Wikipedia talk:RfA reform 2012

First steps

If we are going to create this project, our first steps should be discussing how the project should be formatted on this talk page. Do we want Wikipedia:RfA reform 2011 2.0 or do we want to create something entirely different? How will we set this project up? Ryan Vesey Review me! 20:59, 20 June 2012 (UTC)

First proposal. I propose that before we start running around trying to flip RfA on its head we create Wikipedia:RFA2012/Problems. There, we will identify very specific problems that exist in RfA. Rather than trying to make changes that modify the entire thing, we can attempt to make specific changes that address those problems. Ryan Vesey Review me! 21:03, 20 June 2012 (UTC)

On another note, can we move this and the related pages to Wikipedia:RfA reform 2012 for consistency? Ryan Vesey Review me! 21:05, 20 June 2012 (UTC)

Sure. note: I fixed the links from the previous move, so this can be kept as a redirect to wherever. - jc37 21:11, 20 June 2012 (UTC)

I shall move. ⇒TAP 21:12, 20 June 2012 (UTC)

 Moved. ⇒TAP 21:13, 20 June 2012 (UTC)

Synthesis?

There are elements that I both like and dislike in both Egg Centric's and Thine Antique Pen's proposal. I hope someone does a synthesis with a jury pool that arbcom could use, too. 75.166.206.120 (talk) 21:21, 20 June 2012 (UTC)

Proposal process

I was bold and moved discussion to the talk pages of various proposals. That edit was modified. What do people think. Should we have proposal pages and talk pages separate? I believe we should, because a well developed proposal may be 5 or more paragraphs long-covering every issue. Trying to have the proposal and discussion on the same page can create a mess. Ryan Vesey Review me! 21:27, 20 June 2012 (UTC)

Ahh, I found the relevant rationale. I was attempting to set the proposal system up like reform 2011 was set up. Ryan Vesey Review me! 21:29, 20 June 2012 (UTC)

Talk page transclusion

Do what you will in your proposals, I suppose, but I find the structure (tranclusions and so on) make it more difficult than easy for people to comment. Just a thought that these things typically are tough enough without making the process of discussing more complicated : ) - jc37 22:44, 20 June 2012 (UTC)

I am still of the opinion that all of the discussion should take place on the talk page. Since we are in the process of making some larger proposals, I'm going to recreate a proposal I had that died when I went to school. I think it is a good example of where talk page discussions are encouraged over discussion on the proposal page. Ryan Vesey Review me! 23:54, 20 June 2012 (UTC)

Thoughts

As the guy who inadvertently started all this with the Signpost story, hopefully these words will mean something. If not, oh well, you're getting them anyway. ;-) From reading too much of RfA archives and reform initiatives over the last week, one major thing struck me. This was something similar across everything I read, but it wasn't a common theme. It wasn't an outstanding idea. It was the sheer volume of ideas coming in. As long as there are 40,000 ways to fix RfA, zero will gain the support necessary to move past the basic proposal stage. If you are all are serious about RfA reform (and I assume you are), you need to choose three important, defining, game-changing ways to address the issues at RfA. Then you need to pick one of them, and proponents of the other two need to support the one picked. Without that, you will never have enough momentum to effect change. Just my two cents. Ed ^{[talk] [majestic titan]} 06:38, 21 June 2012 (UTC)

• And the easiest way is to form an initiative group of say five who would analyze past discussions and decide on what directions are perspective. Then they could prepare an RFA and offer it to the community.--Ymblanter (talk) 06:49, 21 June 2012 (UTC)

As someone said above, until you identify the problem - for example is 'not enough candidates' a problem or a symptom - you'll continue to get 40,000 solutions, any number of which are from people who wouldn't pass an RfA now, wouldn't have passed it five years ago, and want only a solution to 'how can I get to be an admin'. The other thing I'd suggest is that rather than developing carefully crafted solutions at this stage, getting a broad input from the wider community now would be wise. Does the community even think there is a problem? If they don't, all this will be seen as tinkering from a very small group that have been going round in circles discussing this forever. --Elen of the Roads (talk) 09:30, 21 June 2012 (UTC)

I think that doing something like Dank has said, would be useful before jumping into RfA proposals. Ryan Vesey Review me! 12:07, 21 June 2012 (UTC)

Thoughts from WTT

As one of the co-ordinators of and the person who did a large portion of the research for WP:RFA2011, I thought I'd drop by. The changes we managed to implement on last year's reform were based on single ideas that could be made boldly - no RfCs happened in the end, I guess we dawdled just a little bit too much. I'd love to see some change at RfA - but I think identifying the problems is where some focus needs to go. If you just come up with new ways to request adminship, they're unlikely to gain traction, but if you're giving a new way as a direct solution to a problem then that's more likely to work.

The problems I see with RfA are:

• The general belief that "RfA is broken". The perception is one of the biggest problems with RfA and needs to be tackled as it leads to a lot of the other problems. People have complained about RFA being too difficult since it was set up.
• Not enough candidates - we have less than 5 successful candidates per month for months now.
  • Good potential candidates are (for want of a better word) intimidated by the process.
  • Average potential candidates are over eager, then put off by the process after failure
  • Poor potential candidates seem to keep trying over and over again.
• People trying to police RfAs - if they see a comment they don't like they do something about it, but every disagrees about what they don't like. Blank supports, non-standard opposes, uncivil comments... the first oppose of a candidate they support. Clerks was meant to be a solution to this, but without a mandate for the the clerks, it's not going to solve that problem.
• Too many candidates with no chance apply and fail instantly, causing a demoralising atmosphere. (SNOW and NOTNOW)

Now, I focussed on getting more candidates (hence WP:REQUESTNOM and the group notice change, trying to get people to think before applying) but any other bright ideas would be useful. I should point out that after countless hours of research, looking at the candidates who've passed and those who didn't - I don't believe the process is actually broken and needs to be scrapped. I do believe that many who are looking for a new process are trying to circumvent a process which they believe they would fail. Worm^TT(talk) 09:23, 21 June 2012 (UTC)

I just said that above. The catastrophic fails are people who - on sober reflection - were never going to make it at that particular time, for one reason or another. Dennis Brown and Lord Roem showed mature discussions with opposers and supporters largely remaining civil - Dennis succeeded and I hope Lord Roem returns after the recommended period of higher visibility. A great deal of the 'problem' is people applying who are not suitable at that point - and cannot handle hearing it - and partizan third parties harrassing the other side, which could be sorted with formal clerking.Elen of the Roads (talk) 09:42, 21 June 2012 (UTC)

A huge amount of research and focused discussion took place at WP:RFA2011, and I would hope that this new project is not going to be a simple, perennial rehash of it all. That said, clerking was about the nearest the active participants got to a possible solution. Clerking: because the very problem of RfA is the behaviour of the voters - which is what needs/needed clerking; it was not because the bar has been set too high or any other tangible reason. At the moment, RfA has become such a rare event that it will be impossible now for a long while to identify any trends or improvements in it. Only time will tell, and then only if some candidates of the right calibre start showing up in greater numbers. Read more about clerks here. --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 07:34, 22 June 2012 (UTC)

My opinion

• Wikipedia_talk:Requests_for_adminship/Archive_215#My_opinion

There are several good points in the discussions above. However, adminship really has a catch-22 inherently built into the process.

Fear and trust are at the core of the rfa process as well as "the rfa is broken" complaint.

There's nothing really wrong with the process on the surface. The problem is there is no way really (without being incredibly bureaucratic) to control/gauge the extremes. We want people to comment based upon trust. But trust is so broad a term. I look at a person standing next to me at an intersection waiting to cross a street. Do I trust them to hold my lunch? my camera? my life savings? Do I trust (based upon community/social constraints) that they will not: vandalise the street corner? harass others standing nearby? suddenly brutally stab me? Would I trust them with a whispered secret: I hate my boss? or this is my home address? or this is my password to my online gaming account? or this is my atm pin number? or this is where my children go to school? And in a society where we build with anonymous contributors, privacy and secrecy becomes even more of a trust issue.

As long as rfa is based upon "trust" (an intangible criteria) there will always be complaints that rfa is broken. Because how I may define my "trust-level" of the administrator package is simply going to differ from every other commenter's.

If we want change, we will have to change the paradigm. - jc37 19:07, 23 June 2012 (UTC)

Point

If I don't have the option of becoming an admin (and I would not accept it, don't worry) after an RfA reform, then you will have failed. You need to be radical. Egg Centric 01:49, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

2 Problems and their solutions

"It's not a vote" but it is

There are reasons for "it's not a vote" in Wikipedia, why should RFA be different? It basically IS a vote requiring 70% or 80% to pass. And it would tend to rule out people who have ever done anything that people didn't like (regardless of what it was). Including being willing to put themselves into difficult places/situations where such is needed. Solution: go to a normal closing process, but get closers who take a little extra time to look into the responses. North8000 (talk) 11:39, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

Needless hurdle

The hurdle of 2 nominators will tend to select against people who don't have a possse or who aren't Type A personalities to arrange an nomination by others, and for people who do that. This is an artificial and not useful criteria. Solution: Allow and encourage people to simply submit themselves for consideration. North8000 (talk) 11:39, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

Can you clarify if you are thinking of an actual criterion that is formally part of the process, or something else? The current process does not mandate a certain number of nominators, and candidates can nominate themselves. isaacl (talk) 14:49, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

I'm confused. Being nominated by one editor is not a requirement for opening an RfA at all, let alone two. Users can self-nominate if they'd like. There's an open RfA right now that's a self-nomination. (Statistically, users who are nominated fare better than users who self-nominate, but that's another discussion.) elektrikSHOOS (talk) 21:48, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

I saw some that were proposed off-RFA and held waiting until they were seconded. I assumed that that indicated that it was a requirement. Looks like I was mistaken. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 22:52, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

Combine RFA2011 and RFA2012 proposals into draft RFC?

I plan to copy and combine all the proposals in WP:RFA2011 and WP:RFA2012 into a new draft RFC which I will not open or announce, but leave open so that senior admins and others can refine the ground rules and proposed RFC procedure in preparation for opening the RFC, perhaps in a few weeks or months. My initial impulse is to draft ground rules with blanks for three "senior admins" to close the RFC after 60 days, then open a new RFC to select between conflicting approved proposals, and then open another RFC six months later to decide whether to return to today's status quo. I am interested in others' ideas about drafting such an RFC. 75.166.207.214 (talk) 00:10, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

I would suggest that it's a bad idea. For one thing, there are far too many proposals, so adding them all would splinter the discussion so far that no consensus could plausibly be reached. Another, RfA2011 was largely based around research and improvement of the current system, brand new ideas were kept on the "radical" subpage, but as far as I'm aware they were never taken to fruition. RfA2012 has a couple of well written suggestions, but I think it would be unfair to put them live before the creator is happy.

Finally, I take issue with the idea of "senior admins" existing - I don't consider any editor senior to any others, and from that, I don't believe it should be limited on who can refine this process. I fully expect it'd be a non-admin hard worker who actually comes up with a better system for adminship. Worm^TT(talk) 07:40, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

One of the main things that we were fairly unanimous about at WP:RFA2011 was that any proposals should be succinct, and address only one suggestion for reform at a time. The climate at RfA appears to have improved of late - at least there is somewhat less bickering and disingenuous !voting and we're getting some reasonable nominations, even if some of them won't quite pass, and there are far fewer candidates who don't stand a chance at all. I don't believe that any suggestions for a new system would gain much weight in the near future. There is no such thing as senior admins; all editors are equal - except that some are more equal than others. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 09:21, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

2013

It's not 2012 any longer. I suggest closing this page as {{Historical}} and opening WP:RfA reform 2013, perhaps with the combined 2011/2012 progress merged as suggested above. — SMcCandlish  Talk⇒ ɖ^⊝כ^⊙þ Contrib. 17:16, 1 February 2013 (UTC)

Probably a good idea, but if people have energy to discuss RfA reform, I'm really hoping they'll do it in the current RfC. - Dank (push to talk) 17:34, 1 February 2013 (UTC)

Idea

Okay, you clearly have many great ideas already, so you need a way to show them. How about making a page for a mock RFA post reform. (What the RFA process would look like with all your ideas put into it). First you will have to narrow down the parts you want to change then make a draft RFA page. For example, if a popular idea for the reform is a report by bureaucrats on each candidate, you will write a fake report.

My idea can be likened to how the main page redesign proposals show what it will look like in the end. Ross Hill Talk to me!  01:14, 8 October 2013 (UTC)

How to break the eternal "nothing gets done" cycle

One fatal flaw is that this is too narrow. It's scope must necessarily include also potential changes in the admin structure. So a venue sufficiently broad for that is required. Once you have that:

So here's the eternal failure cycle:

1. 50 people say "change is needed"
2. They propose 25 different ideas
3. Each person supports 1 or 2 ideas
4. (Failure point #1) So, as can be mathematical predicted each of the 25 gets only a few supports. And the "status quo" folks work to kill any idea that seems to be getting more support. Similar versions of good ideas emerge, thus killing each other by splitting the "vote" for that idea. So none emerges.
5. (Failure point #2) If one idea emerges with the most support (lets say 10 people) 2-3 (of the 10 / 50) actively work to make it happen. The other 7-10 of the 10 are just willing to give a "support" vote and for the other 40 they didn't support that particular idea so they aren't interested in promoting it, even if they think that it is OK or sort of good. So only 2 or 3 of the 50 "change is needed" folks are working to make it happen, and it doesn't.
6. Failure point #3 The status quo folks maneuver it so that even a small minority can force retention of the status quo because anything short of a super-majority is called a "no consensus to change"

Here's a way to break the "nothing ever changes" cycle.

1. Define a good process to end up with one proposal. The process should include strongly asking everyone to weigh in on every proposal.
2. Get the 50 "change is needed" people to agree (seeing that the process is good and fair) ahead of time that they will support whatever comes out of the process. Perfection is the enemy of progress.
3. Have a process to present proposals pick a short list of proposals and then a final proposal. Advertise it, and that this is their last chance to propose new ideas.
4. Advertise a final big RFC, and that this is not the time for new ideas So, of the 50, now maybe 10 people will work hard to make the final proposal pass, and most of the rest of the 50 will "support" it.
5. Do a final widely advertised RFC of the new proposal and the status quo. Explain the history.....it is then too late for other ideas. The status quo itself must stand as just another proposal.
6. Demand that the results rule.

Sincerely,North8000 (talk) 02:59, 8 October 2013 (UTC)

Please see these exchanges this and this with Dank. This will clarify a lot of things that are basically also on similar lines to thinking as yours. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 04:58, 8 October 2013 (UTC)

Thanks! (Note: You might say that in addition to being one of the bleeders, I was (more importantly) the structure gnome in key areas when we got the big change in wp:ver done (on the 2nd try) a couple years ago.) That said, wanna make this happen? A team of 3-4 committed experienced people orchestrating the above would be enough to make it happen. North8000 (talk) 11:26, 8 October 2013 (UTC)