Wikipedia talk:Requests for adminship

Feel free to join the discussion on the future of Requests for adminship process at Wikipedia talk:Requests for adminship/Reform. Everyone's comments are welcome!

Wikipedia:Proposed adminship

I've been bold and created a new proposed guidline for the RfA prod idea. I've also created {{Rfaprod}} which can be added to the user page of the candidate to propose them for adminship, using this template also automatically adds the user into Category:Proposed administrators‎. I've also created a mock up in my user space (User:Ryan Postlethwaite/Rfa) of how the cat could be transcluded into the current RfA system. Ryan Postlethwaite 15:56, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

Great idea! This may be just what we need to reform the adminship process. -Mschel 16:13, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

Terrible idea, unless you think that deleting the main page a couple times is the worst a hostile admin can accomplish. —Cryptic 16:16, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

Could you explain why you think the idea is terrible? -Mschel 16:17, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

Because it increases the difficulty of rejecting an unqualified candidate: not only must you show that someone is unsuited to adminship, as at present, but you have to jump through hoops to even find out that he's running.

Look. Proposed deletion does what it was designed to do very well: reduce traffic on AFD. Traffic is not a problem on RFA; candidacies that aren't ended early invariably get fifty or more !votes. In contrast, prod's main drawback - that we sometimes have a redlink for a while when it should be blue, because nobody noticed it before the week was up - doesn't substantially harm the encyclopedia, and when it's discovered, it's trivial to undo the damage and bring it to a wider audience. This can't be done with adminship; not only are there obvious problems with being able to de-admin people at will, but if a truly bad apple slips through, there are extremely damaging things he can do that are similarly extremely difficult to undo, and several not-quite-as-damaging-but-still-nightmarish things that can't be undone by other admins at all.

According to the proposal's talk page, the main reason this is being put forward is to reduce the meaningless me-too supports. While I agree that a large proportion of them don't indicate actual familiarity with the candidates, and I'm inclined to think that most are merely meant to familiarize the voter with other RFA regulars in order to increase the chance that their own future RFA will succeed, the actual meaningful supports are about all that makes the torture of an RFA worth it. The extra workload and continuous stream of trolls, vandals, spammers, POV pushers, and cluelesses that you won't let write about their girlfriends sure don't. —Cryptic 16:44, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

• This proposal was already beaten to death earlier on this page. It suffers a significant number of problems. --Durin 16:25, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

I wouldn't say that in the above thread it was beaten to death, yes some people disagreed, but as with all new proposals on wikipepedia, some people love it and some people hate it. Ryan Postlethwaite 16:27, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

• Just one of the problems is one that a large subset of people here disagree with. This proposal would place the burden of review and decision regarding a candidate squarely with the bureaucrat, using only the bureaucrats concept of who would and would not make a good admin. It also greatly increases the workload on bureaucrats, since they will have to fully evaluate candidates at the end of the seven day period. Yet, we can't pass new RfB candidates to take over the load. Another problem is the inability to effectively watchlist the category to alert to new candidates. And on, and on... --Durin 16:34, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
  • Well, if somebody has still got the template after 7 days, it's highly likely that they should pass, the final check by the 'crat is simply there to stop clearly inappropriate users from getting the mop. The cat would be transcluded on the main RfA page so it would be easy to see who's asking for adminship, but I accept the concerns of not being able to watchlist it. Ryan Postlethwaite 16:38, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
    • Maybe there's a way to code categories to list what's in them via a transclude, but I don't know the code. Just trying to transclude it as it is now resulted in the instructions at the top of the category, and not anything in the category. Contrast Category:Proposed administrators with User:Durin/test. --Durin 16:43, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
      • That's a really valid point, it's certainly something that would need to be sorted out if the system was used, I'm by no means a code king so somebody else would need to have a look at it. We certainly couldn't rely on people manually putting their names in a list. Ryan Postlethwaite 16:45, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
        • I'm not entirely sure what objection is being raised here, and I don't agree with prodding admins anyway, but I think these sort of concerns were addressed at WP:PROD with the use of a tool to generate a list. Not sure, but they did iron out some problems over there and got it running smoothly. Carcharoth 10:56, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
          • User:Vassyana was good enough to come up with a solution to displaying the contents of a transcluded category. See [1]. --Durin 12:16, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
• I don't have any serious problem with this as long as it's understood that the bureaucrats are expected to use their discretion in promoting editors. It should be clearly understood, and stated explicitly in the guidelines, that bureaucrats may promote proposed admin candidates, but are not obliged to do so. A bureaucrat reviewing the proposal should state a good reason for not promoting. A failed proposed admin can run for admin in the normal way if he wants. --Tony Sidaway 11:05, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

New record

We're now at the longest time between bureaucrat promotions ever! Last time it was as long as this was between Oct 04 and Sep 05, but we're still going strong. Given the 12 hour late RfA closures this weekend (I had to personally ask Raul654 to close them) it is to me, critical we have another active bureaucrat. I'd stand myself, but among many contentious reasons that are nothing to do with a bureaucrat's role, it's been less than a month. I urge someone suitable to stand, and I plead with people not to oppose him/her for reasons that are nothing to do with a bureaucrat's role. Thank you all. Majorly (hot!) 16:57, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

I concur with you. —Anas ^talk? 17:02, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

Oh, horrors, some poor sap had to wait TWELVE WHOLE HOURS to be promoted! THE FUTURE OF THE WIKI IS AT STAKE!

Please. I waited four days to be promoted. Twelve hours is a pittance. Stop being so Chicken-Littlish about this. Wikipedia would not be harmed if b'crats only closed RfAs on Thursdays. It probably wouldn't even be harmed if they only closed RfAs on the 15th of each month. Kelly Martin (talk) 17:02, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

Pay no attention to this; Kelly Martin's opinions do not help Wikipedia. :) Kafziel ^Talk 17:08, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

This is not necessarily everybody's perspective on the matter. What harm will it do if we had RfA closures on time? There are definitely many people suitable for the position. Similarly, we would like admin backlogs to be cleared as quick as possible, even though it wouldn't harm if they weren't in an expected period of time. Yes it would be nice to have more bureaucrats, but it isn't unavoidably critical. —Anas ^talk? 17:12, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

While I agree that an extra bureaucrat would be an excellent idea and I am still confused as to why some suggest that we do not need more bureaucrats PERIOD, I don't know if such fervor is warranted... --Iamunknown 17:06, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

That idea is nearly extinct now. It's mostly the answer to Q1: votes or consensus (consensus is the answer btw) and other nitpicking at things that are irrelevant to being a bureaucrat. Majorly (hot!) 17:12, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

On that topic, why do people oppose RfBs based upon "We don't need any more bureacrats"? I've never seen a solid rationale. --Iamunknown 17:25, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

They tend not to anymore (e.g. my RfB only had two such opposes), but I have no idea why they do. You can never have enough, and we clearly don't have enough. Majorly (hot!) 17:44, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

There's a reasonable argument that we already have too many: anything more than one person gives us potentially inconsistent results. We only have one Featured Article Director; why should we have more than one user promoting administrators? I don't quite agree with the opinion, but do not find the argument in itslef unreasonable. It is very unrelated to an individual candidate, but I guess we would also reject any candidate for Featured Article Director unless Raul654 steps down or really screws up. Kusma (talk) 17:59, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

A single point of failure is almost always ill-advised. Intertia with respect to Featured Articles does not excuse illogical arguments elsewhere. Either we trust the 'crats to be be consistent, or we don't; the number is not any more relevant than arguing that admins will be more likely to wheel war as their numbers grow. -- nae'blis 18:39, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

Kusma: I don't like the idea of a featured article director. A board of users perhaps who are familiar with the process. Nae'blis: maybe I worded my comment badly. I'm mostly referring to the fact that we haven't had any new bureaucrats for ages, and that the weekend is an example of where another may have been useful. Majorly (hot!) 18:45, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

We only have on featured article director? Usurp it and distribute the decision making; this is, after, a wiki. --Iamunknown 20:52, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

Raul was ratified as Wikipedia's featured article director in Aug 2004. See this thread if you're interested in the background: [2]. WjBscribe 21:23, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

The sooner that Raul says "I can't keep up!" the better. Not because he does a bad job and he needs to have a helper to keep an eye on him, but because the current trickle of FAs is criminally short of where we need to be at if we're to meet Jimbo's wish of 100,000 more featured articles. That said, I don't know how the combined workload of the bureacrats compares to Raul's, it may be that there's not much difference. --kingboyk 18:50, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

The reason we produce featured articles at the rate we do is that that is the rate at which people write them. It takes a lot of work to get an article up to FA status - they don't grow on trees. I am willing and able to promote featured articles much faster than we do now (although at some point I may write a python script to accelerate some aspects of it), but we need people willing to write them. So rather than talking about getting to 100,000 featured articles, it'd be much more helpful if people actually helped write some. Raul654 21:15, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

Back to the subject at hand. I don't think Kelly's comment was the most diplomatic way to put it, but I agree with her that waiting 12 hours for a bureacrat to close an RFA isn't all that big a deal. If this trend to continues, it might later present a problem, but at this point, I don't see this as being a huge problem. Raul654 21:22, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

My point is, if it does happen, there is no one to sort it out. And it is currently difficult to become a 'crat, so I'm asking someone suitable to stand and people to not oppose them, so we don't have unnecessary waits like that. Majorly (hot!) 21:29, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

Either that, xor the bureaucrat promotion threshold could be lowered to 75%, or maybe 80%. But then again, if we lowered the threshold, people might make oppose votes to be "gadflies" (without the hemlock). Gracenotes^T § 22:12, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

I have said it a thousand times. We do not need more crats, we need the current crats to do their jobs or loose the tools. --Jeffrey O. Gustafson - Shazaam! - <*> 02:05, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

Thank goodness you're the tiny minority that believes that. Majorly (hot!) 07:39, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

• Agreed with Majorly. Holding a gun to RfA's head to demand they make the current bureaucrats work harder on a volunteer project is an unsupportable position to take. What if every single bureaucrat ceased work entirely? Would you demand the entire bureaucrat corps was removed before you'd agree to let any new bureaucrats on? --Durin 12:37, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

• I don't expect this drought to go away anytime soon. - Mailer Diablo 09:53, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
• Twelve hours is really not a problem. Neither, for that matter, is seventeen minutes' delay before a rogue gets the banhammer. >Radiant< 12:48, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

Poll: Should Kelly Martin refrain from voting on Requests for Adminship?

Moved to User:Kelly Martin/RFA poll. This is getting longer than some RFAs.

--Richard 22:51, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

The one thing I learned (well, thought up when I was reading others' comments) is that maybe Kelly Martin's WikiProject endorsement has some merit. It depends upon what we expect of potential administrators. If they are to be good collaborative editors, then an endorsement of a Wikiproject would be no problem. But what is adminship and how do we define it? --Iamunknown 23:01, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

Agreed, but someone needs to take the initiative and try and create a mechanism for it. Ryan Postlethwaite 23:03, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

But what exactly are we trying to make a mechanism for? I'm not just posing random questions; in my time at RfA I have been subjected to serious confusion! On the one hand, adminship is no big deal; on the other, YOU MUST HAVE 60,000 EDITS TO PROJECT SPACE. *ahem* I guess I am at a loss to which it is. If it is no big deal, does WikiProject endorsement matter? Or, even if it isn't a big deal, should we still concern ourselves with WikiProject endorsement as a means of getting to know the interpersonal relationships of the candidate. --Iamunknown 23:17, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

In practice, the same goal could be served by asking the candidate, "What WikiProjects have you participated in?" If I had to answer the question, I'd cite my work at WP:DEP, noting that I have about 100 edits to the project page. It's not a big deal. There's no need for User:Jeepday or User:Salad Days (the DEP veterans) to endorse my participation; it stands on its own. Does this make sense? YechielMan 00:55, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

If people really feel the need to garner Kelly Martin's support, they could always ask a vet on their wikiproject of choice to give a nomination/co-nom. --tjstrf talk 01:06, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

This whole charade isn't about Kelly making unreasonable demands--it's a doddle to make an edit on your active wikiprojects asking if they'll discuss the merits of endorsing you as an admin candidate--it's mainly about people who are determined to act in a very dense manner and blame Kelly for their stupid behavior. --Tony Sidaway 12:43, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

• Yes, we really need a mechanism to vote on which people are allowed to vote in RFAs. >Radiant< 12:52, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

• I'm not so sure. I think we need a vote on whether to hold that vote. :) - Taxman ^Talk 13:10, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
• Quite. I propose Wikipedia:Requests for Privilege to Vote on RFA (WP:RPVRFA), with pure voting (to reduce load on bureaucrats) to gain this status. 95% voting threshold. --Durin 13:11, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

As tempted as I was to scream m:Instruction creep, I think this may be a good idea. --Deskana (fry that thing!) 13:22, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

• Umm, you do know I was kidding, yes? Please? Pretty please? :) --Durin 13:25, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

I did suspect as much, but I still thought it might be a good idea. It'd be a bugger to impliment, there'd be a lot of hard feelings and upset people, and then we'd have to decide who can get to vote on that page though. So really, it'd never work. --Deskana (fry that thing!) 13:26, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

We'll make it like the UN Security Council. There'll be a few permanent members who always get to participate in RfAs (obviously me, and maybe three or four other people) and then the other participants each month (maybe five or so) will be randomly selected from the pool of all other users. Everyone out there thus has a 5 in 4,279,814 chance of getting to participate each month.

• You do know that WP:BAG uses essentially this system? Bots can only be approved by the select group of people who are permitted to vote on approvals. To get into the approvals group, you need unanimous support of the current members. Cute little cabal if I ever saw one. Thankfully they don't multiply like tribbles :) --Durin 13:35, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

That's two references to Star Trek in this subheader ;-) --Deskana (fry that thing!) 13:45, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

• Must be a good proposal then! :) --Durin 14:12, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

Of course, we'll need a whole system of scrutineers to oversee the random selection process. --bainer (talk) 13:34, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

And a group to watch the watchers. --Deskana (fry that thing!) 13:35, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

I've sometimes thought that Proxy voting would make sense, since it would allow non-regular voters to choose regulars to vote for them, who typically agree with their view of RfA candidates. NoSeptember 14:16, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

I say we nuke RFA entirely and give +sysop to anyone who asks nicely. But then we'd begin fighting over what constitutes nicety. ^demon^{[omg plz]} 13:50, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

• Oh, very simple. We hold a vote where people can state if the question was nice or not. If 80% of commenters consider it a nice request, it is granted. 70%-80% is iffy. >Radiant< 14:07, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

I fail to see how limiting the voters to a subset of the community will help us better find the level of community trust. RfA is not BAG because BAG requires specific technical knowledge, whereas RfA is only a question of trust. But really, where are all these RfAs that being ruined by bad votes? I don't seem them. ^High_InBC^{(Need help? Ask me)} 13:54, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

• WP:BAG thinks one must have technical knowledge in order to have a valid objection to a bot. This is false. --Durin 14:10, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
  • Isn't that a bit like restricting RFA voting to people who hold a degree in psychology? >Radiant< 14:19, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

• Hey! I like that proposal! RfA voting restricted to those people who have proven to hold a higher degree in psychology. Everyone agree? If I don't hear objections, I'll implement. --Durin 14:23, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

Well, people could make like Essjay and say they have psychology degrees when they do not. Captain panda 20:46, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

• Should Kelly Martin refrain from voting on Requests for Adminship? It would be nice to think she would, but I doubt she will so is there actually a point to this conversation, is anything going to be changed by sitting around here discussing it ad-nauseum? Bearing in mind the comments and assurances given by Ms Martin at her ill fated election for the Arbcom, and afterwards at her RFC (was it 3, the one she brought herself) which have all as they say in Yorkshire "come to nowt" it is unlikely that she will be influenced by any comments made here. I expect it is constitutionally impossible to ban her commenting anyway, so any compliance to the outcome of this poll is rather dependent on her good nature - which of course is not something for us to judge. Giano 14:02, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

• Incidentally, I thought of more things via that poll: we get so much driveby voting at RFAs, its utterly impossible to generate consensus. See Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Dark Dragon Flame for an example; Durin has brought up excellent points that may or may not change opposers minds. If it does change their mind, then we need to know that! It helps the bureacrat judge whether the consensus of the community is towards less stringent requirements than in the past! On the contrary, if it doesn't change their mind, then the bureacrat needs to know that too! It helps the bureucrat judge whether consensus merely is the same! But we can't judge consensus without participation. Silly drive-by voting. I wonder if those people even kept the RfA on their watchlist? Hmm... --Iamunknown 19:23, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

• Is she a member in good standing here? If so, then why should she be excluded from contributing to anything she sees fit to? Crockspot 14:50, 8 May 2007 (UTC)
  • She is, but some Wikipedians feel that there are problems with her ways of opposing many RfA candidates for what they perceive to be meaningless criteria. Nishkid64 (talk) 14:52, 8 May 2007 (UTC)
    • If her criteria are meaningless, then her comments should be given the appropriate weight by those reading them, not excluded from the process. If she is being disruptive, there are processes to handle that. If there is no justification for going through such a process, then the answer to this question is for her to decide, not us. - Crockspot 15:23, 8 May 2007 (UTC)
      • An RfC for Kelly was created less than two weeks ago. It was eventually deleted, though. Nishkid64 (talk) 20:17, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

With everything else that is going on right now, I suggest that this thread has become unnecessary and counterproductive. In any event, nothing new is being added. Can we drop it? Newyorkbrad 20:20, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

Maintaining WP:RfA

There are typically a number of RfA's where the nomination is created and then the nominee accepts some number of hours later and forgets to update the closing time. This isn't a huge problem in the grand scheme of things, but if someone was willing to monitor each listed nomination and adjust the end time to 7 days after the time listed on WP:RFA that would be helpful. Thanks all. - Taxman ^Talk 13:10, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

I've corrected them all now, almost all were wrong, I'll keep my eye out for it in the future. Ryan Postlethwaite 13:38, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

• I have a list ot tasks users can perform to help RfA run smoothly, things I used to do regularly before I got busy :(. NoSeptember 13:53, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
  • Of course you already have a list for that. :) Yeah it wouldn't be a bad idea to move that to project space so more people can see it. As your page notes, a half hour either way really isn't much of a problem. - Taxman ^Talk 15:22, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
    • Individual pages in The NoSeptember Admin Project can be moved to project space at any time, if that is what the community wants, as I have written here. NoSeptember 16:43, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
      • I say roll them in as a subpage to this page. Ryan Postlethwaite 16:46, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
• There's a lot of this that I used to do. I don't anymore either. --Durin 14:11, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

  Well I created that list so that if anyone ever asked, what can I do to help with RfA as a normal user?, I could tell them :). Otherwise there will be periods of time when such things fall through the cracks. NoSeptember 14:19, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

Mathbot tool again

Well, a whole new problem - 0 edit summary usage based on the last 0 major edits and 0 minor edits. Simply south 18:33, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

Good! Now let's keep it like that, and end the idiotic use of edit summary usage as a serious indicator of a candidate's suitablity for adminship by certain users – Gurch 23:23, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

spam list?

Some users, after an RfA, like to give people who've participated a message box or some sort of message. However, some of these participants don't like receiving these "spam messages." Should we set up a sort of spam list for the ease of candidates who wish to thank their critiquers? bibliomaniac15 23:40, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

Anyone who doesn't want to be thanked should be upfront about that in the RFA or on their talk page. Candidates, on the other hand, should absolutely refrain from automated thank-yous so they can see said messages. Communication is a key skill on a wiki. :) -- nae'blis 23:51, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

I've never really understood the point of thank yous; why can't we just be thanked for your participation on the RfA itself? Personally, I'd much rather that than see {{BASEPAGENAME}} show up on my talk page. I endorse the idea of a spamlist where all those of us who don't want thank you templates can list ourselves. Picaroon (Talk) 00:02, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

• As someone who was recently en-moppened, I considered the semi customary thank-you message. My feeling is that it a nice gesture, but since it is being handed out to (potentially) dozens of people, its rather impersonal and spammy. I don't think making either an opt-in or opt-out list is worth the extra overhead of new admins checking their vote list against it, compared to the fairly minor inconvenience of receiving an extra thank-you. If people want to send these out, that's OK, but my own solution was to just post a general thanks. —dgies^t_c 06:14, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
  • I put a small text thankyou on my own talk page. Spamming everyone who's participated is a bad idea in my opinion. --ais523 08:36, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

I don't think sending messages should be done, but I did it to not seem ungrateful. · AndonicO ^Talk 11:37, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

The custom of thank-yous evolved spontaneously a long time ago, although there have always been people criticising it. The average level of participation back when I was sysopped made it feasible to write something different to each participant, given the average level of participation now that's not really practical, and sending messages to each person is becoming less useful. --bainer (talk) 11:51, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

So is it better to send them or is it better not to? Captain panda 01:43, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

It's traditional, and serves no real purpose. Prodego ^talk 01:47, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

Malformed request pages

What is usually done with request pages like Wikipedia:Requests_for_adminship/hayoungs? —AldeBaer 15:31, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

Leave it, or if it gets added fix it. Majorly (hot!) 15:34, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

Thanks, will do. —AldeBaer 15:36, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

The general answer is: Until it is transcluded to WP:RFA it is just a subpage for the candidate and nominator to work on. You can offer to help if you want by contacting the user. He is a new user, so it should be pointed out that it would be unwise for him to submit this anytime soon. An admin can delete it if the user wants them to do that. Just do not add it WP:RFA yourself, that should only be done by the candidate or nominator. NoSeptember 15:39, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

Out of curiosity: The page says Scheduled to end 06:19, 2 May 2007 (UTC). Would this be automagically reset when added at some later point? —AldeBaer 16:16, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

No, that gets updated manually at transclusion time. The Rambling Man 16:20, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

I see, thanks. —AldeBaer 16:43, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

Frankly, that would probably get closed early per WP:SNOW if it was transcluded. If anybody checks the history, he has used sockpuppets (another account and his ip adress) in that RFA. Funpika 18:17, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

constructive comments in newbie RfA's

Please can everyone try and be a bit more constructive when opposing good faith candidates with only a handfull of edits, it saddens me when RfA's like this get hardcore opposed because they've only got a few edits and obviously don't know about the process. I'm all up for hammering candidates with only vandal edits, but this is different. Just offer some constructive advice to them, not comments like Strongly oppose, suggest withdrawal, why should they withdraw? What have they done wrong? They don't know our processes so they don't know these answers. Sorry for the rant, it's just newbie biting. Ryan Postlethwaite 22:34, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

I agree. To make sure very new editors are not bitten - what if we permanently semi-protected WP:RFA? That way no editor newer than 4 days will be able to list an RfA (after that they'll hopefully realise why its a bad idea). It will also prevent the occasional vandalism the page gets. Can anyone see a downside? WjBscribe 22:39, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

I couldn't agree more. It is really saddening to see such comments, and I would agree strongly with permanent semi-protection. Majorly (hot!) 22:41, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

I also entirely agree and I had thought of bringing this up before actually. If a couple of people have opposed it isn't necessary to all pile-on if it's clear that the RfA isn't going to be successful. It would be much better to just be neutral and say "good start but you probably need a bit more experience" or suchlike. Will (aka Wimt) 23:33, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

The semi-protection might not work well unless a form of cascading protection was created to "semi-salt" (protect subpages from creation by newbies) all subpages of RFA (and if any other page it would ever be needed on of course). Funpika 23:38, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

Why don't we just not bite them when they show up? Christopher Parham (talk) 23:53, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

• • hmmmm, because we don't bite newcomers - we're a community, if we don't get new people in we don't evolve. Ryan Postlethwaite 01:38, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

Are people currently vandalizing this page at an intolerable rate? --Kim Bruning 23:41, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

No, but we're getting too many newbie noms though. Is it really worth everyone's time opposing a candidate who will clearly not pass? Majorly (hot!) 23:54, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

Cascading protection wouldn't be neccessary, infact it would be detrimental. Anyone, newbie or not creates their RfA before it is transcluded so it wouldn't stop them making an RfA, and if cascading protection were enabled it would prevent anons commenting in the discussion section in ongoing RfAs (while rare I saw an instance of it the other day). Perhaps semi the main rfa page but nothing else. James086^{Talk | Email} 23:56, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

Ideally, people are supposed to provide encouraging advice to a new user who requests an RfA. Of course, this is reality, and people lazily decide to cut down their comment to "Oppose per xx. Withdraw". If people could put a little more thought into their opposes not only in RfAs for newbies, but in general, that would be appreciated and better help the candidate understand the reason for opposition. It would also prevent the need for excessively long RfAs, which stem from people asking questions on every single oppose comment. Nishkid64 (talk) 00:37, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

• Semi-protection is not going to stop many premature RfAs. It would have stopped this one, but the majority of such early RfAs are not in this category. Agree with Kim; if the page isn't being vandalized, I don't see the point. Vandalism is rare on this page. Protection, semi or otherwise, is supposed to be a limited use tool, not a permanent one. --Durin 01:05, 4 May 2007 (UTC)
  • I actually support semi protection per WJBscribe, there is no need for a non autoconfirmed user to edit the page, it would stop tears from new users that think they should be admins but acting in good faith, also the only IP edits here are vandalism. Ryan Postlethwaite 01:15, 4 May 2007 (UTC)
    • I'll re-iterate. Protection is a limited use tool. IP users don't have any business editing policy pages either, but they're unprotected. The logic doesn't follow, at least not by Wikipedia standards. In general, we're supposed to trust anon IPs as much as logged in users. --Durin 01:26, 4 May 2007 (UTC)
      • I do agree that we shouldn't misuse protection, but RfA is different, the only edits at WP:RFA from IP's/new users that I can see are vandalism or new users requesting adminship - and when they do, they get shot down with a bang, semi protection would stop that. Ryan Postlethwaite 01:38, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

It's one of our foundation issues that anyone can edit. This means in practice that we must not restrict areas for reasons of mere convenience. In fact, if a beginning user comes here, and makes a mistake, isn't that the ideal teaching moment? That's the same as anywhere else on the wiki. --Kim Bruning 01:36, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

• Of note is that the protection policy allows "user request" as a valid reason to lock out IP edits on userpages, despite the fact that's unwiki. But yes, I agree with Durin here. --Deskana (fry that thing!) 01:36, 4 May 2007 (UTC)
  • Durin's right. Although it is sometimes justified, protection has always been criticized as being against the purpose of Wikipedia. We don't need to protect pages when it's not necessary. People can easily revert malicious edits, if need be. Nishkid64 (talk) 13:46, 4 May 2007 (UTC)
    • It depends. By "malicious edits", do you mean biting new enthusiastic wanna-be admins? A better solution to the problem would be kindness, a path I hope others take. Gracenotes^T § 18:42, 4 May 2007 (UTC)
      • No, I'm referring to trolling and vandalism. If a new wanna-be admin submits an RfA request, I would disapprove of any newbie biting. It would be best to let the RfA run and explain to the user why they are not yet suited for adminship. Nishkid64 (talk) 21:20, 4 May 2007 (UTC)
        • Yes, I thought (okay, knew) you meant that. Just trying to put it in perspective—why we're having this discussion. Gracenotes^T § 21:44, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

I disagree with semi-protecting this page as it doesn't receive a lot of vandalism on a regular basis and the inappropriately-submitted RfAs can be used to educate their subject-editors about the RfA process and constructive ways to contribute to the project in a manner that would be seen as more beneficial if the admin tools were granted them. Those RfAs that are submitted with little-or-no chance of passing don't need to run for a full five days in order to get the message across. Constructive criticism in the 'oppose' section and on the canddidates' Talk page and/or editor review, if one exists or is prompted to be created, would be a reasonable attempt at education and may make for a better admin in future. (aeropagitica) 22:47, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

Bar self-noms?

Many of the doomed newbie RfAs are self-nominations; is there any support for disallowing self-nom altogether? It seems that any editor who could pass an RfA nominating themselves would have no trouble finding another editor happy to nominate them. ➪HiDrNick! 22:49, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

And how untoward would that be? Hey, mate, can you nominate me? I know if I wanted to be an admin I wouldn't try and get someone to nominate me (though I'd graciously accept a nom.) David Füchs^{(talk / frog blast the vent core!)} 22:57, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

Gosh, no. This isn't a good idea. --Deskana (fry that thing!) 23:02, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

Bad idea, especially since self-nominations have no particular trouble passing any more. --tjstrf talk 23:06, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

We need bold admins, self noms should not be discouraged. ^High_InBC^{(Need help? Ask me)} 23:08, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

Not a good idea. A self-nom is not an inherently bad thing. Just as with a nominated candidate, it's all down to the quality of that individuals' contributions to the project. A self-nom may be an industrious Wiki-gnome or an unlearned new editor still finding their feet. Conversely, bad-faith nominations of innocent but unprepared editors have also been known to crop up from time to time. The quality of response from the contributors will serve to either support and/or educate them about their potential at that point in time. We are all encouraged to be bold from the off and starting your own RfA is a very bold move on any editors' part. (aeropagitica) 23:53, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

A bad move. While an offer to nom is a good thing, looking for someone to nominate is akin to canvassing almsot. JodyB _talk 23:59, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

There are some Wikipedia editors who might not be recognized and nominated by other members of Wikipedia. Take me, for example. I wasn't too particularly well-known in September 2006, so I decided to go with a self-nomination. The result: I passed my RfA. Although it's become uncommon for people to have successful self-nominations, the fact that it does happen once in a while should be reason enough to allow for self-nominations in the future. Nishkid64 (talk) 00:06, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

Barring self nominations are bad things. I think, like HighInBC, that they show a certain amount of boldness that an admin should have. Indefinite semi-protection to protect from newcomers, maybe, but barring self-noms would be a mad idea. bibliomaniac15 00:53, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

Your comment seems to contradict itself. Can you clarify? —²¹⁰physicq (c) 00:56, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

Just about to say the same thing Physicq. Also, barring self-noms is bad. People should be bold. There's plenty of undiscovered "talent". --TeckWiz is now R ^ParlateContribs_@(Let's go Yankees!) 00:57, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

I would assume from context that he meant to say "aren't bad things", since that's what everything else in his post indicates. -tjstrf talk 00:59, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

Yup, Very bad idea. Sure many of the snow-failed ones are self-noms, but a lot of great admins have come from self-noms as well. Actually I can think of zero good that would come of this idea.--Wizardman 01:20, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

Not a very good idea; considering that about half of self-noms do pass RfA and that most of the newbie noms don't make it. I wouldn't say anything good would come out by barring self-noms. Sr13 (T|C) 08:52, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

• That table does not indicate the success rate of self-noms. It indicates that ~50% of nominations are self nominations. This table does show that self nominations are successful ~40% of the time (at least for all of 2006) and are about 20% less likely to pass. --Durin 11:58, 5 May 2007 (UTC)
  • Oops, sorry about that - but I still agree that some potential admins should be bold and request adminship themselves if they are capable of handling the tools. Sr13 (T|C) 17:29, 5 May 2007 (UTC)
  • Keep self-noms – if you want the admin tools, and no one asks you, why should you be prevented from asking? Majorly (hot!) 13:37, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

    Self-noms show that the candidate is bold and willing to volunteer to tackle the really annoying problems on Wikipedia. If we got rid of all of them, we'd have to have legions of nominators trawling the userspace looking for good candidates just to maintain the admnistrative status quo. I recall that my nomination was a self-nom, and it passed almost unanimously. Sean William 14:55, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

Admin IRC - how to get on

Wikipedia:IRC channels/wikipedia-en-admins

Questions? There's a talk page link there.

I'd quite like all admins, including freshly adminned admins, there. But it's not compulsory. And if ANYONE starts trying to use IRC access as a criterion for adminship ... please ignore them as being foolish as hard as possible - David Gerard 19:33, 6 May 2007 (UTC)

Thanks, David. I am following the instructions but I get this: memoserv: seanw has reached the maximum memo limit, and cannot receive more. ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 19:50, 6 May 2007 (UTC)

Who's seanw? I'll see if I can get someone to help you on IRC (if you haven't already). Nishkid64 (talk) 19:52, 6 May 2007 (UTC)

User:Sean Whitton, formerly known as Xyrael - I'll poke him to flush his MemoServ queue. Миша13 19:55, 6 May 2007 (UTC)

Sean Whitton. Damn, he'll need thumping. - David Gerard 19:56, 6 May 2007 (UTC)

Didn't know he changed his Wikipedia name. Honestly, we need Wikipedia:List of people who recently changed their name, or they did it a long time ago and I just don't know about it. Nishkid64 (talk) 19:59, 6 May 2007 (UTC)

We have such a page: Special:Log/renameuser :P Majorly (hot!) 20:21, 6 May 2007 (UTC)

See also User:NoSeptember/admin username changes. WjBscribe 02:31, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

NoSeptember thinks of everything, doesn't he? It's truly amazing. Nishkid64 (talk) 02:34, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

That list is a work of god. I just found out about the new aliases of a bunch of admins. (Heligo is now Nick?!?!?) Nishkid64 (talk) 02:39, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

:-) he sure does. The new usurpation requests at WP:CHU/U meant quite a few renames :-) which was why he decided to have the page. I've mostly kept it updated myself while helping the crats out with the rename pages... WjBscribe 02:41, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

IRC is the least productive way of prepping yourself, IMO. I've just never been able to stand the multiplayer Notepad for very long. I prefer to hang out at WP:AN. hbdragon88 01:34, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

Prepping yourself? What do you mean? As for #wikipedia-en-admins, I feel that is a very productive way of contacting admins to discuss admin actions. You can get help from other people, and it's much faster than posting at AN/I or AN and waiting for a response. Nishkid64 (talk) 02:18, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

Outside of privacy concerns, admin actions should be discussed on-wiki. RxS 02:45, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

True, but I find IRC very helpful when you want a few admins to quickly look over a few deletions of yours or a block of a particular user. Nishkid64 (talk) 03:12, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

David Gerard warned against people using IRC "as a criterion for adminship," and I was just palying off of what he said. hbdragon88 04:15, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

Not so much about preparation for becoming an admin, more about smoothing the learning curve once one becomes an admin. Having an array of experienced admins at one's fingertips is very useful when learning the ropes. --bainer (talk) 06:16, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

Actually, whether or not I become an admin, I pro'lly do want to pay attention to IRC... do any of you know of a good IRC client for Mac OS X (10.3 if possible)? David Fuchs^{(talk / frog blast the vent core!)} 11:35, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

Yep! Sounds like you need Colloquy - that's the one I'm using anyway. Here it is - Alison ☺ 11:40, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

Mmkay, well, I'd love to join you all, but apparently I'm too damned illiterate because I can't get past the second step of the request form. I've never seen IRC before, so half the instructions are Greek to me. Cloak? Nickserv entry? Freenode? I don't know how to send a memo, let alone how to send one to seanw. It would take me all day just to figure out how to sign up for this thing, not to mention learning how to actually use it. I know, I'm an idiot. I'm not here for my computer skills. Kafziel ^Talk 13:14, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

I pity your edit counters

I see lots of different edit counters used on RFAs. Cute trick. I challenge anyone to produce a full edit count for Cydebot (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log), though. --Cyde Weys 06:48, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

Is Cydebot going on RfA anytime soon? :) – Riana_ऋ 06:53, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

I thought AntiVandalBot was king in terms of edits? hbdragon88 07:25, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

Hehe, try running an edit count on both and see which has more. If you can get it to run, anyway :-P Cyde Weys 12:54, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

Cydebot's extensive block log clearly shows that the user is far too controversial for adminship. Oppose :)) Moreschi ^Talk 12:58, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

What?! That's not a valid reason to oppose. If you look at the ratio of blocks to edits, it's really quite low. --Cyde Weys 13:02, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

How often do you run the bot? Cause I think it averages about 5000-6000 edits per day, and it's been around for about 13 months. James086^{Talk | Email} 13:05, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

If number of blocks isn't a valid reason to oppose, I'll go with recent blocks (18:16, May 7, 2007, 2 hours ago). -- Renesis (talk) 19:28, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

Has Cydebot written any featured articles? If not, then it's obviously not qualified for adminship, because we all know that featured article authorship is required to block disruptive vandals and delete things like "joe johnson is this loser that sits next to me in classs!!!!!!11!". Also, there's the issue of Wikiproject endorsement.... - CHAIRBOY (☎) 13:34, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

What, this Joe Johnson?!?! Is this a cue for me to get a lot of stick? I baulk at the prospect. Maybe I should just break off and take a rest from these edits. I'm snookered. --Dweller 15:32, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

I would support if I would be reassured that this user wouldn't go rogue like AndyZ, BuickCenturyDriver, or Jiang (or use a insanely simple password). Sigh...what the hell is going on with these people? Nishkid64 (talk) 14:04, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

Oppose, not enough image experience. Raymond Arritt 19:34, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

Oppose. Although this user has more than 45000 edits (that's the point at which Interiot's "wannabe kate" counter terminated), he/she/it is clearly a troll ... note the repeated use of identical edit summaries employed in a devious scheme to fool RC patrollers. I recommend an indef block for disruption. -- Black Falcon ^(Talk) 20:23, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

Moral Support- I see he's an eager lad, but his actions on wikipedia seem... a tad mechanical. David Fuchs^{(talk / frog blast the vent core!)} 21:07, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

I'm serious, nobody can get a proper edit count on Cydebot? C'mon! Do better! It's vitally important for WP:RFA! --Cyde Weys 04:42, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

• Sure. Here it is. >Radiant< 09:26, 8 May 2007 (UTC)
• Well, I can start off by counting its logged actions. Using ais523's edit counter (which caps at 5000 edits per namespace and 5000 logged actions for sanity/editcountitis/server load reasons):

newuseraccount 1

• Far less than mine, I would point out. So Oppose Insufficient page moves, image uploads, and creation of new accounts. --ais523 10:46, 8 May 2007 (UTC)
• Interiot's tool (the one called slow Kate's tool) will do it if you just raise the limits high enough. Or you can use api.php which has a user contribs query built in. CMummert · talk 04:18, 9 May 2007 (UTC)
  • api.php no longer has a contribs query built in. (last that I know of). —— Eagle101^{Need help?} 05:37, 9 May 2007 (UTC)
    • It works for me. I couldn't get the login to work, though. [3]. CMummert · talk 05:41, 9 May 2007 (UTC)
      • The contribs query still works. The contribcount query was disabled. --ais523 10:42, 9 May 2007 (UTC)
        • It must have been disabled since before I learned about api.php, so I never heard of it; sorry for the confusion. But since there is a contrib query, it's not hard to write a loop to download and parse the contribs - it took about 30 lines of perl last night. CMummert · talk 14:15, 9 May 2007 (UTC)
          • Care to share? --Cyde Weys 21:15, 9 May 2007 (UTC)
            • Last night it crossed the magical 777777 mark. CMummert · talk 02:09, 10 May 2007 (UTC)
              • The bot or your counter? If 777777 is the edit count, that sounds far too small. Carcharoth 02:47, 10 May 2007 (UTC)
                • I'm pretty confident in that count; I got the same result from a hacked version of slow kate's tool and from api.php, and both claimed to fetch contribs back to the date that special:contribs claims is the first edit of the bot. The edit rate has been much higher recently than it used to be (I remember seeing a big fuss about that, actually...) CMummert · talk 02:50, 10 May 2007 (UTC)
                • The edit count will also be skewed by the fact that MediaWiki forgets about edits to deleted articles and images. It's over 812K now, though. Any change of reaching 1M? I don't know how large the current job is. AntiVandalBot has a measly 256389 edits in comparison. CMummert · talk 03:42, 10 May 2007 (UTC)
                  • Is it still not possible to count deleted edits? Will it ever be possible to count (and review) deleted edits. Sure, now I watchlist everything (well, actually, save the watchlist somewhere before it hits various limits), I can see redlinks appear in my watchlist, so I know what got deleted, but still... Carcharoth 11:25, 10 May 2007 (UTC)
• All of my attempts to count cydebot did not end very well: first time, after about a couple hours of so of running, it downloaded the page wrong so the parsing failed and the script exited of fatal error (parse failing = undefined function). bug fixed. second time, the thing took up so much memory that it used up all my ram and swap so the computer was basically unusable and I had to manually restart. fixed (I forgot to delete the DOM object's clones as well as the original). Third time is still running and is only consuming a constant 33mb. Lets hope this one doesn't crash like the others... GeorgeMoney (talk) 01:57, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

Wannabe Kate's tool terminated at 45000 - and that was just this month. Dear god, what does this bot do exactly? Viridae^Talk 02:04, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

It think it mostly just 'moves' categories around (carrying out CfD results) by creating new categories and moving articles from one to the other. Though recently it caused controversy with some image stuff as well. The count below has a large chunk of image edits, so that is what it was doing this month. Cyde will probably tell you more if you ask nicely. Or you could just look at the contribs and tweak the URL to jump about to diferent dates. Hasn't Cydebot run up against any of the contribs limits in MediaWiki yet? Or have those been fixed? Carcharoth 02:46, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

I was doing this with Flcelloguy's Tool, but then I got bored... here's what I got:

Statistics for: Cydebot
(Permissions: Bot)
- Total: 145000 -
Main: 2044
Talk: 22
User: 1653
User talk: 12747
Wikipedia: 63
Wikipedia talk: 27
Image: 128277
Image talk: 28
Template: 18
Template talk: 5
Category: 115
Portal talk: 1
-------------------
Total edits: 145000
w/ edit summary: 145000 (100.0%*)
w/ manual edit summary: 145000 (100.0%*)
Minor edits: 145000 (100.0%*)
First known edit: May 6, 2007
-------------------
* - percentages are rounded down to the nearest hundredth.
-------------------

Look at the "earliest edit" date, though. May 6, 2007. This thing did 150,000 edits in four days. Titoxd^{(?!? - cool stuff)} 02:21, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

Yes, as you can see, it will be quite the challenge to get the whole thing. I'm wondering if anyone (or any script) is even up to it. Hell, for all we know, Wikipedia may already have its first million edit account, and we just didn't realize it. --Cyde Weys 05:48, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

Flcelloguy's Tool, given enough memory and time, can finish it, but it will only be accurate to the beginning of the count. Since this would take forever, it would be inaccurate by the time it finishes... Titoxd^{(?!? - cool stuff)} 07:41, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

• That's a lot of edits. Support: "It has a good beat and you can dance to it." ;) --Strangerer (Talk) 02:52, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

Oppose per Black Falcon, but Support per Strangerer. So, in conclusion, Neutral, since the user is obviously a troll with a cunning plan to kill us all, but the style with which he does this, and the music it produces, cancels out my vote.~ G1ggy! _{Reply | Powderfinger!} 04:04, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

• My script finally finished:

Edit count for Cydebot as of [May 10, 2007 06:25 (UTC)]: 812052

GeorgeMoney (talk) 06:35, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

• • Congratulations to both George and Cyde; that's substantial. It's not at 1 million yet, though if it keeps going at the rate it has been recently it'll get there in less than a week. As of 11:42, 10 May 2007 (UTC) Cydebot has made 0.6033% of all edits (from Special:Statistics). James086^{Talk | Email} 11:42, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

Revoking/Withdrawing RfA

Could anyone please tell me how to revoke my RfA? I am taking my comments and will re-apply when I have further experience/more edits. For now, I want my RfA canceled. I don't see an option to do this, do I just delete my entry from the list? Thanks, FirefoxRocks 22:27, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, you can untransclude it; also, write that you withdraw your nomination on top of your RfA (near where you accepted it earlier). Heimstern Läufer 22:30, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

• Your note here is enough for us to remove it from WP:RFA. NoSeptember 22:31, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

It's Green Week again

I count fifteen highly green RFA noms :) >Radiant< 09:25, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

<bad political joke>Actually the Liberals are up in the polls after the budget today.</bad politcal joke> It's good to see that lots of admins are being promoted. Also the image backlogs are way down. James086^{Talk | Email} 14:05, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

Of course, the fact that the image backlogs are down just means we already have enough admins. ;) Kafziel ^Talk 14:10, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

I support withholding any promotions until the image backlog gets large again. Nishkid64 (talk) 14:45, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

• Yeah, and Category:Candidates for speedy deletion still has >400 in the backlog [4]. Do not mistake temporary drops in a given backlog as indicative of the overall situation being less backlogs. Likewise, do not take temporary spikes in passing adminship as indicative of an upward trend in promotions. Both conclusions would be inaccurate. --Durin 17:37, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

RFA is really not so harsh as people think. Spready the word!>Radiant< 15:11, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

Pages not transcluding; time to reformat?

Yup. We have so amny staying up that DGG's RfA is actually not showing up in the Table of Contents, and isn't being deprecated. Apparently the limit on the page is 17, whenever someone's adding another it's pushing that one down. Look for yourself while Lake's RfA is still up (when that's removed DGG's will be back to normal, oddly enough.--Wizardman 18:10, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

I think you need to tell a dev that the template limits are too small and the rest of the transclusions don't work. Or better yet, come up with a new way of formatting this page since the current size is ridiculous for people with slower connections. Currently, the html source for wp:rfa contains things like "<!-- WARNING: template omitted, pre-expand include size too large -->" and the pre-expand include size is 2047997 (when the maximum is 2048000). - Bobet 18:22, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

• Unless the limits as linked above are changed, the only solution we appear to have at hand is to reformat WP:RFA such that RfAs are not transcluded, but only linked to. Thoughts? --Durin 18:46, 8 May 2007 (UTC)
  • Well, they're all back up - I snowball-closed Lake54's nicely - but this is really quite bizarre. Certainly something needs fixing somewhere. Moreschi ^Talk 18:55, 8 May 2007 (UTC)
    • With only three rfas closing in the enxt 3 days, this may very well happen again, so we certainly have to think of something. I don't think this happened last time we had this many rfas up though.--Wizardman 18:58, 8 May 2007 (UTC)
      • All the RfAs are back up, but Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/bureaucratship is currently not transcluding to the bottom RfB section. If anyone runs for RfB (probably insane to do so, therefore not qualified :)) it won't transclude. We're *right* up against the limit here. --Durin 19:28, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

It's unlikely that sysadmins will be persuaded to increase the limit, which is in place for performance reasons. Running the page through Special:ExpandTemplates gives the size of the page after all substitutions as 420 K, well under the limit. (If the actual text went over 2 MB, you'd need to break up the page anyway so as not to kill viewers' browsers.) There's something there adding a lot of unnecessary bytes, maybe a conditional (all branches of the conditional are evaluated and count toward the limit, see Template:Bug). It should be possible to cut out a lot of the size without having to actually remove anything useful. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 20:50, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

• Then the culprit is very, very likely the userlinks now appearing on RfAs, ala "Links for <candidate>". I'll remove them now. --Durin 00:36, 9 May 2007 (UTC)
• Ok, done. Everything is transcluding now. --Durin 00:49, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

Could not the "Links for <candidate>" still not be included in the relevant talk pages ? David Ruben ^Talk 01:53, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

• Sure. --[[User:Durin|Durin

  The culprit was indeed {{usercheck}}. I've made a cut-down {{usercheck-short}} which shouldn't cause the same problem (it's much shorter and slightly less pretty). --ais523 11:03, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

  (To be clear: the new pre-expand include of Template:RfA is 4414 bytes, as opposed to 106341 bytes for {{usercheck}}.) --ais523 11:36, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

Wikipolitical Compass

Where are you on the RfA Wikipolitical Compass?

I'm not sure whether this will shed light on the politics of RfA or simply fan the flames, but it's fun enough that I'm going to post it: Wikipolitical Compass

I've plotted the way people vote on RfAs on a sort of political compass, using axes that were statistically determined to be the most significant components in the way people vote. The result is a plot of all the voters and candidates on two orthogonal axes, which I tentatively call "agreeability" and "balance". If you've voted on 5 or more RfAs so far in 2007, or if you've run for adminship in that time, you're plotted somewhere on the chart.

The image linked here is the chart of voters, but you may want to read the page first to figure out what it means. The candidates chart is also on that page, and the data is there in text form so you don't have to squint through the mess of text on the graph to find out where you are.

I'm at (4.13, -3.83). rspeer / ɹəədsɹ 04:13, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

Yay. I'm either (1.5,1.5) or (-1,-1), depending on whether you choose my voting patterns or candidacy. No idea what that means. -Amarkov moo! 04:31, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

Well, if my interpretation of the axes is correct, it means that you somewhat disagree with the common wisdom on RfA, and you're near the center on whether to promote candidates with a balance of contributions across many areas or candidates who specialize in one area. In your own RfA, your supporters were even more disagreeable than you, and also near the center on the "balance" issue but leaning more toward specialist.

And since your two points are fairly close together, if you saw a clone of you running for adminship, you'd probably support him. :) (This isn't trivial. You can find a few people on the chart who would appear to oppose their clone.)

Does this sound right, or do I need to rethink my interpretation? rspeer / ɹəədsɹ 04:45, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

I'm really wondering what the mysterious axis 3 is, since there's apparently all of 1 voter more extreme in it than me... --tjstrf talk 05:18, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

I'm a 5.19 on agreeability?? I tend to think of myself as fairly unconventional... Maybe it's because I'm not above being someone's 113th support. I can't figure out what 3 and 4 are either, the outliers don't tell me anything. Grandmasterka 05:54, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

The tiny edit count newbies who only got 5 or 10 votes and were then withdrawn probably aren't the best cases to look through for outliers, since they just reflect whichever random people saw and SNOWed their RfA first. If we're looking for useful outliers, then it would probably be better to check the candidate pages which got at least a bit of discussion. (Oddly enough, I did vote for The Halo.) --tjstrf talk 06:15, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

I can't make any sense out of axis 3 so far. Meanwhile, the most striking feature of axis 4 is Danny at the top of it. With so many votes on Danny's RfA, you'd think they would average out. It also has more current admins near the top.

Oh, by the way, we should all go edit an article or something now. I'll admit that all this is WP:BULL, but it's interesting. rspeer / ɹəədsɹ 06:59, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

You can begin with Category:Stub-Class hurricane articles. :) Titoxd^{(?!? - cool stuff)} 07:32, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

The intriguing distribution of candidates on the same axes.

That's really interesting; at (7.31, -0.13) I think it means I'm an un-controversial voter and I demand slightly less than average for my support. What do the standard deviations mean? Is that with regard to voters or candidates, also I think they would need to be normalised (like the voters to between -10 and 10). If it's not possible to scale them back accurately that's fine, then again, I may have completely misunderstood what they mean. James086^{Talk | Email} 14:18, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

• I'm just centrist, I guess. ~1.75 on axes 3 and 4. -Amarkov moo! 14:33, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

The sigma values are the singular values. They indicate how strongly that axis predicts votes (either from voters or for candidates), and the axes were sorted by those values. I don't know how large sigma has to be to make an axis statistically significant. rspeer / ɹəədsɹ 15:22, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

Oddly fascinating. Thank you. Haukur 14:51, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

Apparently I was way more agreeable as a candidate (6) then voter (4.6). Pretty much in the center for the others. I'll look into axes 3 and 4. Part of my wanted to say time for axis 3 but I think that's wrong.--Wizardman 15:04, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

I don't appear to be represented on this compass and I know that I've contributed to more than five RfA discussions since January 2007. Any particualar reason why I would have been missed off? (aeropagitica) 15:10, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

Only thing I can think of is that it choked on the parens in your username for some reason? Haven't examined the code though... -- nae'blis 20:33, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

It's because you link only to your talk page in your sig, not your user page. (It also doesn't count you if you don't include randomly bolded words in your comments. I got left out on both counts.) —Cryptic 20:59, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

• On the !voters section, I'm at (5.96, -1.04) and on the candidates section I'm at (3.39, -3.71). Acalamari 20:27, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

Huh. I'm much less disagreeable than I thought, as a voter. I did a tally for myself once on how many candidacies I supported failed, and how many I opposed passed. ;) -- nae'blis 20:33, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

Ah, so the 5.96 for me means I'm highly agreeable. Coming to think about it, I've said neutral or oppose about five times in all compared with numerous supports. Acalamari 20:36, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

Huh. I'm proll'y on there somewhere, but in the mass of black... ;) I think that the successful/unsuccessful RfA graph is by far more compelling. There are plenty of stats here about what edit counts for candidates ended in success/failure, but this gives a trend to see, for example, if well-rounded editors are looked upon more favorably. Thanks for doing this! David Fuchs^{(talk / frog blast the vent core!)} 21:21, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, thank god for the lists at the bottom of the page; reading those charts is like playing "Where's Waldo?", only without the striped hat. Kafziel ^Talk 21:27, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

I wonder if it'd be possible to render them in SVG, which might make them a bit more searchable? Might jump the filesize unreasonably, though... -- nae'blis 21:57, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

Even if it were SVG the names would still overlap, and while easier, I don't think there's any way of sorting out the densest crowds. I think the best way is to look up your coords although it still took me a while (on the voting, as a candidate I'm easy). James086^{Talk | Email} 23:46, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

After Midnight's RFA small optional queston problem

I've added a question here but for some reason its bolded at least half the question and i'm not sure why. Even checking editing it looks okay. Could someone sort this out? Only the "Optional question from Simply south", "7." , "not" and "A" are meant to be in bold, not the rest. Simply south 14:14, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

Done. Moreschi ^Talk 15:08, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

Edit Summary Usage

I found it hypocritical strange that some people oppose based on low edit summary usage, though plenty of admins almost never use an edit summary. --TeckWiz is now R ^ParlateContribs_@ (Let's go Yankees!) 00:10, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

"Hypocritical" is probably too strong a word, unless the people opposing candidates for low edit summary usage are themselves not using edit summaries. Personally, I just wish that more editors, and particularly more admins and admin candidates, were aware of the option on Preferences that prompts for an edit summary automatically. I would have omitted edit summaries inadvertently lots of time, but because of that feature, have been able to manage a run of 100% edit summary usage. :) Newyorkbrad 00:13, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

You're right. Word changed. --TeckWiz is now R ^ParlateContribs_@ (Let's go Yankees!) 00:19, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

It is not hypocritical to have higher hopes for the future admins than the present ones, even if that was the case. ^High_InBC^{(Need help? Ask me)} 00:14, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

That falsely assumes that people who oppose based on that want all current admins to be admins, which is not necessarily the case. -Amarkov moo! 01:06, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

According to "Wannabe Kate", I have full edit summary usage, and in case I forget to put a summary in, I've enabled the reminder in my preferences. :) Acalamari 01:50, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

"Don't use edit summaries" is somewhat misleading. If you browse Special:Contributions/Deskana, you see a lot of edits with no edit summaries in. Use the Mathbot tool, however, and I have 97% for major and 100% for minor. That's because that only checks article space. I'd never write an edit summary if posting to a talk page or discussion page. I use them on Wikipedia pages like WP:RFCU where it's fairly important, and in article namespace, but writing "comment" or "reply" or something on a talk page is totally useless. There's absolutely nothing wrong with doing it, but there's nothing wrong with not doing it either. Which is presumably why Mathbot only checks article namespace- the only place where edit summaries are crucial. --Deskana (AFK 47) 01:54, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

LOL! I remember a period when I was checking my edit summary usage every week, and wondering why none of the percentages were changing. Then I spotted the "article namespace" clause, and realised I needed to start working on articles more! (as opposed to wittering in projectspace.) After I realised that (and turned on the prompt), the values went to 100% very quickly. Carcharoth 02:51, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

The only reason I use edit summaries everywhere (outside article space as well), is in a vain (hopeless, not the other meaning of vain!) attempt to bring order to my contributions list. It is surprising, with careful use of edit summaries, how easy it is to sort through all your contributions by searching, sorting and other manipulations (in some external editor like a spreadsheet or database program). Using clear edit summaries, and remembering to make them explicable to yourself reading them a few weeks (or years!) later, it is remarkably easy to review your own contributions and see what you have been up to. Well, that is the theory. In practice, finding the time to do such analysis is, shall we say, difficult! (The closest I have got so far at such an analysis is User:Carcharoth/Contributions.) But with proper edit summaries (combined with page titles) it is theoretically possible. Kind of like a personalized and more intensive version of the edit counters/analysis. Carcharoth 02:18, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

Low edit summary usage should not really be a valid reason to oppose someone's RfA, provided they turn the "prod me when I forget an edit summary" option on in Preferences. Once you've done that, you go to 100 percent on Mathbot very quickly. Moreschi ^Talk 10:40, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

Edit summaries can be helpful even on Talk pages. For instance, the 'r to Deskana' in my edit summary for this edit is more useful than just the section name, because it gives information to people watching the discussion (and they can look at the edit if they're interested in what I'm saying to Deskana). More commonly, I'd use the gist of my edit as the summary, or even the entire comment if it's only a line or so long (leaving in the colons and tildes to provide a clue that it's the entire comment). --ais523 10:47, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

Useful? Yes. Essential? No. --Deskana (AFK 47) 11:29, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

Just to make my views clear, I agree with this comment. (I don't think I've ever opposed an RfA solely on edit summary grounds, and it would take a pretty extreme case of not using edit summaries for edits where a summary is important to get me to do this.) --ais523 11:32, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

A point people sometimes miss about edit summaries is that experience in using them shows whether the potential admin can write clear, concise, helpful and informative block and deletion log summaries. First the use of edit summaries should be checked, and then the quality should be checked. If the user doesn't realise they can link within edit summaries (eg. they should realise they can link to deletion debates from the deletion log, and Arbcom cases in block logs, etc.), that should be politely pointed out, and if the edit summaries are less than helpful, or even uncivil (using swear words for example), that would be something to raise. Libellous block log and deletion log summaries are really bad (cos they are difficult or impossible to get rid of), and uninformative or misleading ones are nearly as bad. That is the real reason, IMO, for a potential admin to show experience with using edit summaries. Carcharoth 11:52, 10 May 2007 (UTC)