::Looks like the template was RFC. [[User:Wgolf|Wgolf]] ([[User talk:Wgolf|talk]]) 02:00, 3 June 2015 (UTC)
::Looks like the template was RFC. [[User:Wgolf|Wgolf]] ([[User talk:Wgolf|talk]]) 02:00, 3 June 2015 (UTC)
{{archive bottom}}
{{archive bottom}}
== [[Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/OccultZone and others]] closed ==
An arbitration case regarding OccultZone and other editors has now closed and the final decision is viewable at the link above. The following remedies have been enacted:
#[[User:OccultZone]] is banned indefinitely from English Wikipedia. They may appeal the ban after twelve months, and every six months thereafter.
#[[User:OccultZone]] is also topic banned from making edits related to a) sexual assault or b) crime on the Indian Subcontinent, both broadly construed.
#[[User:OccultZone]] is indefinitely limited to operating a single account.
For the Arbitration Committee, [[User:Lankiveil|Lankiveil]] <sup>([[User talk:Lankiveil|speak to me]])</sup> 12:29, 3 June 2015 (UTC).
: Discuss this at: '''[[Wikipedia talk:Arbitration Committee/Noticeboard#OccultZone and others]]'''
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(Initiated 43 days ago on 19 September 2024) Legobot removed the RFC template on 20/10/2024. Discussoin has slowed. Can we please have a independent close. TarnishedPathtalk23:11, 24 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Doing... I've read the whole discussion, but this one is complex enough that I need to digest it and reread it later now that I have a clear framing of all the issues in my mind. Ideally, I'll close this sometime this week. —Compassionate727(T·C)20:23, 27 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
(Initiated 37 days ago on 25 September 2024)
Last addition/comment was a week and a half ago (October 4th). As far as I can tell all those involved with previous discussion have responded. Relm (talk) 10:43, 14 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
(Initiated 158 days ago on 28 May 2024) Latest comment: 3 days ago, 79 comments, 37 people in discussion. Closing statement may be helpful for future discussions. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 10:29, 11 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I wanted to note that this is taking slightly longer than expected, but it is at the top of my priority and will be completed soon. — Frostly (talk) 05:14, 27 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Hi Voorts and Soni, thanks for the pings! I've unfortunately been in the hospital for the past week but am now feeling better. I apologize for the long delay in putting out the close and appreciate your messages! Best, — Frostly (talk) 03:59, 22 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I can't touch that cos I !voted, but although that was a productive and thought-provoking discussion, it's not a discussion that has an actionable outcome. I personally feel it can lie in the archives unclosed.—S MarshallT/C11:36, 3 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
This isn't a priority given S Marshall's input, but I'll save it for offline reading. If I have time while I'm in Cuba next week, I'll take a look at it and see if I can't summarize some of the broader points and ideas potentially worth pursuing. —Compassionate727(T·C)23:27, 15 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry, I haven’t accomplished anything on this. I couldn’t find a way to save a readable copy of the discussion to my iPad, and the government of Cuba has disabled the Internet nationwide to suppress news of the ongoing blackout. —Compassionate727(T·C)22:46, 25 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
(Initiated 31 days ago on 2 October 2024)
Discussion has slowed after 30 days; needs to be closed by an uninvolved editor please. Muzilon (talk) 21:05, 1 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Place new discussions concerning other types of closing requests above this line using a level 3 heading
On the brink of collapse
Lately, especially in the last days, it feels like we're on Titanic after already hitting the iceberg and taking in water, but before starting to sink.
Everywhere we look, there are backlogs building up. I just had a look at WP:SPI where there are open cases stretching back to April. WP:ANV looks good right now, but I've frequently seen a 10-hour backlog during which vandals manage a lot of damage. At WP:ANI, more and more discussions are never closed. I'd say an unclosed report is always a bit of a failure; many are not good but could be still be closed. We've come to a situation where backlogs are now feeding themselves. For instance, the lack of a attention to a user's unblock request led to a rant on WP:ANI[1]. (The request was perhaps unfounded, but then it could have been turned down). Despite the pointy cabal accusations, the subsequent discussion showed that many users (and admins) have noted this same problem. Same thing today, again a post on WP:ANI about the lack of attention [2]. In fairness, it was dealt with rather quickly, but it was such an obvious case it could have been quicker. These are just a few examples, but I see more and more such examples and, worryingly enough, more and more good, serious users as well as admins commenting on it [3], [4], [5], [6]. I'm not saying there's one single case that is very serious (I haven't seen it) and I certainly have launched no unaddressed report myself that would require immediate admin intention. But the general picture is beginning to look worrying. Admins do a fantastic job here, an unpaid and voluntary job and the usual "thanks" is abuse and insults and accusations. The last thing I intend is to accuse any admin, and I don't think any other established user do either. Notwithstanding that admins do all they can, though, if this situation continues, Wikipedia will be in problem. The whole structure is reliant on vandals, socks, conflicts and disruptive users being addressed quickly. The more time it takes, the more damage is done which in turns require more time to sort out, and which can push serious users away, and we're quickly entering a downward spiral. Not calling for any quick fix, nor for admin attention to any specific issue, but for a good discussion about what we can all do.Jeppiz (talk) 14:30, 13 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks, those discussions are very relevant. I agree with the premise. Given the current situation, I think extending some responsibilities to established users in rather straightforward matters would free up some time for admins to focus on the more complex issues.Jeppiz (talk) 15:39, 13 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
While we can certainly use more admins, I disagree with some of what your pointing to. To start with AIV, it is rare for a blatant case of vandalism, were the vandal was fully warned, (4 escalating warnings followed by another act of vandalism) to not result in a quick block. If there is a report there more than 60 minutes old, it is almost always a more ambiguous case. For example, I'm very cautious about blocking genre warriors reported to AIV, because my own understanding of Genre sucks; not in a position to make a judgement either way, genre warrior reports pile up, and may not be actioned for a few hours, creating an appearance that AIV has a long backlog, when it only sort of does. As for reports on AN/I not being closed, until a year or two ago, reports at AN/I were not regularly closed unless it was a specific proposal that needed a consensus determination. Not every thread on AN/I needs to have a definitive outcome, sometimes they just fizzle out and the issue doesn't arise again. There are real backlogs, but its typically not critical time sensitive things like active vandalism, but things like RM, where another month is annoying, but wont be the end of the world. Monty84519:18, 13 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, I would probably describe it more as "on the decline" than "on the brink of collapse". I don't really have any "big picture" solutions for you though. I've just been trying to do my part, ie I've recently learned and started contributing to CSD for the first time in these last few months. Sergecross73msg me19:58, 13 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I spend some time at AIV, and Monty's assessment is in the right direction. The majority of the backlog isn't accounts that need to be blocked, it's bad reports that need to be declined. I'd say that, most days, far more than 50% of the reports I respond to are not valid AIV reports, and I have to spend a considerable amount of time crafting an explanation as to why they are being declined, usually some variation of "Vandalism is not a synonym for edits I disagree with". Most of the old AIV reports are simply ones admins have looked at and decided no block was needed, but didn't bother to write a decline rationale. You can know this by watching the history of AIV, where the really obvious vandals often only remain mere minutes, but the "This guy keeps changing the genre and I don't like it!" stuff hangs around a long time. The backlog would go away at AIV (and I suspect many other boards) if over-eager vigilantes would stop biting the newbs and creating frivolous reports that have to get dealt with. --Jayron3201:18, 15 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Jayron, I take your word for it and I'm sure there are lots of bad reports, possibly even bad faith reports. As I said, none of what I address here is a criticism of any admin decision, there is no particular case that made me comment but rather a thought building up over several weeks. I have seen some obvious vandals (who eventually were blocked) remain much longer, but could it perhaps also be a matter of time zones? While English Wikipedia is fairly global, I'd still guess there could be times when there are less admins around than at other times. As as I also said, AIV is probably the least worrisome of the different places I mentioned.Jeppiz (talk) 01:26, 15 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Jayron, would a verbose but standard template be useful to you in declining those inappropriate reports? I'm thinking about something that includes a Venn diagram drawing, to explain that vandalism is only one type of unwanted ("bad") edit—"edits that create problems" and the subset of "edits that create problems and the editor was intentionally trying to create problems". Or maybe we should try better instructions. I have some ideas; I'll post them at WT:AIV. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:34, 18 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I don't believe in templates. If someone is worth talking to, they're worth my time to directly talk to them, not templating. I never use user talkpage warning templates. If I feel the need to explain something to someone on their user talk page, I have the decency and respect to leave a personalized message, TYVM. --Jayron3219:03, 18 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
There are a few things that could be done. The most logical (and, unfortunately, the most unlikely) would be to tighten registration procedures to ban IP editing and require some sort of significant registration process to edit. This would reduce vandalism by an enormous percentage, lightening workload. Second would be an unbundling of tools to enlarge the anti-vandalism force. Third would be an expansion of the pool of administrators through an easing of the RFA process. We approved a record low 22 new admins in 2014 and are on a pace to set a new record low in 2015. Desysopping of inactive administrators will once again top the 50 mark. There are less than 600 administrators with 30 or more edits in the last 2 months, which is a very loose definition of "active." The question is: how many are really needed? Carrite (talk) 20:33, 13 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with the IP aspect. A vast majority of the vandalism and misconduct I have to deal with comes from IPs who feel they can hide behind the veil of anonymity. As long as registration is free, I personally don't think that it violates the "an encyclopedia anyone can edit" mantra, though from what I've observed, there's quite an opposition to this though, correct? Sergecross73msg me13:44, 14 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
There are two theories here that could do with being tested and proved, qualified or refuted. The first is that allowing IP editing is the secret sauce that built this site, partly because a large proportion of goodfaith editors start with a few IP edits before they create an account. The second is that most vandals will do the minimum necessary to vandalise wikipedia - so if we require them to create accounts they will do so and thereby become harder to spot, and the editors we lose by requiring registration will predominately be goodfaith ones. Personally I'd expect to see either theory if properly tested would give sufficient grounds to justify continued IP editing. But if someone persuaded the WMF to do the research and both theories were tested and refuted then I would be willing to change my view . ϢereSpielChequers05:33, 17 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks Monty, well argued disagreement is always the best thing. Support is nice, badly argued disagreement annoying, but well argued disagreement is both nice and instructive. I agree that I've only rarely see AIV with a big backlog, though those rare occasions are all recent. I agree it's not the my main concern. About AN/I, I would argue that closure is always a good thing. Quite a large number of unclosed cases tend to come back sooner rather than later. I'm not saying that does not happen with closed cases, but if a case has been closed and comes back without any major development, it's a very easy close by just referring to the old one. Even though closing cases take some time, I'd posit it may be a time saver in the long run. And Sergecross73, of course "on the decline" is a more accurate description than on the brink of collapse, pardon my somewhat dramatical exaggeration. But ideally, we would not want decline either, right? Carrite, I think you nail it, thanks for those very relevant (and slightly worrying) statistics. With an already low number of active admins, and an actual decline in the number of admins both in 2014 and (on current trends) in 2015, it's little wonder the situation is becoming more difficult. While I agree with Sergecross73 about decline rather than collapse, it's not rare than a slow decline rapidly becomes a large decline when a critical point is reached. The harder it gets to edit and admin, the less admins and good users are likely to stay, making it still harder to edit and admin, and downwards we go.Jeppiz (talk) 21:17, 13 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
How is this their problem in particular, out of all the people who might help? I'm thinking of the 500 to 600 admins who are still editing regularly, the Wikipedians who could probably become admins if they ran at RfA, and non-admins, who only differ from admins in not having extra buttons to push. Who would want to run for RfA if being a new admin makes you responsible for problems that aren't yours? - Dank (push to talk) 12:55, 15 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
No backlog is anyone's problem, but all these alluded to helping out with backlogs, and surprise surprise, none of them have stepped up to the challenge. I picked those three as they were the most visable. You'd expect them to at least being active. I guess not. And speaking of the other 500 to 600 admins - what the hell are they all doing? I bet if anyone started a thread on this very board questioning one of them, it would be locked down in no time at all, but when there's work to be done, they're nowhere to be seen. LugnutsDick Laurent is dead18:17, 15 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
To clarify, my goal here isn't to get this page "locked down" when you or anyone says something uncomfortable about what admins are or aren't doing; you're asking reasonable questions. There's work to be done here that's not getting done, and there's a wide range of approaches the community might take to make the workload a little easier or get more people doing the work ... I don't have a position on that, and I'd prefer to stay neutral. Until the community makes some progress on this, the best we can hope for is to at least avoid various negative feedback loops that might make the problem worse. For instance, if new admins become scapegoats for the larger problem, then obviously, we'll have fewer new admins. (Not that you're scapegoating them, but that's the risk of focusing on the newest admins.) OTOH, it wouldn't be inappropriate to get the word out to all active admins, and to everyone else who might be willing to help, that we're falling behind on some things that we probably don't want to fall behind on, and help would be appreciated (help of any kind that lightens the load or gets more work done ... for instance, help with triage, or making the jobs easier, or figuring out better ways to delegate work, or increasing throughput at RfA). - Dank (push to talk) 18:36, 15 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Everyone is a volunteer here, not an employee. The problems are not the fault of the 500-600 remaining admins, they are the fault of the stupidity that is RFA. Of course there's going to be a gradual reduction in admins; people lose interest, get jobs, have families, and all the other things that reduce their time to edit here. When I passed RfA in 2007 I had plenty of time to edit Wikipedia; now I don't. I get a few minutes here and there, or if I have a bit of time I hit the AfD backlog for a little while. But the facts are these; in 2014 there were 34 succesful RfAs ... in 2007 there were 408. Until the community gets its act together and makes RfA easier to pass (or gets rid of some of the stupidity that causes admins to not bother any more), the situation will continue to deteriorate. Black Kite (talk)18:42, 15 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
22 in 2014, and we're on track to produce fewer this year. It's not as bleak as it sounds, but there are decisions that need to be made. - Dank (push to talk) 19:26, 15 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I would run for RfA and reduce the backlog if someone could only convince me that one of the following isn't true: [A] I would go through hell during the RfA, and [B] I would almost certainly lose the election. In other words, I would tolerate going through hell if I thought that there was a chance of winning, and I would take my chances despite almost certain failure if doing so did not involve going through hell. I just want to help the encyclopedia in wikignomish ways and have zero desire for "power" over others.
BTW, I know exactly how to become an admin. Stop getting involved in discussions at AN, ANI, RSN, etc,, stop mediating at DRN, pick a poor-quality, uncontroversial article that nobody seems to be editing or watching and create high-quality content, withdrawing and moving on if anyone disagrees with me in any way, and repeat that pattern for at least a year. In other words, avoid anything that in any way resembles what an administrator is asked to do. Again, I do want to help but the price is too high. --Guy Macon (talk) 05:39, 16 May 2015 (UTC).[reply]
I agree with User:Guy Macon. The procedure to become an admin has become one of avoiding all controversies and bringing a few articles up to FA status; but bringing articles up to FA status has nothing to do with how the mop is used. The RFA process is seriously broken, and gives too much attention to editors who have Enemies Lists. The English Wikipedia community is not about to come up with a consensus on how to fix RFA. It is time for the WMF to do something, but the WMF thinks that the English Wikipedia is a grand success story, which it is if one looks only at the numbers of articles and editors. Robert McClenon (talk) 15:01, 16 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I don't see the community as collectively misbehaving or slow-witted, on this or any issue. I think we decided in previous RfCs that the best course was to avoid any drastic changes ... and, knowing as little as I know, I'm not in a position to say that was the wrong call. I'm not sure how we proceed if a future RfC determines that something should be done, but we can't agree on what to do; that's going to require some finesse. - Dank (push to talk) 16:39, 16 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
That's all true, to be an admin you have to do things which you wouldn't expect an admin to do and even then do you really want to go through an RFA only to receive your new toys but with a higher scrutiny and a reluctance to ever use them because someone is waiting for you to trip up? I don't gnome in any big way, stuck to RFPP these days but I'd still like to take on the dumb mundane tasks nobody else wants to, we need admins who'll do gruntwork other admins wouldn't because they were selected as content creators, not for their skills in actual areas where an admin is necessary. I wouldn't ever pass an RFA as it stands now so most of this is moot besides the fact we really have no clue how to gain new admins that'll use the tools anymore than how to retain editors. tutterMouse (talk) 06:59, 16 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
@Lugnuts: I've checked the logs for the three new admins you mention, all have easily enough logged admin actions since their RFAs to qualify as active admins, so I think it unfair to single them out - may I suggest you strike your "none of them have stepped up to the challenge. I picked those three as they were the most visable. You'd expect them to at least being [sic] active." We do have admins who have yet to perform a hundred logged actions, none of those three are in that group, and I suspect some who are are among the admins who got the bit in order to get rollback before it was unbundled. We may once have had new admins going through RFA and then not using the tools, but I don't see that happening now. ϢereSpielChequers16:33, 18 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
That assumes they knew they you were criticising them and they had something to reply to. How did you inform them of this thread? I don't see a note from you on their talkpages. ϢereSpielChequers07:00, 19 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
They were linked in my initial post with the username template, so the notification system would have alerted them to this thread. So they either don't have that function turned on (which would be odd in their role) or they've chosen to ignore this. I'll go with the latter. LugnutsDick Laurent is dead09:32, 19 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Your ping to User:Opabinia regalis would not have worked because you corrected the user name in a second edit—notifications do not respond to such edits because that would re-notify any correctly listed users. In addition, there have been reports of apparently correct notifications not being received, so in general they should not be relied on. Johnuniq (talk) 10:58, 19 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I love how they're being defended to the bitter end. You'd think a board titled Administrators' noticeboard with the heading "This page is for posting information and issues that affect administrators" would be looked at by administrators on a regular basis. C'mon, lets hear the next poor excuse for them. LugnutsDick Laurent is dead11:02, 19 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I did get a ping and looked at some of the entries in WP:CFD, but decided the oldest needed too much background knowledge for me to make an effective judgement call on any of them. I meant to report this back but got sidetracked with real life. Lugnuts, you could always try stepping up to the mantle and request an RfA nomination yourself, particularly if you've identified an area of deficiency. Ritchie333(talk)(cont)14:19, 26 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
There are inevitably parts of a 5,000,000 article domain (not to metion so many multiples of administrations) that never stood up, so collapse is not possible. Effective triage still occurs, but whole swathes are built not to be cared about. Alanscottwalker (talk) 13:04, 15 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Fundamentally, a consensus driven organization where everyone can participate will never be efficient. It has wonderful virtues, but efficiency is not one of them. If one has to be efficient, one needs fixed authority, and thebest part of our approach to vandalism is some purely mechanical operations, such as the edit filters. I think that part of the problem is our tendency to prefer discussion to work. Looking both here and at ANI, for example, or at some of the other noticeboards, we are spending an inordinate amount of time to decide simple questions, including repeating ones. Some of it is inevitable because we have no way of permanently fixing decisions nor is it easy to think of how a consensus based system could do so. (NOT PRINT is a handicap here, not a help; with print, what is printed is printed & the discussions are limited to the new items) . But some of it could be helped by an agreement on focus and time limits. There are too many of us (myself sometimes included) who often seem to be here primarily to show off how well we can argue. DGG ( talk ) 02:37, 16 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I can't improve on what Jeppiz said above: "The harder it gets to edit and admin, the less admins and good users are likely to stay, making it still harder to edit and admin, and downwards we go." The question for me is whether any kind of negative feedback loops are kicking in yet, and if so, what we can do about that, before people get discouraged and the problem becomes harder to solve. Does anyone want to offer to look at supply-and-demand problems concerning admin-related work over the next month or so and make some kind of report? Does anyone want to offer to help close some relevant RfC in about a month? - Dank (push to talk) 14:28, 16 May 2015 (UTC) (I don't mean this should be formal, only that it would be nice to give everyone a month so everyone gets a chance to have a say and no one is rushed, just as we do for RfCs.) - Dank (push to talk) 15:25, 16 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
The sad part is that, were I to become an admin, working on various backlogs is pretty much the only admin work I would do. I really have no desire to deal with difficult editors and their behavior problems using any tool other than persuasion. Boring, repetitive work, on the other hand, is very relaxing to me after my real-life job of dealing with disputes between engineers. --Guy Macon (talk) 05:09, 17 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Is there a level of adminship that would allow a worker drone to be upgraded to have powers of deletion? I'm guessing not, but Guy highlights a good point that would help. LugnutsDick Laurent is dead08:25, 17 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Deletion is harder to unbundle than blocking. I can't remember the last time we had an RFA fail because the candidate had been making overzealous AIV reports, but we get plenty of RFAs fail because the community doesn't think the candidate is ready for the deletion button. I can think of several RFAs that have failed because the candidate had been overzealous with tagging for speedy deletion at Newpage patrol. ϢereSpielChequers09:00, 17 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Difficulty of unbundling certain tools seems like a problem, but it really isn't. If we as a community decided that we wanted to unbundle deletion, we could simply have RfAs for no-deletion admins, have them promise not to delete, and desysop them if they do. There are all sorts of things admins are not allowed to do that are technically allowed by the Wikimedia software. This would simply become one more of them. There are zero technical obstacles to unbundling. The only obstacle is that we have not agreed that unbundling is something that we want to do. --Guy Macon (talk) 19:53, 17 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Looking at the successful unbundlings such as template editing, file mover and of course Rollbacker, there are some common threads. These are tools that can be used independently of the rest of the admin toolset, there are people who wouldn't pass RFA but we would trust with that tool and the solution was to actually separate the tool so it could be given out on its own (I don't know why, but there are a number of RFA !voters who will oppose candidates who give undertakings that they will never use certain parts of the toolset). Blocking new and unregistered vandals fits all those criteria, and non admins can judge whether the block was a good one or not. Unbundling deletion would be a very different kettle of fish - I can't see how anyone could be trusted to delete but not to be an admin, non admins cannot check deleted pages to see if they agree with deletions. ϢereSpielChequers08:49, 18 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I've been keeping an eye on RFA numbers and admin numbers for several years now, and at first glance we have a huge problem with RFA having collapsed in early 2008. But first glances are notoriously misleading, the early 2008 change at RFA came immediately after the unbundling of Rollback, we have since had thousands of rollbackers appointed, and many of us support the flip side of that - "good vandalfighter" is no longer sufficient qualification to pass RFA, some examples of adding reliably sourced content are now required. If Rollback had been unbundled a couple of years earlier I believe many vandalfighting admins would never have gone through RFA. Of course the logical corollary of that is that we should also unbundle "block Ips and Newbies" so that vandalfighters can block vandals but only admins can block or unblock the regulars. The subsequent decline is more troubling and has put us below replacement level, but the good thing is that once people become admins they usually stick around for a long time. So whilst I think the current situation unhealthy, and it can't be a good thing that eventually we will have insufficient admins, but at present I worry more because of the wikigeneration gulf that has emerged between an admin cadre dominated by people who have been admins for many years and an active editing community many of whom rightly or wrongly see adminship as out of reach. To me we will have entered a negative feedback stage when our remaining admins start giving up the tools because the number of stray requests on their talkpage to use the admin tools interferes with their hobby of editing, and from my own experience that is not even close. That said new and returning admins would be welcome, there are plenty of active editors who could easily pass RFA if they ran (if you think that might be you feel free to email me). ϢereSpielChequers08:52, 17 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I think there is probably a tipping point for successful RfAs. Candidates need experience, and that bar has risen substantially over the years, but the longer someone has been here the more chance there is that they have upset some people and that those people will come out of the woodwork. I am an extreme example but there is a running gag about how many sockfarms and POV pushers would turn up at any RfA by me. - Sitush (talk) 09:13, 17 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
There used to be a theory that if you hadn't made admin before you completed 10,000 edits you never would, that theory has been long disproved, now we even have one or two !voters who will oppose candidates who have done less than 10,000 edits. As for the idea that the longer you are editing the more wiki enemies you acquire, I don't see RFA working that way, opposers who drag up old examples are likely to get a response along the lines of "thanks for demonstrating that the candidate wasn't ready two years ago, do you have any examples that would be relevant to this RFA?" though usually more diplomatically phrased. There are some issues that don't get an editor banned but would torpedo an RFA, however in my experience the RFA community is very focussed on recent months, things from years back are relevant if they show that someone has a skill, not if they used not to have it. ϢereSpielChequers09:27, 18 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
It's pleasant that there is some social pushback against "ancient history" votes, but does a reply like that actually change the vote? After posting a comment like that, do you see people changing their votes from "I am voting against this candidate, because I'm still holding a grudge from five years ago" to "Sure, I guess I support that editor after all"? Or does it stay with "I'm still voting against that candidate, even if WSC doesn't respect my rationale"? RFA is fundamentally vote-driven, and bureaucrats can only exercise a limited amount of discretion. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:51, 18 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I honestly can't remember any votes that I would dismiss as "holding a grudge from five years ago". But sometimes yes challenging opposes does change a individual vote, more often it sways other !voters. Just look at how this one went from April 25/26 to the end result, yes at least one oppose was struck but more importantly the pattern of voting switched and it ended as a success. On that occasion one issue was whether we judge a former admin on her previous RFA or on the many admin actions she had done after that RFA. We had another one earlier in the year where a candidate was opposed partly because some of their early articles were recently deleted, unfortunately we weren't able to turn that round before the candidate withdrew, but one of the opposers did strike part of their rationale. I'm fairly sure that the opposers in that RFA were assuming that recently having articles tagged for deletion meant recently creating articles that merited deletion, and that the RFA would have gone differently if the nominator had had access to deleted revisions and pointed out that the candidate had created articles on some not quite notable subjects years ago but hadn't objected to them recently being deleted. The later you are in an RFA the harder it is to turn it round, but I have seen RFAs collapse on day 6 or 7, and also seen RFAS that were heading for no consensus turn into successes. ϢereSpielChequers06:47, 19 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Content creation work without the tools is incredibly painful. I would happily do piles of boring admin tasks just to have them back. Hawkeye7 (talk) 09:46, 17 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Why? I don't see that at all. It is frustrating having to run around to find an admin but we cannot use tools where we are involved anyway, so there should be no pain due to lack of holding them. - Sitush (talk) 09:49, 17 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
There are lots of simple actions that you can do yourself where WP:INVOLVED does not apply because they are uncontroversial and undisputed. The most common is moving pages from your draft space to the mainspace. Hawkeye7 (talk) 20:19, 18 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, like that. It leaves behind a redirect. Like me, you have multiple sandboxes and intend to reuse it by overwriting the redirect with another article. But when you have multiple articles to move you have to resort to a CSD request to remove the the redirect. Hawkeye7 (talk) 20:39, 18 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Isolated cases of vandalism don't seem to be an existential threat because the problem will tend to be self-correcting — when readers notice significant vandalism, they will tend to mobilise to correct it. The biggest issue seems to be structural problems which require deep knowledge and access rights to correct. For example, AFD is kept running by some mix of templates, bots, tradition and whatever-else. I have been patrolling it for years but still don't fully understand its ramshackle structure. Today, I was reviewing the daily contents at WP:AFD/T and noticed that the list of discussions had a huge list of other stuff embedded in it. I think I've found the cause but am not sure I should interfere. Anyway, my point is that structural glitches like that pose the biggest threat because they make it difficult for the general mass of readers and editors to engage with and resolve the individual detail problems. Andrew D. (talk) 09:59, 17 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Vandalism is a massive problem and a very serious one for BLPs etc, which extends a lot further than articles just about individual people. AfD is trivial by comparison and is also "self-correcting" in the sense that unless an article is salted, it can be recreated. In fact, it can be recreated even after salting, just not under the same title. - Sitush (talk) 10:03, 17 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
One of my hopes for WP:Flow is to (eventually) replace the ramshackle deletion structures with a purpose-built workflow tool that does exactly what we want, automatically, every time, with very little need for bots and manually applied templates. (Also, if Commons' proposes to delete an image that is in use here, then I want to be able to read and participate in their deletion process without leaving the English Wikipedia.) Then we can focus on the actual content, rather than the infrastructure. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:55, 18 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
If I were a closer in a relevant RfC, I'd have to pay more attention than usual to the mountain of text already devoted to the subject, and I'd be sifting through all the suggestions to try to find where they intersect in some kind of minimal recommended change, on the "do no harm" theory. - Dank (push to talk) 18:19, 17 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
And one more thing. (You can tell I'm a Wikipedian, I'm replying to myself.) Every time there's an RfC involving RfA, the throughput at RfA goes up ... and then drops down lower than before afterwards. So even if people are making the argument during the RfC that that month's numbers at RfA aren't worrying, the projected number of first-time admins for 2015 that I would be using if the RfC started today would be 12, because RfA has only produced 5 first-time admins over the last 5 months (along with 3 former admins who regained the tools at RfA ... that's an important number too, but it's a different number). - Dank (push to talk) 22:19, 17 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I remember when I first started diving into doing a lot of editing back in 2013, I thought about trying an RfA. I even got a little encouragement. But after looking at a few respected editors' evaluation lists for RfA candidates, I didn't see how anyone who hadn't devoted themselves to extensively editing a wide variety of areas of Wikipedia for less than 3-5 years could ever pass. And that is assuming that they haven't made a lot of enemies! And that's really weird when you look at old RfAs and find editors becoming admins after three months of editing and less than 1,000 edits.
I look at Oppose votes in RfAs and sometimes they are cast as a result of a single bad call at an AfD or a bad encounter between editors, especially the Opposes that come later on during the week can seem a bit random and offer no explanation. Some editors see decent, qualified editors get shot down at an RfA and decide, "Why put myself through that?" It doesn't help that a fair number of editors who are unsuccessful at an RfA end up then leaving Wikipedia.
If I could change the RfA process, I'd make editing at places like the Help desk, the reference desks, DRN or the Teahouse just as important as writing an FA. It seems to me that being an effective admin relies more on people skills than content creation. Just my 2 cents. LizRead!Talk!22:05, 17 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
There has long been a concern amongst some editors that admins in general don't adequately appreciate heavy content contributors,(and thus treat such contributors less favorably than we should when it comes to deleting their hard work, or blocking them) and that the solution is to recruit admins only from those who are themselves heavy content contributors. I think this as faded a fair bit at RFA in the last couple years, but even when it was still going strong, it was possible to get through RFA without a huge amount of content work. You just needed to be a good candidate in other respects, and proactively try to address their concerns. But then very few people are perfect, coming to RFA prepared, knowing what people are going to see as deficiencies, and being prepared to address their concerns goes a long way, even if it flies in the face of the no-big-deal mantra. Monty84500:05, 18 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I think Liz is right. If you want more admins, then you need to stop making RFA feel like a fraternity hazing program. It's not enough to point out the irony between the "no big deal" fairy tale and the reality (which is more like "preparing for the US presidential debate" than like "no big deal"). You have to actually stop punishing candidates for applying. And if you want good ones, then you need to focus on people who have specialized skills (e.g., tech or copyright) or who are good at dealing with people and dispute resolution. It's far more important for admins to be able to deal with people than to produce brilliant prose. People get desysopped for treating people poorly, not for grammar errors or boring writing styles. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:03, 18 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
We used to require at least one FA before an RfA, but when we tightened the FA requirements, it was felt that this was too tough on some editors who might otherwise become good admins. We should reinstate the requirement. Hawkeye7 (talk) 20:27, 18 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
The result of that short-lived requirement was a bunch of "featured portals" that nobody cared about enough to maintain. It was a pure hoop-jumping exercise, and I'm glad that the requirement was killed. WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:40, 27 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
@Monty845 and WhatamIdoing, I don't recall RfAs that required candidates to be "heavy" content contributors. What I remember – and still support – is the principle that admins should have demonstrable hands-on experience of finding reliable sources, defending them on article talk pages and successfully incorporating them into articles. Candidate's specialized knowledge or people techniques are irrelevant if they don't have the basic skills we look for in every editor. - Pointillist (talk) 22:26, 25 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
It doesn't have to be everyone. If only 5% of respondents personally choose to vote against anyone without "heavy" content contributions, then those 5% oppose votes will break some candidates (and discourage even more from applying).
I wonder, though, if you've really thought through your comment about "specialized knowledge". Does a Lua programmer actually need to know how to incorporate sources into an article to be useful to us? How about a copyright specialist? For a person whose intended role is saying "Yup, another copyvio at AFC, push the delete button" a hundred times a month, does it really matter if that person can create a well-sourced article? WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:40, 27 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, thanks, I've thought this through plenty of times. What you are describing is an argument for unbundling in specialist areas such as copyright. Anyone who has the power to block a contributor should demonstrate that they can perform the basic tasks for creating article content. - Pointillist (talk) 23:45, 28 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Pointillist, please explain this. Imagine that I've got expert knowledge about copyright law (clearly a hypothetical scenario ;-). Imagine that I've never created an article and don't have much interest in doing so. How will my hypothetical lack of experience in writing articles impair my ability to apply WP:COPYVIO correctly, including (if necessary) blocking a user who persists in adding wholesale copyright violations to Wikipedia?
I'm not actually arguing for unbundling (e.g., so that copyvio experts can delete but can't block). I'm trying to figure out how not being proficient at writing articles would make me (the hypothetical copyvio expert) be incompetent at handing copyvio-related admin tasks, i.e., at handling an admin task that has nothing to do with writing articles. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:05, 1 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]
@WhatamIdoing, if the hypothetical expert were purely performing deletions of 100% copyvio material, without any discussion and without any blocking, it might be OK. But that's an extreme scenario. We would be giving all the tools to the expert, but trusting that he/she wouldn't use them any purpose other than copyvio deletions. It is in effect unbundling but based on a promise by the user rather than technical means, similar to Trappist the monk's RfA, where the candidate requested adminship basically on a temporary basis pending the decision about creating the unbundled Template editor user right. Nevertheless, the candidate was expected to demonstrate "clear, civil communication skills" and "articles to which they've added reliably sourced content" (see support !vote by WereSpielChequers (talk·contribs)). The thing is that it's hard to trust someone without having seen them working with other people on articles, so I would recommend that your expert show some willingness to contribute in that way. In the answer to his RfA Q2 Trappist the monk said "I have done enough content creation to know that my interests lie elsewhere". That's all we need to know. - Pointillist (talk) 12:10, 1 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I would be concerned if we had an admin or indeed anyone removing copyvio without "clear, civil communication skills". I suspect that copyvio is often a "goodfaith" error made by people who need to be guided into writing things in their own words and citing them to reliable sources. So I can make a stronger case for an admin specialising in copyvio removal needing to communicate how to put things in your own words and reliably cite them than someone like me who fixes typos, deletes vandalism and actions user requests for U1 and G7 deletion. ϢereSpielChequers17:02, 1 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Entirely agree with your good faith + communication points. Personally I don't believe a purely "Yup, another copyvio at AFC, push the delete button" admin role really exists, but I was sidestepping that issue to make a wider point about single-purpose admins. - Pointillist (talk) 22:32, 1 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I agree that communication skills are necessary. What I don't agree is that it is necessary to create article content to be able to do the necessary things for working in this area, which are:
accurately determining whether or not an edit is a copyright violation,
deleting pages that must be deleted because of copyright laws,
communicating with the editors who made the copyright mistakes, and
(yes, actually) blocking editors who persist in flagrant copyvios despite ample education on the subject.
So let me repeat my question, perhaps more clearly: If you had an otherwise perfect admin candidate, except that this candidate had never created so much as a stub (but had made tens of thousands of edits to clean up other people's copyvios), then which of these four steps would the candidate be incompetent at?
The one in which he uses expert legal knowledge? Nope, that's not it.
The one in which he pushes a button to delete the page? Nope, that's not it.
The one in which he talks to people? Nope, a brief glance at ANI proves that's not it, because we have lots of "content creators" with poor social skills and many "non-content creators" who are great at dealing with editors (especially new ones).
The one in which he pushes another button to prevent people from continuing to cause legal problems? Nope, that's not it.
That's the end of my list. His "failure" to create articles doesn't seem to be relevant to any of these. You are claiming not only that this candidate would be bad at something in this process, but also that if he wrote a couple of GAs, then he'd suddenly have some important skills and knowledge that would help him perform these four tasks. I'd like to know exactly what directly relevant skills he acquires through the content creation process, that he cannot have any other way—what skills he does not have, but must have, so that we could justify treating this as a "requirement", even informally.
Alternatively, you could perhaps conclude, as I did, that content creation is logically not especially relevant for every single admin, and that therefore we should not speak of it as a "requirement", even informally. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:21, 2 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]
WhatamIdoing writing content and creating new articles can be very different things as far as RFA is concerned. We have millions of articles that could be expanded, improved or just referenced. I vaguely recollect one oppose !vote for a candidate who had never started a new article, I've seen several oppose votes for candidates who had created new articles that were good enough for a newbie to have done but insufficient for an admin, and I'm sure there have been RFAs that have failed for that reason. So to answer your specific question, the fact that your candidate had never created a completely new article would be irrelevant. Whether or not they had demonstrated sufficient communication skills to be an admin should be easily determined from looking at their talkpage and other interactions - you don't need to have written content to have demonstrated sufficient communication skills to be an admin, and there are some very good content contributors who are not admins because of their lack of tact and diplomacy in dealing with other editors. But knowing how to explain reliable sourcing to someone who has contributed CopyVio is best judged by looking at the content that they have cited to reliable sources, and the way they have responded to people whose contributions they have removed. To pass RFA your candidate would need to convince the community that they know how to do this. An admin who specialises in removing copyvio will get lots of queries from people who want to learn how to do edits that will be accepted. Those of us who want to make the pedia a less bitey place know that candidates such as the one you described have to be checked and only made admin if they can be trusted to communicate our sourcing standards clearly and civilly. ϢereSpielChequers09:29, 2 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Speaking as a relatively new, semi-casual editor on the sidelines, I'd say I'd consider doing an RfA on the sole basis of helping out with some of the backlogs and other admin-related gruntwork that needs to be done behind the scenes because I just like doing that sort of thing, but I'm similarly deterred by the heavy emphasis placed on frontend content creation and avoiding squabblesome areas out of the way of mainspace... I'm not the greatest at doing more than gnomey edits and I'm not knowledgeable in topic areas that merit new articles, nor do I know enough to improve existing articles to GA or FA-- not to mention I only joined a few months ago, WP:NOTNOW or whatever, so in general there's a whole host of reasons I'd be turned down on the spot. But I just find myself void of things to do and dare I say it bored, after a couple edits and talkpage posts here and there in the articles I feel comfortable editing, which is frustrating when I know there are so many other parts of the 'pedia back-end that could use mopmeisters who are fine working backstage, but the process is so dramatic and unnecessarily latched onto things that don't determine administrative aptitude of an editor that it's not worth the trouble.
I'm pretty sure that this doesn't necessarily mean WP is "falling apart" per se, but it'll likely continue shambling along in a lumpy, broken mess unless a few things are tweaked. BlusterBlasterkablooie!19:10, 18 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I think BlusterBlaster put it perfectly. I would enjoy doing behind the scenes admin work, stuff like AIV requests and move requests that need admin closure to complete. I would like to call myself good at communicating with editors and the like... Sure I may not make the most articles, and I may not have been here very long, but I think my editing history shows I have good judgement and a solid knowledge of Wikipedia policies. But if I took that to an RfA, I would get a speedy not now closure with probably less than 10% support.
Speaking as an editor who's been here a reasonably long time (I've even come up at ANI a couple of times!)...I tend to come here to do gnomeish edits as a way of helping out without getting overly-involved (for instance, I tend to avoid WP on evenings and weekends). I'd consider throwing my hat in the ring at RfA (and my User page has indicated such for quite awhile now), but it seems like I'd be inviting a huge spotlight onto myself for, at best, the chance to help out in somewhat more meaningful ways, and at worst, the chance to attract all kinds of attention that I'm happy not to have in the course of my regular Wikipedia editing. It's a shame that editors who want to help, but generally only in a fairly-limited capacity, can't be given precisely the tools they need to do those jobs; perhaps that would diminish the drama somewhat. Anyway, these comments are worth pretty much exactly the amount you paid to read them. DonIago (talk) 19:40, 18 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Arbitrary tldr break
I'm confused on the question of how far we're falling behind in admin chores. Are some apparent backlogs not really backlogs? I don't know the best way to get at this; some kind of RfC where people could discuss problems and solutions might help, unless there's another way to get the information that isn't coming to me. - Dank (push to talk) 02:25, 19 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
What is actually badly needed, recommended, but does not seem to be ever attempted is a real analysis of backlogs with the conclusion on where we are standing now. What I see already for a long time are just random statements of the type "look, we have an AIV 24h backlog, it is horrible - No, we have a CFD backlog of 3 month, it is the end of the world". From my experience, 24h AIV backlog is indeed horrible and means vandals are effectively not being stopped at the moment, whereas 3 months CfD backlog is certainly not the end of the world - there are too few policies about categories, most discussions inevitably turn subjective, and often opinions bale to shift the consensus are still coming after two months of discussion. I am not sure how and who can perform this analysis for different types of backlogs, but I would find it difficult to discuss unbundling without these data.--Ymblanter (talk) 18:33, 19 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Agreed, and I'd also like to know why we promote fewer admins every year. Is it okay with everyone if I spend some time surveying recent graduates of RfA, asking them what factors caused them to wait as long as they did? I'm asking because I don't want to compromise my neutrality, and miss a chance to keep helping as a closer. I wont suggest any answers, I'll just record and present the data. - Dank (push to talk) 00:41, 20 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
push to talk, I see no problem with doing that, but I suspect that will be like asking people who just subscribed to a newspaper why there are fewer newspaper subscriptions every year. How about asking those who failed and those who refuse to run such as myself? --Guy Macon (talk) 06:16, 26 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
(Btw, Guy, I didn't get pinged by that, you probably have to put "Dank" after the pipe character to ping.) I apologize, I've changed my mind, there's a risk of losing my job as closer if I do anything at all. I'm ready to help, but only in the end-stages of a relevant RfC. I can repeat here what I said at WT:RFA, though: if we do get 12 first-time admins this year, I don't imagine anyone would count on more than 3 or 4 of those, max, to be highly active after a few years. We've been losing more than 80 admins per year the past few years. There's no reason to believe that nothing can be done about this ... there are plenty of people who would like to help out in some way but don't see a role where they fit in. There are hard judgment calls to make, of course, and this is a hard subject to tackle. But the consequences of never tackling it are pretty obvious; the current trends aren't sustainable. It's hard to get everyone on board even with proposals that would make a small difference ... but hard isn't the same as impossible. Thus endeth the sermon. - Dank (push to talk) 13:30, 26 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Correction: According to the figures at #Some limited data below, the number of active admins hasn't dropped over the last year. I should have mentioned that I only had figures through last November. - Dank (push to talk) 19:39, 26 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
To clarify: this new data suggests that, over the past 12 months, the number of admins becoming inactive or leaving equalled the number returning from a period of inactivity. It's not likely that attrition has suddenly disappeared. Before the next RfC, we really need to know whether the recently active admins came back just to edit, or whether they're having an impact on whatever backlogs we've got, or something in between. If everyone votes assuming one answer and we find out halfway through that what everyone was assuming was wrong ... ugh. - Dank (push to talk) 17:16, 27 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Just find something you care about, be it an article or a particular administrative task, and pour your heart into it. That way all at once you'll enjoy yourself, you'll make a difference, and you'll be making an impact such that what seemed so insurmountable will quickly prove not to be so. A few years ago I took aim at the unreferenced BLPs, and the number at the time went from 450 to 150, all BLPPRODded, in a month and change. Obviously it didn't stay that way, and it also didn't change the fact that I had a good time resolving a serious problem with 350+ articles. Don't get all freaked out if other backlogs that you aren't working on build up, just focus on yourself; if you find you want to work on one of those then go for it, and don't ever force yourself to do something you really don't have your heart set on. There's always someone to do even those things everyone thinks no one wants to do—I don't know how many people have told me I'm crazy for my interest in sorting out the absolute worst of the ethnic conflicts—and there's no sense torturing yourself on the basis that you owe something to a volunteer effort. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 23:37, 19 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Personally, I'd love to help fix some backlogs; but running the gauntlet of RfA is not apppealing. Like Sitush, I spend a lot of time working on controversial topics, which guarantees loud opposition at RfA, which tends to select for candidates who've rarely annoyed any other editors and, thus, by definition, it favours admin-candidates who have had less involvement in trying to fix en.wikipedia's most pressing problems.That's the system we've chosen. bobrayner (talk) 19:00, 22 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
RfA is really no longer as bad as it was when it was suggested in 2011 by Jimbo Wales that that it is (or was) 'a horrible and broken process' . Unfortunately there are plenty of newcomers to Wikipedia since that time who don't understand the damage they are doing with their trollish and/or disingenuos votes and IP (mostly block evasion) users. An in-depth study of RfA found that the problem is with the attitude of the voters rather than with the process itself. It was found that the vast majority of RfA participants are one-off voters and the rest of the pool of fairly regular voters is in fact, over time, quite transient. Those who were or had been voting at the time of the study who are still voting regularly are extremely few and sadly among thm are some who still refuse to allow the process to become less of an ordeal.
The voters who vote consistently but far from every RfA and who display intelligence in their voting should be encouraged to vote on every RfA - some of the people commenting in this discussion don't even do that so how do they expect serious change to take place?
That said, the bar is neither too high nor too low - it's simply set anew for each RfA depending on who turns out to vote. RfA generally does what it says on the tin and editors who have read the advice pages before they run will be clearly aware whether or not they are going to be wasting the community's time, and of course their own, and whether the experience is going to be a week of hell or a walk in the park. --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 21:03, 22 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Perhaps the fact that many of the current processes seem ridiculously inefficient is a factor, at least as much as the alleged gauntlet of RfA? Given the thankless admin workload, the contemptuous label 'mop' might almost have been designed to make diligent editors think twice about becoming candidates. Sometimes things have to get worse before they can get better. From this point of view a really precipitous "downward spiral" (@Jeppiz's term) in the number of active admins could just what we need to cull (or automate) the most time-consuming sacred cows and raise the status of adminship. - Pointillist (talk) 21:54, 25 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Interesting discussion. I don't have much to add, except that I remember a similar recent discussion (I think it was at the Village Pump, though darn if I can't find it...) in which the subject of creating a "bot" to automate the process of helping the current Admins search for suitable Admin candidates was brought up. That I think is an idea that might be worth pursuing. At the very least, it might be good if someone would take on the task of fixing (and updating?) Snottywong's Admin score tool as that, at least, might be something that could help people interested in being prospective Admins if they are even likely to qualify at an RfA or not. --IJBall (talk) 04:10, 26 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Snottywong's tool, while interesting, is really not very useful. The things it checks for are very minimal, and give perhaps 10 pieces of a 500 piece jigsaw puzzle. Look at User:Elen of the Roads, former arbitrator. Her score? 238. User:Hersfold, another former arbitrator; 235. Former arbitrator User:Jclemens, 265. Former arbitrator User:Shell Kinney, who hasn't edited in 4 years...275. According to the tool, "Scores over 500 are generally regarded as good". It appears the tool looks at just 4 things; whether or not a person has a user page (why does that matter towards being a good admin?), whether or not they have other user rights, whether or not they've been blocked (and how many times), and edit count. You get full points for edit count if you have at least 25k edits, yet we have 325 administrators with fewer than 25000 edits. --Hammersoft (talk) 14:27, 26 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, agreed – my point wasn't just to take Snottywong's old tool and use it as is (I think it's partially broken right now anyway, as I think some of the inputs it used to look for are gone...), but to take his old tool and improve it. And I don't view that as a "magic bullet" – but something (anything) that might be able to quantify how current editors might fare in at least some aspects of what comes up in an RfA would be all to the good. Because, right now, we've seen a bunch of comments in this thread from editors saying "Well I would help, but I'd never make it through an RfA..." which might not be as true as they think – if we could somehow "quantify" their Admin RfA potential, it might convince a few more people to give it a shot. (I've had separate thoughts on this issue, that I may share later, but it ultimately comes down to the Admins themselves deciding that there's a problem and then organizing a 'working group' to reach out to prospective candidates, and possibly also to reaching out to relatively inactive or semi-retired Admins to try to restoke their interest as well...) --IJBall (talk) 16:01, 26 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I'm all for more data, but this kind of thing has a "you get what you measure" self-fulfilling prophecy effect. This tool apparently gives full points for 25k (!!) edits - not sure what data the score was based on, but in my recent re-RfA a few people suggested a minimum standard of 10k. Empirically, that seems reasonable - I didn't look closely but I couldn't find another recent successful candidate under that number at the time of their RfA. On an individual level, nothing wrong with sticking with what works. And yet, on a collective basis, standards-ratcheting is really bad for the health of the overall process.
Many capable candidates are now getting to RfA much later in their "wiki-careers" than they used to, despite being obviously qualified well beforehand. This pattern:
deprives the community of months to years of admin activity by capable people;
deprives the community of any admin activity by capable people who aren't realistically going to keep ahead of standards inflation*;
selects for people with significant continuous volunteer availability, possibly perpetuating systemic bias and reducing the diversity of the admin corps;
results in a lack of admins with any semi-recent knowledge of the new user experience; and
communicates to new users that adminship is an inaccessible and bureaucratic Big Deal rather than just a way some trusted members of the community volunteer their time.
I've seen a few comments that the environment has improved since the bad old days, and I wasn't around to see the worst of it, but it does seem like you'll perceive an improved environment if the borderline cases don't run, leaving mostly clear passes and confused newbies. Opabinia regalis (talk) 07:51, 27 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
*This was a joke, but there's a point there: 10k edits at my pace would take around the same wall-clock time as getting a commercial pilot's license.
So basically, getting 25,000 edits, or a full 125-something-point edit score, would take as much time as the time required to get 2.5 commercial pilot's licenses? Epic Genius (talk) ±18:55, 27 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
On a serious note, it does look like RfA needs reform. We really do not need admins who were nominated mainly because their content work was good or because they never edited controversially. What we do need are admins who can make the right choices in blocking and page protection, and admins who, hopefully, can clear the administrator backlogs that are getting bigger each year. Adminship should not be viewed as a "super-user" status, but as a status in which dirtier tasks (such as page deletions, protections, and blocks) could be done without the backlog expanding to unmanageable proportions. Epic Genius (talk) ±18:55, 27 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Some limited data
Looking at the history of Wikipedia:List of administrators, we can track the number of active administrators over time. This is not the number of administrators, but the actual number of administrators who are active. "Active" is defined as 30 or more edits during the prior two months. Data points of note:
26 May 2015: Today, we have 602 active administrators.
26 May 2014: A year ago, it was 600.
26 May 2013: 683
28 May 2012: 707 (data missing for 26 May)
26 May 2011: 759
26 May 2010: 847
26 May 2009: 921
26 May 2008: 981
There's obviously been a decline, but it is interesting to note that we appear to have reached an equilibrium for the time being. There's been no net decline over the last 13 months (22 April 2014 was the first time it dropped to 600). This doesn't say anything about backlogs of course, but it does show the pool of administrators still active on the project has remained static for the last 13 months. --Hammersoft (talk) 16:46, 26 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
That's interesting data, but I'm starting to wonder if it doesn't paint the full picture. Because what I've noticed in my poking around the last month or two is how many of the "602" actually don't do much with their tools. I mean, in just that last little while, one high profile Admin (Swarm) has seemingly thrown in the towel (but would still show up as "active" as this happened recently...) while several others have had dust-ups at places like ANI which has apparently significantly diminished their enthusiasm and caused them to become much less active. And then there is the cadre of Admins who have had the bit for ages, but whose names I don't recognize and who seemingly don't use their tools much anymore... What would be really useful data is not the total number of "active" Admins according to the List of Admins (that definition of "active" is far too loose to be useful), but the number of truly active Admins – i.e. that number that have used their actual Admin tools 'X' number of times in the last 30 days, or whatever. I did check that recently, and most the usual names came up, but I didn't actually do a "count" to figure out how many of the "602" are really using their Admin tools actively... In any case, that is the data that would be truly useful to figuring out if there's a real problem right now or not. --IJBall (talk) 17:27, 26 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Well, running that tool for April 26 through today (removing bots) I find (defining 'active' as performing at least one admin action in the 30 days surveyed):
475 active admins.
The top ten most active of those are responsible for 41.8% of the administrator actions (67,665 actions)
The top 50 are responsible for 77.2%.
If you include bots in totals (103,438 actions) and percent of totals, bots do 34% of the admin actions.
Number of actions per active admin (burden): 142
For the same time period in 2014:
490 active admins.
The top ten most active of those are responsible for 37.1% of the administrator actions (63,302 actions)
The top 50 are responsible for 75.6%.
If you include bots in totals (76,261 actions) and percent of totals, bots do 16.9% of the admin actions.
Number of actions per active admin (burden): 129
For the same time period in 2010:
700 active admins.
The top ten most active of those are responsible for 38.3% of the administrator actions (93,853 actions)
The top 50 are responsible for 69.8%.
If you include bots in totals (101,537 actions) and percent of totals, bots do 7.6% of the admin actions.
Number of actions per active admin (burden): 134
Certainly the quantity of bot admin actions has increased dramatically over the years. Of note; the actual burden figure per admin has remained more or less static. --Hammersoft (talk) 17:59, 26 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you for putting together these numbers. I'm not sure how to compare these, given the rise of the admin bot. Do the actions per admin include bot actions? How many of those older actions could have been done by a bot? If the number of admin actions taken (NB not "needed", which is impossible to measure) is more or less stable, are these actions now harder/slower/more complicated cases (because the bots did all the easy ones)? WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:44, 27 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Minor point, here, but I think you and I may have different definitions of "active" in terms of Admin tools. While 476 Admins (including bots) used their tools at least once between 27 April and 27 May 2015, only 269 of those Admins used their tools 10 times or more in that month, and only 210 Admins used their tools 20 times or more. I was thinking more along the lines of a standard like that for "truly active", and I think that's the standard I'd use for comparing Admin "activity" over the years... --IJBall (talk) 16:47, 27 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Distribution of the fraction of total admins taking a given number of actions in one year.Distribution of the fraction of total admin actions taken by each admin in one year.
Here's some more limited data. I had a few minutes so I made some quick-and-dirty graphs of the statistics from the adminstats tool, comparing May 2014-May 2015 (blue) to May 2006-May 2007 (green). Result: the percent of admins taking at least 1 and fewer than 10 actions per year has greatly increased, but the percent taking over 100 actions has decreased. (Note this is admin actions, so that first category isn't necessarily just people making their obligatory one edit to avoid desysopping.) Of course, with fewer contributors, there's arguably less to do - and some formerly manual actions are being taken by adminbots - but the trend is clear enough. On the log graph you get a clearer sense that shares of the overall administrative burden used to be much more broadly distributed. We've concentrated admin actions in a smaller number of hands. This reduces diversity in administrative decision-making, increases the likelihood of burnout among the highly active admins, and makes the community vulnerable to backlogs and interruptions when those people do decide to reduce their activity levels.
There's plenty of discussion at the village pump about possible desysoppings as a solution to what appears to be a non-problem outside an isolated instance. Meanwhile the actual ongoing problem - concentration of the total administrative burden on a narrower base of editors - keeps going on. Opabinia regalis (talk) 04:29, 28 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
In 2006, there were admins running adminbots on their own accounts without bot flags. Technically this was a violation of the rules, but it was something of an open secret that we had both blocking and deletion bots operating. Dragons flight (talk) 05:01, 28 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not sure getting more Admins (to broaden that base using Admin tools) is something that can be solved until Admins get more proactive about. As I said above (I think... or somewhere, recently...), I think if Admins really want to increase the RfA rate, you're going to have to organize a working group on your end to figure out which longer-term or higher-yield editors you want to try to coax into running and then reach out to them. (Right now, I get the impression that this process is really ad hoc, and not "planned" or "organized" to any great degree.) P.S. Thanks for the figures (esp. the first one – that is interesting data that I was not expecting...). --IJBall (talk) 06:45, 28 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
The figures are quite, um, interesting. Does anyone find it weird that the most active admin, who has six times as many admin actions this past month as the next admin, is a bot that blocks proxies? We've got to find a way to automate many admin processes. The top 10 admins have performed 59,000 admin actions in the past 30 days, with over half of them by that proxy bot which apparently runs on magic, but there's got to be a way that we can get more admins into Wikipedia today, even with fewer and fewer editors actively editing Wikipedia. The solution, I think, could be by having bots clear some backlogs, manually assisted of course, but the X for deletion process could probably be good places to start. Epic Genius (talk) ±18:45, 28 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Dragons flight makes a good point about the challenge of comparing current and past adminbot actions - though a lot of people would have had to do some occasional unauthorized botting in order to explain the size of the discrepancy, and the effect should be balanced by the fact that there are now ubiquitous scripts to speed up bread-and-butter non-bot admin actions that don't require technical knowledge to use.
The suggestion of increased automation raises a good point. If the problem is backlogs, do we concentrate on trying to recruit more active admins to clear them, or refocus on increasing the productivity of the existing set? My argument way above is, more or less, that there are underappreciated social costs to low RfA throughput independent of the state of the backlogs. Opabinia regalis (talk) 23:45, 28 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I still find it remarkable that that out of, what, 1300 "active" admins, that top 50 admins do 3/4 of the heavy lifting. No wonder there is a problem with burnout, especially if the admin actions aren't noncontroversial and routine but involve difficult blocks or AfDs/deletions.
Unless it is just proxy blocking, I've found it unnerving to consider how many admin acts are conducted by bots. What other actions do they take, do they block editors or delete articles? Because those acts should have a human being okaying them unless a decision has been made by an admin and it's just a technicality that the bot did the actual deed. LizRead!Talk!15:13, 29 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
As I just mentioned at WP:VPI, whenever all of this turns into one or more RfCs, it will be perfectly okay but not necessary to repeat any or all of this in those RfCs, we'll be reading everything relevant and taking it all into account. Just a reminder ... the goal of the RfCs will be to address everyone's concerns, not to decide who wins and who loses. To do that, we'll need to know what the concerns are, so guys, when possible, don't just tell us what solutions you favor, tell us what problem you're trying to solve ... even if it's just a possible problem, even if you're not sure. Of course ... even better is data that supports a claim, or an argument or position that's acceptable to a wide range of voters - Dank (push to talk) 14:58, 29 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
What is the intention with one or more RfCs? If it's not focused, it's just going to turn into a complaints forum. I do agree that problems need to be identified. Soooo many times I see people come up with "solutions" that fail to address any specific problem, but they're damn sure it will make things better because...well, because! You can't solve a problem if you don't know what it is. You might be able to contain it, but not solve it. --Hammersoft (talk) 15:16, 29 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Are votes a good idea? In some ways, but there's always a cost ... more time spent on unproductive stuff, more people who get the sense that they're not being heard or that the system doesn't work. Are votes inevitable? Yes. Are they necessary? Probably, from a closer's point of view, because consensus has clearly changed over the last year, but it wouldn't be wise or fair to make a call on how it's changed until everyone gets their say. - Dank (push to talk) 15:59, 29 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Related to my above comment, almost anything purporting to solve everything ends up ringing as true as Da Tongshu. While acknowledging it may be the autism and resulting severely impaired gestalt perception talking, my suggestion for improvement would be to find small things to work on. Fixating on your personal vision of the admin system as a whole isn't going to get anywhere, since everyone has their own ideas and there's no possible way they can all be reconciled in one large discussion. All the energy you save can then be put into working on something you care about, and everyone will be more satisfied for it. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 06:05, 30 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
If they are significantly affecting content, problems need to be addressed. If they are for the most point internal, they need not. Really, that is the only test in my mind. Few if any of the tourists who visit Notre Dame care about internal discussions about wages and conditions in 1322 (or whenever), what is important is ... there.--Wehwalt (talk) 14:17, 30 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Well, among all these discussions, the one recurring theme is that "backlogs are real". They don't happen all the time, but they definitely do happen. And, really, we need AIV and RFPP, at least, to have as minimal backlogs as possible. On my end, I sometimes wonder if the backlog issue actually relates to an uneven distribution of en Wiki Admins across time zones – has anyone even gathered any data on how many (active) Admins we have operating by time zone?! Not having enough Admins in certain timezones might be one factor as to why backlogs on the Noticeboards accumulate at certain times of the day. --IJBall (talk) 17:16, 30 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Don't mind me but I'm just looking at recent RFAs and noticing people are opposing for some very (IMO) petty and irrelevant reasons. The general school of thought seems to be that content creation matters most and all your semi-automated edits mean nothing, using Twinkle too much can even be a reason to oppose !vote alone which is ridiculous. Content creators aren't right for admin work, they're builders and proud of that but admins have always been maintenance workers and you don't need to know how to build a house in order to keep it clean. The whole "mop" thing? You don't build things with mops, you maintain. The job of being an admin has nothing to do with how you might !vote in an XfD or how much you've written, we shouldn't even want content creators because their strengths are better spent creating given how there's evidence that eventually they won't use those tools because they have nothing to do with building the encyclopedia as goes the prime directive for some. If you mostly spend your time in Wikipedia space then you should be seen as doing work that needs doing as an admin but we still seem to be stuck in the 2007 mindset that content creation matters in any way, editcounts matter and the more of them that are manual and in articlespace the better, none of which will matter whatsoever for an admin doing requested moves, clerking at RFPP or closing RFCs. That was then when we didn't have as much content and needed to grow so we elevated the ones making stuff to the top, that made sense then but eight years down the line and the site has matured to a state where we need admins who can clear backlogs and the lousy rote work far more than the sort of editor the old guard wanted, basically themselves. tutterMouse (talk) 11:49, 2 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I've long thought that it is important to completely unlink content creation from administration. The one and only admin power useful to content creators is the ability to impose redirects through the software when they are automatically prevented — I run to an admin a few times a year for that. It's minor. Similarly, the people who need tools for vandal fighting or new article queue maintenance don't necessarily need to be able to research and write. I personally think the answer is creating some sort of community-vetted status for advanced editing, which includes auto-confirmation of new starts and ability to redirect over the software — then people could strut their featured article stuff or whatever for validation there, if they are needy for that, and the RFA process could be more narrowly focused on the deletion and blocking tools and who is capable of handling them appropriately without any nonsense about content creation coming into the equation. My two cents. Carrite (talk) 16:56, 2 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I just made a huge mistake and don't have time to fix it right now
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
I was intending to mass delete pages created by a blocked user, but I clicked on the wrong one and mass deleted everything created by User:CookieMonster755 instead. The second I realized my error, I was called into work, I have to go right now and probably won't be free agaion for several hours. Feel free to assault me with many wet fish, but if someone could fix this mess I'd appreciate it. Beeblebrox (talk) 23:14, 29 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Oh no... All my wonderful work is gone It's okay Beeblebrox, I forgive you. That was much hours of work though. Hopefully an admin can fix it.... Cheers... CookieMonster755(talk)23:23, 29 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
@CookieMonster755: You may want to check to see if anything was delinked by bots or otherwise while deleted, particularly files which can be de-linked really quickly. Also leaving an appropriate trophy for Beeblebrox. Monty84523:49, 29 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you everybody, you are wonderful! I understand that anybody even admins can make mistakes ;) Don't stress Beeblebrox, you're discipline has been served ;P Cheers, cheers - CookieMonster755(talk)23:59, 29 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I also see you restored the files, thank you :) I also made a mistake - I reuploaded a logo that was deleted by accident, but you restored it so there are duplicate logos. Could you please delete the duplicate, here. Thanks CookieMonster755(talk)00:03, 30 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Agreed; the stocks is for when you do something unprecedented, either in its nature (nobody's made that mistake before!) or extent (nobody's made that mistake so spectacularly before!), and this is nothing compared to "I missed that day at target practice". Nyttend (talk) 20:55, 30 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I just wanted to say that this is a great example of Wikipedia really working together. Someone makes a mistake, and people immediately pitch in and fix it. Thanks to all of you for being fabulously collegial. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:19, 1 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Quick question/close request for a self-blanked AfD
AfD creator @Rhumidian: quickly blanked the nomination, with the original userspace draft successfully moved to mainspace. I reverted and proposed a procedural speedy keep as a de facto withdrawal, but then Rhumidian cleared everything again. Not going to dawdle at more reverting or anything, I'm just going to request it officially closed here for them.
And for future reference, what is the best course of action here? Revert and NAC or nominate a G7? Thanks. 野狼院ひさしu/t/c08:18, 30 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Seems pretty obvious to me that they just wanted to get rid of the leftover redirtect and just did it wrong. Deleted the actual page per U1, deleted the afd per g6, afd cannot be used to delete pages in userspace, and the nominating editor apparently didn't mean to do it in the first place. Beeblebrox (talk) 16:00, 30 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry about that guys, Meant to delete the user age space after i redirected the page into the mainspace. I did it wrong. Looks sorted now.Rhumidian (talk) 14:11, 1 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Two new backlogs
Through the use of the {{Special:PrefixIndex}} markup, two new page-move backlogs have been created. Wikipedia:Requested moves/Misplaced XfDs is an attempt to list misplaced XfD nominations and old deletion nominations that need to be moved to the correct XfD board. Wikipedia:Requested moves/Old AFC submissions is a list of drafts in the WT:AFC subspace that need to be moved to the draft namespace.
No, these are not admin backlogs as any autoconfirmed user can move pages. This message is being posted here just for publicity. Copyedits or improvements to text are welcome. 103.6.156.167 (talk) 11:52, 30 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I was just about to start work when I thought: "Hang on, why can't these be done by a bot?". Has that been discussed anywhere? It would save a lot of Effingham and maybe Blindingham too. - Pointillist (talk) 12:24, 30 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Hmm, Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Acid rap is an example of why a human might need to be involved. Acid rap was merged into Esham in 2009 (diff), with the original Acid rap page becoming a redirect. Since then Acid Rap has been created, about Chance the Rapper's album. The current status of Acid rap is that sometimes it redirects to Acid Rap, sometimes to Esham. So where should the historical votes for deletion page be moved to: AfD/Acid rap, AfD/Esham, or what? - Pointillist (talk) 12:44, 30 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
It's now Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Acid rap (0th nomination). Most of the VFD subpages were bot-moved to become AFD subpages when VFD got renamed to AFD, but for whatever reason, Acid rap wasn't. Since WP:AFD/Acid rap was the second, the VFD ought to come before it, but moving both pages would be unhelpful, so I just gave it a sequential name and threw a hatnote onto WP:AFD/Acid rap. Nyttend (talk) 20:10, 30 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Dafuq? Votes for deletion from years back. That makes no sense. Just nuke them as past relevance and move on. Guy (Help!) 22:11, 30 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Not all of them. The VFD for Acid rap was a normal nomination that resulted in a solid consensus to keep; deleting it would be as unhelpful as deleting a "keep" AFD from much more recent times. We can delete the ones that never went anywhere (I deleted the three in the next section), but a human is needed to distinguish between them and the actual debates that are somehow in the wrong spot. Nyttend (talk) 22:41, 30 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
But they were not done. I think these moves should obviously be done so as to comply with current XfD naming conventions. It is pointless to start an RM for this. 103.6.156.167 (talk) 03:14, 1 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I suspect they were not done because there is absolutely no reason to do it other than a slavish devotion to current naming standards, which did not exist at the time. This is among the most pointless requests I can recall in my decade or so on Wikipedia. And that is saying something. Guy (Help!) 08:41, 2 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]
The malformed AfC requests needed looking at, but these ancient deletion pages should just be nuked, if a bot can't move them for whatever reason. Anyone who needs to rely on a 10-year old VfD in a discussion has already lost the argument. —Xezbeth (talk) 08:52, 2 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Right. There are actually no formal rules for closing discussions. Most discussions don't even require closure and closures can be performed by any uninvolved editor, not just admins. With RfCs though I would think uninvolved editors can review and close them where necessary. They don't even necessarily have to determine the consensus. If they're stale, just deactivate them. Swarmwe ♥ our hive18:37, 30 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Per all of the above, closing discussions is not an admin function. Any experienced, uninvolved editor may close any discussion. If an admin action is needed specifically, ping the admins here at the board. But if something doesn't need protecting, deleting, or blocking, just do it. It doesn't need an admin. --Jayron3218:40, 30 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Basically. Only big difference is there is a larger variety of subject matters and possible outcomes, many that don't require the mop to carryout. Many are also really looking for a conclusion, whereas many NACs in the AN space are discussions that have run their course, with the close just wrapping it up, whereas RFCs will usually ask for direct judgement of Consensus. (AN related NACs can do that, but typically those are the ones closed by admins) Monty84518:57, 30 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Yikes – in looking a couple of those, I wouldn't even know where to start. It looks to me like the "Macbook" one is "no consensus" (and there seems to be not be much headway on the associated follow-up RM discussion either...). The first one especially is a massive tl;dr discussion, that should probably only be tackled by one of the editors who's already gone through it... Bottom line: I can definitely see why these ones stay open for months at a time – they're not "easy"!! --IJBall (talk) 19:02, 30 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
The Meghan Trainor one has already been closed at the Talk page, so at least one of those can be "closed to go"... (I'm not going to do that one myself, because I'd like to see someone else do it, so I can see the process.) --IJBall (talk) 19:06, 30 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
General thoughts – This probably gets back to the issue of whether AN and ANI should have official "Clerks". I gather such a proposal was already shot down, but I think that was years ago, and I wonder if it's a proposal that should be revisited?... --IJBall (talk) 19:15, 30 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I dunno – if you have a "title", it's actually like having a "job", and you'll take it more seriously? (Isn't this basic psychology?... I wouldn't know – I never took psych!) I can only speak for me, but I only "pick" at ANI closes on days that I don't have a lot of time to devote to Wiki (certainly not enough time to do proper "content creation"), and closing ANI threads is something I can do relatively quickly and painlessly when I want to blow off steam. OTOH, if I were an "official clerk" (and I ain't saying I wanna be!!...), I'd take it more seriously, and do things like take the much more time-consuming plunge into the backlog mentioned in this thread... Anyway, that's my $0.02... But I dunno if there's any interest in reviving the AN/ANI "clerk" proposal. --IJBall (talk) 19:30, 30 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Generally the question becomes what will the clerk do, that a non-clerk can't already do now, and how will that make the process more efficient. The obvious answer would be to allow clerks to close things, and then have admins do any necessary tool use. But in the absence of a strong consensus in favor of having admins defer to the decisions of the clerks on certain matters, the admin remains fully responsible for the tool use, and thus must repeat any work the clerk did to verify the outcome is correct and thus that the tool use is correct. I wonder if we could achieve such a consensus for some less controversial admin tasks, but I don't think AN or AN/I would be a good place to trial such move. Monty84519:37, 30 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I think lots of admins stay out of RfC closures deliberately, for a variety of reasons: Some RfCs have been opened to make a WP:POINT and then got a lot of comments which have only a tangential bearing on the matter, that makes it difficult to evaluate what it is about and what the actual outcome; some RfCs have a lot of different opinions, with very long explanations of each, and many people (including admins) wouldn't have, or take, the time to read it all, that leaves the discussion open for a considerable time; and many RfCs have been hotly debated, and whatever the result assessed by the closer, the whole thing will go through closure review right here. I've been a little busy IRL last week, but I'll have a look at some of the long-text RfCs next week when I'm free. However, I couldn't close the CfD which has been open for 98 days because I !voted in it. But I made a suggestion at the pertaining thread. Kraxler (talk) 20:37, 30 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I only close ANI cases in a couple of situations: a) an admin has taken action on the original complaint (a page is protected, an editor blocked), b) if there is a case where proposals are floated but none has a consensus and the thread is stale and likely to be archived soon or c) the OP has withdrawn the complaint or says that the situation is resolved.
It seems like there are a fair number of NACs of RfCs that bounce back to WP:AN (initial alphabet here) because at least one editor wants an admin to review the closure, on the assumption, I guess, that the outcome would be different. LizRead!Talk!20:44, 30 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Back to the specific issue at hand – I personally can't close the "USSTATION" RfC's because I voted so I'm "involved", but they were opened by Dicklyon who's subsequently been blocked for socking, and I don't think there's been a follow-up reply in weeks, so I think all of those can be closed. My guess is that they can pretty much all be closed as "No consensus" (though there may have been a general consensus for "[Stationname] station" with a lowercase "s" for "station" for article titles, I can't remember) or closed in the direction of the WP:USSTATION guideline conforming in its totality (i.e. with no exceptions, like there have been in the past) to WP:AT. FWIW. --IJBall (talk) 21:10, 30 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
The backlog at the head of the page was close to zero and then a bunch more got added. When they are listed on the top of this page, they get dealt with - unless they are the kind that requires the patience of Job to unpick a 63kb argument on which shade of blue an infobox should be. Guy (Help!) 22:10, 30 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
OK, I've done what I can with the RfC's backlog (thanks also to: Stephan Schulz, Esquivalience and Alsee!). Guy had actually already closed a number of these on May 26, and it just hadn't been logged here. I closed a couple more "easy" ones. The rest fall in to two broad categories: 1) complicated ones that are going to require an Admin (or someone far more experienced with these than me!) – some of these look to this untrained eye as "no consensus" cases, but other ones will require a deeper look; and 2) those that have had comments within the last couple of weeks and thus aren't really "stale" enough to close yet. --IJBall (talk) 06:59, 31 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I looked at that one. My reading of the situation was that the basic consensus was for "No parameter (inclusion)" in those cases where there was "no religion" (e.g. agnostic, athiest, or areligious). I'd be willing to close that one, but only if I get some confirmation from others that my reading of this one is correct. (And, if my reading of that one is correct, I'd think its consensus would likely extend beyond BLPs.) --IJBall (talk) 15:52, 31 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Pretty much. The root of the problem, IIRC, is a small group of people trying to crowbar in their assertion that atheism is a religion, which view is clearly rejected. Guy (Help!) 20:45, 31 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Our original problem was, specifically, a small group of people trying to crowbar in their assertion that atheism is a religion into the BLPs of politicians, presumably to influence voters. Those editors appear to have abandoned that effort. Now I have another problem; when I wrote the RfC I clearly specified that "this RfC only applies to biographies of living persons, not organizations or historic figures", but the threaded discussion (with far fewer participants) was unanimously in favor of removing "religion = None" from the infoboxes of fictional characters, dead people, schools, nations, political parties, etc. Unless an uninvolved closer evaluates those comments and writes in the closing statement that there is a consensus concerning those other pages I need to post a new RfC to determine consensus. Which I don't mind doing, of course; I just need to know. --Guy Macon (talk) 15:38, 1 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]
@Guy Macon: you have specifically asked for an Admin to close this RfC (in several places) – would you be OK with a (semi-)experienced non-Admin editor closing it instead? (I get the impression that a number of Admins have voted in it and so are "involved", and those that haven't may not want to deal with the hassle of closing this one...) --IJBall (talk) 21:20, 31 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
ANRFC's "backlog" is artificially created by a few edits like this one. We have one or two editors who have appointed themselves the unnecessary task of listing 80% to 90% (ninety percent!) of all expired RFCs on that page, including RFCs that have no actual content or whose consensus is so blindingly obvious that it's stupid to ask some other editors to some waste time writing, "100% of respondents vehemently agreed both with each other and the major relevant policies, so I guess that's consensus". An actual majority don't need a formal close by anyone, much less by an admin. If you want to stop having a backlog at ANRFC, it's easily solved: Just create a rule that anyone listing an RFC must either have participated in it, or actually asked the participants if they wanted to have the discussion listed for formal closure (and not listed it unless there is at least one response by a participant that approves of listing it). This would take us back to the days when not only (almost) "anyone can edit", but (almost) "anyone can be assumed to be capable of figuring out the consensus for the discussions they participate in". WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:31, 1 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]
One problem, WhatamIdoing, with RfC is the same as most maintenance discussions including for example, AfD and RfA: most voters are drive-by, they don't return to see how the debate is develping. --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 01:47, 3 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Appeal for Wikignomes and admin watchers
Quite a few of the backlogged items are done. You could help by marking them done in the backlog list, and maybe cruising the project lookign for others. Oh, and anything with fewer than five or six people opining, that has remained open for more than 60 days, where debate has tailed off over a month ago and the matter is of no importance? Feel free to non-admin close it as "moot, due to passage of time, please feel free to start a new RfC is issues remain" or some such. Guy (Help!) 20:49, 31 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
IIRC, some years back WP:AN had a table showing the number of tasks of various kind awaiting admin attention, with color-coding indicating extent of backlogs in each category (CSDs in various categories, unclosed AFDs, RMs, unblock request, unanswered 3RR and RFPP reports etc). Is such a consolidated list still available somewhere, or is my memory faulty? Abecedare (talk) 02:14, 1 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Can't vouch for when and where I recall seeing them, but I am thinking of tables like the ones here but more comprehensive. They provide an admin with a few minutes on their hand a quick guide as to where their attention may be best directed. Abecedare (talk) 00:12, 2 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]
As an admin, I would do a lot more for the backlogs, but I won't until someone will fix some of the scripts that sem-automate some processes, such as, for example, closing AfD. I really like the challenge of closing some of those AfD that even seasoned admins won't touch, but so long as it would take me 20 minutes with my slow INternet and the incredibly slow Wikipedia server (often 5 mins to load a single Wikipedia page or even 'show preview' ) just to mess with all the templates/transclusions to close one, I'd rather be doing something else. All of our most useful scripts and tools were developed by volunteers and are available to admins through extensions such as Twinkle, but many of those editors have long since retired and no longer maintain theier scripts. I firmly believe that with all its millions of surplus $$ it's time the WMF started adopting some of these tools and commit themselves to maintaining them. I hear some WMF employees/contractors complaining that there are no budgets for this kind of thing. I'm afraid I do not and cannot believe this for an instant. --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 02:11, 3 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]
In the 2015-2016 financial year the Wikimedia Foundation plans to spend $28.9 million on engineering and another $12.6 million on community engagement. (Signpost Coverage) Perhaps somewhere in those budgets the foundation can find the time and resources to create and maintain scripts critical to Wikipedia. This seems significantly more productive than converting the tiny village of Esino Lario (population 772) into an internet connected center for Wikimania. Winner 42Talk to me!02:33, 3 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]
What we'll probably get is a bunch of "improvements" in the way of new "features" that no one asked for, that no one really wants, that will be poorly implemented and turned on without notice, that you can't opt out of, and that someone will have to write code to remove from your account. That's been the pattern, anyway. BMK (talk) 02:46, 3 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I didn't go into more detail in my post above, but I have to admit that Winner 42 and BMK echo my opinions entirely. Not to mention the WMF junkets that are slid into the expense accounts of the many, many, many departments of the WMF. The cost of just one round-trip flight across a couple of states for one telecommuting contractor to spend a day in the office in SF would cover a lot of the cost of examining the exasperating problems with scripts, gadgets, and tools, and of course those software solutions that nobody wants. Like any NGO or non-profit, one thing the WMF is extremely good at is wasting donors' money. Until admins get more of the reliable kind of tools they need, and the sooner the WMF can wake up to the need of WP:ACTRIAL, the sooner we will see a serious reduction in backlogs and a pool of active admins who can cope with them. --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 02:59, 3 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I voted on the first day, dismissed the banner and yet it still returns... In different colours too... I do tend to move betweens computers frequently, that would cause it to reappear I guess. I don't want to turn them all off but dang they are annoying. EoRdE6(Come Talk to Me!)15:42, 1 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Currently there is a renaming discussion in progress at Talk:Paraguayan War#Requested move 25 May 2015. As previous requests have resulted in some bad tempered discussions and the latest addition is a rather obvious personal attack on the proposer (myself) [7] I am requesting admin oversight to keep things on track. WCMemail20:59, 31 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
That doesn't seem to me like a personal attack to be honest. Also, if I may, this war is universally known throughout the Spanish-speaking world as Guerra de la Triple Alianza. No one calls it "Guerra de Paraguay" or whatever (although I suppose this might be the same situation as Varusschlacht vs Battle of Teutoburg Forest). And your proposal doesn't make sense - is there another Triple Alliance somewhere in the world? I don't understand the "South America" DAB part of the proposed title. §FreeRangeFrogcroak21:20, 31 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
No there hasn't been as far as I know and it is pretty much known in the English speaking world as the War of the Triple Alliance. In Brazil, its known as the Paraguayan War; those advocating the current name tend to be members of Project Brazil. I added the moniker (South America) as the closer of the last request based his close on the premise it could be confused with other "Triple Alliances" (although confusingly there are at least 3 separate Wars known variously as the Paraguayan War in English). The previous discussion was stupidly bad tempered and I don't wish to see a repeat. WCMemail21:47, 31 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
(Non-administrator comment) @WCM: Incidentally, requests for oversight are supposed to be emailed directly to oversight-en-wp@wikimedia.org, not posted in this (or any other) forum. Erpertblah, blah, blah...03:52, 2 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Log-Linear model :: edit the title
Please forgive me if this is not the correct place to post this but...
I've recently corrected the title of 'https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Log-Linear_model', by moving the page from 'Log-linear_model' to 'Log-Linear_model', but I think that the 'm' in the title should also be capitalized.
I'm a new user and the system prevented me from making this adjustment.
Maybe a user with more gravitas will assist me in making this amelioration.
Unfortunately, that's often the case: we think we know better than the experts. However, H1395010, I think you misunderstand: when I search the loglinear.pdf for linear, most appearances are "log-linear model", and "Log-linear Model" or "Log-Linear Model" almost always appear in titles, where title case is common and words get capital letters even though they don't in most other cases. Nyttend (talk) 00:18, 2 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Julian Gardner (Poker Player) issue
Hello,
Writing on behalf of my Client Julian Gardner who has a Wikipedia Page Julian Gardner (Poker Player), I'd like to request that the (poker player) section is removed. Despite starting out life as a professional gambler Julian moved into financial services (hedge fund) in mid 2000's and philanthropy in 2014, and would prefer to be referred to as either of these. His Children are coming of age where they have access to the internet and he would rather not be seen as a gambler in their eyes.
Let's see, is he notable concerning hedge funds? Well "'Julian Gardner' 'hedge funds' has only 142 Google hits, so the answer there would seem to be "no". is he notable as a philanthropist? Well "'Julian Gardner' philanthropist" has 221 Google hits, so he doesn't seem to be very prominent there. What about "'Julian Gardner' poker"? What? 202,000 Google hits!!! Well, I guess that answers your question, Ldv89 on behalf of your client Julian Gardner, he's notable because he is (or was) a power player, not because of his involvement with hedge funds or philanthropy. I guess he's just going to have to live with that until he does something notable in some other field. BMK (talk) 09:49, 1 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]
BTW, your edits to the article Julian Gardner (poker player) were reverted by another editor, but I would have reverted them myself, since you have an obvious conflict of interest in regard to Julian Gardner, as you represent him in some capacity. I'll also note that you have not complied with our terms of use regarding paid editing, which requires that you clearly state your conflict oin your talk page, and on the article talk page in question. BMK (talk) 09:57, 1 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Obviously the whitewashing is not acceptable. If he didn't want to be known as a gambler, repeatedly entering high-stakes televised gamgbling contests was not the way to go about it. On the other hand, is he really hat notable at all? Not sure we should even have this article. Beeblebrox (talk) 23:49, 1 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Is it really that hard for you people to say "Apologies but the reliable sources and references show the article title is correct in its current form. Also, we do have policies regarding editing with a COI and/or pay. Please read them before editing further on Julian Gardner. " No you go right for the snark and stand-offishness that is killing editor retention. 129.9.75.248 (talk) 16:36, 2 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Oh pfffft. People get the idea that they can control "their" articles on Wikipedia and try to edit them or send their representatives to do the dirty work, and I'm absolutely sick of it. There's a hell of a lot of promotionalism still in our articles, and I take a zero-tolerance policy toward it. Let those folks pay for a website or use one of the social networking sites that doesn't care about its content. BMK (talk) 22:32, 2 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Last time I looked we had remarkably little difficulty "retaining" editors who come here to promote their clients or employers. If anything, we have the devil's own job stopping them. Guy (Help!) 17:07, 2 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]
@JzG: It's inappropriate to invoke WP:NOBODYCARES here since the AFD and MFD processes use suffixes such as "(2nd nomination)", "(3rd nomination)" etc in their page titles, which means that pages in the wrong namespace (articles in MfD, miscellaneous pages in AfD, and everything in VFD) are likely to go lost or unaccounted for when new nominations of those pages are made. 103.6.156.167 (talk) 14:51, 2 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]
See WP:BURO. If the last debate was back when it was Votes For Deletion, it's probably too long ago to be relevant and in any case people can look it up on the Talk page. And there is nothing stopping non-admins moving them if they feel they must. Guy (Help!) 15:19, 2 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Wgolf, and what did these users reply when you asked them about these edits, as you are required to do before reporting them to the administrators' noticeboard? ☺ · Salvidrim! · ✉01:55, 3 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Well I wasn't reporting the users but rather what is going on with persondatas and why they are now being removed, but upon clicking on one of the talk pages it appears there was a notice to why they were removed it looks like. Wgolf (talk) 01:57, 3 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]
An arbitration case regarding OccultZone and other editors has now closed and the final decision is viewable at the link above. The following remedies have been enacted:
User:OccultZone is banned indefinitely from English Wikipedia. They may appeal the ban after twelve months, and every six months thereafter.
User:OccultZone is also topic banned from making edits related to a) sexual assault or b) crime on the Indian Subcontinent, both broadly construed.
User:OccultZone is indefinitely limited to operating a single account.
Doing... I've read the whole discussion, but this one is complex enough that I need to digest it and reread it later now that I have a clear framing of all the issues in my mind. Ideally, I'll close this sometime this week. —Compassionate727 (T·C) 20:23, 27 October 2024 (UTC)
Thank you for putting together these numbers. I'm not sure how to compare these, given the rise of the admin bot. Do the actions per admin include bot actions? How many of those older actions could have been done by a bot? If the number of admin actions taken (NB not "needed", which is impossible to measure) is more or less stable, are these actions now harder/slower/more complicated cases (because the bots did all the easy ones)? WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:44, 27 May 2015 (UTC)
It's okay Beeblebrox, I forgive you. That was much hours of work though. Hopefully an admin can fix it.... Cheers... CookieMonster755 (talk) 23:23, 29 May 2015 (UTC)
. Hopefully this does not have a bad impact on my WMFLabs Xtools review of my article creation log and account statics. CookieMonster755 (talk) 23:42, 29 May 2015 (UTC)
Done Monty845 00:05, 30 May 2015 (UTC)
Dragons flight (talk) 02:03, 30 May 2015 (UTC)
