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This is a bit more complicated, but perhaps more fair way to approach RFA:

• The tally at the top would be removed.
• Each RFA would have one support section, and an oppose section for each objection.
• Each oppose section would be considered seperately with the single support section, with the current discretionary process, as if each oppose section combined with the single support section constitutes a single RFA "discussion"
• If none of the objections are strong enough, when considered individually against the supports, the RFA succeeds.

The net effect of this is that objections most of us would consider trivial will have little impact, as they won't gather enough consensus to override the supports, but strong objections should prevail.

Any thoughts on this one? - Stephanie Daugherty (Triona) - Talk - Comment - 05:44, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

Yes, I like this proposal. — Werdna talk criticism 06:24, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

I worry that doing this could skew the process in favor of the unthinking and careless by giving even trivial objections undue prominence. For instance someone could object that someone had performed fewer than 100 edits in project space (which is really a pretty fatuous objection) but under this scheme the objection would get its own section. --Tony Sidaway 06:36, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

But would such a trivial objection as this get enough "votes" to override the supports when considered with the total weight of the supports? If only say, 4 people share a particular objection, against say 60 supports, that objection is effectively nullified. If on the other hand 30 people were to oppose versus 60 support, it would be a different story. I still think this helps turn aside the more trivial objections, even though it would give them more visibility. - Stephanie Daugherty (Triona) - Talk - Comment - 06:43, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

Yes, I think that if enough weight is given to a trivial objection it may acquire a spurious legitimacy over time. I don't see the advantage of doing it this way, in any case. We're not supposed to be into voting, so why would we want to go out of our way to make RFA into a vote? --Tony Sidaway 08:18, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

I think the gist of what Steph's going into here is that each objection has a little miniature straw poll associated with it — and if an important enough objection stands up to a straw poll, then it can preclude them from adminship. I also think that opposing an objection should distinguish between Oppose as invalid concern and Oppose as irrelevant to adminship. — Werdna talk criticism 08:34, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

Tony, I agree that it shouldn't be a vote, but like most "discussions", they attain the de-facto status of being a vote. I don't like it, but if that's what its going to be, lets at least fix the process so that frivolous concerns aren't given any weight. This would do that I think, because the supports would apply to the entire RFA - you would need a single objection to endorsed by enough users that they offset the supports, going by current standards by at least 20%, possibly by as much as 40%. - Stephanie Daugherty (Triona) - Talk - Comment - 08:59, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

Ideological concerns about whether voting is evil or not should not be the issue here. It is quite possible that a "pure voting"-style RfA would do a good job at weeding out unsuitable candidates, while not turning into a rehashing of old arguments or a general policy discussion like current RfAs do. Most of the unpleasantness of current RfAs comes from the discussions, I think. It is quite possible that we lose good candidates who are not interested in this ordeal. Kusma (討論) 09:16, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

I agree discussions can be unnecessarily hostile, but I think most people use the discussion to help form their view. Also, a pure vote could be gamed too easily. Stephen B Streater 09:25, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

Many other language Wikipedias have pure votes, and their suffrage requirements seem to prevent gaming of the system. Kusma (討論) 10:30, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

Clarification:

• The tally at the top would be removed.
• Each RFA would have a single support section.
• Objections could be raised, each in their own section, each consisting of a statement of why the RFA should not succeed. (Each objection could raise one or more reasons)
• Each objection raised could be endorsed by one or more users.
• At the conclusion of the RFA, each objection is seperately weighed against the total weight of the support "votes". If any objection can stand on its own with enough endorsements to counter the support votes, the RFA fails.

The net effect of this is that the burden to oppose is a lot higher. You need one objection that is strong enough on its own to turn down the user for adminship. - Stephanie Daugherty (Triona) - Talk - Comment - 08:59, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

This is actually a lot more like consensus in some ways (at least the way I teach it), in that once an objection is made, it becomes up to the group to decide whether or not that particular objection is enough to block the proposal from moving forward. It doesn't "belong" to that one user anymore. (In the current system, we're very susceptible to "object per above", where the opinions above include valid, invalid, and insane reasons for opposing). That said, I'm not sure this is a good idea in toto, but it does make me want to revisit the "Discuss for a few days, then !vote for a few days" idea that got discarded when Discussions for adminship sank this spring. -- nae'blis 15:38, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

The tendency with these proposals seems to be leading towards a process we already have; each successive proposal looks more and more like Requests for Comment. Perhaps we have the adminship method we need already? --ais523 07:47, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

I think we do. RFC is a better model, and a model that we could strengthen for dealing with other issues as well. It may even be a valid model for sorting out this mess, as I recall policy can be RFC'd - Stephanie Daugherty (Triona) - Talk - Comment - 06:52, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

Do my eyes deceive me or are there only two concurrent RfAs? Are we running low on good candidates? -- tariqabjotu 22:09, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

Um, yeah. I think people are just busy. Yanksox 22:13, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

Maybe I'll give it a whirl, but I'm not sure it would pass... - Mike 22:15, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

• I'd wait a bit. People will find fault with 1700 edits in 10 months. Not saying I would, but a number of people would. --Durin 22:29, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

That's an average of 5 or 6 edits a day.. and that's considered "bad"? - jc37 22:37, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

• I don't disagree with you, but based on recent history I can guarantee there'd be oppose votes based on that. --Durin 22:44, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

Yes, I can see that. That's why I'm hesitant. I have very much imcreased my activity level lately though. I didn't really plan on going for the mop before I got over the 2,000 plateau. There shouldn't be, but there are a lot of editcountitis votes on RfAs. - Mike 22:47, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

• See, that's exactly why I proposed a mandatory suffrage for candidates that is reasonable, so that people won't make up their own that is not. >Radiant< 22:41, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

• And it's ok for people to make up what standards they want. For us to blanket them would be wrong, and sets a bar that will always rise. --Durin 22:44, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

Perhaps now is the time for existing admins to put themself up for confirmation... do I see any volunteers? :) --ALoan (Talk) 22:47, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

• The problem with reconfirmation is scalability. It's always been a problem, and will remain a problem. From my chair, one of the chief problems we have at RfA is the difficulty in analyzing a candidate unknown to you. This is exacerbated by what is usually (this week is a rare exception) a long list of 10-20 candidates up at any given time. We now have in excess of 1,000 admins. We know from the stats above that at least 450 of them are actively using their abilities. If we forced reconfirmation of all admins, we'd add another 9 RfAs per week to the list. I'm not in favor of admins being above community desire, but expressing that desire by forcing yearly confirmations is a process fraught with problems with scalability. --Durin 22:56, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

I was just thinking of starting a thread exactly titled "Two?". After a year-and-a-half I've literally never seen this. It would be interesting to correlate admin growth with absolute and/or percentage article growth on the Wiki itself (Durin, you do enough, but I'm thinking of you ;). Not to draw too broad a conclusion from one look at RfA, but a plateau here might indicate a larger plateau. Marskell 23:34, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

• What in particular are you looking for? Ratio of articles to admins? That ratio has slowly increased over the last couple of years. Slowly. --Durin 23:38, 26 September 2006 (UTC)
• You're probably looking for one of the first four graphs here. -- tariqabjotu 03:44, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

Strangely the backlogs are probably somewhat better than normal at the moment.Geni 01:09, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

It's definitely not typical. Michael 03:43, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

I'd say everybody's sick and tired of the stupid bullshit that goes on on RfA. I think it's time for reform. — Werdna talk criticism 05:09, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

OK then. Present a specific problem that needs reformation, give a solution, and we'll consider it. Don't just make blanket statements like that. --tjstrf 05:13, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

See Triona's section above. That, and the fact that it is very harsh on candidates. As for solutions, there are a variety sitting around on this page. — Werdna talk criticism 06:46, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

• See also this essay on the matter. >Radiant< 07:48, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

There are lots of essays in all sorts of places (this, for instance; subpages of other users; various Wikipedia policy proposals, etc). It is clear that there are issues that need to be addressed with adminning (and de-adminning). The problem is building a sufficient head of steam, and consensus, to do something about it. -- ALoan (Talk) 10:10, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

((sofixit)). >Radiant< 10:35, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

Sofixit? Well, I am entirely happy to unilaterally impose my "solution" on the community if that it what you really want, but I rather suspect that others might like to have some input into the process. -- ALoan (Talk) 10:41, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

What I mean is, there are at least five proposals along these lines in Wikispace. If you think this is important, you can generate a head of steam from there using the best parts of all five. In my experience whenever there are multiple proposals for something, most of them are way too complex. Witness Wikipedia:AfD_reform as complex, and WP:PROD as a simple end result. >Radiant< 11:00, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

Let's just go with the Dutch solution, that's simple and solves everything. As summarized by Radiant!: "Adminship is subject to yearly reconfirmation via this same procedure, but only if there are significant objections to the admin, which generally means about 4 or 5 dissenters." This means that there won't be a huge load of work in confirming admins everyone likes. And since the window of requesting demotion only opens once every year most storms in a teacup won't lead to a demotion !vote. Haukur 11:09, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

that's perfect. I voice my full support for this "Dutch solution". With 1,000 admins and a "reconfirmation window" of one week, there'll be about 20 admins "open to recall" at any given moment. Only a minority of these will provoke "4-5 dissenters", so that we will have maybe 3-4 open "reconfirmation requests" open. This additional yard of red tape is well worth the added stability and control, resulting in increased trust awarded the admin population, in my opinion. dab (ᛏ) 12:10, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

Well, I would support any admin being required to be reconfirmed at any time if, say, 5 other admins called for it, but this idea is much better than doing nothing. Will there be any sufferage requirements for the dissenters? Only admins? 100/500/1000 edits, 1 month/3 months?-- ALoan (Talk) 13:44, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

yes, the "yearly window" seems a bit arbitrary. Better set a minimal time between requests. It would be reasonable to force re-submission if 5 admins request it, but we have to be very clear that this adds another power to the admin population, setting it apart from the user base: only admins will be able to ostracize another admin (which then will have to be re-confirmed by the entire community). But to avoid needless bad faith ostracisms (anyone can conjure up five troll accounts), I would support a "any admin has to re-submit to RFA if five other admins call for it (don't do this to the same admin more than once every three months)" policy (especially since it will still be the community having the final say). dab (ᛏ) 14:55, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

The important thing at this point is not to get overly bogged down in details or edge cases. A lot of us agree with the basic idea and I don't care that much whether it gets implemented with ketchup or with mustard. The Wikipedia:Adminship in other languages page shows several ways this is done in other languages. Some look like they might not scale well to :en: but the Dutch one looks fine to me. If we could get Radiant! on board here he could tell us more about the way this works over there. He's also someone who can make policy happen after the community has stood and scratched its collective head for a year. Haukur 15:14, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

I've created a proposal at Wikipedia:Ostracism. I know we have a lot of these flying around at the moment. That's part of the process, it will boil down to something more simple. Please comment and improve. dab (ᛏ) 15:09, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

Question: if you incorporate any process of "re-election or recall," doesn't it legimitize political behaviour and attitudes? Sure, there will be a sense of accountability but it still diverts attention and energy from building an encyclopedia. Are there holes here through which politics can build up? Rama's arrow 15:05, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

Other Questions: if a large number of editors don't bother to analyze an RfA candidate, can we say that a process of re-call will provoke sufficient scrutiny? If a majority of 1,000 admins won't be hauled up in this process, will there be a real sense of accountability? Will admins feel comfortable in making tough decisions? Rama's arrow 15:08, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

To be clear, I'm not opposing this idea, rather trying to check for possible holes. Rama's arrow 15:09, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

I felt that a mistake made in the Carnildo affair was to start an RfA at all. ArbCom should not have asked for community opinion on a case it was handling itself - it should always complete doing its job. Consider Sean Black's recent RfA - he handed in the tools and then asked for them back after some time. Only 70% of the folks wanted to give his tools back. He was given the tools back, clearly breaking the RfA guideline. If it was only a short period of time, why couldn't the bureaucrats or ArbCom just hand the tools back themselves, albeit after a brief discussion at WP:BN or ArbCom? Perhaps there is a candid danger in asking the "masses" to hold individual admins accountable, no matter how selective or infrequently you do it. Rama's arrow 15:17, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

I consider administrators to be those editors who protect the flanks of article/media editors, acting like minesweepers keep the path safe for the army to advance. Would it really help to introduce complex processes that take admins in a different direction from where the army is supposed to go? Rama's arrow 15:24, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

Carl is eating his own dog food and runs his own second RfA using his proposed format (to my surprise). Could we please let this fly as a pilot? I understand this might be a bit shocking first, but why not? --Ligulem 16:28, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

Seems like the answer has been given. Duh. [1]. --Ligulem 16:33, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

I would recommend concensus be gathered for such pilot before starting it or else we would end up evaluating the format instead of the candidate in the RfA. --WinHunter ^(talk) 16:35, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

I've added it back, with the normal format. --Alex (Talk) 16:36, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

I would note that the discussion section has been included in the most recent 10-15 RfAs and has been almost entirely ignored, showing that the practical consensus is for the use of the support/oppose/neutral sections. Gwernol 16:41, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

Ok. Let's go with the old format. Thanks to Alex for fixing it :). --Ligulem 16:47, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

I wanted to see how it was recieved by the comunity, but it wan't recieved as good as I was hoping for :( I though it wasn't any wrong doing that, becasue there isn't any policy how the process of nominating and administrator as I have seen. _→AzaToth 16:43, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

After all it was a nice try. And I applaud your courage! But let's run it now as it is. --Ligulem 16:47, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

Hang on. Can you just delete an RFA like that? I thought that once you withdrew you had to wait for a bureaucrat to archive it properly. I'm probably wrong, though. Moreschi 17:25, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

Huh? Nobody deleted the nom. It's here. Carl has withdrawn it, which is in due compliance with current RfA standards. A nominee is free to withdraw at any time during the RfA. At that point, the RfA ends and is delisted. All within current process. And we don't need crats to archive withdrawn RfA's. They are not archived anyway, just listed on the recently failed/succeeded noms pages. --Ligulem 17:52, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

That I really don't know anything about, as this is neither a failed or a succeeded nomination, but an aborted nomination, I feel that it's ok, just to delist it. _→AzaToth 17:29, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

That's fine. Apologies for the misunderstanding - I thought he'd blanked it altogether. Moreschi 17:56, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

I would like to nominate myself for a sysop, but I am having difficulty formatting the nomination because I have a prior unsuccessful nomination. The screen keeps going to the old nomination and I am not sure if I am supposed to delete that and replace it. What do I need to do to set up a new nomination? Ramsquire 16:34, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

No, you are supposed to add a 2 after your name in the new nomination. Michael 16:42, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

Thanks.Ramsquire 16:44, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

All you need to do is open up a new page with the postscript "2" or "(2nd nomination) or whatever, and fill in the ((subst:RfA|User=USERNAME|Description=YOUR DESCRIPTION OF THE USER ~~~~)) there. It's a little less automated, but it'll work about the same as the instructions at the top of WP:RFA (remember to link to your old RFA, and make sure the "Voice your opinion" link goes to the right page). Good luck! -- nae'blis 16:49, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

Would anyone yell at me if I would move the admin listings into a subpage, let's say Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Current nominations for adminship and transclude that into Wikipedia:Requests for adminship? (example content: [2].) I could then put Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Current nominations for adminship onto my watchlist and unwatch Wikipedia:Requests for adminship. This way only the listing/delisting of noms would pop up on my watchlist, not the discussions here. Thoughts? --Ligulem 23:13, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

New listings should appear on your watchlist, but that does seem like a good idea. --Alex (Talk) 23:16, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

What he's saying is that he wants to watch the project page, but not the talk page, which isn't supported by Mediawiki, so he intends to make them seperate pages. I can't see any significant disadvantage, and as this must be one of the busiest talk pages on wikipedia (at least, that's attached to a frequently edited page), it's probably quite a good idea. The other option is to create a Wikipedia_talk:Requests for adminship/Current talk page and make this talk page a simple redirect to it - probably less work and less confusing. --Tango 23:21, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

Hey, good idea. Can we do this? This wouldn't change the status quo of the instruction creep (Um, How do I have to list my RfA? :). Also this would change zilch for the crats. Yummy. --Ligulem 23:44, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

I moved this talk page to Wikipedia:Village pump (RfA) as a proposal. --Ligulem 09:05, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

• I don't know. Seems more instruction creep to me. We already have well meaning, experienced editors tripping up trying to get their noms posted as it is. This change has the effect of removing a single line from someone's watchlist. I don't see the big deal. If your watchlist was mostly populated with multiple, multiple lines indicating many changes to this page I could see it. But, for the removal of one line? Doesn't seem strong case to me. --Durin 23:25, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

Please don't move this page as there a large number of the diffs on it being used in Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Giano/Workshop. Fred Bauder 12:44, 30 September 2006 (UTC) A new page could be created at Wikipedia:Village pump (RfA), but please don't move the page as it causes all links to the history of edits to be bad. Fred Bauder 13:04, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

• There would be near zero additional instruction creep. The only thing that needed to be changed would be the target of "Add new requests at the top of this section." to "Add new requests at the top of this section.". So no additional burdon for the poor nominees :). The section edit links would remain as they are. --Ligulem 23:55, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

I agree very much with Durin. This proposal will make it impossible to add new nominations by using the "Edit" tab on top and it is not worth the trouble given the sole goal of not wanting the RfA talk page on one's watchist.

If you really want to see only the nominations, try putting my bot's page, User:Mathbot/Most recent admin on your watchlist (you'll get the additional bonus of edit summary usage for each candidate in its history). Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 05:23, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

Too bad. I'm taking the whole thing off my watchlist now. After all, I am already an admin :]. There is way too much noise on this talk page for me. And even in the periods when I had it on my watchlist, I missed some Wikipedians RFA's in the past despite this. As a developer (not MediaWiki) I also do not understand what's the purpose of having a frequently changing section inside a page which is otherwise rarely changed. This stores the whole text of the page on the server each time a candidate is listed or delisted. Ok, it's compressed. And we shouldn't care about server load (that's why we have so many bots... :). Thanks for the pointer to User:Mathbot/Most recent admin, though. As usual: no consensus :/. Bye. --Ligulem 08:21, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

What do you mean? Almost all the static text on WP:RFA is transcluded from a subpage. There's one paragraph of introduction and a couple of individual lines on that page itself - everything else is the noms. --Tango 15:38, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

I struck the part about server thinking. You're right. I forgot we already do have the inverted situation. Almost all of the static parts are transcluded from Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Front matter. Anyway, I think your proposal is the better anyway. That's why I would favor to move this page to another location (my proposal was Wikipedia:Village pump (RfA)). Complete moving doesn't work, as Fred needs the diffs into the history of the page. --Ligulem 16:05, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

Please don't move this page as there a large number of the diffs on it being used in Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Giano/Workshop. Fred Bauder 12:44, 30 September 2006 (UTC) A new page could be created at Wikipedia:Village pump (RfA), but please don't move the page as it causes all links to the history of edits to be bad. Fred Bauder 13:04, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

Sorry for that. I didn't know that there are diffs from ArbCom cases into this page. Too bad that diffs aren't redirected too when moving a page. If there would be consensus for partially moving this page here to Wikipedia:Village pump (RfA) (or wherever else), we could move just a part of the history (I tested the procedure for that in my sandbox). But that is too complicated to do per WP:BOLD and you already reverted me, so that's it for now :) --Ligulem 16:05, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

In case anyone is interested: A test for a partial-history move of a page can be seen at User:Ligulem/work/testdiffs. --Ligulem 16:19, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

Is it necessary to move this page? Can't we just archive the latest discussions, put in the redirect, and create a new page for the new discussions? We don't need the history for the old discussions to be with the new discussions. --Tango 23:00, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

I totally agree with that. The move is not needed (although technically it would have been nice, because users wouldn't have had to adapt their watchlists — but the diff problem is a no go for the move). --Ligulem 23:17, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

I may be beating a dead horse here, but for what it's worth, I don't think the move (even without the difficulty of fixing diffs) would be beneficial; it ruins the traditional structure of page and then talk page simply to gain a benefit of not watching the talk page. A more appropriate solution would be to enable watching of just a page without the talk page, something we could push for, if there's enough demand, in other venues. Thanks! Flcelloguy (A note?) 21:48, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

As we already found out here: a move is not needed. And the devs won't "fix" the software because it can technically be perfectly solved by following Tango's proposal. The "structure" wouln't be damaged by a redirect. And yes, this is a dead horse. Deader than dead. --Ligulem 13:54, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

I forgot to mention: we have the same brain dead problem at WP:PP, just the other way round: noisy project page (several edits per day by bots). Seldom edited talk page. It's impossible to watch this talk page there nearly the same as it is impossible to watch new RfA candidacies here. Signal to noise ratio is generally a problem on this "blog". --Ligulem 14:04, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

Yes, we are dancing around a dead horse here. But let me clarify what I meant: even if we did archive the page and create a redirect, it's still going against the idea that discussions for a page should go on the "Talk:" + pagename page. Even though it works technically, it would be a sloppy fix to an issue that would be better served with allowing talk pages to be watchlisted separately. Thanks! Flcelloguy (A note?) 14:13, 3 October 2006 (UTC)