User talk:EVula/admin/RfB notes

Unneedlessly aggressive words

I think people expect 'crats to do more then meet civil requirements. It appears the opposers are identifying aggressive words/language you have used and they expect 'crats not to use such words. I think they are saying be more nice. -- Jreferee ^(Talk) 05:25, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

Weirdness

Just a question... What does civility matter for a crat? Sure, it matters for an admin because they can block/protect and such, but the only things bureaucrats get are doing CHUs and closing RfAs, both in which the crat is involved in little communication. Of course, it is always necessary to be civil, but why for crats in particular? SalaSkan 11:08, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

My view

My concerns are nothing to do with civility or your interactions with others. Instead, I would have opposed your RfB (I didn't get around to commenting before it closed) purely on the strength of your answer to my optional question. No RfA should ever, ever, be closed as successful when it stands at only 68% support. (The only possible exception is if the Oppose voters were identified as sockpuppets of a banned user.) In Danny's RfA, over 100 established editors left good-faith comments explaining why Danny should not be a sysop. The bureaucrats effectively told them that their opinions were worthless. (Note: This isn't a personal comment on Danny. I don't know him and didn't vote on his RfA. It's a matter of principle.) Because of your view on this, I will strongly oppose any future RfB that you undertake. Don't get me wrong; I have nothing personally against you, you're a good admin and a good editor, and I would have supported if this had been an RfA rather than an RfB. But I cannot support you for bureaucratship, now or ever. Ideally we wouldn't have bureaucrats at all; we would have an automated program to count the votes and promote those who achieve more than 75% support. Walton^talk 13:01, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

I disagree with you. RfA is for determining community consensus, and is not supposed to be a vote (although it is sometimes treated as such). Oppose votes for "i don't like you lol noob ur a twat" get discounted, support votes without any comment at all are less valued as well. Like you said, if RfA were a firm vote, we wouldn't need bureaucrats at all. SalaSkan 13:53, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

I totally agree that an oppose vote given in obvious bad faith should be struck, and therefore discounted. However, any good-faith opinion given by an established user should not be ignored, even if it is not accompanied by a rationale. I think a useful idea here would be to limit voting in RfAs to established users with over 100 edits, as they do on Spanish Wikipedia - this would prevent sockpuppets and SPAs skewing RfA votes. However, if we start ignoring established users' opinions and giving bureaucrats power to make decisions over promotion, we quickly become a self-perpetuating oligarchy - which is the way we're going at present. Walton^talk 12:45, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

I didn't mean to sound like established editors should have their opinions completely dismissed out of hand, but I do feel that the actual arguments themselves should be weighted. For example, people who oppose based on a policy that they don't like (OFFICE) aren't necessarily saying that Danny would be a bad administrator; they are saying that they don't like that policy, which is completely irrelevant (there are some policies that I think are silly, but that doesn't mean I'd actively oppose their enforcement).
If community consensus was that votes should just be counted, I'd be comfortable just doing a tally and promoting that way. But everything I've seen and read about RfAs tells me that it is a discussion, not a vote, and so I approach it from that angle. EVula // talk // ☯ // 13:49, 4 July 2007 (UTC)