Wikipedia talk:Featured articles/Make Featured Article leaders elected (RFC)

Framing

I oppose this RfC on principle. It is badly written, and framed in a leading fashion. If there is to be an RfC on this issue, it needs to be more soberly thought through and neutrally worded. Geometry guy 05:34, 8 January 2012 (UTC)

Understood. But I think the advocate of change should make the case. You can vote yes or no and criticize it. But it is only fair to let the one advocating change make a case and then have it judged. It should not be hijacked by those who don't even want a question to be considered. For instance, I don't think much of Kudpung's RFA modification aims. But when he asked me to let them at least develop a proposal to bring forward, I said absolutely. I did not try to pre-shape it as I was in (likely) opposition.

And if it is badly written, that really should not affect what we decide with our program. This is about our program, not grading my writing (Grammarian is a weak debate crit). In any case, it is the people who advocate change who should be mad at me for poor writing. Not those who oppose change and benefit from a poor case. But, I did my best.TCO (talk) 05:39, 8 January 2012 (UTC)

Yes, poor though it may be, I can believe that this is your best effort to advocate change, but advocacy is not the way to hold an RfC. And I agree that editors advocating change should be mad at you. You are undermining good faith efforts at reform by trampling over consensus building and the wiki process. Geometry guy 05:50, 8 January 2012 (UTC)

Would have been better to wait a while and invite for tightly written for and against statements. A lot of the info at the top is not strictly relevant to the question. Tony (talk) 05:54, 8 January 2012 (UTC)

Those are style and process comments.TCO (talk) 05:59, 8 January 2012 (UTC)

No because the material at the top does not necessarily relate to the bottom. To relate them all to a leadership question is simplistic at the very least and missing the point completely at worst. Casliber (talk · contribs) 06:08, 8 January 2012 (UTC)

I agree. TCO lives in a world in which the TCO Party can choose the timing of the elections at arbitrary notice, only the TCO Party allowed to advertise on the day of the election, and the ballot papers are headed "Vote TCO". The rest of us do not. Geometry guy 06:14, 8 January 2012 (UTC)

Also, RFC's have {{RFC}}. And they're set up to be longer than 7 days. --Rschen7754 06:20, 8 January 2012 (UTC)

I've alerted WP:AN/I to the problem. Geometry guy 06:49, 8 January 2012 (UTC)

TCO, why not do the socially responsible thing and withdraw this? Tony (talk) 06:51, 8 January 2012 (UTC)

Rebuttals and comments

I was going to post this in the discussion section of the page, but I'm putting it here.

Point by point rebuttal of the "issues"—

1. FAC is about quality, not quantity, period.
2. WP:Wikipedia is not a democracy. That's policy, and we've always been about discussions, not votes excluding some very limited circumstances.
3. . There's a certain comfort in knowing the expectations of the delegates regarding promotion, archival, etc. If we change over the leadership, or even a portion of it, we'll have a level of chaos and uncertainty at the start of each "term of office". The same goes in reverse. Would a new delegate, elected by a faction of disgruntled editors looking for "an outsider" and "new blood" know what to expect of the various regular nominators and reviewers? Would we be guaranteed that a new delegate or director would even understand what the criteria are? The election scheme threatens to remove the stability in leadership and institutional memory, yet it doesn't yield more advantages. (See below.)
4. There is not too much power in one person. That's just your personal opinion, but many others have disagreed. One does not need a formal title to have "power" or "influence". The title though is a mark of responsibility.
5. Lack of edits is not proof of a lack of participation. If there are no issues requiring Raul's attention, he doesn't need to comment. Editor participation at any moment in time will naturally ebb and flow as our commitments in real life take more or less of our time.
6. I'm requesting a citation on this "vacancy". We have no set number of delegates at FAC, rather the number has varied over the years.

Concerning the "opportunities"—

1. A discussion at WT:FAC can lead to new ideas without overthrowing the existing leadership.
2. We don't need an election to promote participation. In fact, all of this turmoil is likely depressing potential participation. Several good ideas have come up already in various discussions, and most of them don't require overthrowing the existing leadership to accomplish.
3. A well-formed discussion at WT:FAC, or any of the other talk pages, can revise how pages are structured or run. WP:TFA/R has been changed to a points system, and we had an RfC in the past that established the limits on nominations at FAC, limited renomination frequency. These changes were instituted by the community. None of these require changing the leadership structure just to change the nomination process or layout.
4. What is this supposed to mean? If it means what I think it's supposed to mean, this is also dubious. The attributes of an editor good at writing and nominating an article for FAC consideration aren't necessarily the same attributes needed to steer the review process. Neither are necessarily the same skill set as reviewers need. Nominators, reviewers and the leadership can connect on levels of mutual respect and understanding without elections or campaigns. In fact, it's already happened by the group of members called a "clique" by their detractors. One doesn't even need a on-wiki friendship to respect the knowledge and ability of the other players in the FA process.

General comments—

1. The "opportunities" being claimed don't require elections to be achieved, period.
2. Comparing GA and FA has its limits. GA is a lightweight process, without a formal leadership structure. (If anything, you could say that it's "run" by WP:WikiProject Good articles.) With lower expectations, it's easier to nominate, review and promote an article through the process. Although there has been much debate, GAs are acknowledged by many parts of the editing community to be the middle of our quality scale. Because of the lightweight nature of the process, it's also very easy to demote articles from GA status if they shouldn't have been promoted in the first place, or if standards have progressed and they no longer meet the criteria. On the other hand, that bronze star is supposed to be harder to earn. The standards are tougher, and the expectations are higher. The level of effort involved to refine an article to the level of quality judged worthy of that star means most people can't successfully nominate many articles in a year. (I did five in 2011, but I've also been unemployed for that entire time, giving me plenty of spare time to edit, research and refine articles, including stuff brought up to A-Class in previous years.) Even then, it wasn't easy, and it shouldn't be.
3. Our delegates aren't like members of a legislature, but more like judges. Politicians that have to be continually re-elected will always keep one eye on how their decisions will impact their re-election chances. Judges are insulated from that, which gives them the freedom to make tough choices. That isn't to say that judges can't be removed when necessary, but they don't depend on popular opinion when the job will call for them to make unpopular choices from time to time.
   1. FAC is not a vote, but a discussion. Delegates have to have some freedom to discount piled-on "Support because I like it" or "Opposed because it doesn't use <my pet format>" comments. That's only right to ensure the integrity of what the bronze star means. Yet failure to promote a popular article with lots of "I like it" supports may mean that all of those editors will vote against that delegate come the next election.
   2. TCO has repeatedly stated a preference since November for promoting content at FAC and TFA that has high page view counts. What is to stop the election of a delegate who pledges to promote a specific article solely based on popularity, even if that article fails to meet the criteria? If the subject matter is truly popular enough, interested editors could use votes to seat such a delegate in furtherance of promotion, even at the expense of compromising quality and standards.
4. If there truly an issue with a specific delegate, the community has trusted Raul to remove that person. If there were truly an issue, and Raul failed to do so, a one-time RfC could accomplish the same goal. Periodic elections are not needed to affect one-time changes, just as Congress can impeach and remove federal judges.
5. Annual elections will lead to annual disruptions as everyone figures out what to do with their new responsibilities. Even ArbCom staggers their terms by using multiple "tranches".

I suggest that TCO withdraw his proposal. I've point out many issues with it above. I encourage others to help refine my comments before I post it to the page itself in the event that TCO keeps this page live

Now, for the sake of process, this proposal doesn't follow the guidelines at WP:RFC. The page doesn't have {{rfc}} on it, so it hasn't been added to the list of current requests for comment. It does not have a "brief, neutral statement of the issue" [emphasis in original] at the top of the request. And frankly, I think that many of the points brought up are leading questions, misstatements of fact, or opinions cloaked as facts. I see that we're up to 13 opposes already. TCO, cut your losses and withdraw this. Pull the notices you've spammed around already. Imzadi 1979 → 07:21, 8 January 2012 (UTC)

• Also: please, withdraw this. Bulwersator (talk) 08:21, 8 January 2012 (UTC)
  • +1 to the call to withdraw this. Poorly thought out, badly presented, trampling on the discussion happening at WT:FAC... Dana boomer (talk) 15:33, 8 January 2012 (UTC)

Post-close comment

In case it gets reverted, I made a post-close comment that the software seems to have accepted. Carcharoth (talk) 16:33, 8 January 2012 (UTC)