 | This discussion on the Request for Adminship process is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion. |
This request for comment is part of a community review of the process for requesting administrator permissions. The goal of this discussion was to evaluate the community perception of current problems. Editors proposed statements about the Request for Adminship (RfA) process, which the community debated in separate sections, focusing on problems rather than solutions. The purpose of this close is to articulate the community’s consensus on RfA’s problems so that the next phase can consider what proposals will best address these identified issues.
As a high-level summary, we divided the proposals into four broad categories: clear consensus, rough consensus, no consensus, and clear opposition. Items in the first two groups (E, F, G, I, J, O, P, and U) will pass on to Phase 2 for consideration of the problems, and crafting potential solutions for them.
- Clear consensus
- E: Corrosive RfA atmosphere
- F: Level of scrutiny
- I: Standards needed to pass keep rising
- J: Too few candidates
- O: “No need for the tools” is a poor reason to oppose
- Rough consensus
- G: Lifetime tenure (high stakes atmosphere)
- P: Admin permissions and unbundling
- U: RfA should not be the only road to adminship
- No consensus
- K: Too many questions
- M: The RfA process is biased against long-term editors*
- N: The lack of agreed upon RfA criteria is a major part of the problem
- R: Time commitment for RfA
- T: Expecting the unexpected*
*: These proposals have a numerical rough consensus but have very low participation relative to other issues presented.
- Clear opposition
- A: There is no issue
- B: Not enough like a discussion
- C: Too much discussion
- D: Administrator is undesirable position
- H: RfA reflects a declining editor base
- L: Who participates
- Q: Splitting the admin role
- S: Too few trusted and experienced nominators
There is a clear consensus that the atmosphere of RfA is a significant problem (section E). While community oversight of the administrator role is important, editors believe the level of scrutiny is inappropriately high (section F) and that the standards of the community have risen without a clear justification (section I) and with sometimes poor rationales (section O). The combination of these and other problems discourage qualified editors from requesting adminship (section J).
Participants came to a rough consensus on a number of points, and future proposals to address them have a good chance of success as long as opposition concerns are accommodated. Editors largely agree that alternate routes to administrator should be explored (section U) but there are substantial concerns about the development of a two-tiered adminship system or creating a hierarchy within the administrator corps. There is sufficient consensus to explore unbundling (section P) but editors are suspicious of separating the core delete-block-protect tools, and many editors are suspicious that there are any tools left that are worth unbundling. There is a rough consensus that the indefinite tenure of administrators contributes to the corrosive atmosphere and high scrutiny at RfA (section G, cf. sections E and F) but the recent failure of a proposal to impose administrator term limits suggests that proposals to address this point will face wider opposition than seen here.
There is no consensus that the time commitment for RfA is a problem (Section R) but editors generally agree that expectations about candidate availability are too high. Limits on the number of questions are unlikely to succeed as there is no consensus that the number of questions asked is a substantial problem (section K). There is no consensus that the lack of clear criteria is a problem (section N) but there is a rough consensus reaffirming the tacit criteria of civility and reasonableness (see section O, cf. 2015 RfA clerking RfC and bureaucrat discussions). There is some agreement that editors with long tenure are at a disadvantage in RfA (section M), but there is no consensus that this is a problem given the opposition and limited participation. Editors were split on whether the unpredictable nature of RfA was a problem (section T), but participation on that statement was limited (cf. results of N).
Editors reject the ideas that adminship is undesirable (section D), that the problem stems from a declining editor base (section H), or that there are too few nominators (section S). There is a consensus against the claim that RfA participants are ill suited to the task (section L) though these discussions saw relatively limited participation. The current balance of discussion-like process (section B) to vote-like process (section C) seems to be an appropriate compromise as proposals on the issue saw similar levels of opposition.
There is a consensus against the idea that there are no problems to be resolved (section A). In evaluating consensus for future, substantive proposals, editors should consider the strong consensus that problems exist and need to be resolved.
Summaries of each section are provided in the following section. Thank you to all who participated!
Signed,