Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2007-06-18/RfA withdrawn

NB: This article did not meet the deadline last week, and so is being published this week.

In an issue two weeks ago, the Signpost covered Gracenotes' RfA and the heavy discussion that ensued for over a week afterward (see archived story). Upon closure of the RfA, which ended with 73% support, it was left to the discretion of the bureaucrats to make a decision. Although a re-run may have been imminent, no consensus was reached by the bureaucrats by the time Gracenotes withdrew his RfA.

In the bureaucrat chat page, there were comments raised from 5 bureaucrats:

• Cecropia (talk · contribs · rights · renames)
• Warofdreams (talk · contribs · rights · renames)
• Redux (talk · contribs · rights · renames)
• Nichalp (talk · contribs · rights · renames)
• Secretlondon (talk · contribs · rights · renames)

Not all of the bureaucrats participated because they may have recused, or have not been available at the time.

The opening statement of the bureaucrat chat by Cecropia stated that determining consensus of the RfA was the primary objective. A later comment by Redux basically summarized the positions of users in the RfA:

Having read all the comments there, I've observed that, on the opposition side, the concern over the candidate's views regarding attack sites is drawing nearly 100% of the opposition. On the support side, there's also been a considerable number of people who have supported commenting specifically that they either agree with the candidate's position or that they would support regardless of his position.^[1]

Nichalp came to the conclusion that Gracenotes should be promoted. Cecropia also commented, "Stalking, which is a special kind of harassment (which in itself can be civilly or criminally actionable) is the pivot around which this RfA has been spinning.^[2]

Given all of the comments by the bureaucrats and the uniqueness of the RfA, Cecropia came to his own conclusion that "...with a calmer start, there is no reason the community can't actually seek and obtain consensus among themselves, rather than have bureaucrats tell them what it should be.^[3] Secretlondon agreed. Because there was no clear consensus established, the conclusion by the bureaucrats was to relist the RfA.

The final statement was by Warofdreams, who has said that the bureaucrat discussion had halted after a lack of discussion for nearly two days. After Gracenotes stated on his talk page that he wished to withdraw his nomination and run at a later time, Cecropia finally closed the RfA.