RfA Clerks are responsible to a number of maintenance duties while an Request for Adminship is ongoing. This includes fixing poor formatting that interferes with the numbering system, repairing any other bad indentation or formatting, moving extended threads to the talk page of the RfA and removing comments from users blocked as sockpuppets. The purpose of clerking is to both protect the candidate from unnecessary drama, and to insure that participants are able to express their views and have them considered fully and equally, without the fear of them being drown out in a sea of comments.
Qualifications for clerks
editThe Bureaucrats will choose a page to list the clerks, in an area of their choosing, although likely a sub page of Request for adminship. Any editor in good standing may ask to be a clerk by a request at the Bureaucrat Noticeboard. Clerks are selected by the acceptance of three Bureaucrats. A Bureaucrat will then add them to the list of eligible clerks. A clerk may be removed for inactivity or any other reason by the !vote of three Bureaucrats, or by their own request at WP:BN. Adminship is not required to be a clerk. While there are no fixed rules on who qualifies to be a clerk, selection is more likely if the editor has over a year of active Wikipedia experience, at least a few thousand edits, and some experience working in administrative areas. Bureaucrats are not required to provide a rationale for selecting or deselecting any clerk and have the final word in this selection. There is no fixed number of clerk spots, although the Bureaucrats may decide at any time that no additional clerks are required.
Guidelines for clerking
editBureaucrats do not establish nor enforce the rules for clerking, which is left to the greater community, and the Bureaucrats' role is limited solely to selecting and deselecting of the clerks. Any action that requires blocking or advanced tools will be done by an administrator. Common sense and community consensus determines the methods used, although there are basic good practices that many consider universally acceptable.
- It is helpful, but not required that a clerk make a simple statement to the effect of "I will be clerking this RfA" on the talk page. More than one clerk may be active on any RfA.
- Involvement with the candidate or nominators should disqualify a clerk from clerking an RfA.
- Comments from blocked socks may be removed entirely. Votes from any user later blocked for unrelated reasons are usually allowed to stand unless the vote itself was the reason for the block, or other unusual circumstances exist.
- !Votes that have turned into threads more than two additional comments, or are just exceedingly long, may be moved to the talk page by copying the original vote, adding the threaded comments there, and adding a pointer under the original vote that points to the talk page in small print. The purpose is to prevent distraction from long threads and allow the voter and the candidate a fair platform.
- Purely disruptive edits, vandalism and the like may be removed.
- !votes for IPs may be indented as to not count in the final tally.
- Extremely long !vote comments may be hatted in part but not refactored.
- Clerks may not comment on the candidate, the nominators, or any of the merits of the discussion in a case they are actively clerking, and only act in an official capacity.
- Where it makes sense, a comment in small type indicating clerk action has taken place should be left. These should be very short, with any extended rational placed on the talk page.
- Early closing of SNOW, withdrawn and NOTNOW nominations may still be done by any uninvolved editor, including clerks.
Clerks are given a fair amount of leeway to deal with maintenance issues, although the primary goal should be to help insure the primary RfA page is for statements, questions, answers, !votes and rationales, while extended discussion is performed on the talk page. A clerk must be objective in all actions, and careful to never allow any opinion to come across in any action or comment during the RfA. A degree of patience and tolerance is required to clerk as the goal is to provide equity for all parties, not enforce policy guidelines on behavior. The clerk's job isn't to warn or take administrative action on editors (except as noted above), and if needed these actions should be accomplished by an uninvolved admin.
Clerking at RfA is necessarily more informal than at other venues due to the freestyle nature of the RfA process, thus flexibility and creativity is sometimes required. Any comment or question regarding the actions of a clerk should be taken up on the talk page of the corresponding RfA, or on the talk page of the clerk in question.