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Wikipedia talk:Requests for adminship

Current time is 10:56, 4 October 2024 (UTC). — Purge this page

Finally a RFA

This is the 5th RFA eligible for the new 2 day discussion period, after that, discussions should be reinstated. Just a random Wikipedian(talk) 00:02, 31 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I look forward to being able to support good candidates on day 1 again. –Novem Linguae (talk) 00:52, 31 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Is it a RFA or an RFA? ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 01:03, 31 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@ScottishFinnishRadish: an MGM film once featured an RfA, in a metro Goldwyn production, in it a user rode a horse for an hour. The production was delayed for an year. —usernamekiran (talk) 21:33, 3 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
the rfa. ltbdl☃ (talk) 06:36, 31 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I encourage all editors to approach this RfA with caution and respect. Premature iVotes framed as comments may possibly disrupt the new process. Please refrain from that. Cullen328 (talk) 06:43, 31 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
When will we stop the 'new' process and go back to the old? GiantSnowman 16:19, 31 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@GiantSnowman: Since this is the 5th RfA for the trial, if this does not close with SNOW, this will be the last RfA that will go through the discussion only trial. 0xDeadbeef→∞ (talk to me) 16:37, 31 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
But why, GiantSnowman, would you want to go back to the auld ways? We've got admins being promoted, a nicer, more comfortable atmosphere, the opportunity for real consensus building rather than 'per nom and-pretend-that's-a-discussion-not-a-vote', and less—if any—barracking or bludgeoning of !votes. The (new) system works. SerialNumber54129 15:51, 1 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Is it really enough to say it "works" though? I'm not sure I love it but I think if we do keep this style of system I'd prefer it to be lowered to 24 hours instead of 48. Hey man im josh (talk) 15:17, 1 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Just noting that these suggestions should be noted and kept for the discussion of the trial period which will determine whether to maintain or reverse the new system, but discussion here (as far as I am aware) will not be considered as consensus for that determination. Primefac (talk) 17:10, 1 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Good note, thank you! Hey man im josh (talk) 17:25, 1 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I hope that we will let a bit of time pass, before starting that discussion of the trial. I say that in the context of the many comments that have been made, expressing concern about how few RfAs we have been having. One possible hypothesis is that the new system being trialed discouraged some good candidates from running, resulting in a drought of RfAs. There's no actual evidence that this is the case. But if, hypothetically, we get an uptick in successful RfAs just after this trial ends, that might support such a possibility. It would be helpful to know that, before discussing whether the trial worked. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:58, 1 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
an. I was going to suggest the same correction. Elli (talk | contribs) 15:22, 1 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Extended confirmed suffrage requirement

Is it just me, or does an edit like this, striking the harmless input of a non-extended-confirmed editor, feel wrong and un-Wikipedia-like to anyone else? (I'm not criticizing the specific editor there, but the general practice as a whole.) I regret having missed the RfC that raised the minimum requirement to vote at RfA to extended-confirmed (was super busy IRL earlier this year, and still am). But this new policy feels very WP:BITEy, and I feel like it doesn't directly address any of the problems at RfA aside from turning away potential new contributors. Many of the opponents at the RfC correctly predicted the problems with the proposal, and many of the supporters only supported a vague "minimum threshold" as opposed to extended confirmed being that specific threshold. Is there any appetite towards repealing the change? We could meet halfway and ask that voters be autoconfirmed instead (the only requirement before was account registration). The change very much feels like a step backwards in making RfA a better place. Mz7 (talk) 20:10, 2 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Disclaimer: I'm the one mentioned in the above diff.
I agree in principle with limiting voting to EC folks. This is an easy way to keep trolls and socks from causing drama and influencing an RFA. Although in order to be fair, we also have to apply it to folks like the editor in the diff above who was almost surely acting in good faith.
One idea might be to EC protect the voting page, nudging these folks to comment on the talk page. That would probably be less bitey than striking or deleting their vote after they make it.
Another mitigation that could be considered is to show the watchlist notice only to EC. This would probably be the easiest fix in terms of effort. Just change one piece of code one time, rather than protecting every RFA.
If you want another data point, I struck a support and an oppose in Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/HouseBlaster. In @HouseBlaster's RFA debrief, he wrote [...] Novem Linguae did a fabulous de facto job making the whole RfA easier, which I think was referring to me striking these votes, so it sounds like it did improve the candidate's experience? Anyway, happy to hear other thoughts. Hope this helps. –Novem Linguae (talk) 20:52, 2 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
IP editors and new users should be able to comment/ask questions. Implementing either an edit notice warning before they publish or making the talk page editable (and transferring comments) are both far preferable to "striking" votes when it is our weird rules, not them. I would not have struck their vote, but wanted crats to simply deduct their vote when tallying as an alternative here. ~ 🦝 Shushugah (he/him • talk) 21:00, 2 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
That is pretty much what I was referring to in the debrief. I don't think it was necessarily striking the support and the oppose in and of itself which made the process easier – it was more the feeling that someone was watching over the RfA to make sure people kept it within reason. I think a comment like this one (publicly declaring that someone was a monitor) would have had the same effect. HouseBlaster (talk • he/they) 23:09, 2 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I would be curious to go back through historical RfAs and count the ratio of trolls and socks among the non-extended-confirmed accounts that contributed to RfA. My suspicion is that we are throwing the baby out with the bathwater here by restricting non-extended-confirmed accounts: I suspect that if we hypothetically apply the policy retroactively, we would be suppressing way more legitimate voices than illegitimate ones. Mz7 (talk) 05:08, 3 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I wasn't active during the RfC either, and while I do like most of the changes, I have to concur that I don't like this one.
And, on a personal note, I voted in the odd RfA before I hit EC- because while I may not have been intimately familiar with WP:CESSPIT, WP:NPP, or the vast majority of noticeboards, I knew enough to always cite my sources, and to tell who I trusted with the block tools. I mostly wrote small articles, however- so until I started getting involved in backlogs and stuff, I wasn't on track to get 500 edits for a while. In fact, like many editors who don't frequent the backrooms, I didn't hit EC until years after registering my account. Five years, to be precise.
I get that we want to protect against socks and incivility (although anybody who has ever watch an RfA knows that some of the meanest comments can come from very respected longstanding editors & even advanced rights holders), but don't think this trial has shown that disenfranchising the vast majority of our editors has helped that. If anything, I think it showed just how out of touch many of us can be with newer or more sporadic editors. And our voices were never going to be represented in that RfC- because how many editors who write the occasional start-class biography on an actor they saw, fixes typos on the lunch break, or removes promotional fluff from articles they're reading were ever going to see that discussion, know what it meant, or feel welcome enough to participate in it? And, as anybody knows, this will do squat all for preventing an actually good sock master from causing disruption- the obvious ones will easily be caught by the 'crats or several dozen admins monitoring every RfA, and the clever ones will just make sleepers, fix vandalism and typos, then vote away. GreenLipstickLesbian (talk) 20:56, 2 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I would say it absolutely feels wrong to strike an RfA comment just because the editor isn't extended confirmed. Editors who are not extended confirmed are not second-class probationary editors nor are they likely to be trolls or sockpuppets, especially without evidence. The moment someone makes a single edit, they are a Wikipedia editor and are part of the Wikipedia community and should be welcomed instead of increasingly closed off from participation. This would make me want to cease editing. RfA is a community process, and they made a comment ending with Thank you for stepping forward to make our community a better place. Our community. Not the administrator's community, not the community of extended confirmed editors, but our community. This isn't the encyclopedia that anyone can edit if we continue to throw up walls keeping editors out. - Aoidh (talk) 00:16, 3 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I am not convinced that the suffrage requirements are addressing any of the various perceived or actual problems that RfA has. Crankish or half-baked opinions can be posted and are often posted by anyone. I don't like the way people are spreading this extended-confirmed restriction around the project as if we needed such a hierarchy everywhere. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 07:35, 4 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Having the MediaWiki:Watchlist-messages direct non-extended-confirmed editors to RfA only to have their comments struck is unfortunate (I don't think Novem intended for the striking to come across as mean spirited at all). I personally don't like the suffrage requirement, but I think there are a few things we can do right now short of getting rid of the requirement that would help:

Happy to hear other opinions. Malinaccier (talk) 00:50, 3 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Malinaccier +1; there isn't even a consensus whether RfA is a vote or a weighed consensus, but either way, moving non ECA to comment section fits the spirit of no WP:BITE while preventing vote-stacking. ~ 🦝 Shushugah (he/him • talk) 01:57, 3 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I like the idea of moving non EC supports/opposes/neutrals to the discussion section instead of striking. I can start doing this instead if there's no objections. –Novem Linguae (talk) 02:12, 3 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I would support the second proposal, no matter which voter suffrage guidelines we eventually end up with. It's much friendlier. GreenLipstickLesbian (talk) 02:13, 3 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I support the second proposal, if the changes for the RfC on only having ec editors voting remains. – robertsky (talk) 02:20, 3 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not against the second proposal, but I don't think it solves the problem, as it still has the effect of separating out less-experienced editors and letting them know that their opinion matters less. As with any discussion on Wikipedia, the weight of their opinion should depend on the strength of their argument, rather than their edit count and tenure. Mz7 (talk) 05:56, 3 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I would personally like to see the suffrage requirement repealed. Both the vote I re-struck and the vote I struck were constructive and not disruptive, and I don't think a rule that doesn't successfully address RfA's toxicity should be on the books. Regardless, if the suffrage requirement stays, I would support moving it to general. In fact, there's nothing preventing me from doing that now, so I'm going to move both of the struck !votes there. theleekycauldron (talk • she/her) 06:09, 3 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
also, I'm unstriking the text of the votes, as the RfC never prevented non-EC people from substantively commenting (it is an explicit carveout, in fact). theleekycauldron (talk • she/her) 06:09, 3 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Glad this was resolved amicably in the middle of an RfA (Narfhead's trailing signature still looks strange to me if theleekycauldron can have a second look).
I would support removing the suffragist requirement in general or loosening it (an account registered in same day with a sole edit at RfA is clearly SPA) as well as matter of IP users, but I do think we should ECA requirement in place for the more anonymous WP:Admin elections where it is an explicit vote. ~ 🦝 Shushugah (he/him • talk) 11:49, 3 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I !voted for this (and presumably others did too) on the assumption that it would be enforced with ECP, which would at least cut back on the amount of disruption and stress trolls, vandals, LTAs, etc. can create. But what we're doing instead just causes confusion and BITEing for good-faith users while leaving bad-faith ones unimpeded. I think this is a situation where half-measures create the worst of both worlds: either we should go full bore with protection or just return to the status quo ante. Extraordinary Writ (talk) 22:23, 3 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

percentage in tally

Why is Asilvering's tally showing ">99" instead of the precedent 99? —usernamekiran (talk) 17:40, 7 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Looks like that's how Template:Recent RfX is coded. {{#ifexpr:{{#expr:100*{{{5|0}}}/({{{5|0}}}+{{{6|0}}}) round 0}} = 100 and {{{6}}} > 0 | >99 | {{#expr:100*{{{5|0}}}/({{{5|0}}}+{{{6|0}}}) round 0}} In layman's terms, I think that means "If support percentage rounds up to 100 but there is an oppose, display >99". I think this makes logical sense... it's not really a 100% RFA if there are opposes. So I think I'd be in favor of keeping it. –Novem Linguae (talk) 19:40, 7 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I find myself surprisingly opposed to this recent change (and by "recent" I mean "two months ago"); if we want decimal places we should code in decimal places, not put in an exception for a specific case where we want someone to feel better about receiving one or two protest opposes. Primefac (talk) 12:32, 11 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with Primefac. Let it be what it is. —usernamekiran (talk) 20:06, 11 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Just as a note, I read (after posting here) the relevant posts where this issue was first proposed; the intention was not to provide feel-good feelings as I cynically posted earlier (so I have struck that) but rather because the module used to round >99.5% to 100% which is not necessarily correct. I think simply adding a single decimal point will more than suffice. Primefac (talk) 12:09, 12 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
i kinda like it better as is – i don't i really want people parsing down to the decimals on tough RfAs. It's a minor thing, but I think it only accentuates the importance of the percentage. theleekycauldron (talk • she/her) 01:12, 13 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with leeky. >99 is good for "rounds to 100, but not quite there", and for the most part, we really don't want to deal with decimals in a !vote. --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 16:03, 19 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
My thoughts here align with TLC and SOV. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 16:09, 19 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think the [[>]] is particularly helpful, to be honest; it's too vague to be accurate. The status quo ante was sufficient and easy enough for anyone to understand: that if someone passes unopposed, that's 100%. Anything else will always be above and below something else. SerialNumber54129 18:17, 19 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Well, say we have an RFA with 249 supports and one oppose. 249/250 = .996, which rounds up to 100% - which is incorrect. ">99" is a good way to indicate the lack of unanimity without mis-rounding the result or using fractions of a percent which, as I said before, are not terribly useful in a discussion that's not supposed to be a vote. --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 19:10, 19 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Precisely. So, anything other than unanimity = 99%. No mis-rounding, no fractions, no problem. SerialNumber54129 19:16, 19 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Well, no, rounding 99.6 down to 99 while rounding 98.9 up to 99 is mis-rounding. --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 19:42, 19 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
That sounds more like we should be flooring (i.e. rounding down). Primefac (talk) 19:55, 19 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
There's a joke here about intrinsic whole number bias but I can't think of it. Levivich (talk) 05:11, 1 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

–Novem Linguae (talk) 21:02, 11 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Bikeshed proposals #9487209 and #9487210

These are, of course, super important matters for the community's attention:

Anyway, as is typical, we will have a three-stage RFC process to answer these questions, followed by a confirmatory SecurePoll vote, at which point it'll be submitted to the Board of Trustees for approval. Levivich (talk) 01:56, 15 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I've cut the Gordian Knot and added a link to WP:RFAADVICE, which links to other advice and WP:ORCP. I think the original point is that if you don't know what ORCP is, you are almost certainly not ready to go there. As for 9487209, I tried. HouseBlaster (talk • he/they) 03:08, 15 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Good idea about making the two-part question text less aggresive & more concise. I've changed the text at Template:RfA/readyToSubmit to Multi-part questions are disallowed, but you are allowed to ask follow-up questions related to previous questions. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 08:12, 15 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you both! Levivich (talk) 14:17, 15 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I've cleaned up WP:RFAADVICE, as it was surprisingly full of WP:ABF and offputting commentary. Might benefit from another read. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 20:11, 15 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I've taken it to User:Houseblaster/Advice for RfA candidates, in the hopes it can be cleaned up. If others wish to help out, please do so. We did a similar thing to revamp Help:Your first article, and it was (in my very biased opinion) very successful. In a few moments of looking closely, it definitely seems like it was written piece by piece, with small parts being updated as the years go on. There is a lot of WP:BITE which can be transformed into gentle "this is probably not for you" wording. HouseBlaster (talk • he/they) 20:41, 15 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
It was largely written by one editor, and so changes have hewed closely to that original viewpoint and writing style. But as that editor has stepped back from editing, there is more opportunity to incorporate other perspectives and alter the writing style. isaacl (talk) 21:30, 15 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
You might want to just modify WP:RFAADVICE directly instead of forking. Advantages include preventing merge conflicts, not having to copy paste / WP:HISTMERGE later, and letting more people get involved in the process. –Novem Linguae (talk) 22:08, 15 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Administrator recall

Should we create a page about the new administrator recall process? Just a random Wikipedian(talk) 08:39, 16 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

You mean Wikipedia:Administrator reconfirmation? – Joe (talk) 09:08, 16 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

>

Relevant discussion here, could have done with more eyes. It was an interesting proposal, although rather begs the question of when to use <  :) SerialNumber54129 13:51, 19 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I want to suggest a new site-wide rule: for the next 3 months, no new threads anywhere in project space on topics that are not one of the, say, 500 most important issues we face. --Floquenbeam (talk) 14:02, 19 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
No one's stopping you; although this is not, as you know, the place for such a proposal. SerialNumber54129 14:14, 19 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Just noting this is already under discussion at #percentage in tally above. Primefac (talk) 15:27, 19 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for that, Primefac, I hadn't noticed. SerialNumber54129 18:10, 19 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]