Wikipedia talk:Requests for adminship/Archive 79

Perhaps, in lieu of Ryulong resigning, he could use the tools for a month or two and then open a Request for Comment on his administrative actions to that point. The community seems happy with Carnildo and Sean Black being admins, despite the way they were re-sysopped. After some real world experience with the tools, another opportunity for community review could provide some necessary closure and clear whatever cloud Raul has placed Ryulong under. If he turns out to be a good sysop despite my and other opposers' concerns, then WP will be better off in the long run.--

Exactly. And hopefully this will prove once and for all that RfA is too strict. — Deckiller 12:29, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

Disappointment

I am starting to get disappointed in how people handle things here. A consensus is not a vote, a consensus is simply a determination of a debate. Ryulong has been granted the tools, and has promised to use them well. IF he breaks policy and goes nutso; then take it up with arbcom. Raul654 didn't cabalize it, and his name should not be tarnished over determining consensus. Frankly Chacor, I have seen issues with you since your own ArbCom ruling came down and your mop was taken away for policy you broke. I respect your opinions, but you have seem to have come into some attitude issues.

Do I support and continue to support Ryulong? Yes.

Am I worried he may cause issues with blocks? No, or I would not have nominated him.

Do I hear and recognize the community issues? Yes, of course I do; and they are quite valid. But on the other hand, a consensus has been reached and Ryulong HAS been made an admin. The only way this is going to change is with an ArbCom ruling.

Should Ryulong step down? Not at this time, if he shows bad faith and becomes a problem then yes. But stepping down would be a disappointment to those who did support him, and would be a show of bad faith from the community; as he had not done anything to justify a resignation.

I hope we all can make the best of this, and besides cross-posting this to the

How the hell is this turning into an attack on me when I'm not the only one who has expressed disappointment at this? This is an unacceptable ad hominem attack. – Chacor 09:37, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

A few things, if I may. First of all "I like him" is an unacceptable argumentation for a promotion. It practically oozes a

Neutrality Project

) 09:49, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

The problem is that Mark didn't determine consensus. By his own admission, he determined that there was no consensus and used his own personal opinion of the candidate as "the deciding factor." A bureaucrat's discretion allows him/her to analyze and interpret the preponderance of the available comments, not to cast a "super-vote" that weighs more than anyone else's. —

David Levy

17:20, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

Based on people informing me that Frankly Chacor, I have seen issues with you since your own ArbCom ruling came down and your mop was taken away for policy you broke. I respect your opinions, but you have seem to have come into some attitude issues. could have turned into a personal attack, I formally retract such statement with apologies. It was never meant to be a personal attack, just an issue I pointed out.

Copied from

WP:BN

(Didn't know about this discussion) Having not participated in the discussion and not known about it had I not had this page on my watchlist I would also like to voice my misgivings that there was not a clear consensus in this case and it therefore in my view should not have been closed as a sucessful RfA. It certainly did not meet the arbitary standard for RfAs these days (80% support) and many if not all of the oppose views were from respected editors expressing their views, not socks/meats or disrupters. Viridae^Talk 08:09, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

Good arithmetic?

"consider myself as supporting his request for adminship, and discounting the opposition from the newbie with a dozen edits. That gives a final tally of 126-54, which is 70%, which is in the bureacrat's discretionary range." That leads to two questions: are bureaucrats allowed to vote in RfAs that they close? Did Raoul check all the support votes to see if any of those were from newbies?--Runcorn 19:41, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

Only if they register with the review board sub-committee three weeks in advance and receive their written confirmation a minimum of five business days before the closing. A minimal processing fee is required. Jkelly 20:01, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

Well if we are going to add !votes on closure, you can consider mine an oppose - I had not known about the RfA, the first I knew about it was when the AIVhelper bot removed someone as blocked by Ryulong. However, if I had had the chance I would have voted oppose for the same reason as many of the others,

WP:BITE issues. However that is not the argument at hand, and any involvemtn I may have in this discussion are not about Ryulong as an admin, but the issue of what seems to be a promotion over a non consesnsus, apparently discounting the strong oposition from respected editors. In this case, with the very strong opposition, it would would have been much more prudent to move the area of discretion higher than lower so as to make sure you have actually got consensus. Viridae^Talk

01:16, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

I am disappointed with this, even though I only voted neutral. I think it's time for a change. There should be no numbers, if the 'crats make their own decisions, as indicated here, and Carnildo 3, Sean Black 2 etc. Make it more like AfD, and the result can be reviewed if people disagree, much like DRV. It'll at least make the process easier to reverse if enough people disagree. It's one thing complaining, but another actually changing. Comments please. --Majorly (talk) 12:42, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

The problem with RfA is that support votes don't state reasons (and in many cases, it's hard to see how they could), and so they all end up identical. It's clear to me that an AfD-style RfA would result in the promotion of almost nobody. You might also want to look at why

Wikipedia:RfA as RfC failed; I think that might be relevant to your point in an indirect way. (Although I supported and helped draft that proposal, it became clear what its problems were when it was tried in practice.) There was also the addition of the 'Discussion' section to the RfA for much the same reason as you suggested, but people seem reluctant to use it (it's probably a matter of tradition, and of adding in the same place as other users). --ais523 12:48, 24 January 2007 (UTC

)

I think we need to do one of two things. Either make it a straight out vote and throw away the discussion part (this is what we do for ArbCom already), or go the other way and have a pure discussion with none of this support/oppose/neutral dickery. Thoughts? ✎

Neutrality Project

) 12:51, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

Our best option to ensure a more realistic (as to the future of this project; it's going to continue growing and accumulating waste) and fair way of promoting is probably to create a more realistic grey area; 65-75 percent. 75 percent and above can be almost always automatic, below 65 percent never (barring significant trolling and whatnot), and 65-75 can be that grey area. — Deckiller 12:53, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

Anything with numbers ends up just being incongruent dickery, in my opinion. As the quote goes: There are three types of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.' ✎

Neutrality Project

) 12:55, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

Perhaps, but because we already have numbers as a factor most of the time, we can take this time to at least tailor the current system so that it works with the needs of the project. — Deckiller 12:58, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

(edit conflict) What with the problems with giving bots admin rights, it would be even harder to promote a bot to 'crat (only half joking here); if, as I think most people here would agree, we use human 'crats, there's always going to be some discretion used. Besides, there's suffrage/sockpuppetry problems in straight votes (although I suspect they wouldn't be insoluble). I would be more inclined to prefer a straight discussion than a straight vote, although it might be instructive to look at why Wikipedia:Requests for bureaucratship/Grandmasterka failed (as far as I can tell, mostly because the platform involved taking the quality of votes into account, which will always be controversial due to disagreements on what makes a high-quality vote, or I suppose !vote under the Grandmasterka plan). --ais523 12:59, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

I really would not like changing to an AFD style because it wouldn't solve anything. All it would do is make the thing harder to read. --BigDT 13:35, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

Responses to various points above

I'd like to address a few points raised by some people in the above discussion.

• Re: Consensus correlation and trust: This is an interesting point raised by User:Werdna who said "I think that a 5-10% difference in RfA consensus has a rather low correlation to actual community trust in the user". Earlier in the conversation, User:Blnguyen noted that 80% equated to a 4:1 ratio, 75% to 3:1, and 70% to 2.33:1. I think this shows that indeed a 10% range from 70% to 80% shows a dramatic difference in consensus. There's a reason the normal accepted range is where it is; consensus tends to form around that level.
• Re: No accountability for bureaucrats: This was raised by User:Heimstern. Wikipedia is not a democracy, and we do not have any sort of balance of powers really. There is no hierarchical structure here of editor-->admin-->bureaucrat-->arbcom. All of these people in these various categories are equals. Some simply have additional responsibilities that have been entrusted to them through filtering processes of one sort or another. Admins aren't any 'better' than editors in good standing. Neither is ArbCom any better than editors. There are no oversight processes for any duty within Wikipedia. What there is are processes to handle breakdowns in the system. If an editor goes bad and refuses warnings, we block. If an admin abuses their powers, they're taken to ArbCom to make the decision to desysop. If (hasn't happened but if) an ArbCom member went off the deep end in some way, Jimbo would probably step in and ask them to step down. If a bureaucrat gets out of line, they can have their bureaucrat duties removed (and yes this has happened). So, while there is no accountability per se, there is always accountability in general for all things to keep our focus on what it is we are trying to achieve here.
• Not very fair to Ryulong: I raised this point on the Carnildo promotion. However, in this case I don't think it applies. Raul654 did talk to Ryulong before the promotion. Ryulong's well experienced enough to know that this promotion would be controversial and would understand the consequences. Apparently now he is reconsidering his decision.

Personally, I would not have promoted Ryulong. An RfA can be an opportunity to improve various aspects of a Wikipedian and there's no policy in place preventing a second, third, fourth or even fifth RfA. It's been done multiple times before with no apparent harm to the project. The vast majority of the time, RfA percolates along just fine and bureaucrats are not questioned in their decisions. This is important because bureaucrats have a difficult task of weighing different aspects of a discussion with impartiality. Bureaucrats must pass a high threshold of consensus before becoming a bureaucrat precisely because they must be trusted and continue to maintain that trust. A controversial decision such as this RfA tends to cash in some of the trust given to bureaucrats and potentially sets the stage for more argumentation against bureaucrats being entrusted with divining consensus. This is of course a balancing act; sometimes tough decisions need to be made which is what bureaucrats are entrusted to do, but the tough decisions erode community confidence in their ability to make...tough decisions. Bit of a catch-22. --Durin 14:51, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

I think that's a very interesting point you raised which we haven't really considered. Ryulong was told of this before he was promoted. He knew he was below the threshold for consensus. I'm concerned that he had the choice of saying "I haven't achieved consensus to become an admin", but didn't take it. It's certainly not crossed my mind until you brought it up, and I think this makes this promotion all the more controversial - the candidate could've said "no, I haven't made it". – Chacor 14:57, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

Doesn't the fact that he was asked if he wished to be undermine the whole RfA process? thanks/Fenton, Matthew Lexic Dark 52278 Alpha 771 16:11, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

Not sure if this is the place, but as this is the RfA trainwreck du jour I just must chime in. What bothered me was the initial comment that the b'crat just liked Ryulong, only as literally an afterthought was community consensus mentioned. I like to think b'crats don't just cast supervotes, but admittedly it is a fine line between interpreting consensus and using the claim of doing so to do what you want anyway. A lot of the issue to me has to do with the history of RFB, and this hasn't really been mentioned here... if you look at the pre-2005 RFB, which is when a lot of the current b'crats were promoted, it's hard to imagine a lot of them passing today's RfA, let alone today's RFB. I have a lot of confidence in people like Taxman who came in under the modern system, not so much so in b'crats who got elected in the initial days of RFB and haven't really done much as b'crats over the years. To give such automatic confidence to people who really didn't pass anything resembling modern RFB just seems a bit arbitrary. I admittedly speak more of the b'crats who never do anything than Raul who is somewhat active at RfA. --W.marsh 16:13, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

Ditto, not sure where to add my twopennyworth, but this will do. I respect Raul654, but I think this was a poor decision. 69% is not much more that 2:1, so this promotion effectively rides over the opinions of nearly a third of the participants.

On probationary adminship,

I believe it was extremely bad taste to promote somebody with such low support percentage. It does nothing to improve people's faith in the objectivity of the process (and people already think RfA sucks). The moral of this story is that it does not matter how many people in the community think you are not fit to be an admin, all that matters is that a friendly bureaucrat thinks you're a nice guy. Apologies if I repeat something from the above, that discussion was too long to read completely. Either way, I think this was a very poor judgment on Raul654's part, a bureaucrat who has not promoted for ages, and this should not be repeated. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 16:05, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

Exactly why I find this situation so fishy, it just doesn't make sense to me. thanks/Fenton, Matthew Lexic Dark 52278 Alpha 771 16:11, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

So you'd rather have a bot do the promotions based on a number instead of judgement? I guess I should have put my earlier comments down near the bottom here so they don't get lost, but either way they'll just get passed on by the volumes of material that are going to come out. Too bad really, and I'm adding to it, so I'll stop now and instead go work on some articles. - Taxman ^Talk 16:31, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

Nobody said a bot should do the promotions. The point is that we have a system in place, according to which people are promoted. As far as I know, bureaucrat's discretion is in the 75%-80% range. Granted, the system is arbitrary, and the numbers are arbitrary. However, it is profoundly unfair that some people did not get promoted with almost a 3/4 support ratio, while somebody got promoted with much less because a certain bureaucrat thought that no matter what people said that person was a nice guy. It is surely not the fault of the person who got promoted, but it is hard not to agree that the bureaucrat who did the promotion made a mistake. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 17:51, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

On Bcrat accountability

People are mentioning a lack of accountability, but do we really know whether this is the case? Surely the bcrats, as a group, want to have the confidence of the community. If there was significant opinion that a bcrat should step down and/or go through RFB again, why are people assuming the crat would refuse? Surely community trust in the crats as a group is more important than any one editor's privilege level. Friday (talk) 16:22, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

Yes, I think Raul (and other 'crats who are not particularly active) should go through RfB again. --Majorly (talk) 16:32, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

Personally, I trust the bcrats and rarely disagree with their judgment calls. However, I would prefer that they had an attitude closer to "When in doubt, don't promote". The reason is that an editor can always submit another RfA if they don't succeed, but an improper promotion can shake community confidence. There's probably only a handful of these true judgment calls a year, but I think it would be better for such a candidate to wait a few months and resubmit an RfA. Anyway, just my 2 cents.

SuperMachine

16:31, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

What we need is more b-crats, and most others, with the exception of Taxman, Redux, and Essjay of going back to RFB. I supported Ryulong in his rfa, but seriously he should have never been promoted, especially with some heavy concerns that happened in the RFA.

^{wat's sup}

20:40, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

I would be opposed to a bureaucrat re-rfb at this time. It would not be fair. --Kim Bruning 02:50, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

What bothers me about this is not the promotion, but the explanation offered. It appears to contradict the Arbitration Committee findings at

I would say the third principle is well and truly into play. Viridae^Talk 04:54, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

Taxman's comments above seem to support the decision, though he doesn't explicitly say so. As to the accountability generally, surely the procedure is the same for a 'crat as any user. If people think Raul654's action disregarded the expressed will of the Community, a page can be started at RfC. But I don't see why a huge number of semi-active 'crats should be stripped of that access without evidence- at most the evidence here points to misconduct by a single 'crat. WJBscribe 11:44, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

The problem has to do with the rules of RfA system and their implementation; not with one person

• "Futhermore, before I promoted, I made it a point to read through all the people opposing his adminship. If it had been 65%, would I have promoted him?" (by Raul).
• "While some might object that he was below 70% support (with 69.4%), I believe, based on my interactions with him, that he would make a good sysop, and it would be a mistake not to promote him." (again by Raul)

I stress on this two assertions of Raul, because I think that they are at the heart of the problem here. IMO we don't have to do with a problem concerning one person, Ryulong in this case, but with a problem having to do with the way the whole RfA system works. First of all, I want to make clear that I honestly believe Ryulong will do a great job as an adm, and I regard his promotion as a closed case. Whether we agree or not with the way his RfA was closed (I must say I disagree), Ryulong is now a confirmed sysop, and should be allowed to do his job as a sysop properly. I do not agree with the limitations on the use of the sysop tools proposed here; an adm either is an adm either he isn;t. And Ryulong is one whether we like it or not. Limitations on the use of adm tools would ridicule the role of adm, and the credibility of the whole RfA system. Enough harm has been done already. We can't have adms of two velocities. The only limitations on Ryulong are those arising from WP guidelines; namely, the same that exist for all adms and users. For me, we have to deal with another problem here ...

Raul says he exercized discretion. But is discretion as an argument enough to nihilate the rationale of a whole system; because IMO discretion the way was exercized here did exactly that. Raul argues that "while some might object that he was below 70% support (with 69.4%), I believe, based on my interactions with him, that he would make a good sysop". But RfA doesn't speak about a 70% potential threshold; it speaks about a 75% potential threshold: "The numbers of people supporting, opposing, or expressing another opinion on a candidacy are a significant factor in determining consensus (few RfAs succeed with less than 75% support), but a request for adminship is not a ballot". Yes, RfA is not a ballot, and I would accept discretion exercized by Raul or any bureaucrat if Ryulong was about 74%, 73%; maybe 72% and with low number of objections. But here support is below 70%?! And 70% is already faaaaaaaar below the potential threshold of 75%. And Ryulong had more than 50 objections and many neutral votes (Don't we take them into consideration? The also matter IMO!).

And when does this discretion stop? Who tells me that another bureaucrat will not promote a nominee with 68%, 67%, 66%, 65%? Raul asks "If it had been 65%, would I have promoted him?" My answer is: I do not know Raul, but your discretion in the way you exercized it establishes IMO a negative precedent. It gives the right to bureaucrats to exercize their discretion in a much looser way. And, yes, maybe you will not do it, but, in the future, another bureaucrat based on your precedent may promote nominees with 65% of support and even lower. Maybe this is what we want: a lower "threshold" (I know the term is not accurate). But, if this is the case, let's discuss the whole matter and decide it accordingly.

The problems are numerous here; I recognize that. And I must say I watched Ryulong's RfA too closely (I was also a nominee at the same time!), because I expected something like that to happen; it was from the first moment a close call. The issues this RfA opened are many, and this is good, because it will make us think: What are the limits of bureaucrats' discretion? Are there any? Do we have the right to question their decisions or are they "sacred figures" beyond criticism? Can we have adms "into probation" as it was proposed here? What is the "threshold" for adm: 75% as RfA says or 70% as Raul argues? And if a nominee is around 80%, but with many objections (more than 30) raising serious issues for the credibility of the nominee, can the bureaucrat exercize his discretion in the opposite direction by not promoting? And in any case, we must never forget Jimbo Wales' wise words.--Yannismarou 16:26, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

The wise words were certainly true in the good old days, but looking at the discussions above, it is evident that things have changed a lot. — Ambuj Saxena (☎) 17:23, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

RfA isn't broken.

Whenever something like this occurs, we see radical proposals of how we can "fix" RfA. Well, there's no need to turn the process upside down; it usually works. The problem is that the correct process wasn't followed here. Mark, being human, made a mistake. It happens, and it will continue to happen occasionally under any RfA system.
Furthermore, while Mark's decision was made for the wrong reason, we don't even know that it was the wrong decision. Maybe Ryulong will be a terrific sysop. Can we please give him a fair chance and not blame him for Mark's misstep? —

Mark made a mistake? I don't think it's quite that simple. When someone makes a mistake, the best response is to admit the mistake and attempt to correct it. This doesn't seem to be the case here. Mark believes that he made the right choice and therefore there is no mistake to fix. Perhaps Ryulong will be a terrific sysop, but that doesn't change the fact that this decision isn't just an isolated "mistake". I believe that it illustrates a disconnect between the way that at least one bureaucrat views consensus and the way it's historically been defined.

SuperMachine

17:45, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

My point is that this was an instance in which the correct process wasn't followed, not an instance in which it failed. When the correct process is followed, we have very few problems. An occasional bicycle accident is not a valid reason to reinvent the wheel.

I agree that Mark's actions are indicative of an underlying problem, and I believe that he needs to acknowledge this and promise not to act similarly in the future. —

David Levy

18:01, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

Ohkay... so, according to you, how has consensus been defined, historically speaking? --Kim Bruning 21:07, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

Servants of the community, not masters over it?

It seems to me that this whole palaver stems from one problem: a misperception that crats are the masters of the community. They aren't, or, at least, if they are, they shouldn't be. We elected these people to do jobs for us, on our behalf - namely promote the people whom we had chosen to be admins to sysop status, and to close the RFAs, among other things.

In this case we had clearly not chosen an admin, within the boundaries of RFA's definition of "chosen". Given the rationale above, the crats had no right to promote against the consensus of the community as that consensus is defined on the RFA page, especially when the rationale for promotion was nothing more than ILIKEIT on a spectacular scale. If I had taken a similar rationale to RFA, or AFD, or anywhere else on Wikipedia, I'd have been laughed out of the house and possibly blocked for disruption.

More generally, every system in the world is broken. You will never, ever be able to come up with a perfect system, because systems are by definition the creations of men, who are not possessors of maximal excellence. On a positive note, there is no reason to think that RFA is massively broken and IMO we are getting better and better sysops, and will continue to do so for a while, though self-evidently that can't last forever. In this case I'd be surprised if Ryulong abuses the tool after this, when doubtless a fair few people will be watching everything he does. But the principle on which he was promoted is not on.

"In this case I'd be surprised if Ryulong abuses the tool after this" Thats the thing, having removed many of Ryulongs reports from AIV as underwarned or overly excessive, I think, as do many other it seems, that he doesn't see anything wrong with the reports he made, and I would think (as it seems do many others judging by the RfA) that these would result in blocks now that he has the ability to do so, where previously they wouldn't. I am no accusing Ryulong of intentionally going out to abuse the tools, but I do think that his judgement is questionable at times. (Ryulong, if you read this, I have a great respect for the shear quantity of hard work you do, and if you had shown some more leniancy and less

WP:BITE in your reports I wouldnt have had these misgivings. The vast majority of your work however is of a very high standard or as far as I know.) Viridae^Talk

13:18, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

As I said to Somitho when he asked me why I opposed Ryulong, I don't think there's much potential for intentional abuse of the tools, but I do feel there will be a good bit of misuse when it comes to blocking. Cheers, ✎

Neutrality Project

) 17:44, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

Exactly. I've opposed a number of candidates not because I feared they'd intentionally abuse the tools, but because I wasn't confident they were experienced enough to use them properly. Candidates who likely abusers of the tools generally fail RfA overwhelmingly.

SuperMachine

22:47, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

Well, I brought this issue up at Wikipedia_talk:Requests_for_adminship/Archive_72#Scientific_and_Emotional_judging_and_bureaucrat_intervention and again at Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Agathoclea when some niggles turned up. Basically, I feel that if a user is low-profile, it naturally makes people less inclined to instinctively support them, and if they are more high profile, then they are more likely to instinctively support, without probing around for weaknesses. For a low-profile user, people tend to try and dig up all sorts of obscure reasons to oppose. Without reprinting all the stuff I said again in the old archives, I can remember people saying "not enough WP, not enough talk edits" on one user, who had dozens of start class articles, and an FA, (Sam Vimes) and he only scraped through at around 78.1%. However, there was another RfA at the same time where the relatively famous user only had two stubs, 8 times less article edits, and only half the amount of (allegedly too few) WP and talk edits which Sam had. Despite this, the other RfA passed at 98% close to the century of supports. It is a human instinct which is causing these things, a human difficulty of separating heart from head, which gives "dashing", "spectacular", "superstar", "flashy" users a much easier run than "dour", "self-effacing", "low-key" editors. If Wikipedia is to fulfil its potential to the maximum, then certainly it must be more meritocratic. Now that a certain controversy has arisen, I feel that it is time to give all candidates a fair go, in terms of ALL grey-zone candidates receiving a close examination of their case, instead of only high profile ones, or ones who are lucky to have had good experiences while working with bureaucrats. I would like to see in grey cases, bureaucrats to analytically compare the issues raised in rock hard, objective terms, so that merit rules the day. It is irritating that because of emotional !?"voting", some candidate X are opposed by one opiner A for some criteria, while another candidate Y failing that same criteria is supported by opiner A, because the opiner simply goes on perception/image rather than rock-solid contributions. If some people suddenly go all soft on some "cute" candidate and then nitpick on some "ugly duckling" candidate despite the "ugly duckling" meeting a given opiner's "criteria" more thoroughly; I feel the crats should take these abnormal phenomena into account in non-landslide RfAs, so that the most skillful selection results for the good of wikipedia. There is no easy way to make people have the same standards, but I think the candidates deserve consistency from a given opiner, or in this case "umpire". Umpires have different interpretations of certain rules/laws in sport, but in a single game, they should apply their interpretation to both sides equally. I would like to see this in RfAs also, so that a superior candidate who is opposed by the same opiner that supported a weaker candidate using the same criteria is not negatively affected by their profile in a close call. This also gives the advantage of filtering out attack/vendetta votes implicitly: If a person decides to disguise their attack oppose, or is unconsciously biased against a candidate they clashed with, they will suddenly use a higher bar on one candidate ( conscious or not) than they did before, and this can be taken into account and dampened. Certainly I would favour this system, and would operate as such if I was a bureaucrat, although, some people don't like arbi-crats, so I doubt I would be able to. Blnguyen (bananabucket) 07:38, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

You know that's interesting you'd say that, because I thought I'd noticed the exact opposite of the first part of your statement. People who keep low profiles and never participate in any admin matters (i.e., the stuff that can get people mad at you) will do great: (e.g.,

WP:ILIKEHIM

, which I've seen certain admins actually admit to voting to).

Patstuart^talk|edits 07:43, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

BostonMA edited religion related pages and disputes. Kuru was mostly a gnome. I'd say that high-profile failed RfAs such as Tariqabjotu, BostonMA, HRE, Khoikhoi failed because the community is very averse to any edit-disputes whatsoever, and if the people were in any non-trivial religion or ethnic dispute, everybody will run away and assume the user is troublemaker or stirs the pot. If you compare people who do undisputed edits, I would say that I have seen many cases when a popular but weak user sailed through, whereas an obscure user, like

Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Sam_Vimes2 and Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Christopher Sundita picked up more damage on "lack of WP/talk edits" whereas other famous users who also edited far away from disputes, with less of the same thing, went almost unanimous. Blnguyen (bananabucket

) 07:51, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

It appears that we completely agree on this, at least on the religion/edit dispute matter, which is a shame in its truth. However, I've noticed quite a few obscure users sail through precisely because no one knew any of their bad edits (maybe they were just obscure to me, as they only edit articles, and I don't see them on the message boards). Patstuart^talk|edits 07:59, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

Generally I feel if you make bad errors, people will always notice, but the problem seems to arise over what they did not or have yet to accomplish, rather than explicit failure. Having said that, if nobody ever knew that someone made a mistake (if it's serious enough, their enemies or simply neutral observers will make a note of it), the system and the bureaucrats would be irrelevant. Blnguyen (bananabucket) 08:11, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

There is a very subtle aspect to the first perspective that renders it tremendously difficult to implement. Note the academic nuance I am deliberately invoking here: what is the difference between equity and equality? Historically, no Wikipedian has been able to precisely characterize this with respect to RfAs. There is reason for this: it hints at a larger challenge to be overcome. --HappyCamper 07:50, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

Voter biases will always exist unfortunately no matter how much this matter is discussed. Whether "low-profile" or "high-profile" as you call it, I believe the outcomes vary in many circumstances as Patstuart mentioned above. I'm not trying to insinuate that discussion is pointless but a large majority of Wikipedians have their opinions, including myself or yourself. If as RfA supporters/opposers we can begin to show a little less biases, that is progress enough in my opinion. Unifying what we expect or examine in prospective admin candidates seems a tad more impossible to achieve.¤~Persian Poet Gal ^(talk) 08:00, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

Not sure if there's a misunderstanding, as is often the case each time I raise this issue - every member of the community is free to have their own rationale as to what makes a good administrator - That is fine with me. I only expect that a given person is self-consistent. Many sport umpires have different interpretations of the grey zone, but if they interpret this in one way and give many penalties/fouls to one team, and interpret the grey area a different way for another team, then people will complain. Blnguyen (bananabucket) 08:11, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

If you mean consistency with their opinions, then that is indeed a good thing to stress. I'm just saying that unfortunately biases will not die down easily if ever.¤~Persian Poet Gal ^(talk) 08:21, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

If it is a first time RfA, it may be easier for a bureaucrat to make the close call as unsuccessful. This only amounts to a postponement of adminship, and many candidates will come back in a few months and have an RfA not in the close call zone next time. There is no real harm to postponing adminship if a consensus is not clear on a first RfA. However, if a candidate has had a series of close RfAs, nothing is likely to change in a few months, and it is all the more important that a close study of the discussion be made. So perhaps it's only the cases of continued stalemate over the course of at least 2 RfAs that we should be discussing, and it is not necessary to force a permanent decision on cases that are not stalemated over multiple RfA attempts. NoSeptember 09:10, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

At the moment we have 23 bureaucrats (not including Danny's office account). According to tbe bureaucrat's page (

Just wondering, we have around 300 inactive administrators too, as far as I know. Should they be kicked as well? -- ReyBrujo 17:06, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

And

WP:DUU90 (which gained consensus, but was rejected for technical reasons) can be seen as a method of removing 'autoconfirmed' from inactive autoconfirmeds... --ais523 17:09, 24 January 2007 (UTC

)

But with crats, we're not talking about hundreds or thousands of people - we're talking about twenty tops. Re-confirmation for admins is completely impractical as it would flood RFA and it would result in admins going out of their way not to tick anyone off. But with bureaucrats, you're talking about a small number and a position of extreme trust. Asking those who are not regularly active and thus perhaps not up-to-date on the current evolution of RFA to either stand for reconfirmation or retire is not out of bounds. --BigDT 17:14, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

• Angela, Raul, et al. fine, I'll heartily agree with that - but Danny needs to be able to change names or otherwise do stuff on a dime in conjunction with
  Neutrality Project
  ) 17:07, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

  I disagree with kicking out the semi-active ones. I mean, if we did that with admins there would certainly be problems. Ones that haven' done anything or have been gone forever can be demote and have to go through the process again, I have no problem with that.--Wizardman 17:09, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

ReyBrujo, yes admins as well, but I think that's been proposed before. Inactive admins (particularly ones who have not been around for over two years would be too out of touch to start again. --Majorly (talk) 17:10, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

Angela and Danny are both stewards are they not? If they did need powers here aren't they enable to set the flag +crat at meta? thanks/Fenton, Matthew Lexic Dark 52278 Alpha 771 17:11, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Or for that matter, +sysop, +bot, or -bot; I think stewards can also rename users, so there's nothing a 'crat can do that a steward can't. --ais523 17:15, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

Actually, thats untrue. Stewards have changerights which can set any user to any rights, whereas bcrats have makesysop and renameuser - the second isn't included in the steward package. Cheers, ✎

Neutrality Project

) 17:31, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

You're right; I was confused by the 'rename' section on m:RFP. --ais523 17:51, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

Promotions on enwiki should be done on enwiki. We want the information in our bureaucrat log, not on the meta log. And remember that Redux and Rdsmith4 and also both enwiki bureaucrats and stewards. NoSeptember 17:43, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

• (edit conflict x5) Last I knew, the community had repeatedly turned down proposals for desysopping inactive admins, it should be no different for inactive bureaucrats. Besides, aren't Danny and Angela bureaucrats due to other portions of their status here? --
  talk
  17:12, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

Bureaucrats are different to admins. It's a different idea totally. --Majorly (talk) 17:13, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

Different? Howso? A quick buzz over to

talk

17:28, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

Bureaucrats and admins are not different. They can do one or two important things that adminstrators cannot. In fact, the Spanish Wikipedia does not have admins, everyone is either editor or bureaucrat. -- ReyBrujo 17:46, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

Right well this is the English wikipedia. Bureaucrats here are different: if they were the same, all admins would surely be able to promote as well? Or, no one would be able to and we'd have to rely on stewards. --Majorly (talk) 17:54, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

I am just demostrating that, if Administrators do not require "confirmation", neither Bureaucrats. And since many proposals to remove admins have been turned down, I don't see why 'crats should be different. If you want to be touchy, the English Wikipedia is different from Meta, where you need to be administrator in another Wiki in order to be administrator there. Somehow the "many inactive, remove them" mantra sounds like a way to have more possibilities for a future RFB. -- ReyBrujo 18:06, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

Bureaucrats are admins with three extra buttons. If these aren't used, they do not need them. Admins, however, are in constant shortage. When was the last time there was an RfA backlog? Or any 'crat backlog at all? You shouldn't be comparing bureaucrats to admins because they just aren't the same. --Majorly (talk) 18:10, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

The community trust users when they request 'crat powers. They say why they want them and the community determines whether they are worth or not. We don't accept or reject based on "active/existing" rate. Otherwise, we would just remove the RFB section until someone steps down. Heck, in my own RFA I stated I would not use the tools extensively, only to deal with some backlogs and nothing more, and made it crystal clear that I would stay as WikiGnome, yet the community thought I would not misuse them and accepted me. One thing I learned from conversations with others: Contrary to Meta or Commons, where your tools are removed if you are innactive, here you get the tools because you are trustworthy, you have an immediate need of them, and because the community approves [of] you. I want to see you falling with all your rage in the first admin that comes back after a wikibreak for deleting an article when he was at the "bordeline" consensus and he was in the gray area to decide. -- ReyBrujo 18:28, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, they were trusted when they were promoted. --Majorly (talk) 18:33, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

And inactive bureaucrats are not in any immediate need. --Majorly (talk) 18:35, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

Regardless of where the "gray area" lies, Mark didn't utilize his bureaucratic discretion to determine that consensus had been reached. He determined that consensus had not been reached and promoted Ryulong because he liked him (citing his personal opinion of the candidate as "the deciding factor"). —

David Levy

18:38, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

I will refer you to my comment almost at the end of a section above: he was in the gray area (according to his own perception) and used his personal knowledge about the topic to close the RFA. Since bots don't promote admins, I guess it is fine. If you want to change the way 'crats are chosen, create a RFC or a proposal at the VP. Discussion is good, but remember, to reach consensus, everyone must give up something. Postures stating "Demote everyone, reconfirm every year, assume bot mind" are not open for discussion apparently, which makes this discussion a good way to release stress and dispair, but achieve little. -- ReyBrujo 18:51, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

1. It is not a closing bureaucrat's job to "[use] his personal knowledge" to decide whether a sysop candidate is qualified. It's his (or her) job to gauge community consensus and respond accordingly. Discretion plays a role only in interpreting the discussion's outcome, not in creating it. Mark's personal opinion of Ryulong is worth no more than that of any other Wikipedian in good standing.

2. What gave you the idea that I wish to change the bureaucrat selection process or demote anyone? I've said nothing of the sort. —

David Levy

19:48, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

Point 2 was aimed at Majorly, I should have replied just below his post instead of joining both replies for shortening the discussion, sorry if misunderstood. As for point 1, I have replied to that too many times: I am considering he approved the user because he had demonstrated a need for admin tools, for which Raul had been witness. People don't seem to agree with this statement, and instead prefer a black/white system, where either you are acclaimed by the masses or not. You know, I am still here because I assume good faith, and trust his judgement because people chose him as 'crat in the past. I invite anyone who does not trust him to create {{

biased}} and slap it in his user page. -- ReyBrujo

20:22, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

And no, Danny uses his Dannyisme account for office use. I don't know about Angela. --Majorly (talk) 17:14, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

We should propose more bureaucrats :) HIZKIAH (User • Talk) 17:25, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

No, we don't... that's the whole point of this discussion. --Majorly (talk) 17:31, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

This seems to be a solution looking for a problem. If there is a particular user you don't trust with bureaucrat tools, you should take it up with that person. Jkelly 18:15, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

I second this comment by Jkelly; it's not clear to me what the problem with having inactive bureaucrats is. Is it that they might abuse the tools? Or misuse them because they don't know what's going on anymore? Those ideas seem kind of farfetched to me. delldot | talk 22:20, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

The only thing I can think of is that the "we don't need any new b'crats" argument assumes all b'crats are active, when really barely only a handful really are. So it really skews the numbers. But that's obviously more perceptual. There are lots of hypothetical problems but yeah, those are really just hypothetical and I'd prefer to solve problems that actually exist. --W.marsh 02:45, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

For some reason, I get the idea that older bureaucrats are saner than younger ones (because they'll have more experience with wikis in total, and because older bureaucrats were drawn from a pool that happened to have more experience in total.) So removing the tools from older bureaucrats might be unwise. A similar argument goes for older admins. Even so, by now I'm unsure why anyone would be crazy enough to still want to be a bureaucrat or an admin ;-) --Kim Bruning 23:05, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

• Oppose: Nominee was insane enough to nominate themselves for bureaucrat. Can't be trusted. (I can see it now... :)) --Durin 02:37, 25 January 2007 (UTC)
  • Bub, if you want me to accept a bit on wikipedia these days, you're going to have to drag me through the nomination kicking and screaming. (You also want to watch out for that when people deliberately are very curt in answering questions. "candidate obviously doesn't want the position" <- an astute observation. )--Kim Bruning 09:30, 25 January 2007 (UTC)
• Many of the older b'crats don't do anything b'cratish... some have essentially never done anything as b'crats. I think we could live without them as b'crats... but if we lost Taxman and Redux, that would be bad since they actually do work. --W.marsh 02:42, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

They may yet be acting in an advisory role (insofar as there is anything to advise). It might be interesting to encourage older bureaucrats to act more. The job is nigh-on impossible these days, and taxman and redux are likely somewhat conservative. There might be some amount of howling and gnashing of teeth at bureaucrats really starting to do their job properly again. --Kim Bruning 09:30, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

In real life I am a great believer of keeping the oldies around when younger ones take over the position of responsibility. They might not do much, but they certainly remember having tried all those "new ideas" the youngsters are coming up with again. Agathoclea 10:18, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

They don't need the bureaucrat bit to be an advisor, only to actually promote. Unless they're actively promoting users, I really don't see why they need to keep the bit. If they lose the bit, then want to go promoting users again, why not come up for an RfB again? They didn't lose the bit because they're bad, just because they're inactive. Nothing wrong with that. --Deathphoenix ʕ 13:09, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

consistency among bureaucrats

I don't think removing inactive crats automatically is a good idea, but they should be confirmed on an annual basis. The only real reason I've seen against confirming admins is that there are too many of them - that's not the case with crats. --Tango 16:11, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

• I think reconfirming 'crats is an excellent idea. Otherwise we'd get things like drive-by promotions and such weirdness. >Radiant< 16:35, 25 January 2007 (UTC)
  • Oh wait, I just realized people are arguing about it because this just happened. It's bad enough that the outcome of AFD debates sometimes depends on who closes them, it's worse if RFA nominations are decided based on which 'crat happens to get there first. >Radiant< 16:38, 25 January 2007 (UTC)
    • Well that is really the question, isn't it? If a different 'crat had made the closure, would it have been the same? Trebor 17:22, 25 January 2007 (UTC)
    • How can you get something that looks like consistency between bureaucrats unless you turn RfA into a pure vote? Kusma (討論) 17:29, 25 January 2007 (UTC)
      • By requiring decisions in the "grey" area to be made collaboratively between more than one 'crat. Trebor 17:34, 25 January 2007 (UTC)
      • One way would be to have more discussions between bureaucrats. If five or six bureaucrats discussed Ryulong's RfA and came to the decision that he should be promoted, then I don't think we'd see anything like this outcry. Especially if the closing was immediately followed by a detailed explanation of their reasoning.
        SuperMachine
        17:35, 25 January 2007 (UTC)
        • ...and the reasoning is based upon upon how they judged the consensus of the community. Trebor 17:38, 25 January 2007 (UTC)
          • Yes. The explanation should have contained something along the lines of "We did not find arguments A or B by opposers to be very compelling because of reasons X and Y."
            SuperMachine
            17:47, 25 January 2007 (UTC)
            • This is what I believe should have been done, based on my reading of the September/October Arbitration Committee case on this issue. The joint discussion among bureaucrats seems to be highly recommended by that RfA, but I think an explanation based on how consensus was judged should have been forthcoming as soon as it was requested. (Best if reasons X and Y are references to arguments actually made in the RfA by the supporters.)
              GRBerry
              19:24, 25 January 2007 (UTC)
• (de-indent) I would love to see our current bureaucrats pledge to take a consensus view amongst themselves on possibly controversial RfAs. It is my strong opinion that some promotions have occurred when other 'crats would have declined, and some have been declined that perhaps would have been passed. If they agreed to make a quick sanity-check amongst themselves on RfAs in grey areas (70-80%? 60-75%?), it might alleviate some of this inconsistency. Obviously anyone who registered an opinion outright in the RfA itself should recuse. Taxman
  inuse}}). -- nae'blis
  21:07, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

If we look at old RfAs from 2004, RfAs were a lot more vote-like than now. Old RfAs were not so much discussions, and many people passed with a three-line nomination statement and not much further information from the support voters. As RfA has changed and discussion has become more important (and typical support and oppose counts have changed), our criteria for promotion should change as well. As it is insanely hard to become a bureaucrat these days, only the most trusted users can become one, so we should trust them to judge how to close RfAs and not ask for pure vote-counting. If we don't want to allow them this discretion, we should return to a more explicitly vote-like RfA system without a discretion range. In any case, we shouldn't do both - it is silly to pretend that bureaucrats need an insane amount of trust while at the same time giving them only the tiniest of discretion ranges so their judgment skills are never actually needed. (note: I know that bureaucrats have used their discretion to extend RfAs, but that usually brings in as many oppose as support voters, so extending an RfA often means to decide it should fail but to pass the responsibility elsewhere). The thing our bureaucrats should do at the end of the day is to make sure we get enough decent admins that help everybody build the encyclopedia, and the RfA process should do that in a way that causes as little friction as necessary. If we can't decide whether we want a vote-counting or a more actively deciding bureaucrat, we will continue to have problems finding people who can actually pass RfB. Kusma (討論) 17:25, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

I agree with Kusma. Well said. However we should have more bureaucrats. --HIZKIAH (User &#149; Talk) 17:27, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

Sorry Kusma, I don't understand what you're getting at. What's the point of your argument? And, HIZKIAH, we don't. See the thread above. --Majorly (talk) 17:30, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

My point is that we should allow more bureaucrat discretion, as that is what is needed while RfA is evolving from a vote to a discussovote. Kusma (討論) 17:34, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

In that case I agree, only if the bureaucrats get reconfirmed every year, in the style of stewards. We have too many bureaucrats doing nothing. --Majorly (talk) 17:37, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

Sure, they can all reconfirm each other every year if that makes you happy. I doubt it would change anything though. --

talk

17:43, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

Hmm I don't know what you mean there. I mean they are confirmed by everyone else in an RfB. --Majorly (talk) 17:50, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

That would be fun. I don't think many would pass (hint:RfB is broken). Kusma (討論) 17:54, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

An election style would be better, like they do on Meta. --Majorly (talk) 17:55, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

Stewards reconfirm each other. They don't go up for public vote every year, they go up for confirmation by their peers. If Bureaucrats were to be grouped with them and treated the same way, then they would similarly be expected to reconfirm each other. --

talk

17:59, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

• It almost sounds like we either have to change it bureaucrat voting bots, or no support/oppose votes at all... We're right in the middle now though.--Wizardman 17:57, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

tjstrf, what I'm saying is they should be confirmed, in a vote, by any users if they should remain a bureaucrat. We only need 3 in reality, so whoever has the highest three % stays a bureaucrat. --Majorly (talk) 18:03, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

My only problem with that is if we cut it off at 3, that's gonna be seen as a status symbol. If it's the right 3 that shouldn't be a problem, but I'm just sayign that for reference.--Wizardman 18:07, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

3 would just be the number we cut down down to. After, any more can be added. --Majorly (talk) 18:13, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

Ah, okay then. There's very few active anyway so that should work.Wizardman 18:14, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

• Having only three is in my opinion far too low. During the calendar year of 2006 we had 16 bureaucrats performing at least one RfA promotion. Seven of those had more than 10. Certainly limiting the number of bureaucrats to 3 produces
  Single-point failure problems. Limiting the pool of bureaucrats to such a limited set reduces consultation possibilities when faced with a potentially controversial decision. Further, I find arguments that we only need X number of bureaucrats unpersuasive. If a candidate is able to successfully pass RfB, they are trusted to perform the duties of a bureaucrat. Having bureaucrats handy is a good thing. The duties were spun off from stewards to help the project. Limiting the pool of bureaucrats significantly reduces the potential positives and goes against the original intention of the project in creating bureaucrats. Having a reconfirmation every year might not be a bad thing, but limiting them from even getting to that point is I think counterproductive. --Durin
  18:16, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

• You read me wrong. I meant we demote the inactive bureaucrats and leave the most active (i.e. about 3, but the number doesn't matter). When/if there's a need for more, someone can apply. --Majorly (talk) 18:20, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

• Demoting the current bureaucrats implies there's a problem with them...because of this particular controversial RfA. That doesn't follow. The bureaucrats as a group have not demonstrated incompetence nor any compelling reasons to consider older bureaucrats as less capable. I'd prefer to see more evidence that older bureaucrats are less competent than more recently promoted bureaucrats before stripping ~20 people of the bureaucrat flag. And again, "need" is a bad basis on which to constrain the bureaucrat pool. If they are capable and trusted and can pass RfB, there's no reason to deny them because of a perceived lack of need. Single point failures can and do happen, and we saw a microcasm of that recently on
  Wikipedia:Changing usernames. Whenever User:Essjay takes a break from it, we get a backlog. There isn't anything wrong with having 15 bureaucrats if 10 are capable of covering all the bases, so long as all the bureaucrats are acceptably skilled. --Durin
  18:34, 24 January 2007 (UTC)
  • I do agree with you very strongly about one thing - this is solving the wrong problem. The issue at hand is that a bureaucrat has the unchecked power to do whatever they want and ignore consensus. The solution to that problem isn't to de-crat 20 people who had nothing to do with this decision. The solution certainly isn't to introduce an AFD-style debate into the process. (Could you imagine having to sift through the unordered, verbose comments of 100+ people?) The solution is to lay down stricter standards for promotion. If 75-85 is the margin of discretion, then we need a rule for anything outside of that range. For example, prior to promoting someone with 74% support (or not promoting someone with 86%), a crat must discuss it with and gain the approval of three other crats. That way, there is a check in the event of puppetry, ballot stuffing, etc, but a single bureaucrat cannot unilaterally make the decision. Personally, I support the promotion in this case, but I think the much bigger issue is a lack of confidence in the promotion itself and a solution like this would help restore that confidence. Retiring crats is unrelated to the problem. --BigDT 19:14, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

• This is the solution that makes most sense to me. The vast majority of cases are uncontroversial in their closing and there's no problem, but in the few cases where there is doubt about the consensus, more than one 'crat should be involved (like for Carnildo's RfA). I disagree with the promotion and particularly with the reasons given, but to de'crat a bunch of unrelated people makes no sense. Trebor 19:21, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

In my opinion, RfA is already far too much like a vote. I agree it's nice to have all the comments neatly laid out, but I think we should remove all of these limits like "75%", "80%", "85%", etc., that we demand 'crats follow. By doing so, we virtually make RfA a vote, and indicate that we don't trust the promoters - when Wikipedia is virtually a trust-based community.

If there were no guidelines, no one would be able to complain ;) --Majorly (talk) 23:58, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

And if RfA truely was "not a vote" then these percentages would be redundant. --Kind Regards -

Heligoland

00:04, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

That sounds nice in principle, but eliminating any kind of guideline would grant too much power to the bureaucrats and make RFA more of an aristocracy. Even with the best of intentions, that system is only going to increase mistrust. What if promotions like this became an every day occurance? That would be much worse than the current situation. The current system isn't really that broken ... it just needs some guidelines so that in potentially controversial situations, nobody acts unilaterally. An AFD system could never work for RFA for the very simple reason that AFD has more checks and balances. If an administrator discounts the apparant consensus in closing a deletion discussion,

WP:DRV will examine that decision. But there's no Wikipedia:Adminship Review. In general, there's only one shot here to get the right decision made. I propose this simple guideline: "if you plan to promote a candidate who gets under 80% support or not promote a candidate who gets over 80% support, consult with other bureaucrats first." It's simple and solves the problem. --BigDT

00:06, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

Would eliminating the "guideline" (it's more like a "policy" at the moment) really give 'crats too much power? At the moment they don't have enough freedom; whenever they do something wrong, no matter how small, everyone breathes down their neck. I don't see exactly how giving 'crats more freedom gives them more power, it just gives them more leniency in applying that power. RfB is the final test to see if 'crats will be sensible in their decisions; why make life harder for them afterward?

Yuser31415 (Editor review two!)

00:10, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

I'm with Big DT: yes, it would give them too much power (or freedom, either way). I don't feel like RfB should be the final test for trustworthiness, that if someone passes RfB we should automatically trust them for good (not that this is necessarily what you're suggesting). Decisions should remain in the community's hands as much as possible, IMO. Having your neck breathed down is just a side effect of making important decisions, and it's an important means of having checks and balances. If we give away too much power, somewhere down the line someone's inevitably going to abuse it, we can't expect every RfB to be flawless in picking up on who it's going to be. I agree with BigDT that discussion is warranted in close call cases, and would add that they should discuss when it's a close call either way (whether they're leaning towards promoting or not). (whoops, misread BigDT's statement here). I'd also suggest that crats shouldn't be the only ones allowed in the discussion (though for practical purposes they'd still have the final "say"). delldot | talk 01:28, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

'Crats have just as much power now as they would when the limits were removed. Who's stopping a 'crat from promoting a vandal to adminship? At the moment, the numbers are just an excuse to complain.

Yuser31415 (Editor review two!)

01:36, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

I think keeping the 75%/80% "rules" in place is a good idea. They're never followed rigidly, and

exceptions to the rule are made occasionally inline with Wiki philosophy. --Deskana (request backup)

02:44, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

What? Of course they are followed rigidly. Do you not remember what happened last time a bureaucrat passed an RfA that did not fall within the correct percentage? -Amark moo! 05:18, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

If we remove "all of these limits like "75%", "80%", "85%", etc." then what is going to be the criterion for promotion? The absolute discretion of bureaucrats? But exactly this was the problem in the recent case that caused this chaos. A bureaucrat interpretating consensus in his own way against what majority regards as "discretion". Do we want this to happen more often? I don't! If you ask me what we have to do here is to keep the rules and percentage limits as they are, and define the limits of discretion of the bureaucrats. Promoting a nominee with 74% or 73% is exercize of discretion; promoting a nominee with 69% is something else. IMO this is not discretion but misinterpretation of the essence of discretion. What we must make clear is that everybody here, bureaucrats and sysops, are accountable for their actions and they cannot interpretate rules and guidelines in any way they like without being held responsible for that.--Yannismarou 10:38, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

I wanted to let it go, but I see new data, and scepticism dominates my mind. Some numbers (yes, you may hate them, but they are sometimes useful!):

• Ambuj.Saxena's RfA: Final(110/40/12) Ended 16:50, 2006-08-04 (UTC). Support: 73,33% - neutral votes not counted. Nomination failed; consensus not reached.
• Can't sleep, clown will eat me RfA (1): Final (117/36/20) Ending 02:30 24 January 2006 (UTC) Support: 76,47%!!! - neutral votes not counted. Nomination failed; consensus not reached.
• Ryulong (3): Final (125/55/7); Ended 06:19, 24 January 2007 (UTC) Support: 69,44% - neutral votes not counted. Nomination succeded; consensus reached!!!

"Wikipedia is a trust-based community": Yes, but how can I show my trust, when they tell me that with 76% consensus in not reached, but with 69% it is reached!!! "RfA is already far too much like a vote": Yes, because as you say it is a community-based (+trust-based) encyclopedia, and the community must find a way to decide. RfA is not only a poll, but votes do matter, because they constitute the most democratic way a community can express itself.

I don't feel comfortable with all this raw, guys! And I don't feel comfortable, because I believe the whole controversy is still open; no real solution has been given and we can't go on like that. We must move forward, but, in order to move forward, we must all acknowledge here, and, most importantly those involved in the particular promotion, that a mistake was done. And that this mistake will not be repeated again. What is done is done, but from now on consensus or not-consensus will be respected. I think this is the only way to get over with this controversy. Possible changes in policies, guidelines or the way RfA works come next; at least IMO.--Yannismarou 13:08, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

Perhaps it is time to move away from "consensus is 80%", as that is getting harder and harder to reach in Wikipedia's growing and more and more fractured community. Ultimately, RfA is not about consensus, it is just some way to find people who will get a few extra buttons and can be trusted to use them responsibly to help us all create an encyclopedia. Polling / voting / consensus / discussion are just tools we use for that. And I don't think that a mistake was made here (to show that a mistake was made, you'll have to show that Wikipedia would be better off if Ryulong wasn't an admin). Kusma (討論) 13:18, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

You confuse the procedure with the result. I don't question Ryulong capacity to be a great adm. - this can be a great result of this raw -, and I said that I regard this particular case as closed. But I do question the procedure that led to Ryulong's promotion. Whether Ryulong will be a great adm or not (and I do believe he will be a great adm), the flaws of the procedure followed remain, they create a bad precedent, and they should be seriously discussed.--Yannismarou 14:16, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

And, if we want "to move away from "consensus is 80%"", this is something we can discuss and decide. But this change can't be the outcome of a disputed exercize of discretion by one bureaucrat, because that's where this particular promotion leads RfA, without any prior to the application of this change in-depth discussion.--Yannismarou 14:23, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

If wikiconsensus after discussion is required to change RfA procedure, it will never change. Some amount of boldness from bureaucrats will be necessary for any change to happen. Ryulong now gives us one extra data point of a "low percentage" promotion that we can study. Kusma (討論) 14:30, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

The usual procedure was not followed here. The result is that we have one new admin and several people who are annoyed that procedure was not followed or their concerns ignored. This popular dissatisfaction with a bureaucrat's decision or an RfA outcome is always part of the result. For example, in Carnildo's last RfA, the short-time result of the promotion was bad for Wikipedia (I don't believe that having Carnildo as a sysop was worth the huge mess that became the Giano RfAr). I can't really judge whether it was a good idea to promote directly after that 61% RfA from a long-term point of view. In the case here, I still hope that the net result (including this discussion) will be beneficial. Kusma (討論) 14:44, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

I'm marking this "closed" because this is only tangentially related to RfA itself. It's more appropriate for a

After spending the long time required to read the above (this is what I get for being away from Wikipedia for some time, I suppose), something in the above jumped out at me.

Someone commented that there is no backlog on RfAs, and that Bureaucrats are "tripping over themselves" to close RfAs (or something like that).

How about just make it that it requires 2 Bureaucrats to promote?

I think that this would end all the controversy, and provides quite a few other benefits.

What does everyone else think? - jc37 13:16, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

I like the idea, but it may not be easy to find two bureaucrats on at the same time to make a promotion... unless there's a way around that I can't see in your suggestion? – Chacor 16:05, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

B1 deems a nom as successful, and closes the nom to further discussion.

B2 also deems the nom as successful, notes on the nom that the nom is sucessful, and promotes the user in question.

If there is dissention between the two Bureaucrats, the nom is closed to further discussion, and the bureaucrats take it to the

WP:BN

for consensus among any bureaucrats who wish to discuss.

The above is just one way to handle it, I'm sure that we can all come up with different ways to handle dissention between Bureaucrats. The main idea is merely that it take two bureaucrats determining consensus for final closure of a nomination. - jc37 16:19, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

I think this would be an overreaction; most cases are closed without a shred of controversy. But I think for cases in the "grey area" where the bureaucrat has to use more of his or her own judgement, a collaborative decision makes sense. I don't think the technicalities would be too hard to work out; for instance, further up the page nae'blis suggested using a template for an on-going decision. This wouldn't be an expression of lack of faith in the 'crats, just a reflection on the fact that community consensus isn't always clear and that people's reading of it may be different. Considering the uproar and time wasted when it does go wrong, and the non-existent backlog, this seems to make perfect sense. Trebor 16:13, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

This in no way suggests that we no longer trust any of our bureaucrats, but merely a way to add a bit of transparency and cover (among other things). - jc37 16:19, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

Sounds like a good idea to me. ~

problem solving

16:25, 26 January 2007 (UTC)