 | This is an essay. It contains the advice or opinions of one or more Wikipedia contributors. This page is not an encyclopedia article, nor is it one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines, as it has not been thoroughly vetted by the community. Some essays represent widespread norms; others only represent minority viewpoints. |
Over the years, there has been much discussion of what is wrong with RFA and how it should be fixed. Though by an undeniable number of accounts there is need for a change of some kind, nothing has ever materialised and nothing looks to be about to do so; thus, I hope to be able to try and think up something that might be more successful. (Fat chance.)
The problem with RFA seems to be that not enough candidates pass, which is apparently due to inconsistent voting standards. Indeed, it is to a large extent 'voting' rather than '!voting': people have all sorts of ideas on what constitutes a good administrator, and some give no reason at all or simply 'per so-and-so'. I believe the solution is to make RFA more like AFD, i.e. to have a clearly defined set of standards for !votes and to enforce those standards as needed.
My thoughts on what kind of votes should be disallowed are as follows:
- Votes citing the candidate's age, as it is not an argument based on evidence, but on a generalisation that has not conclusively proven to be accurate. (Generalisations are always risky.)
- Votes that give no reasoning or consist entirely of statements such as 'per nom', per WP:PERNOM and the idea that RFA is not a vote.
- Votes that fall under relevant sections of WP:ATA, such as:[1]
- The candidate did X and Other Editor who also did X did/didn't get adminship
- I like/dislike the candidate
- Making the candidate an admin wouldn't hurt anyone
- The candidate may not be good enough now but can surely learn on the job
- Voting against this candidate is insensitive because s/he is working really hard
- We need/don't need more admins (including such statements as 'We don't need more admins who don't create content and just fight vandals')
- The candidate has a good sense of humour
- The candidate's user page/username/signature looks good/doesn't look good (This one is less clear, since anyone can rename or clean up an article, but editors have to consent to being renamed and clean up their signatures themselves; their name and signature also appear much more widely than the title and contents of an article)
- The candidate will get harassed so much after becoming an admin that it's just not worth it
- The candidate is/isn't an admin on (an)other Wikimedia project(s)
- Personal attacks/comments toward the candidate or nominator
- The candidate has run for adminship so many times that clearly s/he wants to become an admin, and this is good/bad
- Wikipedia:Arguments to avoid in adminship discussions already exists, but if this proposal were to be implemented, that essay would be upgraded to a guideline and expanded to discount--rather than discourage--a wider array of arguments.
- Either allow or disallow votes based on whether the candidate has created x number of articles and the quality of those articles. I'm leaning towards disallowing them, but obviously others would disagree; this should probably be put to a vote.
- Votes made by accounts that have existed for less than x time and have less than x edits. Maybe 9 months and 500 edits.
- Votes made with reasoning that has nothing whatsoever to do with any kind of policy, guideline or essay, such as 'The candidate has x deleted edits'
- ^ A number of these are actually pretty common.
As well, there should probably be a set of fixed, easily verifiable criteria that, if the candidate does not meet them, are grounds for a bureaucrat to speedily close the RFA as unsuccessful:
- Has existed for x or more time and made x or more edits; this would of course be more stringent than the requirement for voters; probably 1 year and 5000 edits, at the least. Which namespaces the edits are in may also be important, as someone who mainly edits userspace is probably WP:NOTHERE.
- Has created x or more articles (if this is found to be an important criterion). X should be a well-defined number.
In contrast to other reform proposals, mine makes no radical changes, which may prove to be an advantage. Keep in mind, however, that I have hardly participated in RFA and AFD, and that FAC may be a better model to work from (but I have literally no experience with it, so attempting to base anything on it would be an exercise in stupidity).