Wikipedia talk:RfA reform 2011/Possible proposals

Comment from Swarm

Note: This thread has been copied to Wikipedia talk:RfA reform 2011/Candidates. Please continue the discussion there.

Several good ideas on this page, but the idea I'd most like to see proposed is a set of minimum requirements for RfA candidates. This year, there have been 22 NOTNOW closures, plus multiple SNOW closures due to activity level. In the last year, the successful candidate with the lowest edit count was RHM22, who had about 3,900 edits. This is an exceptionally low edit count, and was the only successful RfA with less than 4,000 edits. While it's good that we can close RfAs early, frankly, it's ridiculous that absolutely anyone can run in the first place. It would save time, effort and stress if there was an edit count level that candidates have to meet before they are allowed to run. It would also filter out trolls. Swarm ^X 02:31, 19 June 2011 (UTC)

We have a whacking great big warning template on the edit notice of the transclusion page but we still get clots who just don't read it . Thre solutions that could be proposed to the commuynity right now. The scripts are easy to instal in the site software and Twinkle. Note that the German Wikipedia requires: One should should demonstrate at least one year of experience as a writer and collaborators in various fields of the project. Candidates with less experience have no chance of being elected to adminship.

Candidates that do not have a significant four-digit number of edits are mostly rejected. The proportions of the edits in different namespaces is often critically examined.:

Suggestions:

1. A checkbox on that transcslusion page that reads something like this:

Before transcluding this page, please be sure to have read all the instructions and advice pages.

[checkbox] I'am aware that my RfA can and will be reverted or closed early if it is obvious that it will not succeed.

If the user does not check the box but tries to save the page, a simple script that will load a notice declining the transclusion: "Sorry, but as you have not read up on all that is required to become an administrator, it will not be possible to process your request this time."

1. 2 Short questionnaire

Enter these details: 1. Total number of edits to date: [field 1] 2. Total number of recent consecutive months editing: [field 2]

if the software detects less than 4,000 for field 1, and/or less than 6 in field 2, a simple script will load a notice declining the transclusion:

"Please note that candidates with less than 4,000 edits and/or 6 months continuous editing are most unlikely to succeed. If you wish to continue please click here, but be aware that your application is unlikely to succeed." if the software detects less than 2,000 for field 1, and less than 3 in field 2, a simple script will load a notice declining the transclusion:

"Sorry, but you do not appear to have sufficient experience to become an administrator at this time. Please read the pages at xxx and xxx, and xxx, and discuss your request with an administrator before applying again."

1. 3 We simply set the bar as low as possible (e.g. 2,000/3) to ensure that the certain time wasters don't waste our time, install a Twinkle script that deletes the RfA proposal or the RfA if it has already been transcluded, and leaves a message on the applicant's talk page:

"Thank you for applying to be a Wikipedia administrator. You do not appear to have sufficient experience at this time, and your application has been declined. nevertheless, you may wish to read xxxx and xxxx and xxx, and try again when you feel you meet the recommended minimum criteria. In the meantime you may wish to help out at Recent Changes Patrol and New Page Patrol, and taking part in more AfD, RfA, SPI, and AN/I, which will certainly help increase your experience of admin tasks significantly. Good luck, and happy editing!"

Basically, we've discussed setting a bar before, but every time we have, people have assumed us to mean either raising it or loweriing it. This is not the case here. What we are doing here is making both the time wasters not waste their or our time, and encouraging others who may not be time wasters, but have little chance of passing, to take more advice and get more experience - such as those who would pass in another six months or so.
Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 08:57, 19 June 2011 (UTC)

I'll just add that a lot of people here probably are not aware of the number of RfAs that don't make it to tranclusion, and I don't see a way of tracking those deleted or reverted applications for the stats. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 09:06, 19 June 2011 (UTC)

Note: This thread has been copied to Wikipedia talk:RfA reform 2011/Candidates. Please continue the discussion there. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 03:22, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

don't let newbies transclude

have software stop it or have buros authorize transcludes. TCO (talk) 19:22, 19 June 2011 (UTC)

I agree. My76Strat ^talk 01:40, 2 July 2011 (UTC)

See next thread. --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 01:51, 2 July 2011 (UTC)

Also set the bar high

I will take any bar. That said, I recommend setting it high. Even if there are SOME editors who will do a great job with 3900 edits, it is just more efficient to set it at 10,000. Don't WORRY about excluding a small number of good candidates. Unis and companies routinely filter candidates. You can't obsess on the one that got by. Think about an efficient process. And if they really love the encyclopedia, they will keep editing, regardless of the "moderator hat". TCO (talk) 19:26, 19 June 2011 (UTC)

We also have stats for that too - of the ones who left Wikipedia in disgust of the way they were treated at RfA. Whether the candidates pass or not, there is a clear need to filter out the drama mongers and and incivility from the voting process.. They might not all be posting comments here, but some people are working constantly on stats in the background. Please consider !voting on the proposals when they are ready for RfC. Thanks. --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 21:03, 19 June 2011 (UTC)

Companies that are paying people need to be picky and sometimes to be arbitrary. Admins are not paid and we have no shortage of mops, so providing we screen out a few unsuitable candidates the more admins we appoint the better. That said a low threshold for self noms would screen out some people who the community won't take seriously as candidates. But it needs to be an automated thing in terms of permissions i.e. Only editors with >1500 edit can transclude to this page, not a snarky excuse to delete RFAs without consideration. we also need the safety valve of allowing other editors to nominate candidates and make a case for an exception. ϢereSpielChequers 15:13, 26 June 2011 (UTC)

I really doubt anyone is going to quit because a mechanism stopped them from transcluding. A regulation. It's more being part of the process and losing that makes them sad. I would seriously consider to put the bar reasonably high. Let special cases (if really needed and we don't) be dealt with by crats going around the system. Set it high. You want to eliminate the waste of time train wrecks. Set it at 5000. Or even 10,000. 1500 is insane and does nothing for us. Might as well have no bar then.TCO (talk) 15:54, 26 June 2011 (UTC)

(edit conflict) As I have said in several places before, the actual bar 'floats'. It depends on who turns out to !vote and what their individual criteria are. There is only a very small core of regular !voter that have their own set criteria. AFAIK, there have never been any serious discussions on this project to raise or lower that bar. There have, however, been suggestions to introduce a low threshold that is just enough to screen out some people who the community won't take seriously as candidates, as WSC says. The French, German, and Italian Wikis have such a threshold. Here at en.Wiki It's very rare to see anyone passing with less than around 3,000 edits these days, and Snottywong's table shows a median of more around 11,000. Only yesterday we had a candidate trying to transclude with only 36 edits. It won't show up in any stats because it was nipped quickly in the bud. What I suggest would be a threshold of 1,500 edits/3 months, and this is still lower than that practiced by the other countries. The only exception I can think of would be the rare times a new bot would need admin access for some reason or another. It would not be difficult for the devs to write a software block for editors who try to transclude under the bar, and load a templated message such as, for example:

Hello Jonesey95! Thank you for your interest in wanting to serve Wikipedia as an administrator. However, at this time you do not appear to have been registered long enough or have made a sufficient number of edits. Please read the guidelines for adminship and when you have been registered for at least 3 months and have made at least 1,500 manual edits you may try again. You might also wish to join our Admin School and WIKIVERSITY has an excellent programme too.

Of course, there is always the psychological danger that once such a threshold is known, there may be a stampede of candidates who meet it. That's just the collateral damage we would have to take int consideration. It always amazes me that they don't take any notice of this in-your-face message when they try to transclude:

Wait, Jonesey95!

Please read Administrators and the Guide to requests for adminship before you nominate yourself. Adminship is not for new or inexperienced users. You need to have made several thousand edits to articles and housekeeping tasks. You also need a good knowledge of deletion, copyright, and other policies, and to show that you can exercise sound judgment in awkward situations.

Applications from editors without considerable experience are often quickly declined as premature. If you are not sure that you qualify, please ask an admin or an established user for advice.

--Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 16:25, 26 June 2011 (UTC)

I wouldn't worry about the rush from people who just meet the quota - by the time people have 1500 edits they usually have an idea as to their chances of passing. As for TCO's suggestion. 5,000 is higher than some candidates who have recently passed, so setting it at that level would mean delaying some people from adminship. Turning down good candidates is a bad idea, and any proposal to change the system to exclude a group of candidates who currently get consensus support is logically doomed to fail. Remember that while there is an argument that you don't want so many active crats that a crat chat becomes dysfunctional, there is no equivalent way in which one could ever have too many admins. 1500 and 2000 are both figures that I and others have proposed before and got majority support though not consensus, they are of course only partial solutions to the problem - but partial solutions can be useful incremental improvements. I'm pretty sure that only one candidate has got through in the last three years with less than 2,000 edits, and he could have got a nomination if he'd asked for it. So the advantage of a 1500 or even a 2000 threshold is that it would delay a group of candidates who can currently get badly bitten by the system, whilst having a healthy safety margin to avoid excluding serious candidates. My understanding of the pattern is that by the time an editor has 1500 edits they usually know enough not to run until they have a chance of getting through, so a 1500 bar if gently applied would improve our treatment of a bunch of newbies whilst not losing any potential admins. ϢereSpielChequers 16:33, 26 June 2011 (UTC)

Is that really the message we currently put for transclusion? I thought we limited that stop sign for badfaith final warnings before we block people. ϢereSpielChequers 16:36, 26 June 2011 (UTC)

Ooooh, I hated the "STOP" sign! Don;t we have a "WAIT!" sign instead? The stop seems horribly ... errmmm .... 'heavy-handed', or some such phrase. I can;t think of the right phrase, but I guess the rest of you guys will know what I meant, anyway :o) Pesky (talk …stalk!) 11:28, 28 June 2011 (UTC)

Don't mess around with 1500. I really DO worry then that you get a lot of 2000 edit noms and you do more damage than help with an unrealistic threshold. Make it 5000. We only had a tiny fraction of people (one?) below that in the first year, and he would have qualified in a few months. 10000 is too high, if 11000 is the median. The warning is a waste of time, Kud. Make a real change, not something so flimsy as another exhortation. The minimum requirements is easy. If you guys can't nail that, then I have zero hope that you are going to do anything harder in terms of reform.TCO (talk) 16:39, 26 June 2011 (UTC)

WSC: Yes it is, but I didn't put it there! What we really need is something more attractive but that really hammers the message home. I'm thinking on the lines of Fetchcomms' excellent modern page designs at the MedaiWiki outreach project. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 18:08, 26 June 2011 (UTC)

I hate the editcountitis implied by editcount based thresholds, but too few of the electorate will seriously consider a candidate with less than 2,000 edits. I suspect that most candidates with 3,000 would struggle; Though of course if they had an FA and relevant experience on other projects it would be a different matter. The trick is to set the threshold high enough to make a useful difference, low enough that it won't delay good candidates, and to have a safety valve for exceptions.. ϢereSpielChequers 20:07, 27 June 2011 (UTC)

I think that the problems with RFA these days have a lot to do with the fact that there doesn't seem to be any 'minimum requirement' per se. Therefore, inexperienced editors seem to have the impression that it doesn't take much to become an administrator when this, in fact, is not the case. Establishing a minimum edit count threshold is a necessary measure to prevent candidates from pursuing RFA too soon. Tyrol5 [Talk] 01:19, 28 June 2011 (UTC)

I think we should get a local consensus here for one of the solutions I have proposed above in 'Comment from Swarm', and the template above, with it's software block, and then draft a proposal we can agree on for posting at RfC. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 01:28, 28 June 2011 (UTC)

Minimum requirement suggestions

Well, if we're looking for local consensus on what the bar should be - I'd suggest looking at the summary of candidate findings. Essays seem to agree that you should have 2000 edits and 6 months tenure minimum, so that seems like the right sort of place to put a software bar. Especially since we've only had one candidate since the beginning of 2009 who has had less than 2000 edits (a special case, who could have got a nomination I'm certain). That would take out the NOTNOWs, and by the time they have 2000 edits, they should be savvy enough to know whether they should transclude. NB since 2009, removing MGA73, there were 0 successful candidates with 0-3000 edits, but 20 with 3000-5000 - so we should really pitch the bar below 3000. Worm^TT · (talk) 09:23, 28 June 2011 (UTC)

I'm happy with anything on the lines of 1,500/3 months, 1,500/6 months, or 3,000/6 months. I don't think we need 12 months like the German do (they have their own cultural reasons for the things the do). Let's not forget that the bar we are suggesting is not a qualification for adminship, it's more a fence to jump over to get to the door of the interview room. It prevents those who think Wikipedia is a club, a blog, or a web forum, and those not tall enough, from getting anywhere near the building: "Come back when you've growm a few more inches and then we can start to talk about it." --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 10:09, 28 June 2011 (UTC)

I agree, and I'd prefer to set the bar lower for that reason. However, since no one has passed with less than 3000 (nor with less than 8 months) in the past 2.5 years, and we already have a "Journeyman editor service award" - 2000/6m - I thought that'd be a good place to put it ;) Worm^TT · (talk) 10:29, 28 June 2011 (UTC)

Excellent - and I like the Journeyman bit. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 10:46, 28 June 2011 (UTC)

Yes, Journeyman level seems like a good place to start, unless someone has a heap of edits-and-good-standing globally but not necessarily in -en. Pesky (talk …stalk!) 11:24, 28 June 2011 (UTC)

My thoughts exactly, and if we have a software check (is this even possible? - I know we use it for elections, but they're not actually held on WP), IAR situations can be transcluded by any user over the Journeyman level. We could even have a category of "Users who are willing to consider RfA Nomination requests". In fact, why the hell don't we have that already? Worm^TT · (talk) 11:34, 28 June 2011 (UTC)

Hello Jonesey95! Thank you for your interest in wanting to serve Wikipedia as an administrator. However, at this time you do not appear to have been registered long enough or have made a sufficient number of edits. Please read the guidelines for adminship and when you have your Journeyman award you may try again. You might also wish to join our Admin School and WIKIVERSITY has an excellent programme too.

I've suggested in this discussion that we require a qualified nominator only for candidates that haven't reached Journeyman editor yet (or whatever criteria we agree upon; personally I like the Journeyman requirement). Tyrol5 [Talk] 15:41, 28 June 2011 (UTC)

If we get a consensus for the suggestions I extrapolated above, there won't be a need for a nominator for those who have not reached Journeyman - we would only be excluding the candidates who clearly are not ready for RfA. If in spite of that they still think they should be considered, they can ask an admin for an opinion. There is in fact no real reason why our bar should be any lower than those practiced by, say, the German Wiki (One year and significant four-figure edits). More important background to all this at WT:RFA2011/CANDIDATES. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 11:03, 29 June 2011 (UTC)

Qualifications for voters

After reading through this proposal, I believe the community will immediately reject it. !Voters should not have to be qualified to !vote at an RfA, much like users who have discussions to try to get a consensus do not have to be qualified. We have to keep in mind that a request for adminship is aimed at getting a consensus from the community on whether a candidate should receive the tools or not. This isn't an election per se, but more of a discussion. If we limit who can participate, the number of !voters will surely decay over time due to lack of interest in "registering" to speak one's mind. Eagles 24/7 (C) 17:27, 28 June 2011 (UTC)

Keep in mind that the bar can be minimal- it could be one month and 50 edits. It doesn't have to mean making an "RfA voter" group. Swarm ^X 19:42, 28 June 2011 (UTC)

I don't think that's too much to ask; we require that participants in other community processes as well (i.e. ArbCom elections). It makes sense to have an experience threshold for RFA participants, albeit an easily attainable one. Tyrol5 [Talk] 20:08, 28 June 2011 (UTC)

If we were going to go with a new "RfA voter" group, it could simply be automatically added to a user's account after they've been autoconfirmed. That way, we could stop most of the vandals while still allowing input from almost everyone. Having the new group also means that someone who has been abusing the process can be blocked from voting for a finite period of time without going to the extreme length of hitting them with the banhammer. — Oli ^OR Pyfan! 02:21, 29 June 2011 (UTC)

That's reasonable, but I think autoconfirmation is still too easily attainable. Swarm ^X 02:24, 29 June 2011 (UTC)

I was thinking that the "RfA voter" group should be designed to stop people creating an account solely to ruin the chances of a specific candidate - anything else could be gamed. The number of edits I'm not worried about (though there should be some) but I think the time period should be 1 week. Worm^TT · (talk) 06:27, 29 June 2011 (UTC)

I don't think the community will reject it. We are forgetting again that this bar is not a qualification - it's not for preventing suitably mature and experienced candidates from voting. Lack of maturity, experience, and civility, have been demonstrated enough for it to be of concern. Some other Wikis have qualifications for voters. Autoconfirmed should be enough, with a topic ban for anyone who abuses the system three times for incivility, creating drama, unreflected voting, and posing silly questions. The fact that such rules would exist would be a deterrent and once they exist, they would probably not be broken. There is more important background at WT:RFA2011/VOTING. I was once plumply told by an admin to publish a list of the names of such editors, but I refused out of decency, only to be told by the same admin that by not naming them, I was acting like a child in an elementary school playground - one wonders how mature some of our existing admins really are - one only has to examine a year's worth of RfAs to know who the drama queens and kings are. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 10:54, 29 June 2011 (UTC)

We currently have an unwritten rule for this, replacing it with a written rule isn't about extra bureaucracy it is about openness. Socks created purely for a particular RFA are rarely if ever worth listening to, but I don't think we get much participation from editors who have a few hundred edits, and I fear they are the group who can spot that there is an unwritten rule, but are unsure if they qualify. So provided it is kept low I'm happy to support a qualification for voting, to keep things simple we should use an existing threshold. I think that "All wp:Autoconfirmed editors are welcome to !vote in RFAs and RFBs, but please read the guide for voters first." would be a good way to go. The only worry is that once you formalise a criteria you risk having standards inflation and at some point you'll need as many edits and as much tenure to vote in an RFA as you originally needed to pass one - but as we've seen with RFA, unwritten standards are more prone to inflation than written ones. ϢereSpielChequers 06:20, 1 July 2011 (UTC)

See:Comparison of voting on RfA other Wikipedias. It's been suggested that we take one of the lower service awards such as for example Novice Editor) (200/1m) or Apprentice Editor (1,000/3m) as a qualification for voting. Other Wikis have a software check to see if voters have attained the requirement - no 'right' needs to be specially accorded. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 07:35, 1 July 2011 (UTC)

Encourage oldtimers to !vote

I have long held out the theory that grizzled old timers who've been here since, say, 2008 or earlier, are good to have at RfA. They are less likely to suffer from editcountitis and more likely to focus on what makes a good admin than being swayed by weak arguments in the oppose section. Maybe I'm completely wrong, but I think that encouraging long-standing users to !vote at RfA would help more RfAs pass. And if more pass, more reluctant editors will step forward. It doesn't, of course, address the main problem, which is declining numbers of editors, but hey, at my best I'm good, not brilliant. --Dweller (talk) 16:05, 27 September 2011 (UTC)

Only around 2% of our active admins even come back to support the RfAs with a vote of some kind, and even some of them don't always vote in an intelligent fashion, so we"re open to all sorts of suggestions as to how we can enlarge the pool of reasonable participants. --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 14:53, 28 September 2011 (UTC)

I didn't mention admins, but all old-timers. I think they could be encouraged with some carefully considered messaging on their talk pages, supported by the Signpost. --Dweller (talk) 12:59, 3 October 2011 (UTC)

Other Wikipedias with far fewer registersed users than en.Wiki have a similar turnout of voters at thneir RfAs. Each RfA is published at their Village Pump or some such venue. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 13:30, 3 October 2011 (UTC)

Part of me really likes this idea and part of me is somewhat skeptical. Will the old timers really be more reasonable !voters? What makes you think that? Swarm 18:13, 3 October 2011 (UTC)

They are less likely to suffer from editcountitis and more likely to focus on what makes a good admin than being swayed by weak arguments in the oppose section. Maybe I'm wrong, but it's a fairly simple thing to try, isn't it? --Dweller (talk) 20:10, 3 October 2011 (UTC)

A huge number of 'old timers' are stolid content workers and are probably not interested in any Wikipedia meta subjects. The irony is that many of them are just the right kind of people to be admins. Edit counts are always a contentious issue - for example, my edit count has dropped dramatically over the last 6 months, but the time I spend on Wikipedia doing research and participating in other WikiMedia areas has in fact increased significantly. However, edit counts are not always a true demonstration of dedication - or maturity and responsibility either. It can be assumed that anyone with upwards of 6,000 edits might have sufficient clue for admin tasks, but is a poor criterion of character. Edit count is unfortunately one of the few metrics available. I'm not convinced that all voters actually look very hard at the quality of a candidate's edits or know how to interpret the pie chart. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 00:51, 4 October 2011 (UTC)

Edit notice

I suggested this on the Wikipedia talk:RfA reform (continued) but nobody really responded there (I think it got buried in the other conversations). On the topic of the civility problem, perhaps it would be helpful to modify the edit notice that people see when they're voting on an RfA. You could add material about the length of comments, badgering, civility, etc. Here's an example of how it might be tweaked. ~Adjwilley (talk) 02:44, 12 October 2012 (UTC)