Wikipedia talk:Requests for adminship/Money emoji/Bureaucrat chat

Voting graphs

Contextualizing The RFA has been dropping steadily over the course of the last 48 hours:

RfA supports (supports/(supports+opposes))*100

RfA opposes (opposes/(supports+opposes))*100

Thanks to User:Hugsyrup for the graph ([1]). ——SN54129 12:23, 18 February 2020 (UTC)

These graphs show the same thing so there is no need for both. Showing both seems like it could be intended to bias people by having them arrive at the same conclusion twice. Jason Quinn (talk) 11:27, 20 February 2020 (UTC)

I assure you any person who has ever seen graphs can tell that the oppose graph is basically an inverted support graph (duh!) --qedk (t 桜 c) 19:03, 20 February 2020 (UTC)

That needs interpretation. It doesn't seem to be the case here, but I have seen such graphs presented before that are not simple mirror images. For example one could take account of neutral votes but the other not, so the fact that two graphs are shown makes others do more work to check them. Statistics, especially when presented in graphic form, are very slippery things that need precise definition. Phil Bridger (talk) 19:17, 20 February 2020 (UTC)

Neutral votes are not counted in percentages at all and I doubt that the crats would not know that. I'm aware of what you're saying, except in this case, they are exactly mirror images since there's only supports and opposes into play (and the rest is stats!). Added the maths for context if anyone's missing anything. --qedk (t 桜 c) 19:27, 20 February 2020 (UTC)

Surely, Jason Quinn, you meant to say "could have the unintended effect of...", not "could be intended to..."? Your comment could have the intention of aggressively smearing the motivations of a good faith user. --Floquenbeam (talk) 19:23, 20 February 2020 (UTC)

I meant what I wrote. My phrase was "seems like it could be intended to" and the word "seems" plays a role in the context. Regardless of semantics, which I do not wish to waste time on, I actually do prefer your suggested phrasing and it would have been a better choice but, if we are talking intentions here, you could have have failed to consider that my comment was a good faith effort to help make a person notice a type of biased representation of data that is often overlooked. And while my comment was phrased with the conditional "could", it had behind it only neutral motives to try to keep the discussion unbiased. Your comment, however, is clearly designed to suggest I was "aggressively smearing" someone despite the presence of the conditional "could have". A suggestion that is not only untrue but ridiculously melodramatic. Jason Quinn (talk) 10:48, 21 February 2020 (UTC)

• The trend lines look very different if you plot versus vote count, as opposed to versus time.

Most vote early. Plotting versus time visually biases the late votes. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 07:17, 21 February 2020 (UTC)

Comment

@ Amanda, when you mentioned maturity as a concern highlighted in the opposes, most of it is stemming from the retirement statement made, claimed to be made by him under pressure and stress. Would you still consider that to be indicative of a lack of maturity? Apoorv Chauhan (talk) 23:38, 18 February 2020 (UTC)

It's not really the crats' role to give their personal opinions on the concerns raised in the RfA. – Teratix ₵ 23:57, 18 February 2020 (UTC)

@Teratix: You're right. However, it is in the hands of the crats' to determine if the opposition brings up valid points which are substantiated by evidence, and isn't frivolous. At the end of the day, this is essentially an opinion. Some crats' may see the opposition valid, justified and substantial enough to render no consensus, while others may not. Having this discretion is what allows candidates with low support percentages to pass. A recent example of this was RexxS's RfA, which didn't even meet 65% support, but was still closed as successful. In my opinion, I don't see this candidate's "retirement statement" truly indicative of his maturity, even though it seems as if that's what most of the opposition centers around. However, I would like to see alternate perspectives on this so I can better understand where others are coming from. Apoorv Chauhan (talk) 04:32, 19 February 2020 (UTC)

With repsect, as Teratix said, it's not for me to comment. I'm only here to sum up the community discussion. I have no evaluation of the candidate and have not done an indepth look into the candidate like the participants in the RfA. So simply, it's a question you would have to put forward to those who have voted. Also a crat chat is not a place where I get to evaluate each vote for validity. I only get to look at the effort/weight the user themselves puts on it. -- Amanda (aka DQ) 05:49, 19 February 2020 (UTC)

It is perfectly valid for a voter to feel that being able to deal with pressure and stress without lashing out is a sign of maturity. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 15:04, 19 February 2020 (UTC)

I concur with the comments expressed by DeltaQuad and Ahecht. I don't see what RexxS' RfA has to do with anything, really. That RfA and this RfA are not directly comparable based on the strict nosecount. One needs to assess a variety of factors that went in to each RfA. It's entirely conceivable that a candidate could pass with ~50% support and a candidate with 65-75% could not pass. It really depends on the sentiments expressed and the arguments. Doug Mehus T·C 19:24, 20 February 2020 (UTC)

Refute

“The content creation opposition was mostly refuted by the supporters that claimed to not have issue with that aspect.” This isn’t really something that can be refuted. People can disagree with it, but it doesn’t mean it’s been refuted. Calidum 01:37, 19 February 2020 (UTC)

"Counterbalanced," perhaps. Levivich (lulz) 01:39, 19 February 2020 (UTC)

Hi Calidum I made a slight amendment, replacing "refuted" with "overcome" - as this is primarily a matter of the participants opinions, I didn't mean to imply that there were statements presented as facts that were shown to be false. Apologies for any confusion. — xaosflux ^Talk 03:56, 19 February 2020 (UTC)

Post your unsolicited non-crat comments here

• With 70% of the community – a strong supermajority by all means – in agreement that the candidate's judgement and demeanor are suited to adminship, I feel strongly that "consensus to promote" is the only reasonable takeaway here. The downward trend is the strongest case against promotion, but as noted, a not-insignificant number of participants returned to reaffirm their support, and as far as I can tell, no new points of opposition had been advanced in several days prior to closing; whereas the supporting rationales grew increasingly fleshed-out and impassioned toward the end of the discussion, many late objections were "per" concerns raised in the early stages. It speaks volumes to me that no additional evidence of immaturity or inexperience came to surface through the drastically heightened scrutiny in the final two or three days. And we know that people were looking, myself included. Finally, the candidate was nominated by two of our most diligent and respected nominators, which surely must represent at least a small advantage over a self-nomination in discretionary cases. Respectfully, this editor implores his bureaucrat colleagues to close the RfA as successful. – Juliancolton | ^Talk 04:47, 19 February 2020 (UTC)
• A quick look of the numbers shows a rough super-majority. I've never considered content creation to be a major factor for adminship out of all things, we keep stating that non-content contributors do not understand policies while that has never been true, as evidenced by the number of content creating admins who get desysopped, but I'm not trying to say correlation implies causation, simply that they are not correlated conversely i.e. not creating content does not equate to administrators who do not understand policy. Now, coming to consensus, a lot of the opposes are fixated on the content creation creation, to which I contest with my previous point - if the point of "maturity" is taken into account, we also need to take the incident into context and how far back it was, given the fact that it was in 2018, it does not give me much confidence. I'm aware RfA has a tradition of dragging people through the mud for things people did years ago, without any respect for their improvement since, and that notion needs to be absolutely eliminated. If the editor were the sort to get critical feedback or perform wrongdoing without correction since, it makes absolute sense to take the "maturity" opposition into account but there is absolutely no basis for the same in this particular case. Even if Ritchie was overselling their content creation (a fair claim), that is an error on the nominator's part and not the candidate, they only stated I helped Pizzagate conspiracy theory become a GA, which is true and a definite justifiable claim. --qedk (t 桜 c) 07:33, 19 February 2020 (UTC)
• I think it's worth noting that the maturity concerns are fundamentally different from the other oppose rationales. There is no consensus in the community as to whether substantial content creation is necessary for adminship. Many people think it's essential and many think it's an optional extra. The same goes for edit count and tenure, at least at this level. By contrast everybody agrees that admins need to demonstrate maturity, and the only issue there is whether the candidate has or not. Hut 8.5 07:52, 19 February 2020 (UTC)
• Far too much was made of the retirement message, which the candidate has explained several times was posted when they were having some family issues and does not reflect who they are today. 70% should be enough consensus to promote. -- P-K3 (talk) 13:35, 19 February 2020 (UTC)
• For what it's worth, I personally have little, if any, problem with the content creation levels on the part of the candidate as we need administrators who are both content creators and janitors. Administrators more inclined to pick up the mopping slack help those administrators who write great content. To me, the bigger issue is the maturity issues, both past, but, particularly, as demonstrated in the recent RfA. I was struck by this comment on the candidate's user talk page. On the one hand, I find it admirable the candidate remains in good spirits and will attempt another RfA, perhaps just in a few months. That's welcome. What bothered me, though, was that the candidate didn't seem to realize the reasons for the opposition, with the suggestion that they need just to focus on content creation when, arguably, the bigger issues were the demonstrated maturity levels and ability to assess the consensus from the referenced AfD discussions in which the subject closed. Doug Mehus T·C 15:59, 19 February 2020 (UTC)
• For the record, I am disagreeing with some of the comments here. It has been my impression (perhaps incorrect?) that neutral commentary matters as well, and I most certainly raised a new concern that should be weighed; that the candidate accepted the nom on a false premise (GA), which speaks to character as well as maturity. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:02, 19 February 2020 (UTC)

  SandyGeorgia, you raised an excellent point, and I appreciated your exchange with Diannaa, for whom I have the greatest of respect. It's a valid concern, and my understanding is the 'crats will definitely assess all comments, including those who were officially "neutral" but also the sentiments expressed by those in the "support" column who shared some of the same concerns as those who were "neutral" or even decidedly "opposed." Likewise, those who "opposed" the candidate also expressed some level of support for the work the candidate has done. So, it all needs to be weighed and assessed. In short, the 'crats are definitely earning the "pay" they don't get here following this RfA. ;-) Doug Mehus T·C 16:09, 19 February 2020 (UTC)

  I agree wholeheartedly with SandyGeorgia. There's one too many red flags. I think we should give this candidate more time to incubate, and chalk-up a bit more experience over a wider range of WP, rather than a single area. ^Atsme _Talk 📧 17:21, 19 February 2020 (UTC)

  I'm not sure it's fair to say that the candidate "the candidate accepted the nom on a false premise". Of course, those of us who look out for content contribution in an RFA candidate are likely to assume that "I helped Pizzagate conspiracy theory become a GA" means the candidate was an active and major content contributor on the article. But actually the statement isn't false - MoneyEmoji did start the GA nomination, and responded to issues raised by the nominator. So with WP:AGF I don't think they lied to us, although it almost probably did mislead several of the early supporters. Otherwise I fully agree with Sandy - neutrals are important, for the points they make, as are the specific wordings of supports and opposes. For me the lack of content is quite important, the 2018 retirement less so. It wouldn't be a bad thing if they were promoted here but equally having time to incubate, maybe to actually to contribute content to a future GA, and another six months of showing a level head, would not be a bad thing either, to assuage those in doubt.  — Amakuru (talk) 20:27, 19 February 2020 (UTC)

  I am not known for precision in wording, and brevity is not the soul of my wit (if there is any :) Understatement alert. So, never take my words too literally. What I mean by this is please read my whole message. I did not intend to imply, via sloppy wording, that Emoji lied, and I was really troubled that this problem was set up by the nominators to begin with. Whether Emoji misunderstood, or felt the noms knew the ropes better, or whatever is not for me to say. But Diannaa’s reassurance convinced me not to oppose. What I care about is what people who know the candidate have to say about whether we can trust them. Actually, had Diannaa been the nominator to begin with, I would not have supported, per my content creation stance, but neither would I have weighed in at all, as I would not have been as concerned. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 21:36, 19 February 2020 (UTC)

  "the candidate accepted the nom on a false premise (GA)" - neither the acronym "GA" nor the phrase "good article" appeared in my nomination statement. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 14:06, 20 February 2020 (UTC)

  Although I have previously proposed changing the requests for administrative privileges process to determine the consensus view of pros and cons of the candidate, this hasn't gained favour. Thus we continue to have a system where the strength of support versus oppose are weighed on a person-by-person basis, with each viewpoint rolling up the net opinion of each commenter. Given this, I don't see how arguments raised in a neutral viewpoint can get weighed in themselves. They can certainly provide context and additional evidence for support or oppose opinions. But if no one commented on the arguments, or on matters related to them, when describing their net support or oppose, it means they weren't considered important enough to be a significant factor. (With my proposed reform, strength of all arguments would be examined, rather than strength of each person's net opinion.) isaacl (talk) 18:42, 20 February 2020 (UTC)

  Yeah, that's a good way to put it. I can imagine an exception, like a neutral that introduced actual new evidence shortly before the closure, thus before people had time to consider, investigate, and possibly vote-adjust in response to it. The 'Crats are smart enough to account for this, I'm quite certain. Here, the neutral in question was early on and was well-considered by lots of the support and oppose respondents, so it is already integrated into the results tally.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:21, 21 February 2020 (UTC)

• I tend to agree with Juliancolton. While I didn't check in quickly enough to reaffirm my own support vote, I would have done so. I'll add this: The "lack of content creation" concerns are exaggeratory to the point of invalidity. What they really are is an objection to a lack of creating new articles and working on GA/FA candidates. The editor's actual editing history is relatively mainspace-heavy, with the rest concentrated in places we would expect for the kind of admin-leaning work the user focuses on. It's not like the candidate is goofing off in their own user space all day doing WP:NOT#WEBHOST crap, or setting up camp in the drama boards for debate-as-a-sport. As WP grows (6 mil articles now!) we're running out of new articles to write other than on extremely obscure topics (= specialist knowledge), and trivial pop-culture junk like new popular songs and what TV shows are coming out next month (which anyone who's a fan of WP:NOT#NEWS is apt to not want to work on). The bulk of the content work these days is incremental improvement of good topics that don't effectively require advanced degrees to work on, especially stub through B-class articles. That's about 95% of my own mainspace work, so I would know. Some of us consider it far more important to make crappy articles acceptable than to make great articles extra-great by polishing the chrome on GAs to make them FAs.

  Next, having taken off for a while isn't "immature"; if you need an extended wikibreak to let the stress of on-site conflicts wear off, then taking one is a good idea. Those who don't do it are the ones who end up going out in a blaze of inglory. Most especially take a long break if one has real-life stuff to contend with. Those who don't do that that are, well, WP:CIR problems. [insert cuckoo clock SFX here]

  @SandyGeorgia: What is this "brevity" thing of which you speak? In closing, I don't completely disagree with Atsme and SandyGeorgia; the sky won't fall if this candidate has to sprout a bit more and try again later. I just think some of the rationales given in the RfA for opposition are unusually weak. If I were a 'Crat, I might be more concerned about the GA thing if lots of others in the RfA had been, but little was made of it. In one of my own ancient RfAs, one of my nominators also mentioned a GA, and I didn't really think about it, but the one in question was an article I, too, had personally not really put that much into. I did not pass RfA, but it wasn't for that reason. Other people give you the GA badge; it's their judgement (not one's own) that one did enough to have mattered. And we don't get to write our nominators' statements for them.
   — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  21:38, 19 February 2020 (UTC)

Amusing but off-topic ...

Brevity thing is, to try to make a long story short ... whole problem for me was set up by noms. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 21:45, 19 February 2020 (UTC) I think what SMcC meant by, "[w]hat is this 'brevity' thing of which you speak?," is because he is not known for brevity. (I am not known for brevity, either, mind you.) Doug Mehus T·C 21:54, 19 February 2020 (UTC) uh oh, humor-challenged I am today! SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:02, 19 February 2020 (UTC) It's okay, I usually don't get others' sarcasm either. I could still be the one who interpreted what SMcC was saying incorrectly, in which case, call me confused. ;-) Doug Mehus T·C 22:16, 19 February 2020 (UTC) <small>Small text</small> is in practice the closest thing we have to a sarcasm font here, so yes, I'd say you're right. – Juliancolton | Talk 22:55, 19 February 2020 (UTC) I was self-mocking; I'm notoriously wordy. Or, from my perspective, I just type very, very fast, near the speed of thought! I figured the standard "What is this X of which you speak?" gag would give it away. I've seen it going back to least the late '80s. It's absurdist, and usually takes forms like "What is this 'sleep' of which you speak?" Now I'm all wondering where it really originated. Finding threads on it at Language Log, etc. [2][3][4] Dates to at least 1983 online (Usenet), and now traced back to at least The Little Prince (English transl.), 1943, including the absurdism.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  08:31, 20 February 2020 (UTC) There are some who frown upon use of small text, as it messes up screen-readers etc. and can make it harder for visually-impaired people to read the text. You're right that it's become the de-facto standard though, to assuage those who get annoyed about frivolous chit-chat or off-topic camaraderie, masquerading as encyclopedic discussion. (We're not Facebook, dammit!)  — Amakuru (talk) 09:39, 20 February 2020 (UTC) I got the sarcasm; I just thought SMc was being sarcastic about me, not themself. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:58, 20 February 2020 (UTC) SandyGeorgia, Oh, LOL! Doug Mehus T·C 16:08, 20 February 2020 (UTC) Nah, got no fight to pick with Sandy!  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:14, 21 February 2020 (UTC) I feel small text isn't for sarcasm per se, but for asides that aren't that important to read as they don't provide significant input to the main discussion thread. Accordingly, their legibility isn't as big a concern as it would be otherwise. All the same, small text ought to be used sparingly. And typically I won't sign in small text. isaacl (talk) 18:51, 20 February 2020 (UTC) SMcCandlish - something you can use to close your comments...I have made this comment longer than usual because I lack the time to make it short. Quoting Blaise Pascal but using "comment" in lieu of "letter". Atsme Talk 📧 22:54, 20 February 2020 (UTC) Atsme Oh, that's good! I'll have to remember that one. (talk page stalker) maybe not technically since this isn't user talk namespace, but, practically speaking, it applies. Doug Mehus T·C 23:00, 20 February 2020 (UTC) Yeah, I've used it before, but I would square-bracket the editorial change, and quotes don't go in italics (I'm not sure where that idea came from; it seems to have originated in a particular blogging/CMS package as a stylesheet default and to have been picked up from there, but I'm not 100% certain). On the <small> thing, I don't really buy it, and I'm one of those people with shitey eyesight – about +325, and I still have to enlarge fonts and set min. fonts in my browsers. But that's the thing – anyone with vision problems is already doing this. MOS:ACCESS already covers min. font size stuff (on WP it's 85% of the default font size, last I checked) and <small> / {{small}} is within that, unless you nest it inside other size-reduced text. If there were screen readers still choking on the markup, I think this would have come up over there with a proposal to remove such markup from infoboxes, etc. Various screen readers have some unhelpful defaults out-of-the-box, like "do nothing to indicate stress (em, strong) markup", and so on; like any piece of software, they require some preferences-setting on the part of their users. The 'Crats are probably like "WhyTF are people talking about this stuff on our talk page? Is this some kind of conspiracy to distract us from considering the candidate? Let us pray one of these OCD weirdos doesn't open an RfC about humor posts or font size in mid 'Crat-chat." LOL.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:14, 21 February 2020 (UTC)

• My opposition based on insufficient content creation should be taken as a "come back after you have more article editing experience" and not as a "go away," as I am sure the many others with similar opposition would say. The candidate clearly understands this based on his talk page comments. No harm will come from declining to promote. EllenCT (talk) 17:35, 20 February 2020 (UTC)

  EllenCT, I agree. The candidate can point to this very RfA and address, specifically, what steps they've taken to address the community's concerns, which, more or less, centre around three things: (a) article creation; (b) emotional maturity; and (c) the ability to assess consensus, which, even though the candidate is focused on other adminy areas like CCI that don't necessarily require that, during administrative backlogs and a shortage of admins at XfDs, it will be "all hands on deck" for admins and all administrators will be expected to help patrol and close such discussions. Doug Mehus T·C 18:14, 20 February 2020 (UTC)

• Regarding trendlines: given that the temperament-related concerns were raised on the second day of the request period, and that about 42% of the supports came afterwards, I believe a fair opportunity was available for extended discussion of these concerns and for all commenters to ponder and revise their stated opinions accordingly. Thus I don't see any particular reason to treat this request differently than the many others where the support percentage peaked early, and declined afterwards. isaacl (talk) 19:43, 20 February 2020 (UTC)

  Yes, agreed, and IMHO @Warofdreams: is wrong to take this into consideration when deciding on their !vote. The consensus is determined by those who participate, not hypothetical people who might have voted if the thing were extended beyond the seven-day window. And seven out of every ten !voters, a supermajority indeed, gave this candidate the nod. I fully accept that this RFA is borderline, and I won't be too upset whichever way it goes, but if it fails, let it be for the right reasons, not based on linear regression lines on a graph.  — Amakuru (talk) 22:18, 20 February 2020 (UTC)

• How many of the opposes cited a concern that this editor, if granted the tools, would abuse them? Mkdw ^talk 22:06, 20 February 2020 (UTC)

  I think that's implied by maturity concerns. --Ahecht (TALK
  PAGE) 22:09, 20 February 2020 (UTC)

  Is it though? The alleged "maturity" concern was the editor suddenly deciding to leave the project. That's a concern about longevity/devotion, not disruptive behavior, so it doesn't actually relate to tool abuse. And a plausible explanation of this as having been about off-site responsibilities has been given anyway.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:14, 21 February 2020 (UTC)

Some editors who opposed identified concerns about behavior in the RfA discussion as well, such as badgering early opposers, fixating on and outing their "friend" as part of question answers, not setting the record straight on the extent of their non-copyvio-cleanup contributions to articles, etc. For my part, any one of these would be a minor issue that could be dismissed. Taken as a whole, and together with other admissions of a lack of comfort making decisions in significant fields of admin work such as deletion (Q5) and dispute resolution (Q18), there is more of a cause for concern. _signed, Rosguill ^talk 00:31, 21 February 2020 (UTC)

I echo what Rosguill is saying. The maturity concerns go beyond an ill-advised, hasty retirement message and into the RfA discussion and elsewhere. Equally important, too, is the editor's ability to assess consensus appropriately. This was touched on by a few editors, but less so, with most of the focus being on an apparent lack of content creation and the retirement message. These are, in my view, important issues; I don't expect all administrators to be content creators...in fact, we probably need more non-content creating administrators, to free up the time of those who love to create content. So, it's on that basis that I think the other issues are more significant. Doug Mehus T·C 00:39, 21 February 2020 (UTC)

• If I could please join the conversation: I did not support the candidate. But fair is fair - at the end of the day, the consensus of the Wikipedia participants who participated in this discussion is in favor of the elevation of the candidate to being granted the title. I support the will of the Wikipedia community and I have no problems with giving this individual expanded duties. Capt. Milokan (talk) 00:58, 21 February 2020 (UTC)
• Regarding this comment: I would further note that the number of support opinions is, in fact, not similarly sizeable as the oppose opinions, but more than double. (To argue that the two are similar in weight, an argument would have to be made that the opposes are held with over twice as much conviction as the supports.) I know that determining consensus in this matter requires more than a simple numeric majority, but there's a lot of margin of support with a 70/30 split. isaacl (talk) 01:18, 21 February 2020 (UTC)
• 70% is overwhelming consensus everywhere else on Wikipedia. Why does there need to be special exceptions at RFA? I am not sure I understand how 'crats seeing consensus against the candidate are assessing consensus differently than they would anywhere else. Mr Ernie (talk) 12:13, 21 February 2020 (UTC)

@Mr Ernie: I mean, it's the Community that set 65-75% as the discretionary zone, and in doing so, told them that there must be cases with even more support that were not so overwhelming as to just be accepted and could indeed be declined. They aren't just making up a unique definition of consensus against their own bat. Nosebagbear (talk) 12:16, 21 February 2020 (UTC)

True, and I guess that range has emerged as a result of previous RFAs, and the community trying to take a view on which sorts of candidates should be passing. The implied weighting where 1 oppose is equivalent to 2.33 supports (at the mid-point of the discretionary zone), perhaps reflects the fact that supports are often made with less investigation than opposes, and that a lot of people !vote support almost by default. Or it could be that promoting an admin in whom more than 3 in 10 Wikipedians lack trust would cause friction down the line. It would be interesting to look into the history of how the present ranges were arrived at.  — Amakuru (talk) 12:31, 21 February 2020 (UTC)

Question to crats

@Primefac, DeltaQuad, Xaosflux, and Nihonjoe: Apologies if this is mentioned somewhere but I do not recall how crat chat discussions are closed (mostly since all crat chats for a while have had a majority in numbers of crats voting), but I believe it's always a majority in numbers (and in the case of a tie, the recusals will vote) and not an assessment of consensus among crats themselves? --qedk (t 桜 c) 08:23, 19 February 2020 (UTC)

@QEDK: They are already assessing consensus; who would assess theirs? A self-assessment? ——SN54129 10:26, 19 February 2020 (UTC)

@Serial Number 54129: The closing crat assesses the crat consensus (über-crats?) always so one of them will I guess, can't have them busy stewards climb the pole back into this mess, hey. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ --qedk (t 桜 c) 16:16, 20 February 2020 (UTC)

That would be a like a descent from Everest QEDK ;) ——SN54129 16:20, 20 February 2020 (UTC)

Apologies for the multiple pings beforehand. I was trying to fix Primefac's and ended up pinging the 4 of you again. --qedk (t 桜 c) 08:25, 19 February 2020 (UTC)

Nope, you didn't. Alerts get created by posting a ping and placing a signature in the same edit. Hence, only the first edit will have created a ping, but Primefac missed out. Schwede66 08:59, 19 February 2020 (UTC)

I actually messed up and sent it twice (hence the apology). I created a total of 4 edits, tried to switch to a newline for Primefac's ping and failed and so decided to put the 4 together, didn't realize it was a newline and bam, 4 new pings. --qedk (t 桜 c) 16:16, 20 February 2020 (UTC)

Judging by some recent (OK, for a given value of "recent") items on Category:Bureaucrat discussions such as the ones for RexxS, Liz, Jbhunley, Floquenbeam_2, Godsy and GoldenRing it looks like there is a headcount. Rich_Farmbrough_2 and Hawkeye7_2 also look headcount-ish but given that the chats were not closely split I am not sure how much to infer from this. And of course, I don't think we've ever formalized how a crat chat is supposed to operate. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 10:34, 19 February 2020 (UTC)

Certainly in my time it's looked head-count based, and I vaguely recall a discussion between the 'Crats a while back indicating that a draw counted as no-consensus (that is, the default is no consensus). Nosebagbear (talk) 11:30, 19 February 2020 (UTC)

If I recall correctly from what I've heard (but haven't verified myself), crat chats used to be conducted offline on the crats mailing list, and they would then come back with a joint decision one way or the other. But the community hollered that this lacked transparency and that it should be open and public. So the crat mailing list was scrapped altogether. But that seems to have also had the effect mentioned above, that now the crats just vote based on their own assessment with only quite limited reaction and discussion based on each other's points. I think that's very disappointing. Proper discussion-based consensus forming and the WP:NOTAVOTE principle are the backbones of the Wikipedia's decision-making process and this should be no exception. It leads to better decisions than any one person would come up with on their own.  — Amakuru (talk) 11:41, 19 February 2020 (UTC)

@Amakuru: That does not agree at all with my memory of things or any of the evidence I can find. The 'crat mailing list was established in March 2009, mostly to deal with renames, long after the 'crat chat process was established. (Also see this thread). The mailing list was scrapped because bureaucrats no longer did renames. Graham87 04:59, 20 February 2020 (UTC)

Ah, thanks for correcting me. I must have misunderstood or misremembered then. Striking. Cheers  — Amakuru (talk) 09:35, 20 February 2020 (UTC)

Considering I've only been around for one other crat chat (if I'm awake enough to count right), I don't think i'm the right person to ask. -- Amanda (aka DQ) 12:01, 19 February 2020 (UTC)

@QEDK: they are closed by a 'crat; it may be by one that took part in the discussion. If we are split, we generally take time to consider and/or ask about (i.e. "chat") each others opinions to see if anyone wants to reconsider. In general if there is no consensus to promote found among the participating crats (and there is no quorum requirement) the RfA will end in a no-consensus, maintaining the status quo. — xaosflux ^Talk 12:23, 19 February 2020 (UTC)

@Xaosflux: Let me be more clear. I mean to ask if the decision is split, will the determination be made by consensus or by having someone switch to gain the numbers, as it stands, two crats see a weak consensus, will that weak consensus be taken as consensus or as a simple +1 to "consensus to promote"? Will the closing crat assess the consensus or the numbers is the crux of the question (and it makes more sense to have recusing crats have a say then closing it as de-facto no consensus). --qedk (t 桜 c) 16:12, 20 February 2020 (UTC)

@QEDK: Crat Chat's are absolutely not "votes", just like with RfA's in order to close as successful a successful finding is needed, so a lack of consensus on a crat chat normally will result in a NC result. These are infrequent events, so don't have hard rules. If I was trying to close this I'd start with suggesting an outcome and ask for other comments from the dissenters (see this prior motion to close for an example); I think having dissenting crats buy in to the overall closure makes it stronger, though not absolutely required. — xaosflux ^Talk 16:21, 20 February 2020 (UTC)

Thank for the clarification. --qedk (t 桜 c) 16:29, 20 February 2020 (UTC)

Tools question

No one has explained clearly to my satisfaction exactly how giving the tools to this guy would aid the copyright violation fighting team, beyond the most elementary and obvious fact that he could delete copyvios himself rather than tagging them for deletion. That alone is a tiny benefit, the speedy deletion categories are cruised daily by dozens of active administrators. – Athaenara ✉ 23:40, 19 February 2020 (UTC)

@Athaenara: without speaking to this candidate specifically - if this work includes taking care of {{Copyvio-revdel}}'s that is something that CSD patrolling admins wouldn't usually deal with. — xaosflux ^Talk 00:21, 20 February 2020 (UTC)

Some other reasons other than just tagging for CSD and deleting articles; I can view deleted revisions and content without having to ask others to (almost necessary for CCI), I can revdel without having to tag (which eliminates articles sitting around with big, red, ugly notices on them for weeks- Strictly Balti has had revdel notices since the 3rd, I had one article with a revdel notice on it for 21 days), block repeated copyright infringers/spammers without having to post at AN or nagging Diannaa, perform history merges, open CCI's myself, and effectively tackle reports at WP:CP. Money emoji💵^{Talk💸Help out at CCI!} 02:43, 20 February 2020 (UTC)

To me this is exactly why a bit of leeway should be afforded this case; needed thankless work would get done by a specialist willing to do it. Copyvio is tricky and yet crucial to the project. I’m guessing their noms would be willing to serve as sounding boards when ME felt guidance was needed. I trust them not to screw up anything too much, and to ask for help if they do. Gleeanon409 (talk) 02:59, 20 February 2020 (UTC)

@Gleeanon409: Well, there's no question of leeway in the first place. Crats assess the consensus at hand and the candidate with respect to that consensus, not the candidate themselves. --qedk (t 桜 c) 16:13, 20 February 2020 (UTC)

Policies

@Warofdreams: "I'm with UninvitedCompany, there is significant opposition which is founded in policy"

What policies are these?

If it's that all admins must create content, can we desysop all those who have not written a good article in the last year? I'd personally like that, but I have a minority view on this. As we saw at Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Ergo Sum, even writing a featured topic is not a shoe-in for adminship, though I'm glad that RfA was successful.

If it's that you're never allowed to get cross or emotionally upset, even 18 months ago, where's the policy for that? Is it WP:CIVIL, WP:NPA or something else? Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 13:03, 20 February 2020 (UTC)

This piqued my curiosity when I first saw it. Now it is being depended on by another 'crat., I think we need a more detailed insight into the "policies" being referred to to decline the RfA. The only rule for an Admin. candidate is this "The only prerequisites for adminship are having an account and being extended confirmed (having both 30 days' tenure and 500 edits) so that you can file your own nomination". So it cannot be that. Leaky caldron (talk) 13:28, 20 February 2020 (UTC)

The most relevant policy is WP:ADMIN, and editors' interpretations of whether a prospective administrator can be trusted to meet the expectations. As Leaky cauldron says, the fixed requirements are minimal; RfA is a discussion which, ideally, considers all relevant aspects of a candidate's contribution to Wikipedia. Warofdreams talk 13:31, 20 February 2020 (UTC)

The only time the word "content" is mentioned in WP:ADMIN is "Administrators should not normally use their tools in matters in which they are personally involved (for example, in a content dispute in which they are a party)." None of the opposes gave examples of a content dispute involving Money emoji that caused concern they would abuse their tools. As mentioned earlier, I would personally like anyone with a good track record of content to be trusted with the administrator toolset; however in the absence of any policy, I am prepared to consider people who don't but have another skill - in this case, dealing with copyvios, one of the most important policies on the project. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 14:02, 20 February 2020 (UTC)

The point that Warofdreams is may be making—if I may be so bold—is that the single most important quality a candidate brings to an RfA is trust (which is mentioned multiple times at WP:ADMIN, both positively and negatively (as you note, far more frequently than "content")). From that stems everything else. All the supports—whatsoever individual or particular quality they focus on—and all the opposes—whatsoever incident or event they are based on—all stem from trust. Specifically, trust at at this point in time. Now at RfA, an oppose !vote may = "lack of trust", but this lack of trust =/= distrust, merely, that the qualities required to actively demonstrate the peculiar quality of trust expected on the Eng Wikipedia has not been objectively demonstrated sufficiently to the degree necessary to convince those opposing to support. All the best, ——SN54129 14:27, 20 February 2020 (UTC)

to the preceding comment by Serial Number 54129. Doug Mehus T·C 16:07, 20 February 2020 (UTC)

• @Warofdreams: ...there's no evidence that it is as a result of strategic voting except that's not what Xeno said. By accepting consensus from a trendline, you're setting a precedent that votes placed later have more value than votes placed earlier. Please refactor your statement: ...I do think that the trendline is significant. --qedk (t 桜 c) 16:54, 20 February 2020 (UTC)

That's called a difference of opinion, and it's at the heart of every discussion, anywhere. Indeed, without a difference of opinion, there is no dicussion. There is certainly no need for anyone to refactor anything. ——SN54129 17:03, 20 February 2020 (UTC)

@Serial Number 54129: With all due respect, it is much more nuanced than that, there is opinion and there is being wrong. By saying, this trendline is giving me some idea about consensus, you are automatically reducing the weight of the votes placed earlier on, even if the votes placed earlier were more researched and well-formed, simply because a crat's "opinion" is that the trendline matters, Xeno got it exactly right the first time. If the trendline matters, we might as well all vote in the last one hour since that's all that should count anyway, but we don't, because every vote should count on their own merits, and not when they were placed. I wish this were down to a difference of opinion but it is simply not fair to those in this RfA who casted their vote with due diligence and exaggerates the view of the pile-on opposes which may or may not have any merit to them. And as usual, I'm open to clarifications. Best, qedk (t 桜 c) 17:17, 20 February 2020 (UTC)

@QEDK: Forgive me, but calling upon nuance in the same breath as saying that something is either right or wrong is dichotomous. The rest of your comment is fair enough as an opinion, but it is—like Warofdreams', like Xeno's—an opinion, and not something for you to call right or wrong. Cheers, ——SN54129 17:36, 20 February 2020 (UTC)

@Serial Number 54129: I wrote the nuanced sentence as "very different things" in an earlier draft and forgot to update it as I added and removed more things but hey, that's what you get for forgetting I'm the one who wrote one of the worst sentences in history. --qedk (t 桜 c) 17:43, 20 February 2020 (UTC)

While I understand and appreciate your argument against using the trendline, I think we should acknowledge at the very least that the trendline highlights the tendency for many, if not most, non-SNOW RfA to quickly accumulate several dozen support !votes before there has been time for serious scrutiny of the candidate. After a day or two, issues are raised and then opposes begin to accumulate to varying degrees depending on the strength of these opposing arguments. I don't see the need for the near-immediate rush of supports. These discussions are open for 7 days. Unless you're well-acquainted with the candidate and are justifiably certain of your support, why commit yourself to supporting before you've seen the arguments against them? Usually, the strongest opposition arguments should be brought out within a few days, and then you can evaluate the candidate on a broader basis. Lepricavark (talk) 17:28, 20 February 2020 (UTC)

(ec) Another problem is that, in a vacuum, factoring the trend into a reading of consensus is effectively extrapolating the RfA beyond its standard seven-day voting period, which is... unfair, to say the least. Everyone gets a week to make their case. It would be different if there were shocking revelations 12 hours before the close, but that couldn't be farther from the case here. – Juliancolton | ^Talk 17:30, 20 February 2020 (UTC)

@Juliancolton: such an analysis decontextualises every !vote in the ring. ——SN54129 17:41, 20 February 2020 (UTC)

@Serial Number 54129: What makes you say that? – Juliancolton | ^Talk 18:01, 20 February 2020 (UTC)

I strongly disagree with the anti-trendline logic; earlier comments retain value as they can influence those later in the conversation, while comments made in the last day or hour have little chance to do so, however well considered. The fact that this approach could be gamed is irrelevant unless there's some actual suggestion that people are trying to game it. Warofdreams talk 17:33, 20 February 2020 (UTC)

You state earlier comments retain value and comments made in the last day... have little chance to do so as if consensus is formed in an absolute vacuum. Everyone has a chance to assess the candidate in the 7-day period, it is absolutely possible that the assessment made in the later opposes has already been taken note of by the earlier supports and taken into account. As a crat, your job is not to second-guess the votes made earlier as if they made an incomplete assessement simply because the later opposes raised a certain issue. There is absolutely no evidence to your statement that earlier comments retain value, if they did, by your very own logic, this RfA would have an increasing trendline throughout, since that's how it started off, however it did not, proving your logic untrue by contradiction. I hope the closing crat assesses your viewpoint on its logical merit, to which there is not much, as both of your cruxes are being debated and borderline fallacious at best. --qedk (t 桜 c) 18:49, 20 February 2020 (UTC)

• ...but by this logic (WP:ADMIN and trust), literally any possible rationale would be "based on policy" if I say I don’t "trust" the candidate. I could say that having 88 on your username means "heil Hitler" and that as a result I don’t trust the candidate, and that would be called "policy based". I could say I oppose because the editor is American and I don’t trust Americans, and that would be called "policy based". I don’t think this is really what is meant by the phrase "policy based". Levivich (lulz) 17:08, 20 February 2020 (UTC)

Your policy is to take extreme examples of possibilty and present them as likelihoods. WP:ADMIN is no more or less based on trust than every single other thing in the Encyclopedia. ——SN54129 17:41, 20 February 2020 (UTC)

That's fair up to a point, but I guess what is unsaid is that there needs to be some sort of clear logical link between the expectations of an admin in the policy and the level of trust, even if I might personally disagree with the reasoning. If the "logic" is entirely obscure or arbitrary, or based on gross generalisations, conspiracy theories, incorrect claims, etc, then it fails this bar. Warofdreams talk 17:33, 20 February 2020 (UTC)

To summarise Warofdreams, your logic of significant opposition being "founded in policy" is basically (or rather, absolutely) misplaced and convoluted. Your premise that the opposing editors have significant reason to oppose, is basically, and absolutely right. Lourdes 18:31, 20 February 2020 (UTC)

I believe you meant summarize, Warofdreams? +1 above. --qedk (t 桜 c) 18:41, 20 February 2020 (UTC)

QEDK, Isn't summarise an acceptable U.S. (or U.K.) English spelling on summarize? (Apologies if I have that backwards.) Nevertheless, Lourdes' reply was succinct, to the point, and correct. Now I must look at the source and figure how which template you used to get the stylized "+1". Doug Mehus T·C 19:06, 20 February 2020 (UTC)

LOL! It couldn't be simpler...it's literally named {{+1}}. :-P Doug Mehus T·C 19:08, 20 February 2020 (UTC)

@Dmehus: I was actually pointing out the comma, "summarize, Warofdreams" as opposed to "summarize Warofdreams". As for the spelling, summarize is acceptable in British English and US English (but mostly common for US English, summarise is the usual British counterpart), it is quite weird since I've been brought up learning British English and I use the terms specific to it except those ending in "-ize", which albeit syntactically correct, is a strange practice I've taken to. --qedk (t 桜 c) 19:34, 20 February 2020 (UTC)

QEDK, Ah, thanks for clarifying that you were pointing out the missing comma. Indeed, that makes a difference. Like you, I tend to use summarize as well, but actually thought that was the American English spelling. Are all the -ize endings British/Canadian/etc.? I thought, for some reason, that wasn't always the case. Doug Mehus T·C 19:39, 20 February 2020 (UTC)

As far as my knowledge of the language goes, all the -ise variants are specific to British English, whereas -ize is used in both (British and US). -ize is indeed the US English variant (i.e. -ise is used very infrequently) but it's also used frequently in British English (where both variants are used). --qedk (t 桜 c) 19:51, 20 February 2020 (UTC)

See Oxford spelling Johnbod (talk) 22:35, 20 February 2020 (UTC)

• Re: "level of trust", I'll just quote Albert Einstein: When the issue is one of Truth and Justice, there can be no differentiating between small problems and great ones. For the general viewpoints on human behaviour are indivisible. People who fail to regard the truth seriously in small matters, cannot be trusted in matters that are great. Some in the oppose corner may be seeing the candidate's acceptance of the nom as being under false pretense because he did not clarify the nom's statement, "major contributions to Pizzagate conspiracy theory", an article where his participation was limited. There are also some opposers who are concerned about whether he possesses the level of stability/maturity we expect in an admin who has been granted the ability to take unilateral actions at their own discretion. In the past, I have suggested a probationary or trial period for new admins with RfAs that are not shoo-ins. Others have suggested unbundling some of the tools for RfAs that indicate a particular area of the pedia the candidate may prove beneficial. Until one or both of the aforementioned suggestions are enacted, I'm of the mind that trust remains a major factor in the WP community, and as such should also be a major consideration by the crats. ^Atsme _Talk 📧 14:01, 22 February 2020 (UTC)

Atsme, that is brilliantly well said. I, too, would support a probationary period for such "close call" RfAs or, ideally, an unbundling of the "delete" user right. It's quite a different role for an administrator who simply processes deletions to one who also wields a banhammer. Maturity, or lack thereof, can still have negative consequences in both, but it can be decidedly more negative in the latter. Speaking of which, it seems to me that we don't seem to have a Request for CheckUser (RfCU) or Request for Oversight (RfO) for all non-ArbCom members requesting those two functions... Doug Mehus T·C 14:16, 22 February 2020 (UTC)

@Dmehus: see Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/CheckUser and Oversight and Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/CheckUser and Oversight/2019 CUOS appointments. – wbm1058 (talk) 15:02, 22 February 2020 (UTC)

Wbm1058, Thanks. That's meh, but it's not a true RfA-like process for the most sensitive level of user right. I personally have no issues with those candidates and would've supported them in a true RfCU and RfO process, but nonetheless, it seems odd that we don't have true direct elections for those roles. We can always add in qualifiers like, "...subject to the consent of Wikimedia Foundation's Legal department," following their election. Doug Mehus T·C 15:07, 22 February 2020 (UTC)

@Dmehus: I'd argue that since those are the most sensitive levels, it is okay to not keep them under direct elections. The CUOS appointments sort of selection by the electoral college, like the US Presidental elections (except voting). The electoral college consists of: 1) ArbCom members (directly elected as admins and also as members) 2) existing functionaries (selected by previous ArbCom members who are directly elected). There is also a very mild effect that consultations produce (although I'm not sure how much impact they have, @Xeno and Maxim: if either of you are willing to clarify). As long as the process is determined by people who have been directly elected, it does not affect me, even if it might seem more bureaucratic than necessary. --qedk (t 桜 c) 16:37, 22 February 2020 (UTC)

QEDK: I haven't sat on an appointment round since 2012, but as I recall the community consultations are useful to ensure that we've covered all the bases: major concerns are usually identified at the vetting stage. Since last year, functionaries assist with the vetting process as well. Dmehus: We used to have direct elections but they proved ineffective. –xeno^talk 00:46, 23 February 2020 (UTC)

QEDK, Yes, I agree that since they're the most sensitive positions, but that's why I said the elections would still be subject to confirmation by Wikimedia Foundation Legal department. In short, I'd rather have WMF Legal as the final decider over ArbCom members. Doug Mehus T·C 16:40, 22 February 2020 (UTC)

So to extend your analogy, the positions would be directly elected, rather than appointed, but, once "elected," they would be subject to confirmation by WMF Legal department in a manner not dissimilar for how the U.S. Senate confirms most presidential appointments. Otherwise, we essentially have ArbCom, in its quasi-judicial role over English Wikipedia, with the executive power of appointment, when they may be called in to provide scrutiny for and over the actions of CUs and Oversighters. Doug Mehus T·C 16:44, 22 February 2020 (UTC)

@Dmehus: That is written in fine print so you probably missed it but all CUOS appointments are subject to final approval by the WMF: For legal and policy reasons, the Wikimedia Foundation retains the final authority over access to CheckUser and Oversight permissions. Also, WP:FRAM is just one reason why the WMF should not be allowed to make decisions over the community where there are no legal implications involved. --qedk (t 桜 c) 16:47, 22 February 2020 (UTC)

QEDK, Thanks for clarifying that; no I didn't miss it, but I still think my point carries a lot of weight. I'm not sure which department was involved in the WP:FRAM decision (perhaps it wasn't just Legal department, or Legal department at all; perhaps it was Wikimedia's public relations department, I'm not sure), but in any case, my proposal would not change the current scenario given what you've described. It only enhance the process, by separating ArbCom's powers and making it more independent, by not giving it the power to make appointments (other than to existing ArbCom members being given their CU and Oversight powers, which, arguably, the 'crats can take care of once duly elected as ArbCom members). Doug Mehus T·C 16:51, 22 February 2020 (UTC)

Ideally, we should have a Wikipedia:Sysop Commission that would be separate from Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee and have the powers to grant CU and Oversight powers, as an alternative to annual direct elections of CUs and Oversighters. The Sysop Commission, in turn, would be subject to review by ArbCom, which would provide oversight over their decisions. The Sysop Commission, likewise, could then, potentially, be called in to review ArbCom decisions to desysop, to correct what seems to have been procedural flaws in the RHaworth and BrownHairedGirl decisions. Doug Mehus T·C 16:56, 22 February 2020 (UTC)

Trendlines and reaffirmations

If we're going to look at trendlines, I guess I'd argue we need to take reaffirmations into that formula. --valereee (talk) 23:26, 20 February 2020 (UTC)

We are, I'd argue. Moreover, just as there were reaffirmations, there also those moving from neutral to oppose, from "support" to "oppose", and those reaffirming their neutral positions with reservations. Doug Mehus T·C 23:30, 20 February 2020 (UTC)

@Dmehus: I would disagree. Warofdreams, and the other crats’ mentioning the trendline as a factor in their decision, didn’t mention the reaffirmation of supports. Also, I would like to mention that there were people who moved from oppose to support as well, who deserve as much consideration. Apoorv Chauhan (talk) 00:04, 21 February 2020 (UTC)

A trend line doesn't tell you anything about reaffirmations. And even if it did, is reaffirming compulsory? Are supports from those who voted on the first day to be discounted now, because those people haven't come back again?  — Amakuru (talk) 23:40, 20 February 2020 (UTC)

Personally, I would prefer we had some sort of Wikipedia:Sysop Commission, similar to Wikipedia:Arbcom, that would be responsible for sysoping and desysoping administrators (other than inactivity-based desysoping, which the 'crats would still handle), as an alternative to the current RfA process for its many flaws. However, I suspect such a proposal wouldn't have much support. Doug Mehus T·C 00:12, 21 February 2020 (UTC)

I originally was a Weak Support but moved to Weak Oppose. I thought and thought about this. This was one of the hardest RFAs I have ever been involved in.Bobherry Talk Edits 01:46, 21 February 2020 (UTC)

@Amakuru: I don’t think anyone suggested that support votes without reaffirmations should be discounted. Like you said, the trendline doesn’t take reaffirmations into account, which I would presume why people (including myself) are arguing that the trendline is a false indicator of the direction this RfA was heading. Apoorv Chauhan (talk) 00:10, 21 February 2020 (UTC)

@Warofdreams: I don't think there was any suggestion of such tactical voting in this RfA. The issue being raised, as I read it, was that using trendlines would set a bad precedent, leading to tactical voting later on. Which would inherently reduce the quality of consensus in future discussions. ∰Bellezzasolo✡ Discuss 23:54, 20 February 2020 (UTC)

I was wondering the same consideration. I could see it having some effect if any of the next 3 or 4 RfAs are close (probably not much, but a bit), otherwise I suspect it will get mainly suppressed. I think trendlines probably could be used, although I'd also want to see whether reaffirmations were being considered as a trend-rebuttal (not merely a partial rebuttal to oppose content). Nosebagbear (talk) 23:57, 20 February 2020 (UTC)

I can say for myself that it was a little of both. Having come back on the final day to see it at 70% (having looked like an easy pass when I first commented) I was surprised. I reaffirmed to make clear that despite the volume of opposes, I wasn't swayed by their content. Trend lines are dangerous because, since there are so many variables that affect how they pattern, we can read what we want into them. It's naive to think editors don't pay attention to them during the RfA, but the trend line alone isn't a great proxy for the consensus building process. — Wug·a·po·des​ 01:50, 21 February 2020 (UTC)

Reaffirmations should not be necessary in the first place, nor should they be required as a counter to trendline arguments. Crats should not assume that votes made at a certain point of time were unaware of the issues brought up later, they have no way of knowing if a voter performed their due diligence or not and to assume that some votes carry more weight because they were placed later is a very misplaced notion and well outside the ambit of a crat's duties, which are to assess consensus as presented and not to draw suppositions. --qedk (t 桜 c) 06:47, 21 February 2020 (UTC)

I forget which RFA it was but there was one last year that was trending upwards and still closed as unsuccessful, with no crat chat, and IIRC the trend line argument came up and was generally rejected. If we count trend lines going down, what do we do when an RFA is trending up? If we find no consensus at 70% trending down, do we find consensus if it’s 60% trending up? Levivich (lulz) 04:43, 21 February 2020 (UTC)

Greenman's RfA perhaps? Trend line – Teratix ₵ 04:56, 21 February 2020 (UTC)

I disagree that we are including reaffirmations in the formula, or including any of the other changes in direction, either, and I don't think we should try to. Certainly we shouldn't give !votes that aren't reaffirmed less weight, nor those that move from one to another position late more weight than those cast early. Trying to do that complicates the process without adding accuracy. In fact we have no way of assessing such things, so trying to is just bullshit. All we can assess is the validity of the arguments. I guess the point of my question was whether we should take any of this into account at all. An RfA is open for seven days so that people have plenty of time to notice the RfA, investigate, listen to the arguments of others, discuss those arguments, give their opinion, and maybe change their minds. We don't keep them open for seven days so we can use direction as one of our data points. I think the trendlines are (and should be considered) nothing more than interesting artifacts of RfA. --valereee (talk) 11:07, 21 February 2020 (UTC)

• I don't think the slight general path downwards is of note - it's the functional default in almost all RfAs. I could see a massive, rapid, trendline down in the last day or two as being of note - as it would probably indicate something new had been discovered. In that condition, I'd rather the Crats had just left it open, but it wouldn't be unreasonable in those circumstances to consider. But it's not relevant in this case. Nosebagbear (talk) 11:10, 21 February 2020 (UTC)

Comment from former crat

A couple of people emailed me to ask my view and I seem to have failed to keep away. My view is that this RfA shows a consensus to promote. The change in the numerical boundaries means that - although consensus is not numbers - the expectation is that RfAs with 70%+ support will be successful absent a strong balance of argument in favour of the opposition. I don’t see that here. The opposition is valid and of the sort that can lead RfAs to be well outside the discretionary range, but that has not happened here, the opposition is balanced by a supermajority of supporters. It is not the kind of opposition with diffs showing behavioural issues, policy misapplication, editing contrary to policy etc that would make the opposition strong. The opposition is more broad - lack of contributions, too soon, temperament. The latter is important, but appears to be a concern based largely on a single incident retirement message. Factoring all that in, I think this RfA ought to succeed. I note that 3 of the 4 bureaucrats who do not see a consensus here are very old (excuse the word) bureaucrats with RfBs even longer ago than mine, and with (again, forgive me) limited recent activity as bureaucrats. Have you fully factored in the changes in community expectations for promotion since you were active as bureaucrats? WJBscribe (talk) 07:11, 21 February 2020 (UTC)

I’ll admit to personally missing your input on this one, so thank you for posting it. Would only that you wear that hat once again... –xeno^talk 07:22, 21 February 2020 (UTC)

+1 to that.-- P-K3 (talk) 13:31, 21 February 2020 (UTC)

It’s so nice to see your name again, WJBscribe! Apoorv Chauhan (talk) 12:55, 21 February 2020 (UTC)

Agreed. Hope you are well, WJBscribe. Useight (talk) 16:21, 21 February 2020 (UTC)

Welcome back, WJBscribe. Actually, I was thinking the same conclusion upon reading the RFA page ... but then I am not a bureaucrat and supported the RFA besides, so that doesn't count for much. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 19:32, 21 February 2020 (UTC)

Jo-Jo Eumerus, about that...are you interested in being a bureaucrat? I suspect you'd be promoted in a WP:SNOW consensus. Doug Mehus T·C 20:03, 21 February 2020 (UTC)

WJBscribe, you have been missed. El_C 18:38, 22 February 2020 (UTC)

Crat chat to close the crat chat

Given the close nature of the crat chat, would there be a crat chat to close the crat chat? Humour aside, does the crat closing the discussion have the remit to give lesser weight to those crats whose reasonings are off, and whose reasonings have been questioned both within the crat chat and on this talk page? Lourdes 10:43, 21 February 2020 (UTC)

Given that there is no crat chat to open a crat chat (I asked about this at BN), I doubt there will be crat chat to close a crat chat, since this is a crat chat, so the crats will just chat to close the crat chat, so on and so forth... get my drift? No? Sorry. Although seriously, read the section above about if we are looking for majority in numbers or consensus. --qedk (t 桜 c) 11:05, 21 February 2020 (UTC)

• The closing bureaucrat should close the discussion based on the consensus of the participating bureaucrats, and that consensus still needs to be grounded in good reasoning that takes into account community policies, guidelines, and norms, and the strength of the arguments presented by the individual bureaucrats in favour of, or against, promotion. This is also discussed above at #Question to crats. –xeno^talk 11:11, 21 February 2020 (UTC)

If there is no consensus on "no consensus", does that mean there is a consensus? --Pudeo (talk) 12:25, 21 February 2020 (UTC)

No. Keep in mind that RfA's typically close with either an clear unsuccessful, a no-consensus, or a successful note. The first two have the same impact: no flag. This RfA is well beyond the "clear unsuccessful" stage Only a successful closure results in flagging, and that extends in to how the Crat Chat would go. Like most discussions there has to be consensus to make a change, else the status quo is maintained (i.e. the candidate does not get flagged). — xaosflux ^Talk 12:33, 21 February 2020 (UTC)

The other way around. There needs to be consensus that there is consensus in order for the RFA to succeed. Useight (talk) 16:19, 21 February 2020 (UTC)

• This entire situation reminds me of a famous quote from Ronin by de Niro's character: ``Whenever there is any doubt, there is no doubt. That’s the first thing they teach you." Nsk92 (talk) 20:34, 21 February 2020 (UTC)
• Well, crats closing a crat chat who have participated in the crat chat best not chat to close the crat chat. Haha ... wouldn't the next step to be to get WP:ARBCOM involved to close the chat? Steel1943 (talk) 23:36, 21 February 2020 (UTC)

  Maybe, but we'd want to make sure that ArbCom isn't seen as scratching the backs of the chatting crats. ;-)

  I'm sure @Atsme and Levivich: can probably outdo us both on the alliteration and puns. ;-) Doug Mehus T·C 23:39, 21 February 2020 (UTC)

  Why don't we all just go back to building an encyclopedia instead of just sitting around chatting Ba dum tss :) --DannyS712 (talk) 00:30, 22 February 2020 (UTC)

  But I thought a crat chat was our opportunity to chat with crats? Levivich (lulz) 01:00, 22 February 2020 (UTC)

  Levivich, What, no dropped signature? Darn. Different computer? Doug Mehus T·C 01:37, 22 February 2020 (UTC)

• Nobody has clearly answered Pudeo's brilliant question about this crat chat. If a "no consensus" on "consensus" means "no consensus", how can a "no consensus" on "no consensus" mean "no consensus"? :D Lourdes 02:02, 22 February 2020 (UTC)

  If we formalize the outcome of a crat chat as a function ƒ(x, y), where x is the state of the discussion of the RfA and y is the state of the discussion of the crat chat, we find that ƒ(x, y) is constant for the domain {y = "no consensus"} _signed, Rosguill ^talk 02:24, 22 February 2020 (UTC)

  Rosguill for the win with that brilliant response. Doug Mehus T·C 02:33, 22 February 2020 (UTC)

Is this going to be the record? (Icebreaker)

Is this going to be a record for how long a crat chat is open before an RFA gets closed? Just curious if there have been any other crat chats that have lasted this long. Steel1943 (talk) 16:56, 21 February 2020 (UTC)

Steel1943, I don't know how long, typically, crat chats take, but I think it would be good to give it another a week or so, to give all busy bureaucrats a chance to opine and develop a stronger consensus as to whether there was a consensus to promote or not. Doug Mehus T·C 16:59, 21 February 2020 (UTC)

...Eh, that's not what I'm curious or care about. I'm just wondering ... specifically ... about the record for the longest-lasting crat chat, and/or list of records. Steel1943 (talk) 17:03, 21 February 2020 (UTC)

Steel1943, Yeah, I know what you were curious about...I was just adding a comment. I'd be curious to know what the longest crat chat was. Guess we could look through Category:Bureaucrat discussions and discover that easily enough. There haven't been too many. Doug Mehus T·C 17:05, 21 February 2020 (UTC)

Comment As of today, it's tied with at least Floquenbeam's second RfA. Doug Mehus T·C 17:07, 21 February 2020 (UTC)

(edit conflict) ...In fact, Graham87, I know you may tend to keep up on such records. Would you by chance have any insight you could provide into this? Steel1943 (talk) 17:07, 21 February 2020 (UTC)

Comment Nope, not the longest; Gracenotes' RfA took a week. Doug Mehus T·C 17:09, 21 February 2020 (UTC)

(edit conflict) ...After reading that crat chat ... Wow, Warofdreams has been a bureaucrat for over a decade. Good on them! Steel1943 (talk) 17:16, 21 February 2020 (UTC)

Steel1943, Yes, I have a lot of respect for the work that all the bureaucrats do. They have to be pillars of neutrality and objectivity. I actually didn't even realize Nihonjoe was a bureaucrat. Doug Mehus T·C 17:19, 21 February 2020 (UTC)

Comment Nihonjoe's RfB took four days, so I'm  Done now, and this is the third-longest RfA/RfB crat chat. Second longest RfA crat chat, and, in two days from now, the second longest RfA/RfB crat chat. Doug Mehus T·C 17:14, 21 February 2020 (UTC)

(edit conflict × 3) @Dmehus: I'm not confident that all crat discussions are in the category (are they?), it seems like too few for thousands of RfAs. @Steel1943: Most are closed <3 days from a quick search, a notable exception is Gracenotes' crat chat which lasted for 6 days and ultimately was closed as unsuccesful as the candidate did not want to continue with the crat chat. For trivia, there is also an RfB that was extended by ~2 days and did not pass. --qedk (t 桜 c) 17:16, 21 February 2020 (UTC)

QEDK, Good point that not all crat chats may not be categorized correctly. Suspect this is low priority WikiGnoming work? ;-) Doug Mehus T·C 17:17, 21 February 2020 (UTC)

Per WP:CRATCHAT, the record is 134 hours. Useight (talk) 17:24, 21 February 2020 (UTC)

...Wow, there is a page that lists the discussions. Geez, I would have thought that in my almost decade experience of editing regularly I would have run across Wikipedia:Bureaucrat discussion ... but this is actually the first time I have heard of or seen that page. Steel1943 (talk) 18:50, 21 February 2020 (UTC)

Yeah, I hadn't seen it either, and thought, "geez, I'm actually surprised Steel1943 hadn't noticed this." There's even an appropriately named shortcut, too. And, the 'crats do a great job keeping it updated. Doug Mehus T·C 18:53, 21 February 2020 (UTC)

FWIW I have nothing to add to what's already been said. Graham87 02:27, 22 February 2020 (UTC)

• FWIW ... I'd be perfectly fine if this crat chat beats the time record set by Gracenotes' crat chat. Records are made to be broken, after all. Steel1943 (talk) 22:32, 22 February 2020 (UTC)

Points for future discussion

I've seen at least three ideas which seem worthy of future discussion by the community:

• Does the contension that most RfAs which finish around 70% will close in no consensus reflect the community's views?
• When should/shouldn't RfA trendlines be used as indicators of consensus?
• Do we have an appropriate number of Bureaucrats and if not how might we encourage others to run?

Putting this out there in case others have additional thoughts about things which could (should?) be discussed at other venues stemming from this RfA and crat chat. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 17:19, 22 February 2020 (UTC)

I was looking at the past requests for adminship and, as I do recall from the RfC that enacted the change, there is a reason why the discretionary range was set where it is. The vast majority of requests that weren't withdrawn or otherwise closed early fall above the top end or below the bottom end (with a few encroaching a couple of percentage points into the range), going back to five years before the RfC. So from a purely historic point of view, the discretionary range does mark a no-one's land where the community has failed to tip one way or the other. We can, of course, discuss further on how to judge those rare cases that do fall into the range. isaacl (talk) 18:15, 22 February 2020 (UTC)

Barkeep49, in answer to your questions: (1) I don't think we can put a number on what constitutes "no consensus"; it's case-by-case; (2) I have no answer to this at this point; (3) easiest question No, we do not have enough bureaucrats. Might you consider running? Similarly, might you consider recommending others, like SilkTork, Jo-Jo, RoySmith, et al. to run? Doug Mehus T·C 18:23, 22 February 2020 (UTC)

Levivich, where the heck is your reply? I've tried purging the page cache on the server side, twice, and forced refreshing on the client side, but not seeing it. Did you reply to an old revision, due to an {{ec}}? Doug Mehus T·C 18:27, 22 February 2020 (UTC)

 Resolved See below. Doug Mehus T·C 18:31, 22 February 2020 (UTC)

(edit conflict)(1) Wikipedia is the only place in the world where 2/3 or more will agree on something and it’s called “no consensus”. In any other election anywhere else, 70% would be called a landslide with a mandate. I personally don’t like that the way things are set up, 30% of us can veto the appointment of an admin. (And please don’t anyone quote NOTAVOTE to me-unless you’re arguing that we should be discounting supports here for some reason). (2) There should be a village pump discussion about trend lines, it’s a recurring issue. (3) Strongly encourage admins to run for crat, we need more. Levivich (Talk) 18:23, 22 February 2020 (UTC)

— The preceding comment was added from this edit diff due to an untimed edit conflict by Doug Mehus T·C 18:31, 22 February 2020 (UTC)

^We do need more 'crats is my opinion. Our existing ones are doing a fantastic job, but there's a lot to do... :) Puddleglum^2.0 19:46, 22 February 2020 (UTC)

There isn't actually a lot to do, to the point that those proposing inactivity thresholds for bureaucrats run into difficulties. To those supporting more bureaucrats, I'd ask this question: would your opinion be changed if the current head count of support versus oppose was closer to 8–1 rather than 5–4, and in the direction you prefer? Or in the other direction? If the issue you're really worried about is how to determine consensus, then adding more bureaucrats might not help. isaacl (talk) 21:00, 22 February 2020 (UTC)

@Dmehus: you've submitted over 25 comments to this talk page. Might I respectfully suggest a less is more approach? El_C 18:35, 22 February 2020 (UTC)

El C, Okay, fair enough. You know how to win me over with Wiktionary bluelinks due to my fondness for Wikimedia sister project soft redirects. Doug Mehus T·C 18:38, 22 February 2020 (UTC)

• If the closing crat assesses Warofdreams' fallacious viewpoint as valid opposition consensus, I will finally rid myself of all expectations from crats and it will also effectively invalidate the community's viewpoint on expanding the discretionary range to 65% with the hopes of having proper assessment of consensus instead of vote counts. --qedk (t 桜 c) 19:16, 22 February 2020 (UTC)

  After looking at the historical support percentages for completed request for adminship, I can see how the range from 65% to 75% can be viewed as "not enough agreement was reached to tip the balance above or below the range", and so a careful evaluation of the degree of support is needed. Accordingly I disagree that only under unusual circumstances should a discussion with approximately 70% support ... be seen as a consensus to promote. Based on history, it seems more like it could go either way within this range. isaacl (talk) 20:54, 22 February 2020 (UTC)

  And that’s why it’s so close.... Money emoji💵^{Talk💸Help out at CCI!} 21:02, 22 February 2020 (UTC)

  Just to clarify, I wasn't referring to the history of bureaucrat decisions within this range, but the "no-one's land" nature of the range, which indicates a split in the community's opinion happening within the range. isaacl (talk) 21:17, 22 February 2020 (UTC)

• I wish to add something that I saw around this talkpage and I think is implied in this comment. Supermajority does not equal consensus, and it never has. This is not a vote count. Also, the closing crat doesn't get to decide the validity of points, but can only summarize them. We have respect for each others opinions when they come around, even if we disagree. But to imply that the RfA cratchat process will be completely broken and the communities voice is void because you disagree with one vote is extreme, and illogical. -- Amanda (aka DQ) 23:22, 22 February 2020 (UTC)

• If it's not a vote count and you're not allowed to scrutinize arguments, then what's the point of RfA at all? I strongly disagree that "the closing crat doesn't get to decide the validity of points." That's the whole reason why only a handful of people have passed RfB in the history of the project – bureaucrats are expected to exercise judgement when weighing consensus. – Juliancolton | ^Talk 00:46, 23 February 2020 (UTC)

• Sorry, I should have been clearer there, I meant the validity of each persons vote individually. They definitely can determine the validity of the arguments as a whole. The point QEDK was making seemed like Warofdreams' individual vote should be called out in the closure. That is what I was objecting to. -- Amanda (aka DQ) 01:06, 23 February 2020 (UTC)

• Ohh, okay, I understand. Thank you for clarifying. Thanks also for your efforts here (and this goes for the rest of the 'crats, too). It's easy to sit in the peanut gallery and criticize when the stakes are low, but you folks were under a lot of pressure, and as always, your collective level-headedness and transparency have been admirable. – Juliancolton | ^Talk 01:25, 23 February 2020 (UTC)

I consider myself an esteemed member of the peanut gallery firstly. Now coming to DeltaQuad's reply, I never stated that Warofdreams' statement deserved to be singled out, I simply stated that it should be taken into account with respect to its community viewpoint (which is against). I don't think I need to expand on my explanation why it was so faulty, that has been evidenced in my reply above, the eventual closure and Maxim's statement that their ...understanding of the spirit of the request is "to go easier on the numerical threshold". Crats should understand the general viewpoint and understand why the community feels a certain way instead of giving precedence to arbitrary statistics. --qedk (t 桜 c) 13:50, 23 February 2020 (UTC)

Conduct during RfA, etc.

I opposed as "too soon" based on concerns about maturity as an editor. I know some may have interpreted my rationale as "due to the user-page retirement message", and I understand the argument that it's sufficiently in the past to not cause ongoing concern, but my concerns extend beyond the "retirement". Further evidence of "too soon" is his 12-day self-requested block in June 2018, which shows a lack of self-discipline needed to walk away from editing to study for exams. I've been more hesitant to pile on additional reasons for opposing this editor, not wanting to unduly discourage him, as opposed to some of the harsher criticisms I've given to some candidates with more editing experience. I'll say now though, that his choice of articles to nominate for Good Article – "Pizzagate", on which the Arbitration Committee has authorized uninvolved administrators to impose discretionary sanctions – gave me concerns that he might exercise a POV while working Arbitration Enforcement on American Politics. We just have to take it on good faith that he won't do that, but rather will stick to revision-deleting copyright violations. I might not have felt such concern had I seen that he was actually a significant contributor to the "Pizzagate" article. While the self-block request, as the "retirement", are perhaps sufficiently in the past, crat chats should be the appropriate venue for evaluating conduct during an RfA, as it's unreasonable to expect voters to follow RfAs in real time and vote at the last minute after monitoring the candidate's conduct during the !voting. I call your attention to the discussion I had with the candidate following my !vote – in particular, the quick, inappropriate insertion of {{Historical}} to Wikipedia:Contributor copyright investigations/Instructions § Clerks. On the positive side, he did show willingness to follow guidance, but ideally a good admin candidate shouldn't need such steering. I considered withdrawing my opposition, and de facto joining the neutral !voters, but in the end I decided to stick with my initial decision, "too soon". – wbm1058 (talk) 18:57, 22 February 2020 (UTC)

I disagree firmly on expanding the 'crats remit. That would have them being required to simultaneously assess consensus while making substantive decision-making. We require recusing for 'Crats who cast an opinion during the RfA. Both a "fine" and a "not fine" judgement on behaviour by 'Crats on a candidate's in-RfA actions would be taken as influencing their overall consensus judgement. On top of that, the editor wouldn't be able to adequately argue their case on those specific judgements given the format of a CRATCHAT. If you felt that a drastic in-RfA action had occurred (or could occur) that !voters wouldn't have sufficient time to see, you'd be better off proposing a method that would allow an RfA 24 hour extension for events identified late in the RfA. Nosebagbear (talk) 19:12, 22 February 2020 (UTC)

On commenting and closing

Just a brief musing to xaosflux’s comment about there being no clear crat consensus, the one thing I’d add is that I think Primefac should probably comment in the discussion rather than just close. Crat chats aren’t like most discussions, and historically participants have both voted and closed the discussion, so there really isn’t a need at all for an uninvolved crat closer. Currently you’re at a 5-4 majority in favour of promotion, and yes, not a vote and whatnot, but you have another uninvolved crat who started the discussion who should be able to comment. I don’t think it’s particularly fair to the candidate or within the norms of historical precedents on these things for someone to not comment because they’d rather close when their comment could clarify the issue and also wouldn’t prevent them from closing. TonyBallioni (talk) 19:46, 22 February 2020 (UTC)

To my understanding, bureaucrat chats have always been treated as sort-of informal discussions, not like a formal RfC where formal closers and disqualification for involvement would arise. So I think that TonyBallioni's point is quite valid. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 19:59, 22 February 2020 (UTC)

I also agree that this would be in keeping with our norms. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 20:00, 22 February 2020 (UTC)

I'd say, perhaps more accurately, that the positives of a non-participating Crat closing, are less than the positives of another 'Crat participating - that would give us either a 6-4 viewpoint, nice and clear to promote, or a 4-4, much clearer not to promote given our norms. Nosebagbear (talk) 20:33, 22 February 2020 (UTC)

Nosebagbear, By "4-4," don't you mean "5-5"? Doug Mehus T·C 20:39, 22 February 2020 (UTC)

Dmehus...maybe Nosebagbear (talk)

Personally, even though I don't feel that the candidate should have been handed the mop, I do respect Primefac's decision to recuse himself from the vote. In my opinion, I feel that the vote-tallier should not be allowed to vote, regardless of how "informal" the discussion is. JAH2k (talk) 13:41, 23 February 2020 (UTC)

• just musing: if crat's consensus/no consensus gets 50-50 majority, and Primefac closes the chat, would Primefac's closing be considered as supervote? —usernamekiran (talk) 21:27, 22 February 2020 (UTC)

  Usernamekiran, No. It's a semi-involved closure, but per the above, crat chats seem pretty informal. I had been wondering, though, if Acalamari had not recused themselves and !voted in the crat chat, would that be considered a supervote? Personally, I think recusal was the right call in such a case. Doug Mehus T·C 22:14, 22 February 2020 (UTC)

  @Dmehus: i was just joking. I am a little familiar with crat chats, and very much - a lot familiar with RfAs NB: I often have chats with crats, and like you observed, the chats are pretty informal but arbcom cases are a huge in pain the butt even to read through them. —usernamekiran (talk) 09:52, 24 February 2020 (UTC)

Close wording

@Primefac: in the "Close" section you wrote with two recent sysops at ArbCom I can certainly see .... Maybe desysops are meant here? —⁠andrybak (talk) 22:34, 25 February 2020 (UTC)

Andrybak, I noticed that as well, but didn't report it to Primefac because when I re-read it, I think what Primefac was meaning was that there were recently two sysops in proceedings before ArbCom; not necessarily commenting on the result that was desysoppings. (talk page stalker) Doug Mehus T·C 22:38, 25 February 2020 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure they are referring to the cases about RHaworth and Kudpung, BHG was a bit older. --qedk (t 桜 c) 22:43, 25 February 2020 (UTC)

BHG was a bit further back, though I do suppose one could add that case to the list as well (and would make it 2 desysops). I was referring to "sysops at ArbCom" since Kudpung's case isn't closed yet (and deals with behaviour/temperament concerns). Primefac (talk) 00:32, 26 February 2020 (UTC)