC)

    Thanks... the lede confused me. --lTopGunl (talk) 23:28, 26 November 2014 (UTC)

17. Strong Support While the idea of additional bureaucracy is difficult, this would help address a number of backlog problems. I'd actually support this completely replacing the Admin election process. DocumentError (talk) 09:15, 27 November 2014 (UTC)
18. Support There needs to be an alternative to the bear-pit of RfA.
    talk
    ) 13:30, 27 November 2014 (UTC)
19. Weak support I don't think it's the best idea in the world but I'm up for trying something new. The proposed implementation plan makes it straightforward to revert to what we have now if it doesn't turn out well. WaggersTALK 13:32, 27 November 2014 (UTC)
20. Support There needs to be an alternative for the battleground we call RfA. --AmaryllisGardener ^talk 14:21, 27 November 2014 (UTC)
21. Support Hawkeye7 (talk) 20:04, 27 November 2014 (UTC)
22. Support - Based on my impression of the RfA process, that its often (but not always) a tedious, contentious, and often demoralizing process, I would welcome an alternative. Just from my observations and limited involvement with RfAs, the process comes across like some sort of U.S. Senate-style
    (Talk)
    ☮ღ☺ 20:29, 27 November 2014 (UTC)
23. Temporary Support: There are many subtleties and implications which daunt my imagination, so it is too hard to determine how this will work, let alone decide whether it is an improvement or not. Let's just try it for a reasonable period (3 months?) and see how well it works. If it doesn't, end it. If it works great, leave it alone. If it sort of works, decide in a month or so how it might be tweaked. —EncMstr (talk) 20:47, 27 November 2014 (UTC)
24. Strong Support:

    (a) RfA is seriously broken; (b) the only people who pass the process are those who've carefully never taken a stand, never uttered a cross word and have left no handles for anyone to grasp, and thus robs Wikipedia of many talented, able, passionate would-be admins; (c) RfA gives more weight to knee-jerk, thoughtless responses, because after all it only takes five seconds to type "Oppose: He's a deletionist who'll destroy Wikipedia" or "Support: Doesn't strike me as out to get the encyclopedia;" (d) RfA damages Wikipedia because it deters people from running and has provoked once-able editors to quit in anger over their treatment; and (e) RfA is the only area on Wikipedia where it's permissible to canvass against someone. RfA needs to be taken out of the community's hands.

    I wrote the foregoing six years ago, in a RfA review that like many other attempts at reform went nowhere. Things haven't changed, and it's one of the few areas of Wikipedia run by popularity contest head counts. With the current process, while I'd love to see a bureaucrat say "I don't care that she only got 55%, this is a worthy, talented, qualified candidate that got steamrolled by a bunch of nitpicking and irrelevancies," it isn't going to happen, and it never has happened. I'd support damn near any scheme to take this out of the community's hands, before the day comes where the admins are mostly gone. Ravenswing 22:36, 27 November 2014 (UTC)

    Couldn't have said it better myself. —

    Biblioworm

    01:21, 28 November 2014 (UTC)

25. Support: I adore the idea of selection by experts. I've seen its efficiency in the form of the tenure committee. RfA allows everyone, including a recent signup, to ruin the nomination of a potentially good admin or give support to an otherwise unworthy candidate. This isn't fair. A well-known objection to election by majority is that it requires fame, not competence. WikiGnomes have no chance of succeeding in an RfA because success in RfA chiefly demands having a lot of good friends. Best regards, Codename Lisa (talk) 23:59, 27 November 2014 (UTC)
26. Support: There is clearly a problem with the current process. Many good editors would step up if the process was not similar to an inquisition based on experiences with those that follow this side of Wikipedia (as mentioned above FAME). The problem is that being an admin is no big deal.....and for the most part only admins believe this. Thus the average voter at an RfA is more concerned with what might go wrong over the good that could come with give extra tools (that is all amdminship is more tools) to great editors. I have said this before as have others...just need to appoint admins with limited tools at first (levels of administration)....thus have a 3 or 4 levels of tools....as an admin gains experience and show they are mature enough to handle the new tools they will get more and more tools. -- Moxy (talk) 02:38, 28 November 2014 (UTC)
27. Tentative support per Kudupung.
    Jim Carter
    12:11, 28 November 2014 (UTC)
28. Support; doing something to RfA is long overdue. If this works, great; if not we can always return to the broken process we have today. Let's just be bold and try it. Bjelleklang - talk 22:04, 28 November 2014 (UTC)
29. Support FeydHuxtable (talk) 18:19, 29 November 2014 (UTC)
30. Support It's been a long time since I was a regular voter at RfA, but I've kept tabs on it and feel that this alternative proposal has merits. I think a glaring negative of the RfA process is that it is subject to the whims of whoever shows up. If you look at any subset of RfA's from specific points in time, those adjacent to each other all have similar themes and points of emphasis driven by the active voters of the day. With a fixed commission, you'll still have trending patterns driven by the membership, but I think there would still be a greater degree of standardization and accountability in the process. Another point in favor of the commission is that it does not immediately seek to eliminate RfA, and I think it's worth having both paths to the mop open. The key here is that the goal is not to have a smaller pool of admins, but is in fact to grow the pool of admins. The more of us there are, the more open the project is. With a broader pool of trusted editors gaining access to the tool, the admin role regains (or finally gains?) the "no big deal" aspect that it was intended to carry all along. Whether you're someone who just likes to make cleanup edits, or a powerhouse creator of articles, you should be welcome to the extra functionality that admin rights provide so that you can help contribute in more ways, if it so interests you. Will the occasional less-than-constructive individual get through? Yes, but to echo Moxy's comments, the Orwellian fear of this hypothetical is one of many straw man obstacles that either derails RfA's, or that prevents many qualified editors from even bothering with requesting the tools in the first place. Hiberniantears (talk) 19:41, 29 November 2014 (UTC)
31. Support It is time to do something about the current RfA process, which is more about hazing and attacking than it is about getting worthy admins. Eeekster (talk) 22:16, 29 November 2014 (UTC)
32. Support on trial basis. RfAs may be stressful for some, even though this process shows community support. In order so that we don't elect unworthy admins, however, we should then only have bureaucrats or really experienced administrators on this Administrative Standards Commission. Epicgenius (talk) 02:39, 30 November 2014 (UTC)

    The proposal calls for six seats open to administrators, six seats open to non-administrators, and one seat open to either. —

    David Levy

    05:03, 30 November 2014 (UTC)

    That means that 46% of those deciding who is an admin are admins. Does the community really want to give up its authority over who becomes and admin to a group of 13 people who are almost half admins? Being an admin is nothing special and it should not give them the power of a super vote or to appoint people they think will be good admins.

    Chillum

    17:59, 30 November 2014 (UTC)

    I agree, and the same goes for not being an admin. The separation of admins and non-admins into distinct classes with separate "representation" is one of this proposal's many fundamental flaws. —

    David Levy

    22:35, 30 November 2014 (UTC)

33. Support, essentially agree with statement by John Carter, above. Cheers, — Cirt (talk) 02:41, 30 November 2014 (UTC)
34. Tentative support. Before I actually read the proposal I have to say that my hackles were raised. Another layer of bureaucracy. Never! But then I read the proposal it's not bad. Worth doing on a trial basis at least. I do think the provision on removing administrators needs to be fattened up substantially. Also the ASC's deliberations should be entirely transparent. Coretheapple (talk) 20:24, 30 November 2014 (UTC)
35. Support on a trial basis only - See also my struck out oppose below. After sleeping on the idea a bit and looking back at the proposal again, I think this could be worth trying out. I don't think it will ever be able to replace RFA, but I do think it has the potential to supplement it, and a trial is necessary here so the proposal can properly be tested. We'll never know how it works unless we try, and it has the potential to be a good alternative to RFA for those who wish to try it. demize (t · c) 00:59, 1 December 2014 (UTC)
36. Moral Support - it's not going to pass, but trying to do something to RfA is very important. I don't like the focus on technophilic users in the proposal -- they are underserved in RfA understandably, but not the only user types. WP needs more leadership and more boldness, so I like trying to try something new. -- Michael Scott Cuthbert (talk) 08:44, 1 December 2014 (UTC)
37. Support - I wonder how many current admins would voluntarily go through the RfA process again. The vetting process is an absolutely horrible experience for tools which aren't supposed to be a huge deal. — BranStark (talk) 13:39, 1 December 2014 (UTC)
38. Supporting Appointment is fair. New England Cop (talk) 19:49, 1 December 2014 (UTC)
39. Support - If being an admin is no big deal, and if we would like to have more (or at least a sustainable number of) competent admins, then it seems like a bad idea to require them to be politicians as well. Ravenswing makes some good points above. I don't really see any harm this proposal could cause, since it is not immediately replacing the current system anyway. I'm not so sure about the idea of having a fixed number of admins and fixed number of non-admins.. but, on the other hand, I don't really have a better suggestion. I think this would be worth a try. Mark M (talk) 09:37, 2 December 2014 (UTC)

    • "... it seems like a bad idea to require them to be politicians as well." A telling turn of phrase, and one I wish I'd thought of years ago. While of course this effort is as doomed as all the other ones, it's worth saying. Ravenswing 14:57, 2 December 2014 (UTC)

40. Support - The current process is hopelessly broken in that an ever decreasing number of editors will subject themselves to the abuse. Even if I wanted to be an admin, I would never put myself, even if asked, thru the current process. VMS Mosaic (talk) 10:25, 2 December 2014 (UTC)
41. Support something like this, but not with these particular details, e.g., about how many seats are reserved for admins vs non-admins (in that example, I think the community should be able to elect whomever they want). WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:59, 2 December 2014 (UTC)
42. Support. Protonk (talk) 19:28, 3 December 2014 (UTC)
43. Support per
    talk
    14:31, 17 December 2014 (UTC)

Oppose (alternative to RfA)

1. The most extremely strong oppose anyone has ever opposed, which can never be over opposed by anyone ever The last thing we need is another clique of oligarchs, or commissaries or what ever you want to call them. What we need is more and better admins. And the realization that the tools are no big deal.User:Maunus ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 02:29, 26 November 2014 (UTC)
2. Oppose as above. Yet another proposal which would foolishly put too much power into a small clique of officials, complete with even more of the bureaucracy everyone already hates. Seriously, take 30 seconds and ask yourself, honestly, what sort of person would seek to get elected to something called the "Administrative Standards Commission". Really, really think about it. Then, take 30 more seconds and consider whether giving more power to those people is a good idea. If you think that sounds just swell, congratulations, you're officially part of the problem. Andrew Lenahan - Starblind 03:51, 26 November 2014 (UTC)

   You would probably need to be crazy to want to run for ASC. But then, at the moment, the same thing could easily be said for RfA. We should be encouraging good editors to become admins, and the current system is having the opposite effect. — Mr. Stradivarius ^{♪ talk ♪} 05:46, 26 November 2014 (UTC)

3. Oppose. There isn't much to say here that hasn't already been said. Creating a middleman - regardless of whether it replaces RfA or not - sets a dangerous precedent.
   Pylon
   03:55, 26 November 2014 (UTC)

   What "precedent" is that? They are not a "middle man". They would be a group of people elected by the community to carry out an important function for this project's survival. RGloucester — ☎ 04:01, 26 November 2014 (UTC)

4. Oppose Creating admins requires community approval, and as a community member I do not want to cede my approval to a commissioner. — xaosflux ^Talk 04:15, 26 November 2014 (UTC)

   Additionally, I oppose lowering the bar for creating and removing administrators to 54%. — xaosflux ^Talk 04:21, 26 November 2014 (UTC)

5. Oppose per Andrew. RFA needs major overhauling, but replacement by a middleman would be worse. "Middleman": in this context, a group standing between the community and the admin-choosing process. Also known as "republic" versus the current "democracy". We've previously had a system with a republican setup, where regular editors chose people with the power to make decisions: see how we dealt with it by reading through Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:Esperanza in depth. Nyttend (talk) 04:18, 26 November 2014 (UTC)

   I think anyone who reads both this and the Esperanza page in depth would immediately realize the blatantly obvious differences. This would be more like the Arbitration Committee. Oiyarbepsy (talk) 05:08, 26 November 2014 (UTC)

   I was bored this morning and wasted most of an hour reading through the Esperanza MFD, the deletion reviews, etc., and this looks very much like the depictions of the Advisory Council in the MFD that I linked. We need to remind bureaucrats to start doing like we administrators tend to do in discussions and ignore votes that conflict with policies (WP:DEAL, here), ignoring the people who object on grounds such as "Not enough FAs" that don't speak to whether the person is likely to abuse the tools. Nyttend (talk) 06:35, 26 November 2014 (UTC)

   Exactly. One need only read RfA discussions from years ago (when the process functioned as intended) to see how these inexplicable demands have contributed to the toxic atmosphere. —

   David Levy

   07:12, 26 November 2014 (UTC)

   Lol. What on earth makes you believe that RfA was functioning as intended. It hasnt been functioning for the past 5 years at least.User:Maunus ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 18:02, 26 November 2014 (UTC)

   Perhaps you overlooked the words "from years ago". —

   David Levy

   19:38, 26 November 2014 (UTC)

   I've now taken the time to read all this Esperanza rubbish, and I can frankly say that it bears no relation to the ASC I've proposed. That body sounds like it was some kind of odd social organisation with a sprawling membership and a propensity for self-promotion. This body would not be like that. There would no membership, only commissioners. They'd would be like arbitrators, not like these so-called "Esperantos", or whatever they were called. Their only function would be to work on appointing administrators. No "social" elements would be involved. Your asking of bureaucrats to "ignore votes" seems like an acknowledgement that the overly democratic nature of RfA is the problem. Given this, rather than entering into subjective "ignoring" of people, why don't allow the community to elect the ASC to vet candidates in line with community-accepted principles? As I said below, the well is already poisoned. The genie is out of the bottle. There is no going back to how RfA may have been "years ago". The culture of Wikipedia simply won't allow us to go back in time, in such a way. We need to move forward, not backward. This proposal allows us to do that. RGloucester — ☎ 16:55, 26 November 2014 (UTC)

   If the crats thought they had the freedom to ignore such votes, they'd be doing it already. RGloucester is right, that would basically turn them into what this ASC will be, except without the consent of the community. An overall worse idea than just approving this and going forward with people who are explicitly empowered by the community to have such latitude. Gigs (talk) 17:54, 26 November 2014 (UTC)

   RfA is intended to function as a

   David Levy

   19:38, 26 November 2014 (UTC)

6. Oppose forgive my vanity, but I prefer having a say (tiny as it is) in who becomes an administrator & who doesn't. GoodDay (talk) 05:27, 26 November 2014 (UTC)
7. Oppose. A bad idea with even worse execution. (No offense intended toward the editors behind it, by the way. I'm trying to word this as delicately as possible.) We have a process that worked well in the past, and it can work well again. To accomplish this, we need less bureaucracy, not more. —
   David Levy
   07:12, 26 November 2014 (UTC)

   I think we need to accept that the well has been poisoned. RGloucester — ☎ 13:46, 26 November 2014 (UTC)

   Replacing RfC with the proposed ASC would be like dynamiting the old well and constructing a new one in exactly the same location. Until we eliminate the actual poison, it will continue to rise to the service.
   You propose that we replace toxic adminship requests with toxic "elections" to an elite body of editors in charge of selecting administrators on the community's behalf. I'm baffled as to how this is supposed to address the actual problem. If anything, it might even amplify it; because the ASC seats are guaranteed to be filled, the nonsense that currently leads to failed requests at RfC would instead skew the results of these "elections". The same pool of users currently denying trustworthy editors adminship would be responsible for voting in a group of editors with carte blanche (for a time, at least) to grant or deny adminship to whomever they please. —

   David Levy

   19:38, 26 November 2014 (UTC)

   The proposal is not to replace RfA, but to supplement it. Are ArbCom elections "toxic"? Does ArbCom exist as an "elite body of editors"? RGloucester — ☎ 20:39, 26 November 2014 (UTC)

   Eh....yes and yes?User:Maunus ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 20:50, 26 November 2014 (UTC)

   I'm sorry you feel that way. There is an ArbCom election going right now, and I haven't seen any "toxicity" anywhere. I've never seen arbitrators acting as an "elite body of editors". They seem to relatively demure. I fear that such liberal views as yours are simply not reconcilable with reality. RGloucester — ☎ 20:57, 26 November 2014 (UTC)

   I dont think you are in a position to make that judgment, it doesnt seem to me that "reality" is a place you frequent a lot.User:Maunus ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 21:38, 26 November 2014 (UTC)

   Manus, I don't like this proposal either, but the spirit you show of "attacking the person, not the problem" is 99% of the problem with RfA and every other part of Wikipedia that is broken. It discourages consensus, and disengages everyone but trolls and people who love a good fight. That spirit, by far, is what I LOATHE most about Wikipedia and is the reason why I left for several years; your comment above exemplifies it.--Esprit15d • talk • contribs 04:55, 2 December 2014 (UTC)

   The proposal is not to replace RfA, but to supplement it.
   You've conveyed quite clearly that you want to replace RfA (and the proposal explicitly calls for consideration of this). But that's a tangential point, as I'm addressing the premise that the new process would somehow be immune to the "poison" affecting the old one.
   Are ArbCom elections "toxic"?
   Part of the problem is your apparent failure to recognize that material distinctions exist between the objective of RfA and that of an ArbCom election. I do believe that the latter is subject to some degree of toxicity, but the specific "poison" contaminating RfA isn't present there. Conversely, given that the ultimate goal (recruiting new administrators) would remain the same, I see no reason to believe that it wouldn't remain in force in the proposed ASC process. It would simply impact the election of "commissioners" instead of interfering with the promotion of administrators.
   Does ArbCom exist as an "elite body of editors"?
   In certain instances, its members have behaved as such. (That's a separate issue, of course.) But again, you're missing the point that the underlying functions differ materially. The ArbCom exists "primarily for serious conduct disputes the community has been unable to resolve", not as a substitute for community decision-making. It's when they veer off course in that direction that they start to resemble "an elite body". —

   David Levy

   22:10, 26 November 2014 (UTC)

8. Oppose The system we have works well. Chris Troutman (talk) 15:52, 26 November 2014 (UTC)
9. Oppose. Tweaking the existing RfA process would be a much better approach than creating a bureaucracy that would most likely represent the views of the community poorly. --Michig (talk) 16:56, 26 November 2014 (UTC)
10. Oppose An administrator should have the consent of the community, not some committee. What happens when we don't like how the committee is acting? This is just moving power around and diluting the communities direct authority over who is an admin. It is a shell game and like any shell game you cannot win.
    Chillum
    16:59, 26 November 2014 (UTC)

    These administrators would have the consent of the community, because the community would be entrusting the commission to appoint them through elections. That's how it works in the tangible world. No one is concerned about the "consent" of a state's populace when someone is appointed to work as functionary in the civil service. If you don't like how the commission behaves, elect different members. RGloucester — ☎ 17:13, 26 November 2014 (UTC)

    You are talking about second hand consent. Once selected they can just choose whoever they want. Your analogy to the state does not fill me with confidence as they don't have a stellar track record.

    Chillum

    17:19, 26 November 2014 (UTC)

    Social contract? RGloucester — ☎ 17:22, 26 November 2014 (UTC)

    With respect that is at best innocent of you and at worst naive. People are going to act like people.

    Chillum

    17:28, 26 November 2014 (UTC)

    Yes, and I believe that when people act like people, they act for the good of the collective. RGloucester — ☎ 20:29, 26 November 2014 (UTC)

    Acting 'for the good of the collective' is only done by idealised people; real people naturally act for their individual good. That is what 'acting like people' essentially boils down to, and it is common to other species as well because such an instinct is the most conducive to survival. Attempts to create a collective and to force people to act for its good rather than their own are often misguided and always flawed, as demonstrated by Ayn Rand novels and the Soviet Union. That is not to say that selfishness is the highest good and collectives are evil, but rather that one works and the other doesn't.

    39

    05:35, 27 November 2014 (UTC)

    I disagree. I also disagree with the idea that there is any such thing as "instinct". Sadly, I fear you are a rationalist, and I shan't engage in a diatribe that has little relevance to the topic at hand. RGloucester — ☎ 06:30, 27 November 2014 (UTC)

    Well clearly there is such a thing as instinct. If your position is based on the idea that humans do not act off of instinct and that instinct does not exist then I now see the flaw in your reasoning. For example describing an opposing point of view as a diatribe is often an instinctual response to your ideas being attacked.

    First denying instinct and then suggesting rationalism is somehow wrong does not leave much left. What is left after instinct and reason are removed?

    Chillum

    18:29, 28 November 2014 (UTC)

    Actually, he seems to have used 'diatribe' to refer to the comments he wasn't going to make, not to what I said.

    39

    04:04, 29 November 2014 (UTC)

11. Oppose - I think implementing this would just be 'moving the mess'. The root cause of problems with RfA are people - not all those people who contribute there, not even most, but enough to cause things to degenerate into madness far too often. We need more robust guidelines for contributing to an RfA (e.g. what sort of arguments are substantive and should 'count', clearer lines on what is and is not 'badgering', etc.) and stronger moderation of RfAs based on these. We do not need more process and indirection; Wikipedia is not
    Reticulated Spline ^{(t • c}
    ) 18:29, 26 November 2014 (UTC)
12. Oppose, sorry. In my view, the last thing we need, with our article space dying due to lack of attention, is another layer of project-space bureaucracy, least of which a layer that will remove the direct say that editors have in the promotion of administrators. I also agree with Andrew Lenahan and GoodDay. --
    Mkativerata (talk
    ) 20:03, 26 November 2014 (UTC)
13. Regretful oppose. Great idea, but I must oppose for the following obvious reason: Sometimes, an RFA can be derailed by one detailed "oppose" vote, and the same thing could very well happen if the editor "running for administrator" has interacted with someone from the proposed committee in a way that would cause them to vehemently oppose the candidate. Rather than having a pool of hundreds who could prove the opposer wrong, the "candidate" would be at the mercy of the other representatives on the committee agreeing or disagreeing with the opposing committee member's opinion, giving the "candidate" less of a chance to recover from the "oppose vote". Steel1943 (talk) 23:39, 26 November 2014 (UTC)

    Please note the implementation section, which people seem to not have read. This process would be a parallel to RfA, at the start. If someone has a problem with ASC, they can go to RfA, or vice-versa. RGloucester — ☎ 02:40, 27 November 2014 (UTC)

    If that is the case, then my worry would be that an RFA oppose vote would be "per the ASC discussion" or vice versa. Two forums that attempt to accomplish the same outcome almost always interfere with each other's purpose, even if that is not how it was intended to be designed. Steel1943 (talk) 05:39, 27 November 2014 (UTC)

    There's that too; but in any case, the prospect of having two forums for the same purpose does not negate the value of objections to one of them.

    39

    14:56, 27 November 2014 (UTC)

14. Oppose I'm not as intimately familiar with RFA as some of the people here undoubtedly are, but I have a reasonably clear notion of what the alleged problem is. I basically agree with Reticulated Spline: What we need is a more well-defined set of standards to judge candidates by, not a more limited set of people doing it. I believe that having the entire community decide who gets to be an admin helps to counter the risk of having a narrow, biased set of views on the subject. As I point out above, people naturally act in their own interest; with enough different people acting on enough different interests, that effect is more likely to be neutralised. Clear criteria for !votes (which I plan to elaborate on at some point) seems a better way to solve the problem of insubstantial arguments.
    39
    05:35, 27 November 2014 (UTC)
15. Oppose - Per all of above. Plus, I'll not cede my review process to a committee of six. Those sis may not even heard of me when I submit my review and then how on earth they can come to know about my editing character? Will they go through all my edits (For instance, if it Justin, with over 1.4 million edits) and then analyse my editing character? RfA should always be a community opinion, not just an opinion of six users. They may not select a person who would get 100+ supports in RfA, because enmity can have its probability for a committee at maximum, but minimum in public process. --The Herald 12:50, 27 November 2014 (UTC)

    @The Herald: Actually, the proposed number of the committee is 13: six admins, six non-admins, and one position for either an admin or non-admin. These numbers could be changed after further discussion. Also, there would likely be a space for non-committee members to submit evidence about admin candidates, so there would still be a place for community review, although the final decision would be taken by the committee. — Mr. Stradivarius ^{♪ talk ♪} 13:11, 27 November 2014 (UTC)

    If community review remains a component (and I agree that it should, so I'm not finding fault with the idea), the elimination of "drama" (on which some of the above support is based) is removed from the equation. What does that leave us with? Instead of a system in which the aforementioned community review is analyzed by one or more bureaucrats to gauge consensus, we'll have one in which thirteen "commissioners" receive essentially the same input ("drama" included) and are free to heed or disregard it and decide whatever they please. How, exactly, is that an improvement? —

    David Levy

    13:44, 27 November 2014 (UTC)

    It would put the focus on facts, rather than on percentages. I'm thinking of a format similar to, e.g.,

    ArbCom clarifications and amendments, where each user can comment in their own "Statement by UserX" section. The current RfA discussion structure has a tendency to make editors worried about the number of opposes, which leads to lots of heated comments (a.k.a. "badgering") in the oppose section as supporters try to win editors over. If we got rid of the support and oppose sections entirely, editors would no longer have a reason to try and argue with opposers who have already made up their minds. Editors would try and win over ASC members, of course, but assuming that members of the committee were rational people willing to look with an open mind at evidence both for and against a candidate, I would say that there would be a lot less potential for drama there. This format would have the added bonus of making it obvious that frivolous opposes (or supports) would be ignored by committee members. — Mr. Stradivarius ^{♪ talk ♪}

    16:07, 27 November 2014 (UTC)

    It would put the focus on facts, rather than on percentages.
    The current system relies on a determination of community

    David Levy

    21:35, 27 November 2014 (UTC)

16. Oppose per all above. --Fauzan^{✆ talk}_{✉ mail} 13:09, 27 November 2014 (UTC)
17. Oppose Back during RFA2011 I thought the problems with RfA had been blown way out of proportion, nowadays when even Kudpung will say things aren't so bad it's strange to see the same vague rhetoric about "broken"-ness. On those grounds I see this as a solution in need of a problem and cannot spport. benmoore 16:13, 27 November 2014 (UTC)
18. Oppose. What we don't need is people electing elected officials who elect other elected officials. We don't need a group of Soviet Commissars for Administrative Affairs! ^{My name is}not^dave (talk/contribs) 16:33, 27 November 2014 (UTC)

    This is where you get it wrong. The commissioners would be elected, but administrators would be appointed. We need to separate the politicians from the civil servants, as I've said from the start. Politicians have never made good civil servants, and they never will do. Rubbish about "commissars" strikes me as quite mid-century American, and quite uncouth. RGloucester — ☎

    Well I apologise for my bad wording -- even if it does mock the proposed process. I also apologise for the other remark, but considering the strong political viewpoints that you have espoused on this page, I thought it might be good to put it in some form of half-ironic context. I'm not a McCarthyist by any stretch of the mile.

    Nevertheless, if we can't trust the community on this issue, then we can't trust nobody. We have to take the risk of appointing someone with little competence -- after all, we do have a revoke button if things go wrong. ^{My name is}not^dave (talk/contribs) 18:17, 27 November 2014 (UTC)

19. Oppose More committees ... more elections ... more titles .... more bureaucracy. RfA may have its problems, but this is not a good solution. Gandalf61 (talk) 17:10, 27 November 2014 (UTC)
20. No. "There must be no cabal, there must be no elites..." User:Jimbo Wales/Statement of principles. This is a slippery slope. And I'm unsure of the rationale behind having six non-admins in the committee. If someone is experienced and trusted enough to elect a user to be an admin, they should be an admin themselves, and if they are not interested in being an admin, why are they getting involved in admin work? Being an admin doesn't mean you acquire any responsibility to do anything at any time - you simply have access to some extra tools. Being on this committee puts you under responsibility and pressure greater than that of being an admin. If you don't want to be an admin, why would you want to be on this committee? Motives and/or judgement must be looked into. And the election process for getting into the committee for non-admins would surely be worse than that for becoming an admin. I understand that people are concerned about admin recruitment and the painful crucible of RfA, but this is not a solution. This is the creation of a new problem. SilkTork ^{✔Tea time} 17:43, 27 November 2014 (UTC)

    As I believe Jimbo established the Arbitration Committee, I'm fairly certain that he understood that certain matters are best dealt with in such a manner. You've got it all wrong. Some people don't want to be administrators because they don't want to play that role. These people, often vigorous content creators, are just as valuable to the project as administrators. All editors are equal on Wikipedia, and administrators need to understand that their tools are nothing more than tools. If only administrators are in charge of appointing new administrators, the result would be "old boys club" style nonsense. It would result in the creation of a cabal, exactly what you seem to rail against. A commission made up solely of administrators would be reluctant to review administrative actions, and would not be representative of a large part of the Wikipedia community. Non-administrators and administrators alike have an equal say in governance of the encyclopaedia, and, as such, they should have both have representation on the commission. RGloucester — ☎ 18:16, 27 November 2014 (UTC)

    I agree with the principle that "all editors are equal on Wikipedia" (in this context), but I regard your approach as antithetical to it. The creation of separate seats for administrators and non-administrators constitutes a formal declaration that they aren't the same (as does your statement that a group of administrators "would not be representative of a large part of the Wikipedia community").
    In response to your concern that "administrators would be reluctant to review administrative actions", I would expect non-administrators to be more reluctant, given that any aspirations of attaining adminship in the future would depend on support from a majority of a body comprising wither ~46% or ~54% administrators. (Conversely, admins might be reluctant to step on each other's toes, but they have less to lose in such a scenario.)
    However, I don't see why any of this is even relevant, unless you're concerned that the community might not be capable of electing thirteen editors who can be trusted to set aside their personal predilections and engage in an objective evaluation.
    Of course, neither of us advocates that the hypothetical commission consist solely of admins or solely of non-admins. I don't support the proposal, but were it to succeed, I would prefer that every seat be open to any editor (irrespective of whether he/she is an administrator). —

    David Levy

    21:35, 27 November 2014 (UTC)

    No, my approach enshrines it. The cultural norms on Wikipedia, at present, give administrators a certain rank above everyday editors. That's a fact, whether we like it or not. As we've seen above, in SilkTork's comment, many people think that the only people who have an interest in governing Wikipedia either are administrators or should be administrators. This is a wrong-headed approach. We need to check these cultural norms, which are antithetical to the original conception of adminship. To do this, we must provide for non-administrator representation on this commission. I think that the community would struggle to elect non-administrators to this body if they were not reserved seats, and I think that that would be detrimental to both the encyclopaedia and the commission. This is seen in ArbCom now, where non-administrators are allowed to run for the position of arbitrator, but almost never attain it. The vast majority of editors have no desire to be an administrator. That doesn't mean that they should be excluded from the governance of the encyclopaedia. RGloucester — ☎ 01:08, 28 November 2014 (UTC)

    No, my approach enshrines it.
    It enshrines the concept that being an admin is a "big deal".
    The cultural norms on Wikipedia, at present, give administrators a certain rank above everyday editors.
    To the extent that such an attitude exists, it's a problem in need of fixing, not a principle around which to structure policies and procedures. The former might not be easy, and it certainly won't happen overnight, but it's our only hope of setting things right.
    As we've seen above, in SilkTork's comment, many people think that the only people who have an interest in governing Wikipedia either are administrators or should be administrators.
    I think that you might have taken those comments the wrong way. Adminship is supposed to be "no big deal". Trustworthy editors who wish to participate in the sort of process proposed (not that I endorse its creation) should be administrators – not because only administrators should be eligible, but because we should have no qualms about granting eligible editors adminship (thereby enabling them to view deleted edits, which can be highly useful when evaluating an editor's behavior).
    Of course, I'm well aware that such a climate no longer exists. And that's exactly why we're having this discussion. You've structured your proposal in a manner that formalizes symptoms of the problem it's intended to solve.
    We need to check these cultural norms, which are antithetical to the original conception of adminship.
    We need to eliminate them, not accept them as the new normal and attempt to counterbalance them through bureaucratic measures.
    I think that the community would struggle to elect non-administrators to this body if they were not reserved seats, and I think that that would be detrimental to both the encyclopaedia and the commission.
    Think about what you're saying. You want to create a rule explicitly intended to mandate an outcome that you believe is likely to lack consensus. Worse still, it would "enshrine" in policy the concept that we must maintain a pool of trustworthy editors without adminship. If seven of the commissioners were administrators, we would be unable to grant adminship to an eighth without booting one of them from his/her seat – no matter how trustworthy and reliable they are. You want to establish a rule that requires us to consider rank (a concept that shouldn't even exist in this context) before merit. And with what goal in mind? To counter discrimination on the basis of the aforementioned "rank".
    This is seen in ArbCom now, where non-administrators are allowed to run for the position of arbitrator, but almost never attain it.
    

    David Levy

    02:21, 28 November 2014 (UTC)

    No, you're wrong. My proposal makes it clear that administrators are dustmen with mops, and nothing more. Your insistence to the contrary is simply false. Technical workers, mechanics. RfA makes adminship a big deal because it requires users become political, as if they were vying for a position of leadership. This is antithetical to the role of dustman. One does not require that one run for election to be a dustman. A dustman does not need to run for election. He merely needs to do his job properly, in line with the policies and guidelines that the community relies on. I think that what is good for the encyclopaedia is "consensus", whether everyone agrees or not. That's how our policies work, and that's how this ought work too. The problem is not whether we should have any qualms about giving people adminship, but about whether they want it at all. Those that do not want it, the vast majority of editors, should have representation in the governance of this encyclopaedia. RGloucester — ☎ 05:54, 28 November 2014 (UTC)

    My proposal makes it clear that administrators are dustmen with mops, and nothing more.
    You just stated that "the cultural norms on Wikipedia, at present, give administrators a certain rank above everyday editors", and while you clearly don't approve of this, you've based your proposed system on the assumption that such a structure exists.
    I don't doubt that you want administrators to be thought of as "dustmen with mops" (and so do I). But your proposal doesn't reflect this.
    I think that what is good for the encyclopaedia is "consensus", whether everyone agrees or not. That's how our policies work, and that's how this ought work too.
    Under the proposed system, an adminship request would succeed or fail not on the basis of consensus, but through a simple majority vote.
    The problem is not whether we should have any qualms about giving people adminship, but about whether they want it at all.
    If someone doesn't want to be an admin, that's fine. Since first editing Wikipedia (initially without an account) almost ten years ago, I've been steadfast in my opposition to the treatment of administrators as members of a higher class. (This includes instances in which editors mistakenly believed that I was owed special deference, wherein I went out of my way to explain that I wasn't.)
    While I admire your intent, I strongly disagree with your approach (in which you seek to counter the practice of treating admins and non-admins differently by treating admins and non-admins differently – thereby reinforcing the concept and formally sanctioning it as a matter of policy).
    Those that do not want it, the vast majority of editors, should have representation in the governance of this encyclopaedia.
    Such statements imply that administrators are a separate group whose participation is disconnected from non-administrators' interests – that somehow, being given the sysop bit materially alters who they are and what they bring to the table (to the extent that they no longer "represent" the rest of the community). How is this consistent with the beliefs espoused above? Have you stopped to think this through?
    My position is that we're all Wikipedians. If a proposal such as yours were to succeed, I believe that Wikipedians should fill the seats. —

    David Levy

    08:07, 28 November 2014 (UTC)

    I'm British, and in the House of Commons, everything is decided by a simple majority vote. That's consensus. Do note that the commissioners would not just be "voting", they'd be doing extensive research into the candidate. They would have to provide a detailed rationale to community. Regardless, we must counteract the dangerous cultural norms with proactive policy. If we do not, we will continue in this downward spiral. RGloucester — ☎ 15:59, 28 November 2014 (UTC)

    I'm British, and in the House of Commons, everything is decided by a simple majority vote. That's consensus.
    This isn't the House of Commons. At Wikipedia, consensus explicitly is not determined via a simple majority vote. I find it more than a little troubling that you either lack familiarity with

    David Levy

    18:02, 28 November 2014 (UTC)

    It would be "consensus", because the consensus of the community would have implemented the commission. It would have granted them the power to make these decisions, much in the same it way ArbCom does. That represents the "consensus" of the community, because the community granted the power to the commission. Given that we have entrusted the commissioners to make these decisions, if we decide to implement the proposal, their vote represents our consensus. Adminship is no big deal, and shouldn't require a unanimous or two-thirds vote of commissioners. If there is a serious objection raised, I'm sure the other commissioners will take that into account, in line with common sense. RGloucester — ☎ 18:12, 28 November 2014 (UTC)

    It would be "consensus", because the consensus of the community would have implemented the commission.
    By that logic, one could define any hypothetical decision-making process as "consensus". I'm attempting to discuss the nature of the specific one proposed. Whether consensus for its implementation is established has absolutely no bearing on this. Consensus to replace RfA with a coin toss-based system wouldn't make coin tossing a consensus-based method.
    Of course, none of this relates to your previous statement, in which you referred to "a simple majority vote" as "consensus".
    It would have granted them the power to make these decisions, much in the same it way ArbCom does.
    Again, the

    David Levy

    20:29, 28 November 2014 (UTC)

21. No. The problem of needing more admins is not so apparent to me as to justify establishing a power center which by its nature would have influence outside its remit. The community judgment is that the pace of admin-making should be slowed, and it's rendered a verdict, unfortunate in my view in some cases, on some people. That's the community's answer. That's to be respected, not evaded.--Wehwalt (talk) 18:25, 27 November 2014 (UTC)
22. Oppose - Nobody can be forced to be an admin. This proposals essentially would create a way how to promote some users to admins without the trust of the commmunity, and others who are inept, as long as they are friends with the appointing board. That is contrary to all basic principles of Wikipedia ("Community rules" and "Clue is required", especially). It would also increase the drama rate exponentially, for two reasons: Inept admins would make many wrong decisions which then have to be fixed, and then many of those admins would be subjected to recall, more drama. I think we can do without all that. Kraxler (talk) 20:16, 27 November 2014 (UTC)
23. Oppose I would support such a board if it existed solely for dealing with the removal of admins. However, I cannot support disenfranchising the community in the promotion of admins. Mellowed Fillmore (talk) 20:19, 27 November 2014 (UTC)
24. Oppose. I like the idea in principle. RFA is the most horrible job interview you will go through in your life. It goes on forever and questions come in from a multitude of random people, often with an axe to grind irrelevant to the candidate. We need a less stressful way of promoting suitable candidates to adminship. However, I cannot support any proposal that has quotas for admins and non-admins. The community should be free to appoint who they like to the Commission. I also do not agree with the simple majority principle. An RFA that was opposed by 49% of participants would be a clear fail. If 49% of the Commission oppose someone (people who are supposedly picked for their ability to choose good admins) that should carry even more weight. SpinningSpark 20:45, 27 November 2014 (UTC)
25. Strong Oppose This proposal attempts to solve the problems of RFA by taking the power to promote admins away from the community and giving it to a small clique of elites. The proposal attempts to make this more palatable by requiring that the elite clique be elected, but this does not change the fact that users will be getting the mop without community approval. There’s also a risk that admins promoted without community consensus will be delegitimized, and any controversial decisions they make will be more subject to attack than if it was made by an RFA admin. At the end of the day admins should have the support and trust of the Wikipedia community, and attempts at RFA reform should not remove community consensus. Spirit of Eagle (talk) 02:22, 28 November 2014 (UTC)

    Never heard of the social contract, eh? They would have community approval, as the commission would be elected. These would not be "elites", but representatives of the community. This fear of "elites" is juvenile. We already have a large clique of "elites" on Wikipedia, and they are not even subject to elections. These fellows would be elected by the community at large to carry out an important function. They'd be representatives of the community, checked through elections. "Community consensus" is not a liberal ideal whereby everyone must voice an opinion. That doesn't happen now, and even if it did, it would be a rubbish way to appoint dustmen. RGloucester — ☎ 06:03, 28 November 2014 (UTC)

    To quote consensus policy: "Decision-making involves an effort to incorporate all editors' legitimate concerns". The proposal would only allow about a dozen editors to air their concerns while shutting out the general user base. While this group will be elected, it will serve to separate the admins from the userbase and prevent community consensus from occurring. You referenced the WMF to create precedence for the proposal, but that's not really a valid comparison. The WMF rarely gets involved in day to day editing unless there are legal issues or threats of lawsuits. Admins, on the other hand, have a massive impact on day to day editing. In light of this, I believe that admins should have the support of the general community. (Also, I get that most editors do not actually engage in RFAs in the present, but what matters is that they can if they have a strong opinion. Eliminating user participation in RFAs because many people do not participate would make about as much sense as canceling elections because many people do not vote). Spirit of Eagle (talk) 05:03, 29 November 2014 (UTC)

    Besides, any argument beginning with 'We already have a large clique of "elites" ...' is

    39

    06:04, 29 November 2014 (UTC)

26. Strong Oppose. Creating an official cabal of elders to make the decisions on who gets to be an admin is probably the worst RfA reform idea that I have seen in ages. It will decrease transparency and credibility of adminship, and instead of decreasing the amount of drama will greatly increase it. Most problems with adminship have little to do with the RfA process itself but rather are caused by the continuing decline in the ability of WP to attract new regular editors and to retain existing ones. To the extent that the RfA process can affect the situation, what would be useful is a greater degree of unbundling of admin functions. The current system is based on the "all or nothing" approach: a user either has no admin rights at all (rollback really does not count) or gets all of them at once. Given that WP has grown rather big and complicated, such a system is no longer reasonable. For example, one can't really expect any user to have equally solid understanding of all the different aspects of the deletion policies, from CSD to images to user pages to DRV etc. Given the extremely wide array of tools that an admin gets access to and the vast amount of knowledge required to use these tools properly, it is actually pretty easy to trip any admin candidate by a few deftly chosen questions or to point out significant weaknesses that any candidate will necessarily have in some areas of admin responsibility. If the admin tools were unbundled and the stakes were not so high, it would be much easier to promote specific users to greater user rights in this or that narrow area, and their deficiencies in other areas would not matter as much. Farming out relatively low level admin tasks (e.g. blocking vandals and some forms of page protection) to a much wider group of users would allow "full admins" concentrate on more difficult tasks, such as deletion, dealing with ANI issues, etc. But the council of elders proposal is not the way to go. Nsk92 (talk) 02:52, 28 November 2014 (UTC)
27. Oppose – On principle. We've debated for years what to fix RFA since the Kurt Weber, ageism, etc debates of 2007–2009, and clearly the consensus has not changed since then either that we cannot find a solution and that the system works as is, as broken as it may appear. More bureaucracy does not create a solution, but adds fuel to the fire, something I've argued for years. Mitch32^{(The imitator dooms himself to hopeless mediocrity.)} 02:53, 28 November 2014 (UTC)
28. Oppose creating more bureaucracy, more special positions. The proposal will reduce transparency and increase favoritism. The only solution, a hard one I admit, is to encourage more editors to stand for RfA, and to encourage better civility and respect at RfA. The RfA system is a good one if people apply more good faith. Jehochman ^Talk 04:27, 28 November 2014 (UTC)
29. Strong oppose - Granted that Wikipedia is not a democracy, per se, it's a fatal defect that this proposal fails to satisfy the concept that the problems of democracy can only be solved by more democracy. Frankly, I think it's an appalling idea, easily subject to co-option, and more likely to produce more "dramah" rather then less, as every admin created under this proposed system would be suspect. I will grant that there are problems with RfA, and I do believe that those problems do actual inhibit some potentially useful editors from seeking adminship, but putting that kind of power into the hands of a small number of people is, it seems to me, a very bad idea. BMK (talk) 05:38, 28 November 2014 (UTC)

    I think that forcing dustmen to run for election is appalling. RGloucester — ☎ 05:59, 28 November 2014 (UTC)

    I think you don't have a clear idea of what "apalling" means. I also think that your propensity for responding to "oppose" comments is counterproductive, and an indication that you're being far too personal about this. Let it go. BMK (talk) 18:30, 28 November 2014 (UTC)

    I beg your pardon, sir. I didn't even want to put this proposal to an RfC. I only did so because there was an appetite for it, not because I have an interest in doing so. Given this, it is important that I put my energy into it, otherwise it would be a waste of time. I do have an idea of what "appalling" means. If you made everyone that wanted to become a dustman run for election, there would be very few dustmen. That'd be appalling. How would the everyday fellow manage all the rubbish building up outside his door? RGloucester — ☎ 20:43, 28 November 2014 (UTC)

    Your continuing actions and personalization of the issue speak volumes, and contradict your claim to be simply a neutral party. I suggest if that is indeed the case that you stop responding to comments and allow the community the freedom to decide without your further contribution to the debate.

    As for "appalling", no, you clearly do not know what it means. Having a "dustman" be elected might be silly, it might be stupid, it might be inappropriate, it might be a waste of energy, it might be "bureacracy run wild", it might be a lot of things, but it most assuredly is not "appalling". BMK (talk) 23:08, 28 November 2014 (UTC)

    I don't know what "personalisation" means. I have a self-declared density, in that way. I don't believe I claimed to be a "neutral party". I said I don't care what the outcome is. The world goes as it does, and if God wills it, something will happen. I believe that living in a house surrounded by accumulated rubbish is appalling. I'm sorry if you don't agree. I fear I wouldn't want to call on you, then. RGloucester — ☎ 02:47, 29 November 2014 (UTC)

    Well, what one person finds appalling doesn't necessarily hold true for everyone else, I suppose. I wouldn't say that's a misuse of the word. About dustmen, I'm not convinced it's an appropriate analogy to begin with. Dustmen collect rubbish, which by definition no one wants to keep around. Administrators, on the other hand, don't strictly collect rubbish. Some of the 'rubbish' they collect is valued by its creators, but no one else; some of it has been vigorously debated by a variety of editors, many of whom probably disagree with each other; and some of it is other editors themselves, whom it is offensive and dehumanising to liken to rubbish: while some 'editors' are not here to build an encyclopedia, often being here just to mess it up, others are genuinely trying to help, and many of these have been around for years and had a reasonable, even excellent track record before the time came for them to be dumped in the rubbish bin. Admittedly, different admins work in different areas, but 'rubbish' in the usual sense still isn't their sole focus by any stretch of the imagination. A better analogy would be policemen (though they are not elected either, so we are mostly back to square one).

    39

    04:46, 29 November 2014 (UTC)

    There is a reason why the symbol of the administrator is the mop. Their job is to clean up rubbish, and get rid of it. They remove vandals and vandalism, they delete rubbish pages, and they do what they can to keep rubbish out of articles. They are exactly dustmen, and I believe that we've got a lot of dust that's not being cleaned up. I know plenty of good and hardworking administrators. At the same time, I see intransigence across the administrator class. Many are reluctant to get involved in messes that are clearly detrimental to the encyclopaedia, even when they have tools like discretionary sanctions available to them. We must get past this intransigence. We must have dustmen that can remove rubbish, not dustmen that are afraid to do so. It is that simple. The first way to ensure that dustmen are capable of doing their job is by treating them like dustmen. Politics must be removed form the equation. RGloucester — ☎ 06:22, 29 November 2014 (UTC)

    That would be great. Unfortunately, the proposed system would introduce an additional layer of politics (campaigning for a seat on the Administrative Standards Commission) and simultaneously shift the existing politics to a less open, less transparent, more manipulable context. —

    David Levy

    07:30, 29 November 2014 (UTC)

    No, it would allow dustmen to be dustmen, and allow politicians to politicians. Commissioners would be politicians, but administrators would be dustmen. This allows administrators to return to their original function, and removes their political role. This is similar to how Jimbo originally appointed administrators himself. That was a much better system, and if anyone cares to propose it, I'd support removing RfA and only allowing Jimbo to appoint administrators. RGloucester — ☎ 15:59, 29 November 2014 (UTC)

    No, it would allow dustmen to be dustmen, and allow politicians to politicians. Commissioners would be politicians, but administrators would be dustmen.
    Firstly, as I noted in my initial response to this proposal, we need less bureaucracy, not more. The way forward is to address the problem that's developed at RfA, not to "move the mess" (as Reticulated Spline described it) by making "elections" an official part of the adminship process. Secondly...
    This allows administrators to return to their original function, and removes their political role.
    If anything, it would have the opposite effect. Suddenly, the path to adminship would run through thirteen specific editors and their friends. Simply impress at least seven commissioners, and you're in.
    To be clear, I'm not referring to any sort of misconduct. I mean that the new form of "politicking" would be to behave in a manner most likely to be viewed in a favorable light by members of the commission (by participating in similar activities, expressing similar views, avoiding contentious areas, etc.). No longer would prospective administrators face torch- and pitchfork-wielding mobs, but we'd simply be trading that problem for a worse one.
    This is similar to how Jimbo originally appointed administrators himself. That was a much better system, and if anyone cares to propose it, I'd support removing RfA and only allowing Jimbo to appoint administrators.
    Wow. In an earlier reply, I nearly mentioned that option in jest (but decided that this was excessively hyperbolic). Your serious support is rather disconcerting. —

    David Levy

    19:45, 29 November 2014 (UTC)

    And the other symbol of administrators is the

    39

    20:58, 29 November 2014 (UTC)

    RGloucester's basic problem is that he has taken the symbols and analogies we use to help make clear what the role of a Wikipedia admin is and reified them into a hard-and-fast concrete concept which he takes to be the actual reality of that role. Thus, a "dustman" or a "janitor" can be helpful in understanding one aspect of an admin's job, and the mop can be emblematic of that role, but that doesn't mean that an admin is a dustman or that the janitorial role they perform is the only aspect of what they do. To RGloucester, however, an admin is a dustman, period, full stop, and therefore anything which applies to a dustman must apply to an admin. There's little need to point out the scope of this conceptual error, and the part it plays in his (clear and evident) advocacy of this terrible proposal. BMK (talk) 22:08, 29 November 2014 (UTC)

30. Oppose RfA is the best transparent way and I have no problems with the process. Those who think the process deters editors, need to understand that editors must have confidence in themselves before running for RfA. This alternative is doesn't feel good.
    (talk)
    07:48, 28 November 2014 (UTC)
31. Very strong oppose There is nothing wrong with the RfA process. The perceived trouble is just a natural and unavoidable consequence of its open nature. The alternative, however, is to make the process less open and less democratic, for instance by having some commission in charge as proposed here. But this severely flawed. First, this proposal is far too underdeveloped to be taken seriously and should have been discussed in the Idea Lab first. Any serious replacement for RfA must be precise, e.g., how many commissioners, how are they elected, and so on. In fact, how would the election or appointment of commissioners be any less controversial than RfA itself? Plus, if there's a commission, it means fewer eyeballs scrutinizing candidates and that means a less thorough vetting process too. But the worst part of the idea is the extra layer of bureaucracy. This proposal would further erode the open nature of Wikipedia and it would probably cause more trouble than currently exists with RfA. Jason Quinn (talk) 14:18, 28 November 2014 (UTC)

    The point is to make it less open and democratic. Democracy is the problem, and appointment is the solution. Being "open" and "democratic" is not always a good thing. Perhaps you didn't read the proposal page at

    WP:ASC, but all of that stuff is already written. RGloucester — ☎

    16:04, 28 November 2014 (UTC)

    I did miss that link so until I get to read it I'm striking my one concern above but changing the RfA process to be less open and less democratic is why I'm saying this proposal must fail. This comes bundled with a whole new set of troubles that I don't think are worth the effort, not the least of which is taking Wikipedia one bit further away from being the "encyclopedia any one can edit" by centralizing power. Otherwise your comment seems consistent with what I wrote. Jason Quinn (talk) 07:46, 29 November 2014 (UTC)

32. Oppose Half-baked with insufficient ground work done before the proposal ever saw the light of day. Proposal after proposal has died because people refuse to do any sort of problem identification and problem solving, and instead come up with a solution that will fix everything (though they don't know what the 'everything' is). I will not support this nor any other proposal that refuses to proceed in a horse before the cart fashion. Just because someone can come up with a solution doesn't mean it addresses any problems that truly exist. --Hammersoft (talk) 15:38, 28 November 2014 (UTC)

    The problem is mob democracy, and the way RfA makes editors become politicians in order to become an administrator. They should be civil servants, and civil servants are not elected. My proposal renders them into their proper role. RGloucester — ☎ 16:04, 28 November 2014 (UTC)

    With respect, you don't really know. Lots of people have ideas about the problems of RFA but nobody has done a true analysis. --Hammersoft (talk) 17:23, 28 November 2014 (UTC)

    #Strong Oppose - I might support this as supplementary to RfA, but I doubt it. This essentially removes the ability of the community to decide who is or isn't worthy of being an administrator, which I find is quite important. Further, it removes the ability of the applicant to discuss the reasons why people oppose them; this is something that, as an admin hopeful, I feel I need. When I apply for adminship, part of the point will be to get that feedback on my conduct whether or not my request is successful. RfA may need improvements, but a committee to appoint administrators is not the solution. demize (t · c) 16:47, 28 November 2014 (UTC) Moved to support demize (t · c) 00:59, 1 December 2014 (UTC)

33. Oppose RFA needs a wide range of input across the community, people who have past knowledge of the candidate and those who can did into their past actions. I can't see how the ASC could get a broad enough range of views. What I would like to see is the bureaucrats playing a much more active part in moderating RfA to eliminate the nastier end of the comments.--Salix alba (talk): 19:17, 28 November 2014 (UTC)
34. Oppose I understand the urge to replace or supplement a process that is deemed "broken" (although it managed to make a lot of good users admins) but this proposal doesn't seem to be a step in the right direction. Those who claim that this proposal will remove the "democracy"-problem with RfA fail to see that it just shifts it to another level. Not the admin candidates would have to be politicians then but those who want to serve in the ASC. Also, the proposal as it currently stands would allow seven editors working together to appoint a large number of bad admins or to block a large number of good editors from becoming admins. I'm not completely opposed to concentrating power when it serves a valid purpose (e.g. with ArbCom to have an efficient dispute resolution process) but any concentration of power in the hands of a few editors should neither be the first nor the only resort (which is why ArbCom is the final step in the dispute resolution process for example). Regards SoWhy 21:16, 28 November 2014 (UTC)
35. Oppose - Wikipedia needs better, more neutral administrators, not more administrators. Guy1890 (talk) 21:21, 28 November 2014 (UTC)
36. In this case, it is incredibly naive to believe that a less transparent process would lead to a more desirable outcome. There is no assurance that this process will address the existing problems in RfA regarding low amount of applicants - instead all it does is shift the power from the community towards select individuals. Instead of demonstrating competency towards the community, they will instead need to campaign towards those individuals. It is a dangerous assertion to make that these individuals are more capable of making this decision than the community. Is it more likely that more people will be promoted through this process? Probably. Will the candidates be similarly vetted and tested for competency? Probably not. —Dark 04:26, 29 November 2014 (UTC)
37. Oppose I'm also concerned that the commission could easily tend towards cliquishness, that this proposal amounts to swapping democracy for oligarchy, and that it would be very difficult for a commission to really know all would-be administrators, especially without excessive politicking. --BDD (talk) 14:10, 29 November 2014 (UTC)
38. Oppose I do not want a competing process to RfA. I am not convinced that the problems described are serious enough to merit this drastic and shocking change. I would support the creation of a board to support the community in other ways, but I am not convinced that granting more userright flags is going to improve community health. Blue Rasberry (talk) 23:59, 29 November 2014 (UTC)
39. Oppose I feel that community support for sysops is an essential requirement. Further, adminship through ASC would make the position truly special, a status that is already contested as being a "big deal" when it shouldn't be. Mkdw^talk 00:09, 30 November 2014 (UTC)
40. Thank you, RGloucester, for your willingness to think critically about RFA and your courage in bringing this proposal forward despite the contention you must have known you'd get. The proposal has its merits, but I must oppose it. Democracy guarantees very little, except that we deserve the leaders we get. Wikipedia must always deserve its admins. Lagrange613 02:59, 30 November 2014 (UTC)
41. Oppose Not the right solution. wctaiwan (talk) 04:57, 30 November 2014 (UTC)
42. Oppose Reforming the RfA is a good idea, but a new committee is (mostly) a step in the wrong direction. I would much rather support putting a term limit on adminship (repeat adminship possible), and incorporating a review of user's recent admin/admin-like actions as a more explicit factor in the RfA process. Having admins appoint other admins seems to counter the crowdsourcing spirit of Wikipedia.Forbes72 (talk) 06:06, 30 November 2014 (UTC)
43. Oppose - RFA should be a community thing still - Yes we have far to many people and yes the RFA needs sorting but IMHO cutting all the community out isn't the answer, What happened if some admins thought "hmm yeah this persons perfect for the bit" when basically the entire community would've maybe thought otherwise ..... then all shit would hit the fan no doubt, It's a great idea but just don't think it'll work here for long sorry, –Davey2010 • (talk) 06:10, 30 November 2014 (UTC)
44. Oppose I don't at all like the idea of a few people deciding who should be admins when the admins are supposed to have the support of the community to enforce its consensus. Also given that the WMF has sad numerous times that they require an editor to be selected by an RFA or RFA-like process before being granted access to deleted content I don't see how this could work. Callanecc (talk • contribs • logs) 12:28, 30 November 2014 (UTC)
45. Oppose per the previous opposes. I think each person in the community needs to be able to have a voice in deciding who becomes an administrator. I don't agree with the rationale that democratically-electing admins is the problem with RFA, or that making the process into a bureaucratic one involving a cabal that appoints admins would be an improvement over the current process. The way I see it, the problem with RFA isn't the fact that the community elects administrators - it's that there's a lack of guidelines for voting and so people, being people, will use their own guidelines and will make the process difficult. Although the RFA process needs to be improved, I don't think this proposal will improve it. Ca2james (talk) 17:38, 30 November 2014 (UTC)
46. Weak oppose: This idea might have potential—especially for desysopping—but its structure gives whoever's on the commission a great deal of power, and systems that concentrate power are generally not in Wikipedia's interest except as necessary evils (like ArbCom). RfA has its share of problems, but it at least reflects the idea of "community trust" as the baseline requirement of adminship. {{Nihiltres|talk|edits}} 19:57, 30 November 2014 (UTC)
47. Oppose, reluctantly, since I think something on these lines would be useful; but the question asked is "Should we implement this proposal as specified," and I cannot support this as written. First, I disagree strongly with attempts to cast admins and non-admins as separate groups with conflicting aims who need constitutional protection from each other. Certainly, this body should not be admin-only, but I think it should be left to the electorate to choose the people best qualified for the work, and I hope the Commission would operate by discussion and generally by consensus, not dividing along party lines. People who believe that existing admins want to make appointing new ones difficult so as to cling onto their POWER (Mwahahaha!!) should consider that they are greatly outnumbered in the electorate, and so are unlikely to be able to dominate this Commission if they are generally distrusted. At most, reserve three seats each for admins and non-admins, to ensure they each have some representation. Even more, I disagree with appointment on a bare majority. We should not be aiming to lower the standard, just to make the selection process less stressful. The Commission should not appoint a candidate who six of them think unsuitable; I would want to see at least a 10 - 3 majority. Finally, I think the idea that this group should also be searching for candidates involves a degree of COI: they may be reluctant to criticise a candidate sponsored by one of their number. Searching and selection should be separated. JohnCD (talk) 21:26, 30 November 2014 (UTC)
48. Oppose. Editors have been having endless disussions about what's wrong with the RfA. This proposal is one result of the dissatisfaction and impatience with the current process. I respect the creator of the proposal and many of the support voters as well, but I, like many others, don't think this is the answer. We don't need another bureaucracy that somehow interrelates with bureaucrats and the community and ArbCom and god knows what else. I also see people complaining about this process if it were implemented. Although I am not opposed to fixing what is "wrong" with the current process, I think we may have to accept that no process is without flaws. Perhaps then our expectations will be more reasonable as to what can be done.--Bbb23 (talk) 23:45, 30 November 2014 (UTC)
49. Oppose TLDR: Adminship is not a big deal. Their selection process should reflect that.
    In reply to SilkTork (oppose #20), RGloucester said that "Some people don't want to be administrators because they don't want to play that role." Perhaps. But what role is that? Administrators are enabled to do a wide variety of things - and required to do none at all. There is no role for an admin. Being an admin just means that you are generally familiar with the encyclopedia and its policies, have shown that you can follow them, and have minimal good judgment.† And it means you get to help out occasionally when you see a problem. It is no big deal.
    Current admin selection tries to reflects that - it follows a procedure roughly comparable to that of deleting a page. There's a discussion, then a decision. And if not everyone quite agrees on what the guidelines for making that decision are, it's still done as a simple, routine process. Conversely, if this proposal is adopted - a special, globally elected commission dedicated to selecting admins - we will be saying that being an admin is not merely a big deal, but such a big deal that the community can't be trusted to make the selections on its own. That being an admin is such a huge deal that it takes a special commission on the level of ArbCom to select them. I shudder to think what that could do to the role of the admin. – Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 01:43, 1 December 2014 (UTC)
    † Yes, I said minimal - and that's all that's needed for most admin purposes. Most of the truly complicated cases or cases that require more-than-minimal judgment are discussed by the community, reducing the admin to mere button-pusher. Similarly, while there are a few areas that require some particular expertise, that same minimal judgment will tell the admin to stay away until they've acquired that expertise. Which is why we don't grill all candidates on all areas of becoming an admin in every RfA. – Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 01:43, 1 December 2014 (UTC)
50. Oppose Per the above. There are bad apples in the community, but thats a problem for the community to fix, and a reason to shift away from democrtically elected administrators. Haymaker (talk) 03:00, 1 December 2014 (UTC)
51. Oppose The system we have has worked for years now and per above. - Knowledgekid87 (talk) 03:52, 1 December 2014 (UTC)
52. Oppose. The politicization of adminship — the afaik widely-acknowledged fact that those who want to help the project as admins can't edit controversial topics before seeking the vote, lest people oppose them for having the 'wrong' position on the topic — is a problem. But I don't think this proposal solves the problem: when US senators were elected by state legislators rather than directly by the people at large, they were not any less political / partisan. They were, however, less accountable / harder to hold to account. -sche (talk) 04:03, 1 December 2014 (UTC)
53. Oppose – Nothing wrong with the current system. – Smyth\^talk 11:22, 1 December 2014 (UTC)
54. Oppose. I don't like the way this moves adminship away from the community. Anyone should be free to present themselves as an admin candidate and find out what the community thinks about them. There have been people in the past who opposed all self-noms, or opposed candidates who hadn't worked on featured articles -- these shouldn't be the gatekeepers for whether an adminship request succeeds or not. --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 18:34, 1 December 2014 (UTC)
55. Oppose - There is wrong with the RFA process. The problem is that there are many editors who are active, and in good standing, who really ought to be admins, but aren't. Having been an admin for a number of years, it really is "not a big deal". It is useful having the tools to be able to step in and deal with non-productive editors at the click of a mouse, rather than having to ask someone else to do so. It is also useful sometimes in being able to correct one's own errors! One fear I had when I decided to run for adminship was that it would cut down on my editing. This has generally not proved to be the case. As an admin, you don't have to get involved in any dispute or deal with any case should you chose not to. If you are eligible, please consider running, you never know, you might even succeed! Mjroots (talk) 21:03, 1 December 2014 (UTC)

    Or, if you don't succeed, you might become one of the people who are so disgusted by their colleagues that you quit editing (or cut back significantly). I don't honestly remember the last time I encouraged someone that I liked to undergo RFA; it's probably been several years. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:56, 2 December 2014 (UTC)

56. Oppose - This proposal to make a substantial additional bureaucracy to run parallel to the current system and disenfranchise much of the community is not the appropriate change to make at this time. I agree with Jehochman that we must "encourage more editors to stand for RfA, and to encourage better civility and respect at RfA." - tucoxn\^talk 22:20, 1 December 2014 (UTC)
57. Oppose the creation of additional bureaucracy which would only serve to remove the community from adminship decisions and put the power in the hands of a shadowy cabal. Mihaister (talk) 23:21, 1 December 2014 (UTC)
58. Oppose Although I respectfully disagree with Chris troutman above, I think this would be a step in the wrong direction. Miniapolis 23:55, 1 December 2014 (UTC)
59. Oppose --
    Surturz (talk
    ) 03:15, 2 December 2014 (UTC)
60. Oppose: To me, the most important thing to remember about being an admin is that IT'S NO BIG DEAL. AT ALL. With every step towards creating a more elite process, that fundamental truth gets lost. This process seems to not only "christen" certain chosen editors, but then add an ADDITIONAL level of even more prestige--the admin appointing oligarchs. Admins are just editors with extra tools, and the culture needs to swing towards reinforcing that notion and not creating a hierarchy. What makes Wikipedia one of the top 5 internet sites is not the police, but the law-abiding citizens, toiling away on making better content. And if the requirement to be able to add content is "Anyone can do it, unless you abuse the privilege," that should be the basic requirement for being an admin as well. Some bureaucracy is necessary, but it should be viewed as a necessary evil that we should be backing away from every chance we get—not expanding. Our energies need to be going almost 100% towards what will DISqualify you as an admin, not what will qualify you as one. I would just as soon give it to anyone who wants it, and only snatch it if and when they begin to abuse it. The fact that Wikipedia:Requests for de-adminship is underdeveloped is the core of the problem.--Esprit15d • talk • contribs 04:47, 2 December 2014 (UTC)
61. Strong Oppose I didn't think it was even possible to create a more opaque bureaucratic system than the one WP already has, but I was clearly wrong. Word "Kafkaesque" readily comes to mind. Primaler (talk) 05:56, 2 December 2014 (UTC)
62. Oppose - more bureaucracy, more clique-e-ness, less accountability for admins, less community control? That's 0/4. WilyD 14:54, 2 December 2014 (UTC)
63. Oppose Especially the part giving the power to remove administrators--as I understand it, without the involvement of arb com or even an appeal to arb com. This would in effect create two arb coms, and we have trouble enough managing the associated bureaucracy of our single one. And if it does allow an appeal to arb com, essentially every removal will probably be appealed there, it's just adding an extra step and prolonging disputes. DGG ( talk ) 20:31, 2 December 2014 (UTC)
64. Oppose I agree that RfA needs to be improved, but I'm not convinced this process would make it less of a hell week. My own RfA was fairly stressful (mostly because I gave a bad initial answer to one of the questions), but most of the people arguing over my answer were pretty established editors anyway (including a few arbitrators). When your answers and editing history are being relentlessly picked over for mistakes, it doesn't matter if thirteen or a hundred-odd editors are doing it - and if most of the committee hasn't interacted with the candidate, that part might even get worse. TheCatalyst31 ^{Reaction•Creation} 04:21, 3 December 2014 (UTC)
65. Oppose Super bad idea. Feels like bureaucrats are gradually stealing WP away from the community. – nafSadh did say 04:54, 3 December 2014 (UTC)
66. Oppose Too much process wonkery, potential for less oversight. Spencer^T♦C 05:08, 3 December 2014 (UTC)
67. Oppose: After thinking on this for a long time, I'm coming down here. I think that having an appointments board would create a de facto two-tier ranking of admins – elected and appointed – which would be toxic and cause conflict, giving those who dislike an appointed admin a stick to beat them with. On desysoppings, we already have ArbCom and efforts should be on improving that system. Likewise, the recent run of successful RfAs shows it's not broken, we just need to encourage people who have been discouraged by the negative hype around it. BethNaught (talk) 17:27, 3 December 2014 (UTC)
68. Oppose Don't really see the problem with the current system, and especially no need for the creation of a bunch more special positions. IMO, a system that works by appointment is a very bad idea – we only have to look at the House of Lords to see what inevitably happens... Even more concerning is the part of the proposal re revoking admin rights – it's quite easy to piss a small group of people off (particularly if they have the same mindset), and I'm concerned this could lead to a few ANI-type witchhunts where decisions are made on spurious evidence in a short time period. Number 57 19:51, 3 December 2014 (UTC)
69. Oppose: I don't think this is a terrible suggestion, and do believe it's motivated by a sincere desire to improve the process of selecting admins. Nevertheless, I don't believe that adminship will be improved by electing commissioners who then nominate editors. While this proposed practice may increase the number of needed administrators, and obviate the requirement that editors be especially diplomatic, I believe that diplomacy and cool-headedness is one of the characteristics we rely most on in admins, even when many of their actions are simply bureaucratic. Furthermore, because of their substantial powers, I would rather that the entire wikipedia community participate in the selection process. As messy as this democratic process is, I believe it works far better than in most democratic examples to be found outside Wikipedia. -Darouet (talk) 21:33, 3 December 2014 (UTC)
70. Oppose on principle of not disenfranchising the community in this process. Per Mellowed Fillmore and others. Michael Barera (talk) 23:22, 3 December 2014 (UTC)
71. Oppose, while the current system has issues, the proposed system is not any better. Reading the opening line of the
    WP:ASC scream "Good old boy network. Jeepday (talk
    ) 23:40, 3 December 2014 (UTC)
72. Oppose This will just bureaucratize the system. May be next time we need another committee to address the issues related to ASC and the procedure of committees being invented will continue! This is not what we should do. Admin is "One who administers, especially one who works as a manager in a business, government agency, or school 1" Mhhossein (talk) 03:45, 4 December 2014 (UTC)
73. Oppose. The solution to bureaucracy is not more bureaucracy, nor more special hats, nor more processes. Stifle (talk) 09:32, 5 December 2014 (UTC)
74. Oppose - Creating more (or different) forms of bureaucracy goes against what "the Community" needs - which is as simple and efficient a means as possible to enable more established and competent users to undertake administrative tasks, ultimately in support of core purpose of creating and curating encyclopaedic content (while encouraging a mindshift to recognize that adminship should not be viewed as such a "big deal" that otherwise trusted and capable editors are discouraged by a toxic process from even attempting to obtain access to the necesssary admin tools). Azx2 23:33, 6 December 2014 (UTC)
75. Oppose reluctantly. It has always been my opinion that people should only be granted adminship if they have the confidence of the community and should only loose it if they don't, and creating a Commission is only going to move us further away from that principle. I'm open to some very serious reforms at RfA to streamline the process and encourage more candidates to step forward, but this is not the way to go.
    CT Cooper · talk
    22:12, 8 December 2014 (UTC)
76. Strong oppose: This wiki does not need more bureaucracy and more vested power in a very small clique of editors. Community approval is the purpose of RfA, it's worked well, and we simply do not need to shatter one of the foundations of this wiki. T3h 1337 b0y 19:38, 11 December 2014 (UTC)
77. Oppose. While the idea behind this proposal is interesting, and presented with good faith, its basis is unproven (saying "RfA is broken" over and over doesn't actually prove that it is; currently it seems to be functioning fairly well), certain of its supporters appear to be overly invested in it and arguing too fervently (which leads me to suspect their emotional involvement is impairing their clear vision), and, like many above, i suspect that another layer of bureaucracy isn't what WP needs. In addition, though i am open to correction, i have not in all the words above seen anything legitimately indicating that the WMF will accept this proposal as a meaningful replacement for the kind of public vetting they have made clear they require; it has been asserted, and stated not to matter, but i believe that the WMF would surely have to sign off on it for this to go ahead, no? Cheers, Lindsay^Hello 12:44, 12 December 2014 (UTC)
78. Oppose. I think there is a problem that needs to be solved, RfA is broken, but there is currently no social construct on Wikipedia to support this proposal. Every administrator is his own god, making up his/her own rules and decisions as he/she wants. And while some of the gods are, or think they are, more powerful than other gods, and a few of the lesser gods might well be amiable and wise, none of then will ever do anything to risk the continued existence of gods as a concept. They will simply subsume this new Administrative Standards Commission to reinforce their own status, because only a god can create another god (and it is alarmingly easy to become a god if another god is your sponsor). Something more revolutionary is needed. Maybe an actual written social contract, one that no administrator can ever trample over. Then once that is established, things like the suggested can be tried. Tiptoethrutheminefield (talk) 04:04, 13 December 2014 (UTC)
79. Oppose oppose firstly on the ground of not wanting more bureaucracy, and secondly have you thought of what elections to this bureaucracy will look like, all the negatives of the current RfA process being boiled down, concentrated, distilled, and intensified. You will retain all the negatives of the current system and introduce new ones. When power becomes the gift of a body to give, the dangers of cronyism and patronage rear their head, and for those who receive patronage, Tammany Hall politics, the repayment of favours with favours.--KTo288 (talk) 09:11, 14 December 2014 (UTC)

• Oppose appointment of admins by
  boyars. Jehochman ^Talk 14:34, 17 December 2014 (UTC) indenting because this is a duplicate vote [1] Karanacs (talk
  ) 15:10, 17 December 2014 (UTC)

Tentatively neutral extended comment moved to support Ivanvector (talk) 18:34, 26 November 2014 (UTC)

1. OpposeNeutral - I'm strongly in favor of a major reform to the process by which we appoint and remove users from the admin role. As I mentioned on the proposal talk page, I can not support this proposal as written. I agree with the idea of specifically allocating a minimum fixed number of seats to non-administrators. I disagree with specifically allocating a minimum fixed number of seats to administrators. Of course nothing would stop them from being elected to seats that are not allocated to non-administrators. I also have some concerns about transparency, but I'm open to persuasion on that issue.- MrX 17:14, 26 November 2014 (UTC)

   As said above, the particulars of the implementation are open discussion. If you'd like to propose a change, please do so in the discussion section above. If you at least support the principle, I would ask for your voice of support, or even a voice of what one might call "neutrality". We have a very narrow window, here, and I'm willing to do whatever work needs to be done to try and get real reform through. RGloucester — ☎ 17:27, 26 November 2014 (UTC)

   The RfC states "Should we implement this proposal as specified at the proposal page?" (emphasis added) That doesn't convince me that we're now voting on the idea and will vote on the specifics later. I am more or less neutral on the idea of an admin commission (if properly constituted). I support the idea of a major reform of some sort, mainly because I think we need a streamlined process for desysopping.- MrX 17:49, 26 November 2014 (UTC)

   Nothing in our policy or processes is ever set in stone. That's especially true of a newly formed process. If this passes I'd fully expect a couple follow-up RfCs to sort out details. Gigs (talk) 17:58, 26 November 2014 (UTC)

   That's true, but if this proposal passes, the commission would have seats specifically reserved for admins until such time that the community decides to change it, if it ever does. For that reason, I can't support this.- MrX 20:10, 26 November 2014 (UTC)

   Would you like to elaborate on your concerns? RGloucester — ☎ 04:55, 27 November 2014 (UTC)

2. Tentatively neutral - we'd be treating a symptom while ignoring the cause of the disease. Poorly written articles (undue weight, NPOV, OR, BLP, N, V, RS, etc.) are, for the most part, the cause which creates the need for ANIs and admins. But what if articles were reviewed in a close or similar manner to the way FAs are reviewed? I think a big part of the problems would disappear. Instead we are dealing with open editing from a variety of persuasions and perspectives, much of which are based on POV, and we end up with articles that are not worthy of inclusion because they are plagued by multiple guideline issues and/or policy violations.
   Peer Review process, Wikipedia:WikiProject_Guild_of_Copy_Editors, and Wikipedia:Cleanup that, if properly combined or united would eliminate a lot of the problems plaguing controversial articles. Attack the problem before it spreads rather than the reverse as we've been doing. Early detection is key to the cure. Atsme☯^Consult
   17:54, 27 November 2014 (UTC)
   1. Your comment would make more sense if we could keep a handle on the AfC backlog. And that's just a basic filter for some sign of probable notability and suitability for the encyclopedia, it's not the kind of detailed review you are asking for. And it's only a fraction of the new article stream! We simply don't have the manpower at all to drink from the firehose the way you are proposing. Gigs (talk) 17:26, 15 December 2014 (UTC)
3. Neutral I can't discount the significance of the issues with the RFA process anymore than I can discount the concerns raised regarding this particular proposal at this point in time. I will reconsider this again later. Ncmvocalist (talk) 17:09, 28 November 2014 (UTC)
4. No opinion since I haven't read any of the text above and don't intend to. Proposals like this (whatever it is) have zero chance of ever going thru, so why waste time. I see that the vote currently is 27-34 against, but the exact numbers don't matter. To have a ghost of chance of going thru you would be wanting something along the lines of 40-20 in favor, at the very least -- and that, my friend, you are never going to get, and that applies to most any major proposal along these lines; the more people participate, the more the count tends to devolve to 50-50, which means no decision. The current RfA process is what we have and what we going to have going forward, for better or worse. It is what it is and I wouldn't waste too much time worrying about it. Herostratus (talk) 19:40, 28 November 2014 (UTC)
5. Neutral I haven't read this entire section, but I kind of like the idea for such a commission. What I'm concerned about though is that it might create too much bureaucracy. The community at large should have a direct say as to who becomes an administrator. So, I'm going to stay neutral on this for the moment. Sam.gov (talk) 00:05, 3 December 2014 (UTC)
6. Neutral. How about we give it a test run of a year as an advisory body? I.e. this body would issue recommendations on whether the community should support or reject a candidacy. It could become a helpful guide for some voters, and a test in how such a body would operate compared to the current system. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 02:30, 5 December 2014 (UTC)
7. Neutral - I'm not against reform of the RfA process; it is a bear pit of disfunction, However, I'm not sold on this as the answer. I'm also afraid that it would lead us further away from where we started, as a volunteer-run charity, and not in a good way. Bearian (talk) 01:24, 9 December 2014 (UTC)

1. As phase proposer, — xaosflux ^Talk 15:50, 28 November 2014 (UTC)
2. Per above. FYI, I had already filed the bug and was asked to start a discussion - T76050. Cenarium (talk) 20:11, 28 November 2014 (UTC)
3. Yes. Yes yes yes. I've been wanting this for literally years. I was unaware this right now existed, or I'd have pushed for this a while ago. [stwalkerster|talk] 01:41, 29 November 2014 (UTC)
4. Absolutely - This right is designated for creation of new accounts; we should only grant them the rights necessary to create these accounts. de>tboverride-account gives them as jkuch of the ability to do this task as tboverride does, but aloows them to do less other restrcted stuff, so ot's better for this group. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 19:24, 29 November 2014 (UTC)
5. Support Sounds like a great idea, wish we were aware of it in the previous discussions about the user group. Callanecc (talk • contribs • logs) 06:26, 4 December 2014 (UTC)
6. Support Seems very reasonable to me. tboverride-account is what account creators require, not tboverride.
   talk
   15:23, 7 December 2014 (UTC)
7. Support. Very reasonable change.
   talk!
   ) 05:09, 8 December 2014 (UTC)
8. Support Sounds reasonable, and the right is already implemented, so why not? FunPika 20:27, 14 December 2014 (UTC)
9. Support Seems to make sense. Always found it strange that Account Creator rights came with all the extra seemingly unrelated stuff. Sam Walton (talk) 23:22, 14 December 2014 (UTC)
10. Support Mike V • Talk 00:09, 15 December 2014 (UTC)
11. Support -Sounds reasonable. I didn't knew however, that an account-creator was able to do that much stuffs. Out of interest, Has the possible abuses mentioned in the discussion above ever been practiced in real yet by any account-creator?
    Anupmehra -Let's talk!
    09:32, 15 December 2014 (UTC)
12. Support If we didn't already have the correct userright I'd probably oppose as unnecessary, but since it's all in place, we might as well change it. Gigs (talk) 17:13, 15 December 2014 (UTC)
13. Support Chris Troutman (talk) 22:13, 15 December 2014 (UTC)
14. Support this group is for creating accounts and not anything else. A reasonable change. BethNaught (talk) 22:27, 15 December 2014 (UTC)
15. Support -
    open channel
    ) 17:58, 17 December 2014 (UTC)

Oppose

Comment

This is on phab, at phab:T76050. — Revi 06:17, 29 November 2014 (UTC)

100% support a month in, can someone close this so we can update Phab to show community support? — xaosflux ^Talk 03:20, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

Phase 2

About the rate limits (maximum of page moves or other actions allowed per minute or some other duration). noratelimit allows to bypass all those rate limits, as well as the limit of 6 account creations per 24 hours period.

Change proposed

CREATE noratelimit-account enabling to bypass the limit on account creations only

CHANGE enwiki "Account creators" group permissions as follows:

REMOVE noratelimit

ADD noratelimit-account (c.f. mw:Manual:$wgAccountCreationThrottle)

Support

1. So that we can unbundle from sysop or create more rate-limited rights without taking unnecessary risks, such as a rate limited subpage moves. This right was initially given to all autoconfirmed users but had to be restricted to sysops because it didn't respect the rate limits so was massively abused for page move vandalism, I've proposed to modify it so that it does respect the rate limits, making it safe to give back to autoconfirmed users ... unless some of them can easily get assigned a noratelimit userright. Yes, we're restricting a bit here, but those users aren't supposed to use it outside account creations anyway, and it allows to open up elsewhere. Cenarium (talk) 20:11, 28 November 2014 (UTC)

   I don't really understand what you are saying here. Are you also proposing a change in the way noratelimit works? Gigs (talk) 17:17, 15 December 2014 (UTC)

   Yes, but it is separate from this proposal (autoconfirmed users would have the ability to move subpages but subpage moves would count in the rate limit - so no more than ten per minute in total). My point is that it will allow us to grant account creator usergroup to any and all users who need it, without having to worry about rate limits and especially future modifications in the way noratelimit works. Cenarium (talk) 10:47, 19 December 2014 (UTC)

2. Definitely, the proposed user right would give this group the full account-creating ability that noratelimit gives them. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 19:26, 29 November 2014 (UTC)
3. Support this one two, all the group to do what it should be able to do. Then we can look into giving the right to other groups. Callanecc (talk • contribs • logs) 06:29, 4 December 2014 (UTC)
4. Support as well, because this does not remove any account-creation abilities and account creators do not need to override all rate limits.
   talk
   15:29, 7 December 2014 (UTC)
5. Support Account creators don't need to be able to override rate limits on anything but account creation. FunPika 20:45, 14 December 2014 (UTC)
6. Support Again seems sensible. Sam Walton (talk) 23:24, 14 December 2014 (UTC)
7. Support Mike V • Talk 00:10, 15 December 2014 (UTC)
8. Support -Yes, otherwise we have to rename the group to overriders, if it is not limited to only accounts. jk
   Anupmehra -Let's talk!
   09:32, 15 December 2014 (UTC)
9. Support Chris Troutman (talk) 22:13, 15 December 2014 (UTC)
10. Support BethNaught (talk) 22:27, 15 December 2014 (UTC)
11. Support It's a bit of process creep, but if the devs are fine with it so am I. — xaosflux ^Talk 22:38, 15 December 2014 (UTC)
12. Support -
    open channel
    ) 17:59, 17 December 2014 (UTC)

Oppose

Comment

FYI, this need new phab bug, other than the one in Phase 1. (When creating new one, please CC "Revi" so I can tag it or do the patch.) — Revi 06:22, 29 November 2014 (UTC)

There is currently a bug open (T50373) for merging $wgAccountCreationThrottle into $wgRateLimits. If this happens I believe it would be possible to modify the $wgRateLimits configuration to remove (or at least set to an impossible to hit level) the account creation limit for the account creators group. Therefore we shouldn't need a new right. FunPika 03:26, 15 December 2014 (UTC)

1. Does support exist for the proposed change?
2. Is the proposed change technically feasible?

Any and all feedback is appreciated. (Edit: I've expanded the proposal to include Special:NewPages, in case anyone is still using it; I don't believe this significantly changes the proposal.) —Swpb^talk 14:28, 16 December 2014 (UTC)

(Second edit: filter 342 can already catch these pages; it's just a matter of re-enabling the filter and getting the pages displayed on the patrol pages.) —Swpb^talk 20:06, 18 December 2014 (UTC)

• I suppose that could be another one for Wikipedia:Village pump (idea lab)/Archive 15#Bot tagging of edits if that idea gets off the ground. — {{U|Technical 13}} ^{(e • t • c)} 15:24, 16 December 2014 (UTC)

  I don't know about the technical limitations, but it seems these pages could be tagged by the edit filter, or whatever mechanism is currently used to identify new pages. I'm not opposed to bot tagging, I just don't want to tie this horse to that cart. —Swpb^talk 15:28, 16 December 2014 (UTC)

  The filter catching those edits was deactivated for being too expansive, the proposal for bot tagging of edits precisely aims to address those performance issues, since the bot would do the job instead of the edit filter. Cenarium (talk) 12:55, 19 December 2014 (UTC)

  Too expansive in what way? Was it catching false positives, or just causing too much server demand? I suppose it doesn't matter how the pages get tagged (filter or bot), as long as they can be added to the patrol lists. —Swpb^talk 17:06, 20 December 2014 (UTC)

  Too much server demand. Cenarium (talk) 13:09, 27 December 2014 (UTC)

• Support if technically feasible. It probably is, since it does catch pages moved from user land to article land. Oiyarbepsy (talk) 15:38, 16 December 2014 (UTC)
• Support We can easily
  tag these edits with an edit filter, and you could use the older Special:NewPages to detect them by supplying the tag name there. Updating Special:NewPagesFeed to show these tagged edits will require WMF involvement, I believe. — MusikAnimal ^talk
  21:32, 16 December 2014 (UTC)

  Not sure how the tag alone would help. Special:NewPages still won't show the pages unless they're newly created. —Swpb^talk 01:00, 17 December 2014 (UTC)

  Ah of course, duh! I guess Special:RecentChanges is where you'd do your patrolling. Less than ideal. — MusikAnimal ^talk 17:22, 17 December 2014 (UTC)

  Not necessarily WMF involvement, but certainly developer intervention. Although most of the devs who understand NewPagesFeed are/were WMF people. — This, that and the other (talk) 04:56, 17 December 2014 (UTC)

  Indeed. I'm planning to enter a Phabricator ticket once it seems there's a consensus. —Swpb^talk 14:00, 17 December 2014 (UTC)

• Support. Good idea if technically feasible or if not. The tags would be easy to use; just go through the edits that the tag catches. We just need to be careful to mark only the edits that cause the redirect to stop working (for whatever reason), because we don't want it to start flagging redirects that have just gotten marked with {{R from modification}} or a comparable template. Nyttend (talk) 02:34, 17 December 2014 (UTC)

  Indeed. I imagine the filter would look for the removal/breaking of the "#REDIRECT" syntax, rather than the addition of anything else. —Swpb^talk 14:06, 17 December 2014 (UTC)

• Seems like a very sensible idea. It may be technically quite difficult to implement, though. Currently Special:NewPages is essentially a filtered version of Special:RecentChanges that only includes changes marked with the "N" flag. To check whether a page has gone from being a redirect to not being a redirect would require loading and inspecting the old revision of the page to see whether it was a redirect. This would have to be done for every entry in the recent changes table, which would be very taxing on the server. There could be ways around this but they would be quite complex to implement and would require very careful design on implementation on a huge wiki like this one. — This, that and the other (talk) 04:56, 17 December 2014 (UTC)

  Wouldn't it be fairly easy to implement a "created from redirect" edit filter/tag, and modify the special pages to include those pages, in addition to those with an "N" flag? —Swpb^talk 14:04, 17 December 2014 (UTC)

  Implementing the filter may be easy, I don't really know. (Yes, it's true that I am an "edit filter manager", but that doesn't really mean I know anything about the edit filter...) This could technically work by adding a flag to the edit filter system, allowing us to create filters that "add the page to Special:NewPages". But that in itself may be difficult to get working. — This, that and the other (talk) 11:08, 19 December 2014 (UTC)

• Oppose. I am concerned this might result in increased erroneous attempts to delete (especially on the inapplicable grounds of notability) plausible redirects and mergeable content, which is already a problem. (The redirects will already have been patrolled once and identified as plausible). I think a list of such changes should at least be kept wholly seperate from NewPages. I am not convinced there is much need for this. No statistics have been offered as to the proportion of these pages which are invalid content forks. James500 (talk) 04:32, 18 December 2014 (UTC)

  To editor James500: Neither plausible redirects or mergeable content would be harmed under this change. The proposal is not for redirects to appear on NewPages; it's only for ex-redirects to appear. These are, for all practical purposes, totally new pages that have never been patrolled. And it's reasonable to assume that the proportion of such pages that are inappropriate will be at least as high as that among regular new pages, and probably higher; but at any rate, that's what patrol is there to sort out. Plausible redirects are in fact less likely to be deleted under this proposal, as they will no longer pose a risk of later becoming an un-patrolled article. And mergeable content created on an ex-redirect will actually be seen and merged (or at least tagged for merging), instead of languishing in un-patrolled obscurity as now. I hope you will re-examine your assumptions about how the proposed change works, and re-assess your position. —Swpb^talk 13:08, 18 December 2014 (UTC)

• Ex-redirects are not practically equivalent to unpatrolled new articles. They are not new. They have already been patrolled once and found to be unsuitable for deletion. The difference between expanding a mainspace redirect and expanding an article seems small to me. It is not reasonable to assume that ex-redirects are as likely to be innappropriate as new articles. We redirect sub-topics, and a sub-topic of a notable topic is quite likely to be notable at our stage of development, which has incorporated only a small fraction of the information available from reliable sources. It isn't proposed to confine this to the expansion of redirects marked as redirects from an alternative name. In any event, we should proceed on real statistical evidence and not guesswork. I have seen far too many attempts to delete obvious redirects and mergeable content to assume that this proposed innovation will not result in
  mass nominations of them. I have even seen arguments at AfD along the lines of 'this should not be redirected/merged because it is non-notable' or 'we have an AfD on anything non-notable even if it is an obvious redirect'. If we do have an "expand redirect log", we will also need a "BLAR log" so that we can revert innappropriate blank and redirects. James500 (talk
  ) 03:36, 19 December 2014 (UTC)

• There are quite a few missing steps in the logic that leads from this proposal to "mass nominations" that lead me to believe you have no interest in actually understanding the proposal. —Swpbtalk 18:56, 20 December 2014 (UTC)

• I understand the proposal perfectly. I also understand that lists of pages or edits can be used in a manner for which they were not intended.

• Do you? Because the "list of pages or edits" being created here specifically does not include redirects; it's actually impossible for it to be abused to delete redirects, as you say. As for any other kind of "abuse", there's no reason to expect it. NPP is patrolled by inclusionists too, and they consistently force deletion-taggers to justify themselves. I myself frequently chastise editors who apply CSD tags outside their bounds. Any deletion taggings brought about by this change would surely face the same level of scrutiny. If that level of scrutiny isn't enough for you, then your argument isn't with the present proposal, but with the entire patrol system, or possibly with the current standards for inclusion. —Swpb^talk 13:35, 22 December 2014 (UTC)

• Another issue is that, compared to new pages, these redirects are more likely to be on the watchlists of editors who regularly edit articles within the subject area of which the redirect is a sub-topic. There may therefore be no need for an ex-redirect article to be "patrolled" by editors who know nothing about the subject because it has already been examined by editors who are familiar with the subject. James500 (talk) 16:08, 21 December 2014 (UTC)

• I reiterate that the pages we're talking about have not "already been examined" in any meaningful way, because of course the new content may bear no relation at all to the original target. Certainly, the quality of the original target article has nothing to say about the quality of the content on the newly un-redirected page. —Swpb^talk 13:35, 22 December 2014 (UTC)

• That has nothing to do with what I said. It is possible watchlist a redirect. If a user has an article on his watchlist, he is likely to watchlist all the redirects to that article as well. If one of those redirects is subsequently expanded it will show up on the watchlist, and the user will presumably see it and examine the ex-redirect article. So, if you are worried that redirects to an article might be innapropriately expanded, all you have to do is find them with Special:WhatLinksHere and add them to your watchlist. Problem solved.
• Another concern that I have is that, in addition to the lack of statistics and examples presented here, I cannot remember a single instance of a redirect actually being innapropriately expanded. James500 (talk) 08:37, 23 December 2014 (UTC)

• I'm glad we don't have to rely on your memory. Your baseless "mass nominations" fear aside, you've still never presented a credible drawback to the proposal. —Swpb^talk 13:33, 23 December 2014 (UTC)

• Uh. What? Special:NewPagesFeed shows redirects. By extension, it'll show pages that started as redirects. Ironholds (talk) 15:53, 18 December 2014 (UTC)

@Ironholds: I believe this is discussing old redirects being changed into articles (ie. de-redirected), as opposed to new redirects being created. --Mdann52talk to me! 17:37, 18 December 2014 (UTC)

• Oppose These pages aren't new. This circumstance is more like a page move or regular content editing and so is best dealt with by the RecentChanges. Andrew D. (talk) 18:05, 20 December 2014 (UTC)
  • It's completely unlike a page move - in a page move, the content doesn't change at all. In this case, an entire new encyclopedia article can be created, and never once patrolled. —Swpb^talk 19:03, 20 December 2014 (UTC)
    • A page can be completely transformed at any time by ordinary editing, so creating an entirely new article. This sort of rewrite is not unusual and such changes are patrolled by looking at recent changes. We have this covered already and so don't need this
      creep. Andrew D. (talk
      ) 01:47, 1 January 2015 (UTC)
• Oppose including in new pages lists but support listing them in some sort of former redirect list. PaleAqua (talk) 18:34, 20 December 2014 (UTC)
  • You've stated your position, but you've provided no rationale for it. This is a discussion to uncover worthwhile considerations related to the proposal, not a vote on whether you like it. —Swpb^talk 18:59, 20 December 2014 (UTC)
    • The conversion of redirects into new pages seems like a different type of issue to watch for, ( specifically content forks ) and it seems to me that it would better to be able to watch from them seperately. The actions for content fork vs an unsuitable new page also seem like they would be different. Allowing different groups to watch different sets of page actions seems like a better use of wiki-editor power. PaleAqua (talk) 23:36, 20 December 2014 (UTC)
      • That's a reasonable concern, they are somewhat different issues — but I would argue that they're not so different as to demand a separate watchlist. For one thing, new pages are already frequently content forks, and regular NPP'ers understand what to do in such a case (merge any new sourced content, then redirect; or if there's no mergeable content, redirect or speedy the page, depending on the plausibility of the title as a search term). I think we should avoid splitting watchlists too finely, to avoid having underwatched lists. —Swpb^talk 13:42, 22 December 2014 (UTC)
• Support if technically possible - these pages probably have nearly all the problems that new pages do. Even new pages may end up being redirected, and redirects which have been turned into articles are more likely to be restored to their redirect version than deleted. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 07:33, 21 December 2014 (UTC)
• Support This is another area where pages which really need checking can sneak in unnoticed. This seems like a sensible decision and I am unconvinced by the opposers' arguments. Sam Walton (talk) 02:09, 1 January 2015 (UTC)
• Very strongly Support They sometimes will be perfectly straightforward, but this cannot be assumed, and therefore they need checking. In most cases where it is not simply a revert that may need discussion on the relevant talk page , it does amount to a new page creation that needs to be evaluated using the customary criteria. DGG ( talk ) 08:46, 4 January 2015 (UTC)
• Support: Let me give a real-life example of why this is needed. See this page history. Originally it was a redirect from some NN company to its parent. The company was spun off, and an account apparently representative of that company added promotional, copyrighted text, replacing the redirect. This went unnoticed for 14 days until I spotted it while browsing an unrelated maintenance category, but such an action would not have been undetected had the page been put on NPP. BethNaught (talk) 19:20, 4 January 2015 (UTC)
• ...or not. Special:NewPagesFeed (set to show all, oldest first) appears to be backlogged by more than 10,000 (ten thousand) articles, reaching back to September 2014. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:13, 4 January 2015 (UTC)