Wikipedia talk:Requests for adminship is not a majority vote

Guideline vs proposed guideline

I think it's probably more correct to describe this as a guideline. If someone wants to change this to a "proposal", perhaps some justification might be in order. It seems to me that in its current form this is a truism we can all agree on, and we can discuss how to expand it. --Tony Sidaway 23:55, 7 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

as per WP:RULES "A guideline is something that is... authorized by consensus".

I agree with the statement you made. I do not agree with the statement becoming a guideline in the current form. Editors have yet to agree with the statement in this form not to be just true (or false) but to become a guideline. As such this form of the guideline is yet "proposed" --Irpen 23:58, 7 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Could you explain why you think that this statement isn't authorised by consensus? The other stuff seems to be wikilawyering on your part.--Tony Sidaway 00:04, 8 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I ignore the accusation in wikilawyering. Before accusing others in Wikilawyering for a change compare the recent contribution of yourself to that of your opponents to the only non-wikilawyering space there is (that is "main").

In no time, you threw two more accusations as if your recent contempt towards anyone who disagrees with you did not cause enough stir. This above and this absolutely bemusing accusation towards respected users you accused of "trolling" for not agreeing with yourself.

Now, to change the subject, since discussing your attitudes and its overall harm to the community belongs to your talk and when necessary to policy pages, I will explain my edit. I don't see a consensus appearing under the guideline in its current form. While obviously a true statement as confirmed by Carnildo RfA debacle that will be sending waves here for a while, such guideline in this exact form is arrogant. And without elaboration it sends a wrong message to the community. I reserve my judgement for now on why this has become a true statement and what can be done about that.

Let me remind you that you are not authorized to make something a policy singlehandedly. Perhaps Jimbo is. But Tony Sidaway thinking that this is a guideline that would benefit the community does not make this guideline automatically approved by consensus. Perhaps this is a tautological thought, but your strange action made stating this tautology warranted. I will welcome more thoughts on the matter from other editors. --Irpen 00:34, 8 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Third party opinion- I think this already reflects consensus too, but I don't see why we need this as a seperate page from Wikipedia:Requests for adminship either. Friday (talk) 00:16, 8 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I think it might be useful, considering the number of times we get people moaning about percentages and whatnot. --Tony Sidaway 00:28, 8 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I think this above stated in a more consiliatory tone is a better way to talk. To respond, the guideline in the form you propose looks arrogant. And without elaboration it sends a wrong message to the community. We may work out something from this, but that's just my opinion. Obviously there is yet no consensus to stamp a tl:guideline on top of the page with this statement as demostrated above. I agree with the need of this guideline but not in the current form. More opinions welcome. --Irpen 00:36, 8 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Could you explain what you mean by "looks arrogant". It only says that RFA is not a vote.

Does the statement represent the consensual view of the community of not? If it does, it should be a guideline. I maintain that it does. We see as yet no evidence that it doesn't. --Tony Sidaway 00:59, 8 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

There is no consensus that it is good to have the guideline in this blunt and arrogant form. In fact, for now it is only your opinion that the curt and blunt statement of which no one but you spoke favorably yet is ready to be stamped as official. Wait for what others say. That's all. --Irpen 01:07, 8 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

What makes it sounds arrogant to you? One of our official policies says simply "If the rules prevent you from improving or maintaining Wikipedia's quality, ignore them." Does that curt, blunt statement also strike you as arrogant? --Tony Sidaway 06:19, 8 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Imv it's already policy, and everyone (tm) knows it is. Except, apparently, Irpen. The Land 19:19, 8 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Not really in favor of this

I can't say I'm in favor of this page. I'd hope that raw vote totals are an input into the bureaucrat's decision, along with other traditionally used factors such as (especially) strength of the arguments, facts brought out during the discussion, puppetry or lack thereof, relative standing of commentors, and in this case the bureaucrat's good judgement. So I think that as it stands it could be taken to mean that raw vote totals should not be considered at all (else why have this page), which I think would be a mistake. Also, WP:RFA includes material such as " Voting and expressing opinions... Who may vote... Who may not vote... To add a vote/comment...", so either this page ought to be changed or rejected or WP:RFA ought to be changed. Oh and also, putting up a page straight off as a guideline: NO! BAD! NO COOKIE! Herostratus 20:41, 8 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, raw numbers obviously are taken into account. They're not the be-all and end-all, as would be the case if RFA were a vote. Perhaps this guideline should clarify on that point. --Tony Sidaway 20:46, 8 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I agree that raw numbers should not be the last word. To my mind even a small number of well-founded objections should trump any number of I-thought-she-was-one-alreadys. Just so long as the guideline isn't interpreted as saying something else (i.e. retrospectively blessing the Sean Black thing), I have no problem with it. Angus McLellan (Talk) 21:53, 8 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I've added this: "The numbers of people supporting, opposing and neutral on a candidacy are taken into account, but that isn't the be-all and end-all of Requests for adminship." --Tony Sidaway 21:29, 8 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I've applied a light copyedit. It seems like a fair enough statement; but I wonder if one of the special IAR-type "subtle and important meaning" tags might not be more appropriate here than the default guideline/policy/whatnot boilerplate. Kirill Lokshin 21:47, 8 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Personally I'd rather not use such tags where the factuality of the statement is so clear. There's nothing subtle about saying that we don't just expect the bureaucrats to tot up the votes. --Tony Sidaway 21:54, 8 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Meh. The whole "We're not sure what it is, precisely..." bit is a little too airily philosophical, in my opinion—despite (probably) being true. But maybe I'm just reading too much into this. Kirill Lokshin 22:07, 8 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe that bit isn't helpful. Perhaps we could try removing it. --Tony Sidaway 22:37, 8 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

It's not a terribly useful thing to say, in practical terms—and not really the point of this particular page, either—so we may be better off without it. Kirill Lokshin 22:39, 8 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I'm happy without it. I think it originated in my response to people asking, if it wasn't a vote, what was it. In this document we can probably expand a bit more and perhaps try to pin it down. --Tony Sidaway 23:08, 8 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

RfA is a vote, or at least it has always been so far. To attempt to change that is an attempt to manipulate the process to make it meaningless, to convert it into an ink-blot test where one sees whatever one is inclined to see. The end of this slippery slope is the transfer of admin-making power away from the community and to crats and arbs instead. RfA should be given a definition that reflects its reality: it is a consensus-based voting process. Everyking 12:51, 9 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I fully agree. I think we're fooling ourselves when we use the computer-inspired term "!votes" to describe RFA votes. With such a narrow threshold of passing or failing, it cannot seriously be considered anything other than a vote. YechielMan 13:11, 19 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Merge

I still don't see that this serves any useful purpose that a sentence in WP:RFA couldn't serve. Friday (talk) 22:53, 8 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

You could have asked me last week and I'd have agreed. The recent kerfuffle over the Carnildo affair convinced me that many, many editors thought that RFA was a vote. Since it isn't, and the difference opinion seems to have added to the confusion, I think a more prominent statement is merited. To forestall reoccurrences. --Tony Sidaway 23:07, 8 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I think you're assuming that those who objected to how that was handled wanted it to be a vote. I haven't seen much indication of that. In any case, you've still given no reason for a seperate page rather than just a clarification on the existing page. Friday (talk) 23:11, 8 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I agree that this could be merged/redirected with no loss of information. -- nae'blis 23:12, 8 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Okay, you convinced me. Let's try merge-and-redirect. --Tony Sidaway 23:23, 8 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I jumped in and added the wording to Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Front matter, with an explanatory comment on the talk page. --Tony Sidaway 00:17, 9 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Informed consensus, surely?

I was under the impression that all important wikipedia decisions taken outside of WP:OFFICE are infact informed consensus, based on the reasoning behind people's comments not simply the number of comments themselves. I suspect that will give you the term you're looking to introduce. LinaMishima 14:24, 9 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

This is overkill

This proposed policy, created in response to the controversial re-sysopping of Carnildo, is overkill. It's tantemount to the failed Wikipedia:Kick the ass of anyone who renominates GNAA for deletion before 2007 "policy", which is arguable more controversial due to the number of VFD/AFD nominations and extreme polarization. I think Aaron Brenneman said it best: "ad, bad, incalculably bad. Uncivil, unproductive, instruction creep, ignores underlying problem, bad bad bad." [1] This ignores the underlying problem of the RFA in question - the sudden change in deciding what a majority is (someone else pointed out that another RFA had garnered some 72% and failed vs. Carnildo's 60% majority) - and only serves to fan the flames of the controversy. Hbdragon88 18:25, 9 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

It's not overkill- it addresses the serious need for yet another place to argue about the Carnildo situation ;-) Friday (talk) 18:48, 9 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

ROTFL. --Richard 18:57, 9 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, this brings back memories :-) . I think I'm the only person to have ever applied "Kick the ass ..." in a fun episode of wikipedia history. It was as a submarine policy (fairly convincing poll) *after* the page describing it got deleted. (also involved were Ignore all rules, Categories for speedy deletion, a reverted three revert rule, deletion review, Featured Articles, the GNAA being out-trolled by wikipedians, and some measure of Steward intervention). Fun times! Kim Bruning 14:07, 12 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Instruction creep

Tony, Tony, Tony... We already know that RfA isn't a vote, and in fact Wikipedia:Consensus says nothing here is a vote. You of all people should know better than to create extra policy/guideline pages! -- SCZenz 19:41, 9 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

…And that would be why this one-line policy proposal is probably getting merged into the RfA details ;) LinaMishima 21:50, 9 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I do know that it's not a vote. However there is a widespread misconception that RFA is a vote. Please see the debate on Wikipedia talk:Requests for adminship/Front matter. --Tony Sidaway 05:21, 10 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Don't care. Delete two other guidlines and we can consider this one.Geni 22:45, 10 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

That doesn't even begin to make sense. --Tony Sidaway 22:49, 10 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

oh but it does. it keeps the number of guidelines down.Geni 00:52, 11 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, that does make sense (sorry for my brainfart). However if we'd simply had a guideline saying "RFA is not a vote" last week then we wouldn't have had an extremely rancorous debate over the fact that the bureaucrats didn't feel bound by a numerical count. I'm happy with the outcome so far; that we have a de facto consensus for this (and many people are even saying they consider it so obvious that we don't even need to codify it). There probably won't be a repetition of the recent extremely ugly and unnecessary attacks on the bureaucrats. --Tony Sidaway 00:58, 11 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

and next time someone fails who has a reasonable level of support from some group they will try and beat people over the head with that guideline. This is a flawless case of Instruction creep since you are trying to create a guideline to deal with one case.Geni 01:10, 11 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

It could be seen that way, yes. However I see the obvious consternation of some editors at the Carnildo result as symptomatic of a failure of understanding. It appears to me that those editors who objected believed that RFA was a vote. So it doesn't seem unreasonable to make more plain the fact that it isn't. --Tony Sidaway 15:12, 12 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The sad fact is that we have a number of things that are a vote. RfA is usually a vote, except in specific circumstances, and DRV is a vote. This is one of the few things I think I can stand with Tony on - if we need yet another guideline to make it explicitly clear that RfA is not meant to be a vote, then so be it. --badlydrawnjeff talk 12:22, 11 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

RFA is not a vote, nor is DRV. If either *ARE* votes, then they need to be torn down immediately. I've had to deal with voting on wikis before, and it's never pretty. I should check out Deletion review some more. Kim Bruning 14:10, 12 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

DRV is a vote, is meant to be a vote, and is treated solely by majority rule, ignoring any cognizent arguments about the process in favor of what gets more support. I'm happy to try and help you tear down DRV (and RFA, for that matter), but we're a minority. --badlydrawnjeff talk 14:56, 12 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Badlydrawnjeff is correct on this matter, I think. Sadly Deletion review is a vote, an anomalous situation that it inherited from its predecessor, "Votes for undeletion". --Tony Sidaway 15:09, 12 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Well, it wasn't before. I recall being a new upstart IP and convincing one of the admins (angela at the time :-) ) to undelete a particular article. Hmm! Well, that does explain some of the anomalies I've noticed in wikipedia guidelines. I guess we just need some sane admins (and sane ordinary users these days... did I mention RFA is not promoting the right people?) .. well... sane people to drop by and just...like...be sane, do the right thing and give the right example? Kim Bruning 15:28, 12 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Sanity is against the rules. Process is important, dont-you-know. --Tony Sidaway 15:35, 12 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Of course sanity is against the rules at times. Duh. That's why we have Ignore all rules, which effectively states that when sanity and the rules are at odds, sanity should win. Kim Bruning 16:16, 12 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Consensus

I've added a link to Wikipedia:Consensus. Unfortunately, the consensus guideline has not been well maintained for a long time, and really has no description of how a consensus based poll works or should work.

You can't count on it to say what needs to be said, so please head on over there and work on that page too. Remember: Descriptive, not prescriptive! (Do describe what works though ;-). There's no point in describing pathological methods, except *as* pathological methods, even if many people apply them. ) Kim Bruning 16:16, 12 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

It works 2 ways

Tony said above: Yes, raw numbers obviously are taken into account. They're not the be-all and end-all, as would be the case if RFA were a vote. Perhaps this guideline should clarify on that point. But that works 2 ways! Plus how is this going ot stop people simply voting per xxxx - it isnt! This is actually a policy for the closing crat - that they should consider the status of the votes rather than the number. Instead actually helpful advice over how to vote constructively on a RFA would be useful, rather than this constant infighting over what we call the process. Be it a vote or be it not a vote lets at least get good constructive comments c9oming in first.

As to the closing crats - how many go through each vote and consider the users standing and the relevance of their comments. I would hazard the guess that most simply consider the major issues raised and wether there has been large oposition based on that and then just count the votes. Essjay says that 70-80% is the recommended guidline for promotion - is that not a vote????? That is what needs 'changing' if anything.... --Errant Tmorton166^(Talk)(Review me) 21:58, 13 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with Errant above that this really only applies to the closing b-crat. As I would hope that our b-crats already understand the difference between consensus and a straight vote, then this probably isn't really needed... --T-rex 21:39, 16 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]