Wikipedia:2015 administrator election reform/Phase II

In Phase II, the community will discuss possible solutions for the problems identified in the Phase I RfC.

Summary

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In the 30-day Phase I RfC of the RFA2015 reform project, which ran from 15 October to 15 November 2015, seven primary issues relating to the RfA process passed to Phase II. Namely, these issues were the following: (1) There should be broader participation in the RfA process (78%); (2) Ease the load on admins (75%);[1] (3) The environment at RfA is too hostile (72%); (4) The discretionary range is too narrow (68%); (5) The standards are too high (64%); (6) There should be active clerking at RfA (62%); (7) There should be defined standards (57%).

First, there was a 30-day RfC at Wikipedia:2015 administrator election reform/Phase II/RfC. For a period of almost two weeks before the commencement of the RfC, community members had the option of adding relevant proposals to the RfC page, but there seemed to be little interest in this and the founder of the reform project did almost all the drafting. The RfC was as widely advertised as possible.

In the RfC, there were originally proposals about clerking, but it was determined that the topic should have its own RfC and consequently one was started at Wikipedia:2015 administrator election reform/Phase II/Clerking RfC.

The RfC began on November 29, 2015, and was closed by Nihonjoe on December 29, 2015 (around December 17, 2015, the RfC was closed early by another user because of a perception that the community had lost interest, but this closure was eventually reverted after much controversy). Four conclusions were reached: (1) RfAs will be advertised on MediaWiki:Watchlist-details; (2) RfAs will be advertised on Template:Centralized discussion; (3) There should be a limit of two questions per questioner, with relevant followups permitted; (4) The discretionary range should be expanded from the previous de facto discretionary range of 70–75% to 65–75%.

Schedule

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  • Pre-RfC proposal drafting period: November 17, 2015 – December 1, 2015 -- There was evidently no widespread interest in this part of the phase.
  • Primary RfC: November 29, 2015 – December 29, 2015
  • Clerking RfC: December 21, 2015 – January 21, 2016

Notes

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  1. ^ Note that issue (2) is not directly relevant to the RfA process, and thus will be discussed independently from RFA2015.