User talk:Nae'blis/Swotting RFA

“ You're right. I am obstructionist. I have every intention of being obstructionist to poorly thought out ideas that do not approach modifying RfA through some form of methodical approach, for example a SWOT analysis. That's my proposal for solving it. I've said it dozens of times, and I'll keep saying it until I'm blue in the face. Plenty of people want to "reform" RfA, yet few have made any real attempt to ascertain what's wrong with it. I've already done multiple point by point assertions and responses before.
--Durin 14:03, 17 January 2007 (UTC) ”

Evidence/Collation of statements

Hopefully, all of the first category will be filed under SWOT eventually.

Incontrovertible statements

Strike/delete anything that can be reasonably disputed.

1. Requests for Adminship has drawn criticisms over the years since it was implemented.
2. Wikipedia operates by rough consensus in most matters.
3. Requests for Adminship generally causes the right result, i.e. that most people are satisfied with and agree with.
4. The outcome of most nominations fall outside of the 'grey area' (75-80%).
   1. Note: Where does the grey area originate? Many discussions say Cecropia codified it, but he refers to it as being pre-existing in his own RFB: "long debates appear to show that the "gray" area is between 75% and 80%."
5. Reconfirmation/review of admins has been broadly rejected by the community.
6. Change is difficult.
7. Administrative population is growing slower than editor population or administrator workload.
   1. Also look at how many current holders of the sysop bit are actually performing actions.

"Requests for Adminship generally causes the right result; most nominations fall outside of the 'grey area' (75-80%)" is not incontrovertible. Whilst both statements are true IMO, they don't follow. I'd say that some of the cases where we get the 'wrong result' lie outside of those areas too. The 'problem' isn't just with judgement calls in that % band, it is with the existence of percentages altogether.--Doc^g 22:37, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

True, those should probably be broken into two separate statements. Examing 'bad' decisions outside the grey area (especially on the upper side) is going to be difficult, though. I was already planning on looking at RFAs in the 50-75% range. -- nae'blis 01:51, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

Indefensible statements

1. "RFA is broken." - non-specific, non-substantiated.
2. "RFA is broken because X did/will not pass." - anecdotal, emotional.
3. "RFA is working fine." - A non-trivial amount of criticism has come up repeatedly; unfortunately much of it has been emotional, non-specific, and non-repeatable.

Postulations

All of these need more data backing them up, and some may be minority viewpoints that cannot be accommodated.

1. RFA is not promoting enough admins.
2. Not enough respondents at RFA engage in discussion.
3. RFA is/should be a vote.
4. RFA is/should be a discussion.
5. RFA is not scaling well.
6. RFA is sensitive to the dangers of groupthink; trends toward support/opposition tend to accelerate.
7. RFA is a beauty contest; well-known users will pass regardless of merit.
8. RFA is a 'gauntlet' that is too hard on candidates.
   1. Subpoint: Potential candidates perceive #8 to be true and decide not to go through the process.
9. People do not actually like the 'straw poll' system, but feel powerless to change it.
10. It is almost impossible to get someone desysopped when they lose the trust of the community; the arbcomm sill act in only the most egregous cases. Therefore many people are reluctant to extend trust in marginal cases.
11. Candidates with low project-space contributions tend not to succeed.

Analysis

This is a workshop for now, nothing here should be taken as gospel truth or a final recommendation/analysis. In addition, the usual "inside/outside" dichotomy applies to "RFA & RFA regulars" and "Wikipedia as a whole", rather than Wikipedia/outside Wikipedia. See above for more information.

Strengths

1. RFA as currently constituted works smoothly the majority of the time.
2. RFA is efficient at promoting good candidates.
3. RFA is a known quantity; most acculturated users know how it works.

Weaknesses

1. RFA does not always deal well with non-mainstream candidates.
2. RFA only polls a self-selected sample of Wikipedians.
   1. Of course, this is true for most polling on Wikipedia.

Opportunities

1. Greater discussion and better consensus may be possible.
2. A more civil atmosphere may be possible.

Threats

1. Different systems may not work as well as RFA does currently.
2. Changes may reduce the accuracy of RFA representing the whole of Wikipedia's opinion of

Wikipedia_talk:Requests for adminship/Archives

Mailing list (before June 14, 2003)

• to be completed
• User:Kil was de-sysoped in late May 2003"*".

Wikipedia talk:Requests for adminship/Early archives (June 14, 2003-February 2004)

• From June 2003, anyone may agree/disagree with a nomination.^[1]
• June 2003 also saw the 100th admin. ^[2]
• August 2003 saw a de-admin discussion on User:172.^[3] Concerns included incivility, biting newbies, and misusing the tools. Sysop bit was retained."*".
• September 2003 saw the first discussion of re-gaining the sysop bit.^[4] Two interesting things came out of this:
  1. At least one user felt that the community should be involved in re-nominations (apparently even voluntary ones).
  2. At least one user felt that RFA was the place for "straightforward request(s) to be a Sysop ... This is not the place to discuss Problem User Sysops".
• December 2003 saw a discussion on having RFA requests open for a set time; a week was decided upon.^[5]
• Discussion on edit counts and time requirements took place in December 2003 as well.^[6]
• Tim Starling (a developer at the time, since 'crats didn't exist yet) complained in January 2004 about the workload of promoting admins. Some ideas were bandied about for having several admins sign off on any given RFA and letting them flip the bit, or just any admin, but that proved too controversial.^[7]
• Anonymous users were forbidden from voting/nominating in February 2004. There was some opposition to the idea. ^[8]
• Bureaucrats were instituted in February 2004. Come confusion resulted, such as why/how initial crats were chosen, and why the ability was limited to certain users (again, the discussion resulted largely in the concept that giving the power to promote to every sysop was fraught with peril).^[9]
• A distinct challenge to the consensus vs. vote decision-making model came in February 2004.^[10] This resulted in the first logged discussion of the 'rough consensus' threshold, widely supported at 75-80%, certainly not below 67%.^[11]

Wikipedia talk:Requests for adminship/Archive 14 (rest of February 2004)

• Angela proposed to make all sysops who request the privilege bureaucrats, to avoid voting on them twice. This sparked a huge discussion and poll.^[12] It eventually resulted in a very inconclusive poll.

Wikipedia_talk:Requests_for_adminship/Archive_15 (most of March 2004)

• Self-nominations were debated, and edit counts/minimums (again).^[13]
• Someone proposed restricting nominations to sysops, which was quickly shot down as cabalistic and unfair.^[14]
• First documented edit-war over the vote/count tallies.^[15]
• The idea that candidates have to accept nominations was put forward, and apparently accepted.^[16]

Wikipedia_talk:Requests_for_adminship/Archive_16 (end of March 2004 - mid April 2004)

• to be completed

Rename?

This would be more parseable at "SWOTing RfA". People tend to call it "RfA" not "RFA", and "swotting" looks like some kind of highly regional colloquialism, like something someone from rural Shropshire or Idaho uses as a minced oath. "Get your paws off me, you swotting dirty ape!" LOL.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ<  01:23, 9 January 2018 (UTC)