Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/2024 review/Phase II/Discussion-only period: Difference between revisions

2024 Requests for adminship review

Status as of 12:26 (UTC), Saturday, 17 August 2024 ()

• Phase II is open for discussion! Participants are invited to contribute towards improving and refining the proposals for a discussion-only period, administrator recall, designated RfA monitors, and an RfA mentoring process.

Discussion following up on a successful proposal from Phase I of WP:RFA2024 to have a discussion-only period at the beginning of RfA. theleekycauldron (talk • she/her) 23:23, 30 May 2024 (UTC)

Welcome! This is the discussion following up on a successful proposal from Phase I of RFA2024 (Proposal 3b: Make the first two days discussion-only (trial)). The discussion close by Joe Roe is reprinted here:

After more than a month of discussion, there is a clear consensus in favour of this proposal. Eighty editors participated in the discussion and a 76% majority supported the proposal. The arguments against were sound but evidently not persuasive. Additionally, many opposes were qualified as "weak", and many concerned a preference for another variant of this proposal – none of which have been successful.

The details of this proposal were implicitly taken from the unsuccessful Proposal 3 above. For the avoidance of doubt I'll repeat them here (slightly edited for clarity):

For the first two days (48 hours) of a request for adminship (RfA), no !votes (comments indicating "support", "oppose", or "neutral") may be made. Optional questions and general comments are still allowed. After the first two days, !votes may be left for the remainder of the RfA.

This is to be a trial that applies to the next five RfAs that are not closed per WP:SNOW or WP:NOTNOW or to RfAs opened in the next six months – whichever happens first.

Neither proposal specified what should happen after the trial period. I assume another RfC should be held to determine whether there is a consensus to make this change permanently. – Joe (talk) 12:55, 24 March 2024 (UTC)

The trial has been in effect through the RfAs of ToadetteEdit (NOTNOW), Numberguy6 (SNOW), and DreamRimmer (ongoing). The trial will conclude either when five RfAs have concluded without SNOW or NOTNOW, six months have passed, or if consensus resolves to end the trial early.

Open discussion

• no !votes (comments indicating "support", "oppose", or "neutral") may be made An explicit exception for joke !votes should be made. Polygnotus (talk) 23:40, 30 May 2024 (UTC)

  Why? QuicoleJR (talk) 23:43, 30 May 2024 (UTC)

  @QuicoleJR: Because, people will make joke !votes in the comment section and others will literally interpret them as !votes and delete them and then drama will ensue. Also, has it been made clear what should happen to non-joke !votes? Should they be not be counted? Struck through? Removed? Polygnotus (talk) 23:45, 30 May 2024 (UTC)

  An admin, an IP, and a sockpuppet walk into a bar... Randy Kryn (talk) 23:57, 30 May 2024 (UTC)

  I was more thinking among the lines of this one Polygnotus (talk) 00:00, 31 May 2024 (UTC)

  ...and the bartender says, "what're you having?" The admin says, "I'll have a glass of your finest champagne." The IP says, "Give me your cheapest draft beer." The sockpuppet says, "Just water for me; I can't afford a third drink." Levivich (talk) 02:53, 31 May 2024 (UTC)

  It can be difficult to discern jokes, especially when you don't have labeled sections. Imagine the chaos where someone gets a normal-looking !vote removed and insists it was a joke. Aaron Liu (talk) 02:47, 31 May 2024 (UTC)

• I think a large issue with RfA being an unpleasant process for applicants are the detailed explanations of "oppose" votes, not a lack of them. Perhaps the most hurtful (or even dishonest) explanations of oppose votes have been provided only because they're practically required for a vote to count without causing huge drama. If this is true, the discussion-only period was a mistake going into the wrong direction, and admin elections may help. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 00:41, 31 May 2024 (UTC)

  @ToBeFree: I was wondering what you might think of something like this? Do you think something like that could work? Clovermoss🍀 (talk) 02:10, 31 May 2024 (UTC)

Early close

note: section added retroactively. theleekycauldron (talk • she/her) 02:09, 31 May 2024 (UTC)

• Support early close so far this experiment has achieved nothing but waste a lot of community time and prolongs the suffering of unsuccessful RfA candidates. In both Toadette and Numberguy RfAs (and very likely DRs), the discussion period simply forestalled a close for two days, attracting a lot of community energy without any change in the outcome. (t · c) buidhe 00:56, 31 May 2024 (UTC)
• Support early close. Yeah this does not seem like an improvement to me. Lotta milling around, walls of text accumulating without being structured enough to lead somewhere productive. It makes me appreciate that threaded conversation under specific oppose votes (typically) is actually a helpful way to track what major concerns arise and how much weight they deserve. The prospect of having to winnow that out from the morass in the general comments section of DR’s RFA for example seems to have made the process less rather than more efficient. Innisfree987 (talk) 01:21, 31 May 2024 (UTC)
• Support. The fundamental reasons for this change were not elucidated in the proposal, but any change to the RfA process should be an effort to attract more people to sit through the process, without compromising standards or the effectiveness of the vetting process. While this trial run did not result in lowering standards, it also did not make the process any more attractive. As pointed out above, it also made the process less efficient for the community, many of whom needed to visit this page multiple times to weigh in on the candidate. I agree with the call to abandon this trial before we deter potential candidates from RfA, or fail to promote a good candidate who would have passed without this change. – bradv 02:15, 31 May 2024 (UTC)
• Support close per Buidhe. Polygnotus (talk) 02:17, 31 May 2024 (UTC)
• Oppose early close – We have one ongoing RFA discussion (DreamRimmer) potentially heading toward neither NOTNOW nor SNOW result. Indeed, I see plenty of "support" votes yet also plenty of "oppose" ones there. Sure, two other RFAs were closed as either one, and the process seems either annoying, slow, or whatever. However, at this time, the amount of such after enacting the trial run is too small for me to favor early close at this time. After DreamRimmer, let's wait for either four more RFAs resulting in neither NOTNOW nor SNOW or three to four months then, whichever first. In other words, why not patience? George Ho (talk) 02:35, 31 May 2024 (UTC)

  If the DreamRimmer RFA is closed as NOTNOW or SNOW, I will object. NOTNOW and SNOW is not for 57% RFAs. In my opinion, it is up to the candidate to withdraw or wait for a close in close RFAs. –Novem Linguae (talk) 02:45, 31 May 2024 (UTC)