Wikipedia talk:Requests for adminship

Requests for adminship and bureaucratship update

No current discussions. Recent RfAs, recent RfBs: (successful, unsuccessful)

Current time is 19:35, 26 June 2024 (UTC). —

Recently closed RfAs and RfBs ()

Candidate	Type	Result	Date of close	Tally
				S	O	N	%
HouseBlaster	RfA	Successful	23 Jun 2024	153	27	8	85
Pickersgill-Cunliffe	RfA	Successful	15 Jun 2024	201	0	0	100
Elli	RfA	Successful	7 Jun 2024	207	6	3	97
DreamRimmer	RfA	Withdrawn by candidate	31 May 2024	45	43	14	51
Numberguy6	RfA	Closed per WP:SNOW	27 May 2024	5	23	2	18
ToadetteEdit	RfA	Closed per WP:NOTNOW	30 Apr 2024	0	0	0	0

Feedback on the "new RFA process"

Hi all, as suggested above - I think the discussion stage is an excellent improvement to the RFA process, and I hope it continues in future. It's less binary and instant than the wave of negative/positive votes - I would like the status to say something like "discussion stage" or something that indicates that "voting" hasn't opened.

I hope others have feedback too! Turini2 (talk) 17:09, 29 April 2024 (UTC)

• I realize there are multiple, sometimes self-contradicting goals for this new process. But one data point is: I don't think that was any less painful for the candidate than a bunch of opposes. --Floquenbeam (talk) 18:58, 29 April 2024 (UTC)

  I have to agree; it's still a pile-on whether it occurs in the General Comments or Oppose section. Pawnkingthree (talk) 19:08, 29 April 2024 (UTC)

  The above comments are correct, but I don't think that this RfA is really prototypical of the problems that people were trying to address. The discussion period seems like more of a potential fix for RfAs where an initially strong candidate is contested by an oppose that alleges significant misconduct, leading to reevaluation of past supports and perhaps lending itself to an overly polemic back-and-forth as oppose !voters try to swing against the wall of initial, presumably superficial, supports. _signed, Rosguill ^talk 19:38, 29 April 2024 (UTC)

Levivich recently wrote Has anyone reading this ever, in any other aspect of their life, seen anything like this happen? Ever gone to a school where the entire faculty and student body gets together and talks about you? Or had a job where an all-staff meeting is called and the subject of discussion is the performance of an employee? And what do we have here? A bunch of of people lining up to explain "here's the reason why you suck". Only this time without so much as a single Moral support. I would frankly suggest IAR-deleting the RFA. ToadetteEdit does not deserve to be subjected to that. Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 18:59, 29 April 2024 (UTC)

@Suffusion of Yellow, what do you mean? Toadette^Edit! 19:11, 29 April 2024 (UTC)

I mean people are being needlessly cruel in your RFA. I seem to remember that once upon time RFAs like this were just deleted as a courtesy. If you want it kept, sure, that's your choice. If not, well, there's no policy supporting deletion, but hopefully someone will do the decent thing and WP:IAR. Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 19:20, 29 April 2024 (UTC)

It's a nice idea in theory, but I think the discussion phase actually made it worse. I really don't see the point in a general comments section if people are just going to fill it up with would-be opposes, withdrawal recommendations etc. It's just moving the poor and bitey comments to another section on the page. --Ferien (talk) 19:29, 29 April 2024 (UTC)

I admit I'm not the biggest fan of discussion only for a few days even if I think discussion is a valuable part of the RfA process. Maybe the next time we do RfA reform 2 years from now I'll try my luck? An idea popped into my head this afternoon: an actual vote for support/oppose akin to the securepoll process but without getting rid of the discussion aspect. We could just place a greater emphasis on general comments if one has feedback they wish to bring to the wider community (whether that's "wow I'm glad so and so is running, they do a great job at x" or "I have some concerns because of y"). But people don't have to pitch in if they don't want to and votes otherwise remain anonymous. I think we might get the best of both worlds from that. Clovermoss🍀 (talk) 19:54, 29 April 2024 (UTC)

People will always be more motivated to explain why they're opposing than why they're supporting. With the SecurePoll option, people whose votes were going to be "yup" or "LGTM" or "not a jerk, has clue" will probably not make any public comments at all. So the whole "discussion" could just end as a pile-on of negativity, even if the silent majority supports the candidate. Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 20:06, 29 April 2024 (UTC)

I don't think a sample size of one (and not exactly a typical RfA, either) is sufficient for determining this. Elli (talk | contribs) 20:09, 29 April 2024 (UTC)

I'd still suggest a running tally of the votes, just with them being anonymous. I don't think it'd necessarily end in a wall of negativity - I suspect many would be opposers would just oppose and leave it at that instead of engaging in discussion about why they're voting the way they are unless they think it's crucial that other voters be aware of such information. And I genuinely think that people in our community would be willing to leave positive feedback in these comments like they would if they wrote an extensive support vote in the current rfa environment. Clovermoss🍀 (talk) 20:25, 29 April 2024 (UTC)

Yes, a running tally would remove my objection. A bit more difficult to anonymize; you'd need to keep secret the list of voters until the vote is over, and then shuffle it. But not impossible. Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 20:35, 29 April 2024 (UTC)

I don't think these difficulties are significant. That's not to say I disagree with you - just that I think this is easily surmounted. -- asilvering (talk) 03:04, 30 April 2024 (UTC)

Anyways my random idea for the next time RfA reform kicks around is somewhat off-topic for this conversation. If anyone has any further feedback for it (whether it's to say they think it's great or it wouldn't work), feel free to stop by at my talk page. Clovermoss🍀 (talk) 19:24, 30 April 2024 (UTC)

This is a poor test case for the new idea. This sort of RfA would also have been painful under the old system. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 20:18, 29 April 2024 (UTC)

+1. This is not a typical RfA. If this RfA had happened a month ago, it would have been a simple snow close after multiple moral support opposes. Perhaps we should encourage people not to self-nom under this system during the test period. Valereee (talk) 20:46, 29 April 2024 (UTC)

Agreed. Discussions of RfA reforms have always focused primarily, if not entirely, on ones that have a chance of succeeding. It's very difficult to imagine how we deliver a WP:NOTNOW or WP:SNOW outcome in a way that isn't painful, but in any case the discussion-only trial was not intended to address that and explicitly said that they did not count towards the trial period. – Joe (talk) 09:22, 30 April 2024 (UTC)

I'd argue it would've been less painful under the old system—definitely still painful—but however many people would've opposed, it'd get closed as SNOW or NOTNOW, and it'd be over in a few hours. Instead, this discussion has drug out for over a day and the pileons keep, well, piling on. Queen of ♡ | speak 19:14, 30 April 2024 (UTC)

There's some discussion at the RFA's talk page and the candidate's user talk about this. I'm not sure it's that clear. Experienced editors, Arbs, and crats have all pushed back on snow closure being possible here, and the main reasons presented have nothing to do with this trial. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 19:24, 30 April 2024 (UTC)

No one pushed back until the close was reverted, though? What I mean is, it was for ~ten hours treated as noncontroversial. Now that it's controversial, no one is willing to repeat the close. Only a very few actually seem to have objected to it, and as far as I can tell even fewer think the revert was a positive. Valereee (talk) 19:26, 30 April 2024 (UTC)

People have been willing to repeat the close, but it hasn't stuck. Other than that, I agree with you. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 19:32, 30 April 2024 (UTC)

Who repeated the close, @Firefangledfeathers? I saw that the RfA disappeared for a few minutes, but I couldn't figure out why. Valereee (talk) 19:34, 30 April 2024 (UTC)

See Special:History/Wikipdia:Requests for adminship for the back and forth. ProcrastinatingReader→ Cremastra→NoobThreePointOh→Primefac. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 19:38, 30 April 2024 (UTC)

There is no revision history at that link. Sorry for being an idiot, I know it has something to do with transclusion... Valereee (talk) 19:40, 30 April 2024 (UTC)

Special:History/Wikipedia:Requests for adminship; FFF misspelt "Wikipedia". Queen of ♡ | speak 19:41, 30 April 2024 (UTC)

Hahahahaha Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 19:42, 30 April 2024 (UTC)

hahahahaha...and I didn't catch it! Valereee (talk) 19:43, 30 April 2024 (UTC)

And this is why I love Wikipdia, the free encyclopdia anyone can edit... Queen of ♡ | speak 19:45, 30 April 2024 (UTC)

Just a typo: Special:History/Wikipedia:Requests for adminship NotAGenious (talk) 19:41, 30 April 2024 (UTC)

So that wasn't actually it not sticking, though...noob failed to correctly close, Pf simply fixed it? Valereee (talk) 19:46, 30 April 2024 (UTC)

It is true that removing the transclusion isn't the way to close. Maybe Pf doesn't object to closure? Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 19:49, 30 April 2024 (UTC)

The only thing I'm thinking is that the crats at this point seem to be treating this cautiously because of the reversion of the close? I mean, we're all treating it that way. Valereee (talk) 19:51, 30 April 2024 (UTC)

I am "treating this cautiously" because after someone asked if they had withdrawn, I sought confirmation and they said no, they were not withdrawing. I do not necessarily object to someone deciding that this is a TOOSOON/NOTNOW case and closing (as it states at WP:RFA, anyone can make that call), but I personally am going to wait for a go/no go from Toadette before closing, especially since the close has already been reverted once. Primefac (talk) 20:01, 30 April 2024 (UTC)

I get it. I wasn't jumping on it either. Valereee (talk) 20:06, 30 April 2024 (UTC)

Kind of depends. The reversion of the snow close, which turned the original close into a controversial edit, could have been made under either system. Under the old, it might have meant the vote was left open basically for the entire seven days. If this one gets reclosed quickly after voting starts, which kind of resets the clock, it could end only a few hours later. Valereee (talk) 19:26, 30 April 2024 (UTC)

Related to the section above too, but I've asked a question at Template talk:RFX report about enacting 3b on the status column. NotAGenious (talk) 19:28, 30 April 2024 (UTC)

In the interest of not unduly biasing the current request in progress, or having the candidate undergo a meta-analysis of their request while it is live, perhaps further retrospective discussion can be delayed until at least the request is over? isaacl (talk) 21:03, 29 April 2024 (UTC)

Thank you for this suggestion. However, it is now over, and I have to say: this was awful. If we're going to continue using this "comment only" bit at the beginning, we absolutely have to make it clear that comments that are in essence describing a vote are not allowed. But I don't see any way for this to be possible. To take a single comment that I think illustrates the problem well (I don't mean to pick on anyone in particular! but Daniel, since I'm quoting you, it seemed best to ping you), this comment is clearly an oppose vote: Was not impressed by this DRV submission, which was very ill-judged. When challenged by numerous editors, including directly as a reply, failed to show up to defend their position. This would be a strong oppose for lack of experience and capabilities from me.

But let's say we remove the vote part. That would fix the problem, right? No. We're left with: Was not impressed by this DRV submission, which was very ill-judged. When challenged by numerous editors, including directly as a reply, failed to show up to defend their position. Come on! We can all see this is an oppose vote. But how on earth would anyone bring up legitimate concerns without sounding like an oppose vote? I could rewrite this to something more hesitant, like "I'm not sure this DRV submission showed a willingness to adapt to consensus. When other editor challenged this submission, the candidate didn't comment." But that's no better. It's just more passive-aggressive. -- asilvering (talk) 03:03, 30 April 2024 (UTC)

The instructions on the AfD page say "Please keep discussion constructive and civil. If you are unfamiliar with the nominee, please thoroughly review their contributions before commenting." So I thoroughly reviewed their contributions before commenting. "Voting opens at 12:21, 1 May 2024 (UTC). In the meantime, discussion may only take place under § General comments", so I placed my review of their contributions under General comments. I didn't "vote", but indicated how I viewed their candidacy to be totally transparent, based upon my review of their contributions. I felt it was less passive aggressive to write my perspective on their future candidacy, rather than a more vague comment that everyone knows what it means but lacks the candidness of actually saying it. Not sure what else I'm meant to do? Daniel (talk) 03:28, 30 April 2024 (UTC)

I don't think anyone is criticizing you. I believe you just happened to phrase your comment in a way that illustrates how difficult it is to discuss a candidate without indicating a vote. Joyous! Noise! 05:25, 30 April 2024 (UTC)

You're right, of course - my frustration is more with the process causing this confusion. If someone in good faith feels like they're doing the right thing (like I was here), but their action is counter-intuitive to the actual goal of that process, then maybe either a) the process needs to be tweaked or b) the instructions for said process need to be clearer. Cheers, Daniel (talk) 05:31, 30 April 2024 (UTC)

I'm starting to get the sense (possibly incorrectly) that what people want to see is a wave of solely positive comments and discussion points. That's all well and good, but I'm concerned it might set some users up to expect their RFA will succeed and then be crushed when the actual vote comes and it isn't successful. Intothatdarkness 13:10, 30 April 2024 (UTC)

If I'm not mistaken, part of the reason for this trial run is to find a solution for the common trend of dozens of support !votes being cast before the candidate has really been scrutinized. While this is a worthy objective, I do wonder if we may have tipped the scales too far in the opposite direction. That said, this particular RfA probably isn't going to be very instructive for evaluating the trial run. LEPRICAVARK (talk) 19:07, 1 May 2024 (UTC)

I think it would be easier to discuss good points ("several GAs") and bad points ("not many edits to AIV") about a candidate if there were no issues that are almost universally seen as disqualifying. You just can't make up for recent blocks or recent poor judgment about copyright or similar core article issues. —Kusma (talk) 10:05, 30 April 2024 (UTC)

@Daniel, I'm not criticizing you. As I said, I chose your comment because it illustrates the problem well. I don't think there's any way to write it differently that would not come off as an oppose vote. You could have behaved differently, but I don't know that you should have - that is, I can't really come up with any way for you to raise this concern in the discussion without either appearing to be an oppose vote or talking in weird circumlocutions that don't really help anybody. -- asilvering (talk) 15:22, 30 April 2024 (UTC)

Do you think that all comments that raised concerns appeared to be oppose votes? I don't, I think there are plenty of examples on the rfa page of comments that are not votes. Contra to your view above, my view is if you take out the last sentence of Daniel's comment, it reads like a concern raised that's not an oppose vote. Were it not for the last sentence, I would not assume that Daniel was going to vote oppose. I wouldn't assume that a criticism meant the editor would vote oppose or that a compliment meant the editor would vote support. Levivich (talk) 15:45, 30 April 2024 (UTC)

When I wrote "Come on! We can all see this is an oppose vote." I did mean that. -- asilvering (talk) 20:46, 30 April 2024 (UTC)

I closed that section of the RfA RfC and don't remember seeing any discussion of forbidding comments that indicate an intended vote. You're very welcome to propose such a measure, but it was not an explicit part of the proposal that we're trialling now. Personally, I find it difficult to imagine how you could make a meaningful comment, that isn't a question, without giving away which way you are leaning. – Joe (talk) 09:28, 30 April 2024 (UTC)

@Joe Roe For what it's worth, I'm uncertain where I land on Asilvering's argument. But, I personally thought it was obviously in the proposal (at least to the extent my comment below says). If RFA is converting to "No support or oppose votes for 2 days" and editors go "If I could, I'd vote oppose" or similar, that pretty much defeats the point of trial-ing a discussion based setup. I did not care to discuss it because I didn't think I'd need to. "Hey let's not do X for some time" does not need an explicit "But what if I threaten to X" clause; that way lies more Wikilawyering. Soni (talk) 14:14, 30 April 2024 (UTC)

I think the point is that any vote, !vote or quasi-vote expressed in the discussion section will not be counted when determining the outcome. That is, at least, how Barkeep49 described his aim when he proposed it ([discussion before voting] has the potential to take some of the temperature of [RfA] down since people will be able to express concerns and respond to those concerns without the immediate stakes of having that discussion impact the support percentage). – Joe (talk) 14:24, 30 April 2024 (UTC)

I will note that my proposal is not what passed and so how I described it is irrelevant. Barkeep49 (talk) 14:31, 30 April 2024 (UTC)

But the proposal that did pass was derived from your proposal, just changing the number of days. This was noted in the proposal that formally passed (3b) and the close. – Joe (talk) 14:39, 30 April 2024 (UTC)

My reading of the proposal differs from both Joe's and BK's. There were two proposals: 3, by BK, and 3b, by utbc. 3 didn't pass but 3b did.

The text of proposal 3b is, in its entirety, Note I have just added an alternative, proposing a 2+5-day RfA trial instead of the 3+7-day trial originally proposed. This clearly means "the same thing as 3, except change it from 3+7 to 2+5." So the text of 3 is very relevant to what 3b proposed.

The text of proposal 3 included: For the first 3 days (72 hours) no "Support", "Oppose", or "Neutral" comments/!votes may be made. Optional questions may still be asked and answered, and general comments may still be left.

To me, no "Support", "Oppose", or "Neutral" comments/!votes may be made is pretty clear: don't say whether you support, oppose, or are neutral, about the candidate. Because doing so would, indeed, defeat the whole purpose of having 2 (or 3) days during which no support/oppose/neutral comments/!votes may be made.

So I do think there is consensus forbidding such comments, and that consensus comes from reading 3b together with 3, which is how 3b must be read. Levivich (talk) 14:42, 30 April 2024 (UTC)

@Joe: I just realized that your re-statement of the proposal in your close of 3b changed "no "Support", "Oppose", or "Neutral" comments/!votes may be made" to "no !votes (comments indicating "support", "oppose", or "neutral") may be made". Subtle, but I see those two things as being materially different for reasons that are now apparent: It's not just no "[support/oppose/neutral] !votes," but no "[support/oppose/neutral] comments/!votes", and that word "comments" being in there, and not just "!votes" is meaningful, at least under my reading. What do you think? Is this just scrivener's error, or was there something you saw in the discussion that led you to rephrase that part? Levivich (talk) 15:05, 30 April 2024 (UTC)

I think I just thought it was a bit clunkily worded. To me a !vote and a "comment indicating support/oppose/neutral" are the same thing.

In general I'm not saying that the understanding that "no votes" means "no indicating how you will vote" is unreasonable, just that in the absence of a clear statement to that effect in the proposal, and no explicit discussion of it until now, as far as I can recall, it seems a bit too flimsy to hang a new rule off. – Joe (talk) 15:49, 30 April 2024 (UTC)

Comments like This would be a strong oppose for lack of experience and capabilities from me or I will automatically oppose are clearly comments indicating "support", "oppose", or "neutral", right? I don't mean to put words in your mouth, but as I read your closing statement, there is consensus not to have such comments during the first two days... right? Levivich (talk) 15:56, 30 April 2024 (UTC)

I think they're differentiated by the insertion of the word "will" or "would". – Joe (talk) 06:16, 1 May 2024 (UTC)

I do not think it's a 'new rule' but a simple 'Rules as Intended' scenario. To me, the central point of a "Discussion only N days" came from a clear "Why is this proposal a thing", which was 'To reduce stress on RFA candidates'. To me, it's not a bureaucratic note of "Say whatever you want, but we only start counting 2 days later" but a "We find vote-piling is stressful, so we are not voting at all for 2 days". Its core argument derives from "Discussion is less stressful than a bunch of Opposes, but without necessarily losing the 'bringing things up' and feedbacks" in my opinion.

Had I realised how your close differed from what I imagined, I'd bring it up post close. It's hard to notice distinction, but with significant implications (as we can see). So I guess the main question isn't "Is this a new rule" but "Which one did the discussion imply". Soni (talk) 16:01, 30 April 2024 (UTC)

I don't think asking what discussions imply rather than what they explicitly said is a good road to go down. When something is unclear, surely the best and easiest thing to do is to just discuss it further? – Joe (talk) 06:19, 1 May 2024 (UTC)

That's what we're doing here. I just wanted to point out that it's not a "new rule", that's all.

But yeah, we could benefit from a quick discussion on "What comments are okay/not" and "Do we need any enforcement of this/by who?" (Probably just crats?). So far this section has a lot of opinions in all directions Soni (talk) 06:37, 1 May 2024 (UTC)

There's a big gap between "giving away which way you are leaning" and (to take one clear example) "Should I be able to participate in the voting time, I will automatically oppose in line with my past precedence". This is a support/oppose/neutral comment/!vote, it is not general discussion. In fact, it says nothing at all about the candidate, and just an announcement of one person's voting criteria. It's a vote, clearly a vote, and I think there was consensus to not do this. Of course we can imagine less-clear examples, but "I would vote X" and similar constructions are a clear examples of votes, not discussion. Levivich (talk) 14:47, 30 April 2024 (UTC)

Personally, I find it difficult to imagine how you could make a meaningful comment, that isn't a question, without giving away which way you are leaning. Yes, I agree. That's my point. -- asilvering (talk) 15:24, 30 April 2024 (UTC)

"The candidate has 2 FAs and 4 GAs and over 50 DYK credits. They have made no edits to AIV. They seem experienced with content and less experienced with vandalism." A comment like this would just be reporting on research on the candidate without giving away what I personally find important in an admin candidate. —Kusma (talk) 15:50, 30 April 2024 (UTC)

Can you try a similar comment for when there's something specific being brought up? I agree that "They seem experienced with content and less experienced with vandalism" doesn't in itself come off as a vote (unless, of course, the candidate has expressed a desire to work in anti-vandalism, in which case it sure sounds a lot more like an oppose). But a lot of the discussion about the problems with RFA come down to something like "it's awful that the candidate can be doing well and then get totally scuppered because of a single comment they made somewhere, it makes people feel paranoid and ends up being a drama-fest". I don't really see how "you can bring it up, but you can't vote about it" makes that aspect any better, or how people who are really trying to abide by that rule would be able to bring up incidents they think are important without coming off as being an "undisclosed oppose". -- asilvering (talk) 20:58, 30 April 2024 (UTC)

I imagine we could get discussions of the following type.

A: "candidate used invalid ILIKEIT arguments in these AfDs about snooker players".

B: "but they have hundreds of excellent AfDs unrelated to snooker, so I think they understand notability"

A: asks candidate whether they will recuse from closing snooker AfDs

Sometimes there are problems where there are solutions other than opposing the candidate, and it may be worth discussing them first before voting. —Kusma (talk) 22:33, 30 April 2024 (UTC)

• (ec) I think my takeaway is for people to understand that a discussion is different from a voting process. This isn't a typical ANI discussion where consensus will be evaluated from just arguments; we have a separate vote later. Not everything needed mildly rephrased repetitions. Perhaps editors/crats should informally discourage pile ons more (More section headings? Cutting down discussion sooner?).
  Comments like Should I be able to participate in the voting time, I will automatically oppose or bolded "too soon"s do not do any favours either. The point of a "discussion only" time period is to avoid votes, not to merely make them early. Soni (talk) 03:07, 30 April 2024 (UTC)

  I agree that commenters need to be aware that there's no need to repeat any points, since the relative strengths of each discussion point will be weighed by each person weighing in during the support/oppose phase. (Commenters can engage in discussion to further expand or counter points.) In general, Wikipedia editors ought to exercise restraint when an outcome seems apparent.(*)

  Looking at the other end of the process, it's hard to dissuade editors from doing something they decide they really want to do. They will say they've read the relevant advice, and be given opinions from experienced editors against proceeding, and yet still go ahead. Maybe there should be a procedure to initiate a quick temporary pause, where some experienced editors could pause a request for administrative privileges to check with the candidate if they want to proceed. But English Wikipedia's decision-making traditions make it hard to make decisions quickly, and many Wikipedia editors don't like having gatekeepers (which certainly can lead to clique issues).

  (*) I realize, of course, that editors doing what they really want to do applies also to commenters. A lot of editors like expressing a viewpoint set in bold, and so it happens all the time even when editors are asked not to express a final opinion and focus on discussion points instead. isaacl (talk) 04:11, 30 April 2024 (UTC)

  In general, Wikipedia editors ought to exercise restraint when an outcome seems apparent. Honestly, I think this is the crux of a lot of our issues here. We like to see our own comments. We like the little notifications telling us that our comments have triggered replies. This invariably leads to pile-ons in the comment sections. Joyous! Noise! 16:18, 30 April 2024 (UTC)

  your signature being placed after this comment... oh no, haha asilvering (talk) 20:59, 30 April 2024 (UTC)

• I'm not impressed with how this first one went. 1) It interferes with the normal RFA dynamic of the first day or two being mostly supports, which could be an important morale booster. 2) It seems more disorganized. People are still supporting and opposing with the tone of their comments, but it is no longer placed in the corresponding section. 3) Folks that comment now have to remember to come back in 2 days and copy paste their comments into the support/oppose sections. I'll keep an open mind since we have 4 more of these to do, but not off to the best start. –Novem Linguae (talk) 03:51, 30 April 2024 (UTC)

  Editors can and should leave comments during the discussion phase extolling the virtues of the candidate. This dynamic doesn't have to change. isaacl (talk) 04:14, 30 April 2024 (UTC)

  I expect I will leave co-nomination style statements in the discussion phase, assuming I know the candidate and wish to support them. —Kusma (talk) 09:56, 30 April 2024 (UTC)

About 5 trial runs

• P.S. I guess according to the proposal 3b close and ProcrastinatingReader's WP:NOTNOW close, this latest RFA doesn't count towards the 5 trial runs total, and we still need to do 5 more of these? –Novem Linguae (talk) 04:18, 30 April 2024 (UTC)

  Not 5 more of these. 5 real RFAs. Hopefully next time people will refrain from using the nonvoting period to indicate how they will vote. Levivich (talk) 05:38, 30 April 2024 (UTC)

  The instructions on the RfA page itself should be improved to clarify this, especially during the trial period. Nowhere on the RfA did it state that you could not indicate how you would vote, whether implicitly or explicitly. Daniel (talk) 05:40, 30 April 2024 (UTC)

  That's because there has been no consensus to restrict people from doing so. – Joe (talk) 09:24, 30 April 2024 (UTC)

  This seemed like a serious RFA by an experienced editor, so I'm a bit surprised it doesn't count. But that's fine, let's follow the wording of the close. 5 non-SNOW non-NOTNOW RFAs or six months (September 24, 2024), I think it says, whichever comes first. –Novem Linguae (talk) 08:21, 30 April 2024 (UTC)

  I think it is correct that RfAs that do not go into the voting phase after the discussion phase do not count for the purpose of the experiment. —Kusma (talk) 09:57, 30 April 2024 (UTC)

  Moot for now, Cremastra has reopened. Valereee (talk) 12:27, 30 April 2024 (UTC)

  It is still going to end up as SNOW or NOTNOW. —Kusma (talk) 13:37, 30 April 2024 (UTC)

  Perhaps a BN should strike such comments in the future. — ♠ Ixtal ^{( T / C )} ⁂ Non nobis solum. ♠ 15:35, 30 April 2024 (UTC)

  But Joe (who closed the discussion that led to this trial) has explicitly stated that there's no consensus to forbid such comments. Perhaps a bolded Support or Oppose would be downgraded, but those that merely quack like a support or oppose are fair game. As noted above, many kinds of feedback are impossible to give without implicitly supporting or opposing anyway.  — Amakuru (talk) 16:51, 30 April 2024 (UTC)

  What if a sixth RfA while the fifth is still open? My reading of the close says that the sixth and any subsequent RfAs opened before the fifth has been closed will also fall under the trial rules.

  The alternative is that we have two simultaneous RfAs with different rules, where the newer RfA has voting open several days before the older one. Toadspike [Talk] 19:33, 31 May 2024 (UTC)

  Five means five, in my opinion. I think the sixth one should be done under the old procedure. –Novem Linguae (talk) 11:37, 1 June 2024 (UTC)

  I agree that five means five, but one could read the next five RfAs that are not closed per WP:SNOW or WP:NOTNOW as requiring us to wait for the fifth RfA to end, to know for sure that it won't be SNOW or NOTNOWed. Toadspike [Talk] 11:42, 1 June 2024 (UTC)

  Just how we would handle a new RfA, if 4 RfAs have been completed without being closed as SNOW or NOTNOW, and one is currently open. We will not know, at least for a while, if the 5th RfA will complete without SNOW or NOTNOW (and, as we have just seen, that may not be obvious during the discussion phase). So, do we require that next requester to wait until we know how the 5th RfA will end? I don't see an obvious answer. Donald Albury 14:44, 1 June 2024 (UTC)

Reopen and reclose

Since the RfA is underway once again, I repeat my suggestion to defer retrospective analysis until at least the RfA is completed. isaacl (talk) 17:21, 30 April 2024 (UTC)

Cremastra has reverted his reversal of the close. So third time's the charm, I guess? Queen of ♡ | speak 20:11, 30 April 2024 (UTC)

This is what the great Kenneth Parcell would have called a "clusterwhoops". Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 20:15, 30 April 2024 (UTC)

Sorry about that mess... I just hope no-one will revert my self-revert, which would cause everything to become so much more confusing. Cremastra (talk) 20:16, 30 April 2024 (UTC)

Out of your hands now! Thanks for self-reverting. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 20:24, 30 April 2024 (UTC)

I was fairly active in the discussions about the reform proposals, and I tried to make the case that we should take it slow on implementing stuff, and subject most of it to the Phase 2 part of the process before implementing. But I got pushback from editors who felt like, if something clearly had a lot more support than opposition, then we should go ahead and treat it as having consensus. At this point, for this particular trial, it looks like we were going to run into harsh reality, one way or the other, sooner or later. I'm on the side of the editors who say here that we cannot regulate that RfA participants only comment in general, without indicating how they intend to !vote. It's unrealistic to think that we can reduce that rule to something that is enforceable. It can't be done. Editors will want to say what they want to say, and if we demand that nobody indicate a planned !vote, people will just find artful ways to skirt the edges. There are so many ways to write about one's opinion without quite framing it as a stance, that it simply will be unenforceable. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:44, 30 April 2024 (UTC)

Trial info request

I generally come to RFAs from my watchlist and have not followed the reform discussions, and it took me quite a bit of time to figure out why the RFA looked different and why everyone was noting that ToadetteEdit "was the first under the new system". Would it be possible to put a bigger banner/info in the lead on WP:RFA, or the individual RFAs, saying that there's a trial happening and linking to which trial(s) are ongoing? Right now the only information is a half-sentence in #Expressing opinions that I missed until my second time reading the page. Or maybe add another line linking to the trial information in the Support/Oppose/Neutral sections where it currently just says "Voting opens at [date]"? Alyo (chat·edits) 13:45, 30 April 2024 (UTC)

I don't know, it sounds quite bureaucratic and might risk turning the next few RfAs into reruns of the RFA2024 RfC rather than a real test of how the changes work. The way I look at these 'trials' is just that we've agreed to make a change to policy, and also agreed to revisit that decision after a fixed amount of time. Until then, WP:RFA and the individual RfA pages describe the process RfA voters should follow now. The links and discussion archives are all there for those who want to dive into why the process looks like it does. – Joe (talk) 14:33, 30 April 2024 (UTC)

My thought is that for someone (*cough*) whose path is Watchlist-->"An RFA is open" link-->the RFA candidate link in the box on the right, it's complete opaque why "Voting opens at [date]. In the meantime, discussion may only take place under § General comments." I thought I'd gotten to the RFA before it had officially opened and that the candidate had either requested feedback from a bunch of people or was so known that a lot of people had watchlisted their RFA page. And also that maybe Special:Watchlist was glitching and showing me an RFC that it shouldn't be. I realize a lot of this is based on me being dumb, but if you end up on the individual RFA without doing a full read of WP:RFA (which, why would I?) then there's no explanation why it's different than every other RFA I've ever been on. Alyo (chat·edits) 14:42, 30 April 2024 (UTC)

Is something like what I added to Toadette's support section adequate? Floquenbeam (talk) 14:48, 30 April 2024 (UTC)

I added ", per a recent RFC." to Floq's addition. Levivich (talk) 14:51, 30 April 2024 (UTC)

Absolutely, much appreciated. Alyo (chat·edits) 14:53, 30 April 2024 (UTC)

It might also be good to have watchlist notices for all RFAs in this trial mention it explicitly. "A new RFA is up. Note that Support/Oppose/Neutral votes may only be made after 1 May 0000 UTC". Or something roughly along those lines, so it's clear from Watchlist notice that something is different Soni (talk) 15:37, 30 April 2024 (UTC)

I kind of wonder whether it might actually be counterproductive to call these trials out as "something new" on watchlists. Valereee (talk) 16:31, 30 April 2024 (UTC)

I suspect it will not be necessary; I have added language to the preload page similar to what Floq et al added to the live RFA so that it is more clear at the next RFA that this is a trial process. Primefac (talk) 18:16, 30 April 2024 (UTC)

Holy freaking facepalm What an absolute disaster this 'trial' is. Nobody can snow/notnow close it (there's reverting going on over that), it's a freaking shambles as is, some don't know what the hell is going on, no problem was identified that this would solve, and the candidate themselves acknowledges it's a failure but won't withdraw. Not to mention that these 'trial' RFAs are being inflicted involuntarily upon RfA candidates who want to become administrators. Not to mention that now, instead of snow closes on RfAs that will obviously fail, we now get two days of slapping the crap out of a candidate until !voting begins. What an absolutely colossal eff-up. Take this steaming pile back to the drawing board and think about its impact, potential unintended consequences, and just what the hell problems it's supposed to solve vs. the massive problems its inducing. Wow. Just utter wow. --Hammersoft (talk) 20:43, 30 April 2024 (UTC)

I don't think that's really a fair assessment. This wasn't a typical RfA, and the snow close probably should have been left alone. Valereee (talk) 21:04, 30 April 2024 (UTC)

It wasn't an RFA. It was a public hazing. Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 21:30, 30 April 2024 (UTC)

@Suffusion of Yellow, Is there a difference? Moneytrees🏝️(Talk) 21:54, 30 April 2024 (UTC)

Fair enough, no, but if you're nasty to someone who stands a realistic chance of passing, you can excuse it to yourself with "well, they'll have to put up with the same shit when some troll drags them to ANI, so they better get used to it". Piling on to a doomed RFA with "and another thing" is ... well, I'll hold my thoughts per WP:NPA. Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 22:10, 30 April 2024 (UTC)

@Suffusion of Yellow None of what you say is wrong-- you've described every RfA that isn't a blow out. That's why I'll never vote oppose. RfA is one of the oldest, most important hazing rituals on the internet, and I see a lot of that as stemming from how uniquely powerful-- and fickle-- the Wikipedia community is. It's a cultural thing. I don't think the comment delay is necessarily bad because of that. Moneytrees🏝️(Talk) 22:19, 30 April 2024 (UTC)

Without the delay, either there is a "cushion" of supports, so the candidate knows that not everyone hates them, or it's closed (and maybe even deleted) within hours, before an excess of pile-ons can happen. This new format sets up the opportunity for two days worth of pile-ons, the excuse being "well, we don't know how the vote is going to go, they might pass." Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 22:28, 30 April 2024 (UTC)

We have a sample size of one, and it did not go for two days, and was in fact snow-closed within hours (14 hours). I'm not sure that other snow-closed RFAs are snow-closed much sooner than that, and I don't think they're deleted; sometimes they're courtesy blanked, and so was this one. Also, there are different kinds of snow/notnow RFAs: this one wasn't like one that's made by a non-extended-confirmed editor, which might be closed within an hour and deleted; this one was by an experienced editor, so that would lend itself to a longer period before it was closed as snow/notnow... long enough for their to be a pile on. In fact, the only way we get to snow closes in such cases is with a pile-on; it's snow-closed because of the pile-on. So, pile-ons are inevitable for any non-obvious-but-still-snow RFA. While I agree on the larger points (RFA is hazing, this discussion period idea will not make RFA less toxic), this RFA doesn't seem to have been much different than any others. Levivich (talk) 22:37, 30 April 2024 (UTC)

Agree about the sample size of one; I'm still willing to let the experiment run out. Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 22:53, 30 April 2024 (UTC)

If having a bank of supports is deemed important for all requests for adminship, then the process could require a nomination period where editors supporting the request would comment, with a somewhat low threshold required for the request to proceed. Without changing the process, potential candidates could be encouraged to do this themselves, with the understanding that if they can't find enough people to support them, then their chances aren't good at making a successful request. isaacl (talk) 22:43, 30 April 2024 (UTC)

@Moneytrees: "Is there a difference?" I'd say it's analogous to the difference between a multi-level marketing company and a pyramid scheme. Or between an escort and a hooker. Kurtis ^(talk) 19:09, 11 May 2024 (UTC)

@Suffusion of Yellow, I feel like what you're talking about would have happened under any system. This wasn't a ridiculous nom. I think many people would have tried to treat this with respect -- and in fact many did --and we could have ended up with something that went on much longer. If it hadn't been for the reversion of the close, this would have been over in hours. Valereee (talk) 01:37, 1 May 2024 (UTC)

What, you think it would have gone perfectly and there'd be no hard feelings if they had submitted one in the old style? jp×g🗯️ 20:48, 7 May 2024 (UTC)

"Typical" RFAs

• "I don't think a sample size of one (and not exactly a typical RfA, either) is sufficient for determining this."
• "+1. This is not a typical RfA. If this RfA had happened a month ago, it would have been a simple snow close after multiple moral support opposes."

Ahem.

• Typical RfA, January 2024 – withdrawn within 6 hours
• Typical RfA, November 2023 – withdrawn within an hour
• Typical RfA, April 2023 – withdrawn within 3 hours
• Typical RfA, January 2023 – NOT NOW after just 2 hours, despite the candidate's statement:

  "I am requesting this go the full 7 days. I value input from the community as a whole whether it's support or oppose and requesting it be closed only 2 or 3 days would curtail that."

• Typical RfA, October 2022 – SNOW within 2 hours

This typical type of RfA happens much less frequently than it used to, but all types of RfAs happen less frequently these days.
I don't follow the logic that you can NOTNOW or SNOW when the vote is 0–0, i.e. before voting has even started, unless the so-called "discussion" section, where !voting doesn't happen is interpreted as a "pre-voting" not voting section where not not votes are not voted, but are counted anyway.

This trial should be SNOW closed, because of this fatal flaw. A better option for handling pre-vote discussions for first-time candidates would be to mandate that they open an RfA candidate poll before they are allowed to open an RfA. I'm not sure that's a good option, but it could be an option for a viable trial. – wbm1058 (talk) 15:55, 11 May 2024 (UTC)

It's not necessarily a flaw—if the discussion hadn't been closed prematurely, it wouldn't be a problem. Cremastra (talk) 17:11, 11 May 2024 (UTC)

(It is hilarious to read that community consensus should be "SNOW closed" for a "fatal flaw") On a more serious note, OCRP has problems too, like a lack of participation and the danger of digging up or manufacturing skeletons that tank future RfAs. The consensus in favor of a better mentorship system reflects this. What I would support is requiring candidates to have at least one nominator, since that seems to be the best mentorship we can offer. Toadspike [Talk] 19:30, 31 May 2024 (UTC)

A new RfA

Several hours ago a new RfA was started, but we should not do the same as the previous one, closed, reverted, blanked, unblanked, and reclosed. As the second after the review and the first to see possible voting, we would expect positive feedback to be made once RfA has been finished. I cannot expect what has happened, and I was shocked about that. It is like everybody beat me up, but I won't expect the same as the curren RfA. Toadette^Edit! 19:06, 25 May 2024 (UTC)

Yet another self-nom, which is really not all that helpful in determining whether this new system will help. I wonder why this is attracting self-noms? Valereee (talk) 20:11, 25 May 2024 (UTC)

If we're being honest, because the kind of people who would approach a nominator will largely be waiting until the trial is over. RfA incentivizes risk-averse behavior. Extraordinary Writ (talk) 20:48, 25 May 2024 (UTC)

Yeah, maybe people who would't bother to consider approaching a nominator are the same ones who'd take a risk on a new system. It's too bad, really. I do think there could be benefits to this, but if it keeps going this way we may not get a chance to see that. Valereee (talk) 21:48, 25 May 2024 (UTC)

This new system may have sounded like a reasonable idea on paper, but what we've seen in practice is that over the course of two days enough negative information surfaces to sink the candidate. While both of these candidates would certainly have failed under the traditional system, I think the results so far have lessened the likelihood of a more qualified candidate taking the risk. I believe this experiment will fail because very few suitable candidates will be willing to risk it. LEPRICAVARK (talk) 23:23, 27 May 2024 (UTC)

Well, never mind. LEPRICAVARK (talk) 22:58, 28 May 2024 (UTC)

We are also living in the post-Tamzin (and Vami) RfA Wikipedia, where prospective candidates can look forward to any slightly controversial opinion they have ever stated onwiki taken out of context and used as reason to impugn their judgement and fitness to be an admin. Are people really surprised there's little appetite among experienced editors to run? Just scroll up a bit and see what Clovermoss went through, and that was a largely uncontroversial RfA; there's also experiences from those like SFR who had all sorts of accusations thrown at them for their trouble. Personally, I don't think I'll ever run because my record isn't 100% perfect and I could only look forward to being called "uncivil" (because I don't entertain BS) and a "deletionist" (with several dozen GAs). So why would I bother running? I have the content creation 10 times over, and the experience and edit count, but why on earth would I want the massive stress of getting picked apart by the entire site? I think you could ask many other editors and they'd give you a similar answer. Maybe the new system will herald a shift, but I have my doubts. Trainsandotherthings (talk) 01:25, 26 May 2024 (UTC)

Some things change, some don't. Eighteen years ago I put off submitting to RfA, even though SlimVirgin had asked me to, in part because I was worried that some mistakes I had made would be brought up in a RfA. When I did run a few months later, no one mentioned any of my mistakes, other than one criticism for being too bureaucratic about changes to policies. Of course, there were a lot more RfAs then, and individual RfAs got less attention (81 votes total for mine). Donald Albury 14:51, 26 May 2024 (UTC)

+1. Best, Reading Beans 08:16, 29 May 2024 (UTC)

My hope is that people are just waiting until they can try the "admin election". —Kusma (talk) 17:11, 26 May 2024 (UTC)

And/or the other Phase 2 items. Still, I don't think this rfa is any more typical than the last one, so I'm not sure we've had a "normal" or typical test case yet. We may not get one until Phase 2 is done and/or elections are rolled out. I'm very curious to see if we get a bunch of candidates standing for election. Levivich (talk) 20:34, 26 May 2024 (UTC)

I would disagree that this recent RFA was atypical. It was a user with many years of experience and many thousands of edits, but the RFA failed due to lack of experience in a few specific areas (and, to some degree, for taciturn answers in the RFA itself). But I don't think an RFA needs to be successful in order to fall within the bounds of typical. Useight (talk) 15:52, 28 May 2024 (UTC)

Totally agree that a typical rfa need not be successful. I think it was the answers to questions that made the last rfa atypical. (IMO, those were very atypical answers.) Levivich (talk) 16:21, 28 May 2024 (UTC)

Yes, I agree with that. It's much more common for RFA candidates to be more descriptive and verbose when answering questions. I'm wondering if this trial, with its initial period of only comments/questions is simply going to result in a higher number of questions and, therefore, all things being equal, result in candidates giving shorter answers to each individual question due to a number of factors, from the objective (answering more questions in the same amount of time requires shorter answers) to the subjective (more questions tiring or flustering the candidate). Useight (talk) 19:27, 28 May 2024 (UTC)

I do think I'm seeing people wanting to hear their voice but only seeing 'ask a question' as a possibility, so they ask a question. Definitely not a plus for this system. Valereee (talk) 20:11, 28 May 2024 (UTC)

I notice in the current RfA that some people are explicitly saying how they intend to vote when that starts, even though that's not what the proposed process intends. Once again, that seems to be difficult to enforce. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:50, 26 May 2024 (UTC)

I don’t see how it can be enforced and never understood this. It seems to be a fatal flaw. Doug Weller talk 19:33, 26 May 2024 (UTC)

Just read the page and I only saw one person who indicated how they would vote, which seems like a marked improvement from last time. Levivich (talk) 20:32, 26 May 2024 (UTC)

From a candidate's pov, the General Comments section in the current RfA is a complete shambles. Questions to answers buried in TL;DR discussions and ramblings about photographic evidence about animals and basically editors saying how they intend to !vote when the time comes rather than waiting until the time comes. This, repeated as it will be, is unfair to candidates and needs to be addressed, speedily. Leaky caldron (talk) 19:16, 26 May 2024 (UTC)

Any idea how before we get new candidates? An RfC maybe, but that might take too long unless enough agree for a snow close. Doug Weller talk 19:36, 26 May 2024 (UTC)

It does seem that we need to have more structure in these pre-voting discussions. I would like to see people adding relevant information to the page, like their experience from interactions with the candidate, their impressions from reviewing the candidate's contributions, their analysis of the candidate's AfD record etc., so there is better information available for voters once voting starts. Maybe make it "candidate evaluations" and ask all participants to provide information not yet on the page? —Kusma (talk) 19:45, 26 May 2024 (UTC)

I continue to believe that more sectioning would improve the General discussion experience. Right now it's a mismash catch all of "All comments people would otherwise make at RFAs (with/without voting indicators)". Which then leads to more repetition.

I think a simple encouragement of sections would do most of the trick. If I want to discuss someone's laconic answers, I'd put it under "About short answers" subsection instead of the larger "General Discussion" section. I think it wouldn't be very contentious for someone (probably an admin?) to move such comments to the right section too. Soni (talk) 21:25, 26 May 2024 (UTC)

I think we need a better delineation of what is a general comment versus what is a question. At the same time, I don't think it's unusual that we are a bit confused with a brand new process. Once the RfA concludes I think we will be able to do a post-mortem and assess what is and isn't working. I do think that removing the immediate voting really helps turn down the temperature (and allows the candidate an easy out if they so choose). Things have been remarkably calm so far, which is a positive change for sure. Trainsandotherthings (talk) 23:21, 26 May 2024 (UTC)

Update: Voting started an hour ago and as of the moment I am writing, there are 11 against and 2 in favor. Expecting that the ratio of supports and opposes gets worse, it is expected that it may close early and thus it would not still count towards the first five RfAs before September. Toadette^Edit! 02:37, 27 May 2024 (UTC)

This means we still have a lot of fixes for it to work. The RFA talk page seems blank, somehow... Just a random Wikipedian^(talk) 03:18, 27 May 2024 (UTC)

I'm very interested to see how this discussion period is affecting the amount of questions. Average RfAs seem to reach ~20-30 questions across 7 days; this one got to 32 in just a little over 2 days but is also another unusual RfA. I.e. is the discussion period resulting in all the questions being asked at once, or is it resulting in more questions to be asked across the entire RfA, or some other third thing? There has always been a trend that the majority of questions are asked in the first few days and then this tapers off, but this is quite dramatic even acknowledging that. Curbon7 (talk) 05:43, 27 May 2024 (UTC)

It could also be that in this specific case the answers given were way too short. This means people didn’t get a good idea about the candidate and had to ask more questions to get a better idea (my own question was a direct repeat of Q1, for example). I suspect that better answers may have meant a lot less questions, which would then probably have tailed off sharply once !voting started. (I opposed this at the RfC and I’m still waiting to see if there are any upsides to this. Maybe a different candidate (one who isn’t a self nom and with a stronger track record in admin-lite areas) will show the benefits of the system). - SchroCat (talk) 07:57, 27 May 2024 (UTC)

IMHO, folks were chompin' at the bit to engage in the RfA and the process only gave them two outlets: questions and comments. I'm disappointed this candidate wasn't better prepared to respond to questions, because on paper the candidate had some good qualities (an ORCP wouldn't have hurt them either). With due respect to Toadette (whom I honor for being the human to be "first through the door"), neither of these worthy contributors were "shovel ready" sysop candidates, but both of them might have successful 2nd runs if they continue to demonstrate their trustworthiness. For the record, I think having a set of nominators gives some rudder to the boat, so to speak. My 2nd RfA nominators vetted me personally and offered to help me with the basic three questions if they thought mine needed help. My nominators made themselves available to me during my run as did a few other supporting admins. A self-nom is a tougher road to tread. BusterD (talk) 13:29, 27 May 2024 (UTC)

As sort of alluded already, I think this process is no better, if not worse, then the default process we've been using for over a decade. Rather than editors bluntly posting how they will vote, the ... nominee has to guess how they will eventually vote based on the "General comments" section prior to the voting period starting? So ... as far as I can tell, the only way I can see this being avoided is to basically restrict editors from voting if they participate in the RFA prior to the voting period starting ... which I really do not see happening as enforceable or an agreeable resolution to this, but I don't see any alternatives either to make this process better for the nominees. Steel1943 (talk) 23:19, 27 May 2024 (UTC)

Maybe we should have required anyone who RfAd under this trial to have a nominator. Valereee (talk) 01:04, 28 May 2024 (UTC)

Thankfully a moot point, now we have a nominated candidate put forward. A superficial glance shows this one may be a solid candidate, so the new system will at least get something of a proper test. - SchroCat (talk) 11:41, 28 May 2024 (UTC)

This is dependent on what you are testing. Are we testing whether this makes RFA better for candidates who will not pass? Or better for candidates that would have passed on the old system? I'm genuinely curious. Before running tests you always work out what you are testing. Therefore, what is it that we are testing here? - Bilby (talk) 12:06, 28 May 2024 (UTC)

I think SchroCat's point is that we are getting a test of the system with a candidate that has a chance of passing. _Dial^mayo 12:15, 28 May 2024 (UTC)

That makes a degree of sense, but I am still a bit lost. I'll go over the voting from before to try and get a better picture. But it seems to me that the ultimate goal is to make RFA more accessible to editors so that we get more people nominating. If that is the case, there are two situations we should care about - the treatment of people who are unlikely to pass and the treatment of people who have a chance to pass, but may not. At the moment we have two examples of the former, which is a good thing. But we should not discount them because they fail to fit into the second model. - Bilby (talk) 12:48, 28 May 2024 (UTC)

The trial is for 5 non-snow/withdrawn RFAs, so what we are testing is how this works with candidates who have a chance of passing. This current one looks like it'll be the first one. Levivich (talk) 13:03, 28 May 2024 (UTC)

I'm ok with that. I don't want to be difficult, but strangely enough this is my field.

I'm curious because I assume that the intent is to pass more admins. There are two models which I think could achieve that:

• Making RFA less onerous so that more people will run, increasing the number of successful attempts.
• Lowering the standards such that people who would not have passed on the prior model would pass on the new one, and thus increasing the percentage of successes.

I am assuming that we are targeting the first of these. If so, the first two RFAs are relevant, because anyone asking if they should make a run at RFA will look to those to decide if it is worth it. People who would have succeeded in the old model would be largely irrelevant.

The problem with these situations is that the relevant stakeholders are not those who choose to take part, but those who decide not to run. Understanding why some people choose not to run for RFA is far more valuable than understanding why those who choose to did so. - Bilby (talk) 14:25, 28 May 2024 (UTC)

I get it, and I don't think you're being difficult. But I think there are more than those two models, and the intent is not just more admins: it's possible to have a better process that produces the same number of admins, it's not just about the numbers. And then there's admin elections, which is a big untested elephant in the room. I wouldn't judge any of the RFA2024 reforms until, at the earliest, we've had admin elections. Levivich (talk) 14:42, 28 May 2024 (UTC)

(edit conflict) The direct aim (for this new mechanism, at least) was not to pass more admins. The rationale for the original proposal (which was originally for three days of comments followed by seven days of !voting) was given by Barkeep49 and can be found here, where he says "it has the potential to make RfA less unpleasant for candidates". Obviously this hasn't been properly tested yet, but this new candidate looks like someone who will be able to give the facility a proper test to see if it does actually make RfA less unpleasant for candidates. If it does that, there may be a knock-on effect that others will be willing to throw their hat in the RfA ring, thus raising the numbers overall. - SchroCat (talk) 15:01, 28 May 2024 (UTC)

I ask to not be pinged about RfA. Thanks, Barkeep49 (talk) 15:13, 28 May 2024 (UTC)

And we're going to make this rather significant change to RfA based on a subjective analysis of a sample set of ...5. --Hammersoft (talk) 01:00, 30 May 2024 (UTC)

Place for discussing the trial proposals

Obviously, discussion of the Phase II proposals is supposed to take place at the Phase II sections (Proposal 2, Proposal 16/16c, Proposal 17, and Proposal 24), but what about the trial proposals? I see discussion of the trial proposals in quite a few places on this page, but it's a little messy and hard to follow. Should discussion take place in a section here, on WT:RFA2024, or some other avenue I'm not thinking of? _Dial^mayo 11:59, 28 May 2024 (UTC)

Nowhere would be best for right now, IMO. We should try the new stuff out first before we analyze or discuss it. It's too soon to learn anything about the reforms. Levivich (talk) 13:06, 28 May 2024 (UTC)

I agree with Levivich that it's better to wait until there's been more experience with the trial process. We risk overreacting, particularly with the real-time analysis that has been ongoing. Plus if anyone is concerned about the behaviour of participants in requests for adminship, now's the time to influence community expectations. If you feel candidates aren't getting enough moral support, then offer some. Soni has added subsection headings to try to focus discussion into common points, as he discussed earlier. (I've previously advocated centering threads around specific discussion points to avoid repetition.) We have the opportunity to lead by example through our participation. isaacl (talk) 16:28, 28 May 2024 (UTC)

I'm fine with wanting to wait before judging the trials prematurely, but a related point occurs to me. What I see here, at WT-RfA, includes a significant amount of editor concerns about how the trials so far have been going. But it seems to me (other editors' mileage may of course differ) that these concerns would lead logically to some thoughts that could be relevant at the current discussions at Phase 2 of RfA2024. In particular, I think the discussions about the reminder of civility norms and about admin recall are ones where I've been surprised at what I personally think is a lack of the skepticism that is the same skepticism that I have been seeing on this talk page. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:36, 29 May 2024 (UTC)

I've just lost interest because I feel steps were jumped in the process, and now things like Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/2024 review/Phase II/Administrator recall are being ramrodded through. At some point, you just have to realize the project wants to screw itself over. --Hammersoft (talk) 23:02, 29 May 2024 (UTC)

I have a feeling that you are not the only experienced editor who feels that way. But I urge editors who are concerned about that ramrodding (not to mention that screwing!) to weigh in before it becomes a fait accompli. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:06, 29 May 2024 (UTC)

It's too late. There's already been three weeks worth of participation there, and nobody is going to change their minds now. In a world where we're desperate for administrators, we're trying desperately hard to come up with a way to get rid of them <smdh>. And this, for something that happens at the ArbCom level twice a year. If ever there was a solution looking for a problem, this is it. I don't mean to be dramatic, but it gives me pause about whether to continue to be an administrator. --Hammersoft (talk) 00:46, 30 May 2024 (UTC)

By the way, we're now down to 438 active administrators. 16 months ago, we had 500. Give or take, we're going to be down to around 412 by the beginning of the year, and by this time next year, we'll be below 400. --Hammersoft (talk) 01:52, 30 May 2024 (UTC)

Whether or not it's too late to change the minds of editors who already commented there, it's not too late for other editors (even if not you) to add their opinions to the discussion. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:56, 30 May 2024 (UTC)

There are plenty of proposals that have received consensus support about which I've been skeptical. Eventually, though, it gets tiresome for others if I begin every comment with "I'm skeptical of this proposal, even though it has consensus support. That being said, here is my feedback on implementation detail X..." At some point, I either get on board with working on the implementation details, or I leave it to others who feel strongly about making the implementation as effective as possible. isaacl (talk) 15:04, 31 May 2024 (UTC)

Just to clarify, I'm really talking about when editors have skepticism about proposals that are still being discussed. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:36, 31 May 2024 (UTC)

Sure. The level of consensus support for a proposal and its details is on a continuum, and thus in the collaborative spirit, I try to focus expressions of skepticism to aspects that haven't yet achieved consensus. isaacl (talk) 04:16, 1 June 2024 (UTC)

I just can't. We're at the point now where people just throw as much censoredspaghetti against the wall as they can to see what sticks. Nobody seems to give a damn about trying to actually figure out what's wrong and work the process. Just come up with "solutions" and get them applied and see if they work or not. Well, as we've seen with this stupid discussion trial, it doesn't work. I feel sorry for the people that have had to endure this discussion trial. --Hammersoft (talk) 21:06, 31 May 2024 (UTC)

Early start by an hour?

Moved from Wikipedia talk:Requests for adminship/DreamRimmer, since it quickly became unrelated to the RFA itself. Primefac (talk) 11:03, 30 May 2024 (UTC)

@SchroCat, why did you do this? – robertsky (talk) 09:19, 30 May 2024 (UTC)

I suspect because of time zone things. Anyone on UTC+1 will see "starts at 10:02" and potentially forget that "10:02" their time is really 09:02 UTC. Primefac (talk) 09:26, 30 May 2024 (UTC)

Like DST offsets not accounted for? That makes sense. – robertsky (talk) 09:30, 30 May 2024 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Indeed. I forgot that we in the UK are currently on BST, rather than UTC. - SchroCat (talk) 09:37, 30 May 2024 (UTC)

Oh well. The milk has spilled, and it is just an hour off. I don't think much can be faulted on this. A pedantic me would request you to re-sign the vote after 20 minutes from now lest others seek to invalidate the early votes in a toss-up, if it happens. If this 2-day thing becomes a permanent thing, we can look into solutions to warn people not to vote early if they do so mistakenly. – robertsky (talk) 09:47, 30 May 2024 (UTC)

I have always though that a tool to lock sections of a page would be beneficial, rather than locking the whole page. That would be useful in these situations too. Alternatively, not having the voting sections in place until the kick-off time would also help. - SchroCat (talk) 10:04, 30 May 2024 (UTC)

Prior to the note being added, that was my thinking as well (hiding them entirely, that is) much as we do with the auto-close code. Something to discuss at WT:RFA though, not necessarily here. Primefac (talk) 10:10, 30 May 2024 (UTC)

The conditional statement that would have automatically opened up the voting at the right time didn't help much here because it was manually removed an hour early. If that conditional contained the entire voting section, it probably still would have been manually removed an hour early. Not that this was a big deal, but there's probably not much we can do about people removing code because they think the code is broken, don't understand what it is, or don't notice it's there. I don't think the problem is with the code. Maybe add to the hidden comment something that alerts people that the code will automatically open the voting at the right time? Levivich (talk) 10:18, 30 May 2024 (UTC)

How about The code below will automatically "open" the voting by hiding the notice at the correct time? See Special:Diff/1226653241. —⁠andrybak (talk) 01:22, 1 June 2024 (UTC)

I was thinking that maybe we can explore using an edit filter to warn editors to not vote if they make modifications in the voting section early. – robertsky (talk) 10:20, 30 May 2024 (UTC)

Edit filters are loaded on every single edit page on the entire wiki, so in general should be useful on a large number of pages to justify the performance overhead. –Novem Linguae (talk) 13:53, 30 May 2024 (UTC)

Could this be done by transcluding the section from another page (say, Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/DreamRimmer/Vote), and locking that page? Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 10:57, 30 May 2024 (UTC)

Yes, but that makes things complicated. A {{hide until}} call (or something similar) would actually hide the text/sections entirely so there would be no reason for anyone to be editing it unless they were editing the entire page and didn't then notice the code saying that it was hiding the voting. The other option, as Levivich says, is to possibly indicate that the "this isn't open yet" code also contains a note that the code disappears when the time is right. Primefac (talk) 11:02, 30 May 2024 (UTC)

It might look like I'm going to fall out with SchroCat over footnotes and pages +n, etc., in the near future, but he's one of the best editors we've got and is trustworthy as hell. That's for the record. ——Serial Number 54129 11:32, 30 May 2024 (UTC)

No need to do this, and should be reminded that all times in Wikipedia are in UTC and not your local time. Just a random Wikipedian^(talk) 06:49, 4 June 2024 (UTC)

UTC+00:00 (UTC for short) is also known as Greenwich Mean Time. SchroCat above says they live in the United Kingdom, which confusingly isn't always on Greenwich Mean Time, "despite having Greenwich". —⁠andrybak (talk) 08:08, 4 June 2024 (UTC)

Discussion of discussion-only period

You are invited to participate at the phase II review of the ongoing trial of the discussion-only period :) theleekycauldron (talk • she/her) 23:24, 30 May 2024 (UTC)

You are also invited to participate in a discussion of the discussion of the discussion-only period at Wikipedia talk:Requests for adminship/2024 review/Phase II/Discussion-only period. —⁠andrybak (talk) 17:13, 1 June 2024 (UTC)

Asking two questions

I have eliminated the parameter for the second question number from Template:Rfa-question, as it should always be the first question number plus 1. So, if you want to ask two questions, then you should use {{subst:Rfa-question|first question number|question 1|question 2}} rather than {{subst:Rfa-question|first question number|question 1|second question number|question 2}}. GTrang (talk) 14:13, 3 June 2024 (UTC)

Discussion of off-wiki commentary

I don't know if we should do this here or maybe at the village pump or yet another RFA reform RFC but it seems clear we have a problem in this area. It's clearly not going to sink the current RFA, but there are some questions that need to be resolved:

• How are we to evaluate accusations based on off-wiki evidence that apparently cannot even be named, yet alone directly linked to, on-wiki? Only users already in the know of these specifc discussions even know what is being discussed.
• Is there a difference between off-wiki criticism forums as opposed to the en.wp dischord?
• Is emailing links of the relvant off-wiki evidence to the arbitration committee even relevant, as ArbCom is in no way in charge of RFA?

Seems like we need to clarify this stuff. Just Step Sideways ^{from this world ..... today} 19:36, 4 June 2024 (UTC)

Speaking only to the second point, I think there's a pretty clear difference between participating at off-wiki criticism forums vs participation on one of the unofficial Wikipedia discords. I think it's at least relevant that the en-wiki Discord server is moderated mostly by Stewards and en-wiki admins. Hey man im josh (talk) 19:42, 4 June 2024 (UTC)

Speaking of criticism forums, I really like the quote on your user page Criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary. It fulfils the same function as pain in the human body. It calls attention to an unhealthy state of things. — hako9 (talk) 21:52, 5 June 2024 (UTC)

At the end of the day, they're both 'off-wiki' forums for on-wiki activity. It is impossible to separate the two. The stewards and admins of Wikipedia perform very different functions on Discord; naturally so, as they are not subject to community oversight. ——Serial Number 54129 19:57, 4 June 2024 (UTC)

That makes sense SN. Lightburst (talk) 05:24, 7 June 2024 (UTC)

It is impossible to separate the two. – I disagree, unless you were just referring to the idea of treating all off-wiki communication platforms the same. One is specifically tailored towards criticism and, ahem, other things. The community Discord however is meant to facilitate the work that goes on on-wiki in a positive way. Whether we always succeed in doing so is debatable (there is a genuine effort there from what I see), but the intent and purpose of the two are very different. Hey man im josh (talk) 20:07, 4 June 2024 (UTC)

I think there is a big difference in any random place off-wiki and the Discord, which is managed and moderated by Wikipedians and where you have to actually authenticate yourself to participate (or to see anything there). We've been down the road of treating "off-wiki" by semiofficial wateringholes as verboten to talk about, and that did not work out well. Treating Discord as a place where you cannot be held to account on-wiki but which everyone can see is not a winning combination. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs ^talk 20:03, 4 June 2024 (UTC)

I'm just reading along from my watchlist and not planning to deep dive into this discussion (yet), but to clarify: The Discord server does not require authentication, though almost all long time users do so. Everything (but the noted admin area, similar to the IRC admin channels) is visible without doing so. Note this is specific to the main Discord. Some language projects (i.e., not enwiki) DO require authentication. -- ferret (talk) 20:09, 4 June 2024 (UTC)

I want to comment about the third bullet point in JSS's opening post, about whether it is appropriate to email ArbCom. In a general sense (separate from RfA specifically), community practice is to email private evidence of wrongdoing to ArbCom (or in some cases, Functionaries), with the exception of evidence about COI, where we now have a dedicated email queue. I doubt that we need ArbCom to establish another email system for RfA (although if recent events become a trend, eventually we might). Given that, and given that ArbCom does have a specified role for admin wrongdoing, I see nothing wrong with expecting that such evidence must be submitted privately to ArbCom when brought up in RfA discussions (although perhaps we need an RfC to make that a requirement). The problem I see with that is that there is generally a need for a prompt response during an RfA, and ArbCom tends not to be prompt. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:44, 4 June 2024 (UTC)

This, to me, is the crtux of the issue we are seeing before our eyes right now. A few users are opposing based on a few completely inncuous comments at an off-wiki site, basically because "admins can't do that, at all, ever, no matter what it is they say, and if they do they are complicit in literally everything else that goes on in the entire forum". I feel like this is an attempt at creating a chilling effect where users are meant to be afraid to be critical on these forums, or to comment in them at all. How are RFA particpants to judge this opposition when, currently, we apparently can't even say where it is? Just Step Sideways ^{from this world ..... today} 22:05, 4 June 2024 (UTC)

I doubt that this is something that is causing worthy RfAs to go down in failure. We've always had opposes at RfA that happen, cause angst, but don't sink the candidate. Editors familiar with what happened elsewhere can say whether or not they think there was a real problem, and other editors can decide for themselves who to believe or not believe. That's what I did in my support: [1]. (Where I also used a three-letter acronym, uh-oh!) --Tryptofish (talk) 22:12, 4 June 2024 (UTC)

As a seperate issue, I have just filed an WP:ARCA request for the committee to clarify some policy points related to how or even if we are allowed to discuss these things on-wiki. Just Step Sideways ^{from this world ..... today} 22:47, 4 June 2024 (UTC)

Of course we can discuss things in general. A specific outing of someone is not appropriate. But if they have outed themselves, then they gave away the right to that privacy. But the committee can make their own pronouncements. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 00:21, 5 June 2024 (UTC)

I wanna link to the snotty thing JSS just said about me at that other site. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:53, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

The obvious solution is to drop the charade. If Wikipedia editors are talking about Wikipedia, on a public forum, devoted to commentary of Wikipedia, using an account that is clearly linked to their Wikipedia account, then we should be able to discuss it openly here on Wikipedia. It's not outing, not "logging", not a copyright violation, or any of the other ridiculous, self-serving excuses that people have come up with for this taboo over the years. ArbCom has no role to play: their remit isn't "off-wiki evidence", it's matters unsuitable for public discussion, and what we're talking about here is already under "public discussion", by definition. – Joe (talk) 07:50, 5 June 2024 (UTC)

@Joe Roe: Perhaps I'm missing something, but I don't believe there's any authentication between that other forum and on-wiki unless it's admitted on-wiki, since we can't exactly trust that someone is the same person on that site just based on the user name alone. The community Discord however does have a bot that authenticates you as an on-wiki user. Hey man im josh (talk) 13:22, 5 June 2024 (UTC)

To my knowledge there's never been an example of someone impersonating an editor on Wikipediocracy to get them into trouble on Wikipedia. If that ever did happen, I imagine the matter would be very quickly resolved by the target saying "that's not me". Otherwise, I think it's safe to assume that people are who they say they are, authentication process or not. – Joe (talk) 13:27, 5 June 2024 (UTC)

I was impersonated on Wikipediocracy on January 2, 2024. A thread was started by someone with the same name as me impersonating me. It may be more common than you think. –Novem Linguae (talk) 15:47, 5 June 2024 (UTC)

That assumes that the target keeps up with all the many sub-"forum" pages on WPO, which surely at most only a handful of people do, and they wouldn't be the ones to be impersonated. Johnbod (talk) 16:15, 5 June 2024 (UTC)

Just to note one other thing - some active participants on Discord (including myself) don't have a Wikipedia account to link, so there's no way to tell for sure that the person behind this IP at the moment is the same person named Tarlonniel over on Discord, beyond taking my word for it. 57.140.16.48 (talk) 21:17, 6 June 2024 (UTC)

1. So long as the current consensus on Discord chat logs remains in force, mention of them must be avoided entirely instead of using an actual live RfA's !oppose section to re-litigate it by bringing up veiled accusations that stick to the letter of the Discord Logs RfC but not its spirit, no matter if one thinks it's just a charade, or ridiculous, or self-serving, or any such adjective one can think up. Any change to that consensus should be sought in a new RfC.

Personally I will disclose any of my Wikimedia Discord messages to whoever asks, and I won't be opposed to being able to link to messages on the server so long as the users are authenticated. But that is me. Community consensus is that people would rather keep their Discord comments private. Change that first.

2. Yes lol, the English Wikimedia Discord server enforces enwiki's own civility rules far more actively than enwiki itself. Blocked users aren't allowed to harp on their blocks and How Much They Hate Wikipedia day in and day out, unlike WPO where that is the express purpose.

3. If community consensus is something worth respecting, then given the current consensus, emailing ArbCom is the only way to bring up problematic Discord messages. Of course, if consensus shifts to allow Discord logs to be posted publicly, this will be moot.

Wilhelm Tell DCCXLVI (^{talk to me!}/_{my edits}) 09:56, 5 June 2024 (UTC)

Let's say I send you an email, out of the blue, saying Hi Wilhelm Tell, I think you're stupid, but please don't tell anyone else. Best wishes, Joe. And then some years later, you're asked to be on a committee to decide whether I should be given the Friendliest Wikipedian Award. Are you not going to mention the email, because I would "prefer to keep it private"? Oh and remember you can't just vote against me without saying why, because if you try the other members will accuse you of malfeasance and argue for you to be ejected from the committee. – Joe (talk) 10:08, 5 June 2024 (UTC)

Isn't this what Arbcom is for? You can just email your evidence of off-wiki harassment, then disclose the fact that you emailed them when explaining you vote? Because, in this specific situation, to prove that the person said what they said (and that you didn't just lie) you'd have to give out some pretty private information that would have to go through Arbcom anyway. GreenLipstickLesbian (talk) 10:15, 5 June 2024 (UTC)

But what is ArbCom supposed to do with it? Wilhelm Tell is upset with my vote here. I could have appended "which I've notified ArbCom of" to the first clause (because, as a matter of fact, I have, several times), but what difference would it have made? – Joe (talk) 10:30, 5 June 2024 (UTC)

ArbCom will evaluate the nature of the comments then? And they can decide whether or not to block the editor based on the evidence of offwiki abuse, thus preventing their election...? Also, I'm not upset, I only think community consensus should be respected in both letter and spirit, even if you think it's stupid. I reiterate that I will be fine with the Wikimedia Discord being linkable, I don't think we're disagreeing there. Also, if you did send me such a mail, I would be quite amused. You can try it out now ~ Wilhelm Tell DCCXLVI (^{talk to me!}/_{my edits}) 10:47, 5 June 2024 (UTC)

@Wilhelm Tell DCCXLVI In the context of a time-limited RFA, it seems pertinent to note that ArbCom moves at a very slow pace. Mach61 13:10, 6 June 2024 (UTC)

This makes me wonder - what was the timeline of Icewhiz/Eostrix being blocked during his RfA? Was Arbcom informed or someone else? Wilhelm Tell DCCXLVI (^{talk to me!}/_{my edits}) 13:34, 6 June 2024 (UTC)

Someone should correct me if I'm wrong, but my recollection is that ArbCom enacted the block during the RfA, but ArbCom had been in the process of investigating the Eostrix account for some time prior to the beginning of the RfA. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:16, 6 June 2024 (UTC)

You're mostly right; we had flagged the account earlier in the year as a potential sock, but the RFA was really the impetus for finally making the connection. Primefac (talk) 20:33, 6 June 2024 (UTC)

If, hypothetically, the account had not been flagged earlier, but was flagged right around the beginning of the RfA, would ArbCom have been able to work it out within the time-frame of the RfA? --Tryptofish (talk) 20:41, 6 June 2024 (UTC)

Probably, especially if we asked for assistance from the CU team. Primefac (talk) 20:49, 6 June 2024 (UTC)

Decide whether or not the candidate violated the specific policies you named in your vote? It's not perfect, but it's the best system we got. I always did prefer the story about the giant bug to the one about the court, anyway. GreenLipstickLesbian (talk) 10:47, 5 June 2024 (UTC)

@Wilhelm Tell DCCXLVI and GreenLipstickLesbian: there is a rather large gulf between 'something that stops me supporting an RfA' and 'off-wiki harassment meriting an ArbCom block'. Unlike user conduct forums—which is where the 'send it to ArbCom' rule comes from—you don't have to point to a specific policy violation or disruptive behaviour in an RfA. Editors are perfectly entitled oppose a candidate because they just don't think they'll be a good admin, don't like them, and/or get bad vibes – whether that's based on interactions on- or off-wiki. – Joe (talk) 11:44, 5 June 2024 (UTC)

I have no interest in your vote, and nor have I expressed one. You asked a question about a hypothetical scenario. I answered. I am beginning to suspect that the question was rhetorical. Was it? GreenLipstickLesbian (talk) 11:55, 5 June 2024 (UTC)

I'm not talking about my vote specifically, I'm talking about RfA in general. My hypothetical question was supposed to be an analogy for RfA, because this is a discussion about RfA on WT:RFA, but sorry if the use of a counterfactual scenario confused things. (It was also, incidentally, directed specifically at Wilhelm). – Joe (talk) 12:09, 5 June 2024 (UTC)

I'll freely admit I don't know of an effective way to oppose the Discord logs consensus in the oppose section of an RfA. But I do know you shouldn't be opposing the Discord logs consensus by breaking it. It appears to me the better course of action would be a fresh RfC. Wilhelm Tell DCCXLVI (^{talk to me!}/_{my edits}) 12:32, 5 June 2024 (UTC) P.S. A wise person once said if something seems systemically broken on Wikipedia, that may be on purpose, to prevent you from doing what you wanted to do in the first place.

Caveat: I speak only in terms of WP:Discord, and not in general of usage of Discord outside of that specific server. Community consensus is that people would rather keep their Discord comments private. I don't think this is the consensus at all. It's certainly not why I !voted the way I did in the RFC, and anyone who believes that their Discord messages are private is very very sorely mistaken. Joe can call it ridiculous, self-serving excuses if he likes, but I based my position on my reading of the policies and community expectations as I understood them at the time. However, the Discord server has long stated up front (prior to the RFC), both on it's project page and its Server Guide / Info channel, that the messages posted are public and can be read by anyone that joins. The RFC is a silly result that comes from how our policies/guidelines are written. I've noted this in the ARCA as well, but some people take OUTING so far as to suggest mentioning personal details on the userpages of an editor on another Wikimedia project is forbidden. That's obviously silly as well, in the post-SUL world at least. My personal hope is some guidance at ARCA results in some clarification that can then be channeled to a new RFC, that at least takes the Discord question out of this equation. I have no comment on WPO. -- ferret (talk) 14:39, 5 June 2024 (UTC)

I should clarify by "private" I meant that community consensus seemed to be that people didn't want Discord chat logs linked here. Obviously anyone can click on the invite and see every message since 2016. Wilhelm Tell DCCXLVI (^{talk to me!}/_{my edits}) 16:15, 5 June 2024 (UTC)

speaking to question 2: i'm very active on the discord, and i've found some of the comments at Elli's RfA about the discord to be really far out of whack with what it's actually like on there. the moderators are, to their credit, very proactive in shutting down even a hint of misbehavior, to the point where it can even be a bit over-bearing occasionally. the abundance of caution on the part of the moderation team, especially where eg canvassing is concerned, is in part a reaction to what the server used to be like, as well as the history of off-wiki shenanigans that have landed at ArbCom's doorstep over the past 2 decades.
for those not on the discord or not aware of the rules there, one is generally not allowed to even neutrally link an ongoing RfC/XfD/etc or even discuss an active RfA at all. doing such is usually shut down by whoever's active in the chat at the time, whether moderators are there or not - in other words, the discord community does a good job of self-moderating against canvassing (or even the appearance of canvassing) without the moderators needing to enforce it themselves. the prohibition of discussing ongoing RfAs is particularly well-enforced in the wake of Vami_IV's passing, and some of the very difficult RfAs that members of the server have gone through previously. basically, the discord community wants to avoid adding more stress to an already stressful process.
now, i'm not active on WPO and never have been, but this to me seems like basically the exact opposite. ... sawyer * he/they * talk 20:32, 5 June 2024 (UTC)

Sdkb RfA debrief

Hi all! I wrote a debrief of my RfA from February and have added it to the debriefs page. You can read it at User:Sdkb/RfA debrief. Cheers, Sdkb ^talk 22:38, 4 June 2024 (UTC)

Some additional conversation at User talk:Sdkb § RfA debrief. Sdkb ^talk 16:48, 5 June 2024 (UTC)

Clovermoss RfA debrief

Sdkb's debrief above reminded me that I really should get around to writing mine. It can be found here. Clovermoss🍀 (talk) 13:04, 7 June 2024 (UTC)

Floq's RFA debrief

What a wonderful procrastination opportunity. I'm just self-important enough to think that a third one would be useful too. I assume there's some central repository to link to these? Anyway, it's here. --Floquenbeam (talk) 17:23, 7 June 2024 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Debriefs. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 17:25, 7 June 2024 (UTC)

Thanks! Floquenbeam (talk) 17:25, 7 June 2024 (UTC)

Are admins automatically CUd?

I thought all candidates were ran through checkuser, however I cannot find written mention of this and don't want to hallucinate something that happened one time to be procedure. ^Thanks,L3X1 ◊distænt write◊ 18:02, 18 June 2024 (UTC)

@L3X1: no, they aren't. This has been proposed and rejected before. Elli (talk | contribs) 18:04, 18 June 2024 (UTC)

I think it has also been something of an "urban legend" type belief that this actually is done but kept quiet. If it is kept quiet, it is being kept so quiet that even arbcom aren't aware of it. There was this RFA, in which the committee was made aware of a suspiscion that the candidate was a sock of banned troll, and a subsequent investigation produced evidence that this was the case. Basically there has to be an actual reason to CU an admin candidate, or to use CU in any other capacity. Just Step Sideways ^{from this world ..... today} 22:18, 18 June 2024 (UTC)

thanks for the link, that's the rfa I had in mind. ^Thanks,L3X1 ◊distænt write◊ 03:54, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

If there's any doubt that we need more admins...

...I've made a graph comparing stats across English projects. Active users per admin is in blue. Cremastra (talk) 20:20, 18 June 2024 (UTC)

That could instead just be showing that those other projects have more admins than needed. The ones you've chosen are all also kind of niche projects. It still wouldn't "prove" anything, but I'd be more curious what the ratios are like for German, Spanish, French, Hindi, Japanese, etc. etc. Wikipedias. We may very well need more admins (pending a good definition of "need"), but this graph doesn't prove it. Floquenbeam (talk) 20:55, 18 June 2024 (UTC)

My understanding is that eswiki has a more dire admin shortage than we do but that's just an offhand impression I've received from talking to people from other projects. It's possible I'm misremembering what was said. Clovermoss🍀 (talk) 20:59, 18 June 2024 (UTC)

To me this is a more stark demonstration. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 21:09, 18 June 2024 (UTC)

So you would actually be looking for a number of users per number of admins willing to wade into AE ratio. That's gonna be much higher. Floquenbeam (talk) 21:13, 18 June 2024 (UTC)

I'm not concerned about ratios, I'm concerned about important tasks going undone. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 21:18, 18 June 2024 (UTC)

That must be why Wikinews has such high quality standards and so little vandalism. Spicy (talk) 21:10, 18 June 2024 (UTC)

Wikinews is a weird case - it has many inactive admins and relatively few active users. So the stats don't follow. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 21:26, 18 June 2024 (UTC)

News articles there have been fully protected (in some sort?) after days of being approved and published, preventing any further vandalism on those articles. Well, vandals might seek other pages to mess around, but then what else is there for vandals? George Ho (talk) 17:55, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

Commons would be an interesting comparison. Commons is in quite dire need of administrators. Some backlogs there stretch back months, even almost a year at one point. --Hammersoft (talk) 22:28, 18 June 2024 (UTC)

Per commons:Special:Statistics, they have 203 active users per administrator. Cremastra (talk) 22:50, 18 June 2024 (UTC)

I'd be interested to see a graph showing admin backlogs over the last few years. Levivich (talk) 22:51, 18 June 2024 (UTC)

Would also be interested in this...... what we need is to unbundle some of the features so that editors not interested in being admins can do some tasks.... as we did with "template editor" many years ago. Moxy🍁 23:00, 18 June 2024 (UTC)

That's handy, but it's not the whole story, and doesn't capture the more difficult admin tasks. Average time to close, admins commenting, and reports archived without closure at AE would be good. Similar data for ANI threads, too. Backlogs at AIV/UAA/PERM/etc generally don't get too bad because they're fairly easy to clear. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 23:05, 18 June 2024 (UTC)

I'm not sure I'd say the same about PERM. It's not uncommon for requests to be unanswered for days and I've seen some that go unanswered for weeks. I've pitched in there a bit. I've also been taking a break from it lately for reasons that are difficult to explain. My heart just isn't in it as much and I'm a volunteer. I don't exactly have much experience with this... but I'm assuming it's normal for admin motivation to ebb and flow? Sometimes I feel the same way about new page patrolling. I'm trying not to overdo it, pace myself, and chip in where I can. But I admit there is some level of inner guilt that makes me feel like I should be doing more when I hear about backlogs. Ideally everything would just get evenly dealt with across the board but humans are complicated. It's also a bit intimidating to consider all these areas you couldn't help out in before and you don't want to mess up by just waltzing in. It's easier to avoid areas like AE for that reason. Clovermoss🍀 (talk) 00:10, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

Unbundling is just a band-aid and won't solve the underlying problem; lack of administrators. If the situation were static, it might help some. But, things are getting worse over time. Over the last year, we've gone from 471 active admins to 434, a ~8% drop. --Hammersoft (talk) 01:06, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

I entirely agree; the issue is an insufficient proportion of experienced editor effort going toward administrative tasks, made somewhat worse (IMO) by some editors who are willing in principle being deterred by the atmosphere of RFA. Vanamonde93 (talk) 03:36, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

Honestly, this is just average users per admin or average edits per page. The graph doesn't fully explain which admin is active on Wikipedia and how many active editors per active admin have been there. Of course, how about inactive editors per active admin? And what about bureaucrats? George Ho (talk) 18:02, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

The number of active editors (defined as at least one action in the last 30 days) is 117,283 (Special:Statistics). There are 436 active administrators (30 or more edits in the last 2 months) [2]. Thus, about 268 active editors per active administrator. --Hammersoft (talk) 18:11, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

Hmm... I'm unsure still whether the graph tells the full story. Still doesn't fully explain which editors have been reported to ANI and then chided, blocked, or whatever. Still doesn't fully explain which editors have been taken to ArbCom, but such cases have become infrequent recently. Still doesn't fully explain which were taken to 3RR notice, which pages were requested for protection, and so forth. Well, it's not as if an active admin wanna monitor each of 268 active editors all day and pages that such editors have been editing, right? George Ho (talk) 19:53, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

If you want to define active editor more restrictively, we have 5,032 editors who have more than 100 edits this month. [3] Clovermoss🍀 (talk) 20:40, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

This graph is comparing stats between the largest of the Wikimedia projects by far and several much smaller projects with different design goals - it's a bit like comparing the energy use of an ocean supertanker with a Honda Civic. Do one comparing English Wikipedia to large foreign-language Wikipedias, that would be a more enlightening comparison. Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 18:07, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

Extended-confirmed protection

Apologies if this has been brought up before, but as Svampesky suggested here (and as I had been thinking myself), why don't we have a separate page for votes à la the comments sections on The Signpost? The vote page can be extended-confirmed protected and transcluded to the main, unprotected RfA page. This way non-30/500 folks can still comment and ask questions but their votes, by nature of not being able to be cast, won't have to be publicly struck off - what we're doing now is a bit bitey imo. Wilhelm Tell DCCXLVI (^{talk to me!}/_{my edits}) 05:37, 20 June 2024 (UTC)

Or perhaps an edit filter that specifically detects edits to the Votes section and disallows non-ECP editors from submitting a vote? Is such a section-specific filter possible? Wilhelm Tell DCCXLVI (^{talk to me!}/_{my edits}) 05:41, 20 June 2024 (UTC)

Detecting sections probably not, but detecting votes by non-ECP editors should be easy. Nobody (talk) 06:08, 20 June 2024 (UTC)

The recent 2024 RfA review voted to prevent non-ECP editors from !voting and it was strongly supported. The closer of that review took the view that the vote was not to make the page ECP protected, but that was their view and I don't think it was properly debated.

It makes no sense that an almost new editor can make comments on an RfA candidate, and ironically, when many of the typical objections are that the candidate does not have experience. At the 2024 RfA review, it seemed clear that there have been instances where the non-ECP/IP editor was an experienced editor trying to disrupt the process and derail the RfA. Aszx5000 (talk) 09:19, 20 June 2024 (UTC)

The idea of an RfA is for any editor to bring up concerns that can refute the nominator(s)' assertion that the candidate is suitable for the mop. This is why Opposers are badgered if they don't give a rationale, even if they're otherwise respectable editors - let alone a throwaway doing the same thing and disappearing without explanation (which is why I think Kusma used the narrow language that they did while writing up the proposal, of explicitly saying comments were welcomed from all). In my opinion IPs and newbies should be allowed to bring up actual concerns, but if indeed the constructive-to-nonconstructive ratio here is extremely low as Extraordinary Writ said in Support #6, we could probably exclude them from that as well. Would need fresh consensus though ~ Wilhelm Tell DCCXLVI (^{talk to me!}/_{my edits}) 10:39, 20 June 2024 (UTC)

Edit filters are run on every single edit page on the wiki, so they have a performance cost, and they are not usually a great choice for restricting very specific pages and sub pages. –Novem Linguae (talk) 11:49, 20 June 2024 (UTC)

I'm so stupid, I read about this technical cost just a couple days ago. Yea edit filters are off the table –Wilhelm Tell DCCXLVI (^{talk to me!}/_{my edits}) 14:15, 20 June 2024 (UTC)

Not a bad idea, but there'd be a cost in terms of making it more awkward to edit and watchlist the voting page, especially for the first few RfAs as people get used to it. I think the simpler option of just applying ECP to the whole page would be fine. Participation by non-EC editors was already very low before they were prohibited from voting, and if the handful that do find their way to an RfA really want to comment without voting, they could do so on the talk page and ask for it to be copied over. I agree that what we do now, making it look like anyone with an account can freely edit and therefore vote in an RfA, then striking the comment—because oops didn't you read down to the sixth subsection of WP:RFA??—is a pretty unfriendly approach. – Joe (talk) 13:11, 20 June 2024 (UTC)

Right, I've thought up one more approach, so this can be framed as three proposals as below, for further input/consensus-building. In decreasing order of complexity:

• Option 1: Votes shall be cast on a separate, EC-protected subpage that will be transcluded onto the main, unprotected RfA page.
• Option 2: RfAs shall be EC-protected after the two discussion-only days. After this, IPs and newbies can bring up further concerns on the talk page.
• Option 3: RfAs shall be EC-protected altogether. IPs and newbies can bring up concerns on the talk page alone.

Is there a place for this to be proposed? RFA2024? Wilhelm Tell DCCXLVI (^{talk to me!}/_{my edits}) 14:23, 20 June 2024 (UTC)

Should consider adding an "Option 4 - No change / status quo / strike non-EC votes" if you end up RFCing this. –Novem Linguae (talk) 14:31, 20 June 2024 (UTC)

If these options are being considered, we could also consider making the watchlist notice visible only to extended-confirmed accounts. DanCherek (talk) 14:29, 20 June 2024 (UTC)

I don't think using subpages will be an issue for adding comments. Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests is set up with subpages and editing each section happens transparently. If desired, a link could be added to the top of the section to watchlist the subpage. An extra step would be required to create the subpage. isaacl (talk) 18:39, 20 June 2024 (UTC)

• Why are we trying to solve a very minor problem with a long RFC discussion and new technical processes? I'd prefer Option 0: Just leave it as is, and any votes by non-EC people can quickly and easily be struck by, you know, humans. Who can leave a short message on the user's talk page. I understand the use of templates and bots and protection and edit filters for stuff that's overwhelming the humans, but this isn't. If anyone else agrees with me, perhaps they can better articulate this vague feeling I have that this increasingly common approach is the Wrong Direction^(TM). --Floquenbeam (talk) 14:41, 20 June 2024 (UTC)

  I think there's a common belief that restrictions on new/unregistered users that rely on undoing/striking are more WP:BITEy than ones that technically prevent users from editing restricted spaces. I generally agree, but I don't think the trade-off is worthwhile if it inconveniences experienced editors and if the vast majority of participants are experienced. That's the case here; I'd prefer not to have a whole RfC about this, and if it does happen, I'm likely to vote Option 0, or what Novem is calling Option 4. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 14:55, 20 June 2024 (UTC)

  Well it needn't be long if we can simply find consensus right here, and these technical processes are hardly new. Most RfA regulars must be familiar with the Signpost approach and they'll be fine with whatever's up next. EC-protection is not complicated at all. The reason I am opposed to the current approach is purely because of how striking out the votes of newbies and IPs is BITE-ey. Consider their POV - they walk in, they find a community process they may be interested in, participate in it (because it seems to be allowed)... then bam, their vote has a black line through it and there's a senior editor on their page telling them they're not allowed to do that. In contrast, if they just see a blue lock right from the beginning, there won't be any hard feelings. This is pushing me towards Option 3. Wilhelm Tell DCCXLVI (^{talk to me!}/_{my edits}) 14:57, 20 June 2024 (UTC)

  Thanks for explaining the motivation. I guess I just really disagree; having a human come and explain why they can't vote yet seems much less bitey to me. I doubt anyone who isn't allowed to vote knows what a blue lock means, so they're going to try. I think all the system message says is something to the effect of "you can't edit this page", without explaining why. Floquenbeam (talk) 15:05, 20 June 2024 (UTC)

  On desktop, the system doesn't say a thing, they simply don't get the option to edit (only to view the source). On mobile, they get "this page has been protected" or similar. Wilhelm Tell DCCXLVI (^{talk to me!}/_{my edits}) 15:10, 20 June 2024 (UTC)

  Well, they can state a support/oppose opinion from a technical perspective; they're just not permitted to do so from a process perspective. If a human would pop up at the moment they tried to edit the page, sure, that would be ideal, but failing that, stopping them from being able to edit the page is, in my view, less confusing. isaacl (talk) 18:45, 20 June 2024 (UTC)

  Although I think that having a human explain it certainly is non-bitey, having their !vote stay on the RfA page with it struck-through isn't. For that reason, I like Options 2 and 3, because that prevents any embarrassment. There should be (yet another) note to that effect near the top of the RfA page, explaining the protection and pointing to the talk page, in the hopes that some will read it. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:48, 20 June 2024 (UTC)

• Comment I was pinged in this. Leave it as is, the striking is okay and I didn't feel bitten. I'd've felt bitten if people got on my case about it, but no one did. I cast a new !vote and didn't reinstate the original one because it's nothing to be embarrassed about. You cast an invalid !vote, it’s not a big deal; good-faith mistakes aren't something that should be swept under the carpet. Svampesky (talk) 15:37, 20 June 2024 (UTC)

  How about this? Option 5:

  - Wikipedia talk:Requests for adminship/Username - Not protected (for comments)

  - Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Username/!Votes - ECP protected

  - Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Username - Not protected, but transcludes both above like The Signpost

  - Wikipedia talk:Requests for adminship/Username/Off-topic - Not protected (for the badgering) Svampesky (talk) 15:49, 20 June 2024 (UTC)

• If protection would be too controversial, an alternative would be to have a large bold-faced red message that YOU ARE NOT ELIGIBLE TO !VOTE IN THIS RFA and then use Template:If extended confirmed and its relatives to hide it from anyone who's extended confirmed. A passing mention in the editnotice isn't conspicious enough to be noticed. Extraordinary Writ (talk) 20:27, 20 June 2024 (UTC)

  This seems like the best idea so far, since it is easy and effective and would not need an RFC. –Novem Linguae (talk) 20:30, 20 June 2024 (UTC)

  Out of curiosity, is it possible to nest if admin and if extended confirmed given that the latter doesn't hide text from admins? Perfect4th (talk) 20:43, 20 June 2024 (UTC)

  It is: see User:Extraordinary Writ/sandbox7. Extraordinary Writ (talk) 20:49, 20 June 2024 (UTC)

  This is actually harder than it looks as long as this and this remain unresolved. I guess the workaround in the current revision of User:Extraordinary Writ/sandbox7 does the trick, but maybe someone more technically minded can think of something better. Extraordinary Writ (talk) 21:40, 20 June 2024 (UTC)

  Maybe try <div class="extendedconfirmed-show sysop-show">Your message here.</div>. That might work and be a bit neater. –Novem Linguae (talk) 21:58, 20 June 2024 (UTC)

  Is there an easy way to do the opposite of that (to show it only to non-EC non-admins)? Typically <div class="nonextendedconfirmed-show nonsysop-show">Your message here.</div> would work, but interface admins haven't wanted to add nonsysop-show. Extraordinary Writ (talk) 22:10, 20 June 2024 (UTC)

  Ah, I forgot about the "else" case. Sadly, I can't think of anything better than what you have in the sandbox. –Novem Linguae (talk) 22:22, 20 June 2024 (UTC)

  The last thing is that sometimes editors with 500 edits/30 day account get EC removed. Usually it's an accident/side-effect when other roles are edited, like an admin resigning their bit. Is that enough people to add a fix for them? I don't think any template solution has a way to check edit count anyway. Soni (talk) 22:34, 20 June 2024 (UTC)

  Enacting this seems like the right move, would prevent an unnecessary RFC. As Floq said, this is a pretty minor issue that we shouldn't waste too much time with. ULPS ^{(talk • contribs)} 21:13, 20 June 2024 (UTC)

Temperature check: Applying for the Researcher right

The Researcher access right allows users to view deleted content, but not to actually delete (or block, or protect pages, or do anything else admin-y that isn't viewing deleted content).

I am one of the more active admins on Commons (and just picked back up admin on Wikidata to better deal with cross-project spam), and it would be useful for me to be able to see user's deleted English Wikipedia contributions in order to better assess whether images nominated for deletion on Commons as spam are, in fact, spam.

However, there really isn't a precedent for applying for this right, as far as I'm aware, so before I went down the path of actually trying, I wanted to do a temperature check to see if such a thing was something this community would even approve of.

Cheers, The Squirrel Conspiracy (talk) 01:36, 21 June 2024 (UTC)

@The Squirrel Conspiracy: It looks like we have 3 editors with this permission [4]. My gut instinct is to tell you that getting approved for this would be difficult. I wonder what people who are sysops on both projects think of these sorts of situations? There might be viable alternatives. Courtesy ping to Red-tailed hawk who happens to be the only person that I know to be an enwiki and commons sysop (at least off the top of my head). Clovermoss🍀 (talk) 03:19, 21 June 2024 (UTC)

I don't know of any local process to grant it. My understanding is that the WMF holds that viewing deleted data is something that requires vetting (and requires some RFA-like process or elections for a local wiki to give out a role with that right), so we can't quite give it out ad-hoc.

That being said, I believe that it is theoretically possible to create a local process to grant the right. We just don't have one on EnWiki, and the process would probably need some WMF eyes to actually get approval.

Pinging @Vermont and RAdimer-WMF: Can you confirm my understanding on this is correct? — Red-tailed hawk _(nest) 02:38, 22 June 2024 (UTC)

Red-tailed hawk, thanks for the ping. I've brought this up internally and will get back to you when I can :) RAdimer-WMF (talk) 02:55, 22 June 2024 (UTC)

@Red-tailed hawk: Any ideas on possible alternatives if this perm doesn't get granted for whatever reason? I'm not sure how common the above scenario described for the use case is. If it's a small scale issue, collaboration with individual enwiki admins might make it unnessecary. It likely wouldn't be all that different from the admins who provide copies of deleted articles to users with reasonable requests. Clovermoss🍀 (talk) 03:44, 22 June 2024 (UTC)

@Clovermoss: Individual requests might be overkill. When an image on Commons gets tagged for deletion on Commons as spam and is in use in the draft space, I can check out the article and gain a lot of valuable content with just a quick glance - is this an SEO optimizer, someone writing an autobiography, a fan of the subject, etcetera. Being able to see deleted articles would extend this ability to gain said insight into situations where instead of a live draft space article, it's a deleted main space article. Most of the time, the file is going to get deleted as spam, but every once in a while, I catch that it's a fan or other genuinely good-meaning contributor that just doesn't know how to write in an encyclopedia style, and then I convert the speedy tag into a standard-length deletion discussion or outright save the image. That being said, the ratio of non-spam to spam among files tagged for speedy deletion as spam is pretty low, and the volume of such files is decently high, so I'd be doing, say, a lot of pinging admins on Discord to save very few files. The Squirrel Conspiracy (talk) 06:06, 22 June 2024 (UTC)

There is a lot less friction if one does not have to involve someone else. We needn't use time from two persons to achieve one task when time from one would do quite well. — Red-tailed hawk _(nest) 05:53, 24 June 2024 (UTC)

First, I'm not sure who exactly can assign the researcher right, but I can tell you English Wikipedia admins can't. It looks like it may be a WMF-only thing. Secondly, maybe a friendly neighborhood WMF person (or bureaucrat, if they're capable) can remove researcher from the three people that currently have it? It doesn't seem like it was ever meant to be a permanent right. Finally, TSC, if you have any interest in being an en.wiki admin, I'd welcome an RfA. In addition to the cross-wiki spam you mention, you'd be an asset at WP:ERRORS. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 03:53, 21 June 2024 (UTC)

This log does give the impression that these permissions were meant to be a temporary thing [5]. Clovermoss🍀 (talk) 03:59, 21 June 2024 (UTC)

Only Stewards (and I guess sysadmins and WMF trust and safety but they probably won't get involved here) have the technical ability to assign the right. That fact doesn't really matter much here as I'm sure if whatever the community decides is the process for this is followed sufficiently one of them will be happy to oblige. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 04:20, 21 June 2024 (UTC)

This situation also reminded me of Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/lustiger seth. It's rare, but there's definitely precedent for us to RFA someone who's already trusted elsewhere and use adminship in highly technical situations. Not sure how much this applies here though. Soni (talk) 06:08, 21 June 2024 (UTC)

All three +researcher were performed by the WMF, and the first team at least were intended to be temporary, but never removed. MarcGarver (talk) 10:59, 21 June 2024 (UTC)

In fact, based on the page at Meta, created by the WMF team, EpochFail and Jtmorgan can have the rights removed without further discussion as they were clearly only granted until 1 September 2011. MarcGarver (talk) 11:10, 21 June 2024 (UTC)

Well, I tried to do so and am somehow unable. Filed phab:T368577. Joe Sutherland (WMF) (talk) 19:33, 26 June 2024 (UTC)

• Short answer: You'd apply via WMF. This community didn't ask for this permission to be built here, it was forced by the site owners, who control it. — xaosflux ^Talk 12:20, 21 June 2024 (UTC)
  • Xaosflux, does it actually give the ability to see deleted content? I'm trying to remember discussions that I had about this a while back, and my recollection was that it gave the ability to see the dates, timestamps, and editors (i.e. basically the deleted page history) but not the actual content that was deleted. TonyBallioni (talk) 07:54, 22 June 2024 (UTC)

    @TonyBallioni yes, WMF added deletedtext to it a ways back. — xaosflux ^Talk 09:54, 22 June 2024 (UTC)

    Anyone can see the dates, timestamps, and editors, unless the page was oversighted; try this API query while logged out. See also User:SD0001/deleted-metadata-link. I don't know why this is buried in the API instead of part of the web interface. Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 00:07, 24 June 2024 (UTC)

    From what I recall, this used to be restricted, and I don't recall any global RFC to change it - but some developers changed it in phab:T232389. — xaosflux ^Talk 00:44, 24 June 2024 (UTC)

• I think the correct way to do this would be to gain consensus that these set of rights can be unbundled, create a new userright with permissions analogous to the current researcher userright and then have it be assigned by bcrats or admins based on a community procedure/vote, all of which are a lot of work for the specific situation you are describing. Regarding the researcher right, I'm pretty sure that (AFAIK) it is only given to peeps who are working on a research project that requires access to deleted edits (say something like Empowering newbies: Investigating Harassment and Safety in Wikipedia), and I would assume that it would have to be assigned after WMF review.Sohom (talk) 14:23, 23 June 2024 (UTC)
• I don't think there's community consensus to grant this perm to additional folks. It sounds like the 3 folks that were granted this 9+ years ago were granted it by WMF staff accounts. –Novem Linguae (talk) 03:58, 24 June 2024 (UTC)

  Exactly right - unfortunately we were a lot less organised that long ago, so there were no logs maintained for the issuance of these rights. I think it's totally fine to remove them, once it's possible to do so. Joe Sutherland (WMF) (talk) 19:35, 26 June 2024 (UTC)

• The Squirrel Conspiracy: to get specific answers to questions about deleted content, you can ask at WP:REFUND you could get an opinion, a snippet of content, perhaps a restore as a draft, or an email with the content. So for occasional investigations, this would be far easier than creating a new user group and the procedures to cope with it. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 10:58, 24 June 2024 (UTC)

  or a RfA. 😁 – robertsky (talk) 11:04, 24 June 2024 (UTC)

• I agree with Soni, I think Lustiger seth's RFA is the best equivalent to this. That passed at 77%, but it was in 2008. IMHO, a "view deleted edits only" RFA should pass for the same reason LS's did, but I have no idea what would happen today; community opinion is (for me) harder to predict these days. If you started an RFA with the attitude "if this fails, it will be because of people's opinion on how RFA should work, not their opinion of me specifically, and I will not let it hurt me", I think you might have a decent shot. Especially since I don't think there are currently other workable options. --Floquenbeam (talk) 12:21, 24 June 2024 (UTC)