Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:Requests for adminship (3nd nomination)

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the miscellaneous page below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the page's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result of the discussion was Speedy keep. Processes are not decided by MFDs. NeilN ^{talk to me} 02:05, 1 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Requests for adminship

I am aware that in nominating this page I am opening myself up to serious, widespread, and probably very spiteful criticism. After months of observation, and several unpleasant experiences, I have come to the unfortunate conclusion that our current RFA process is broken. The only solution left for us stalwart participants in the Wikipedia experience is to delete the page or mark it as historical. I apologize in advance, but in an effort to preempt as many opposers as possible and to convince the community as a whole that this has become a necessity, this is going to get a little long.

Wikipedia:Requests for adminship was formed in June of 2003, and at the time the page was created it had none of the bells and whistles it currently sports. Administrative hopefuls at that time were not compelled to answer any questions, and frequently passed their RFAs with less than 10 people voting. In July of 2004 the questions made their initial appearance, but they were optional, to help feel out a candidate. In 2005, editors began to make more elaborate nomination statements, and by 2006 the format we use today had been introduced. At our peak in 2007, the setup was tweaked only slightly, with the generic question becoming a series of recommended questions. I believe that this is where we first started to screw up. Around 2006-7 we suddenly started asking more questions about highly specific administrative areas. Not that this is necessarily a bad thing, but the combination of increasingly specialized questions and the existing process seemed to cause a crash in the process. After 2007, successful nominations fell by as much as of 40% per year.

It is no coincidence that it was around 2007 that the earliest proposals to reform the RFA process were made, as seen in The Signpost and at Wikipedia talk:Requests for adminship/Reform. These proposals failed to garner much support, but demonstrated that there was still some spark in the idea of experimenting, since the current RFA process no longer appeared to work. As is evidenced by a 2007 Wikipedia:Adminship survey, elements of the RFA process were identified as broken by the community, elements which still have not been fixed in any significant way. The failure to address the concerns manifested itself most startlingly in 2010 and 2011, when an "admin drought" began to grip the site (2010 coverage;2011 coverage). According to the log, the recommended questions at RFA had become mandatory while the number of editors who passed RFA had fallen below 100 per year for the first time. The same suggestions were again put forward, and either failed to gain consensus or were outright shot down. A broken process, safeguarded by our apathy, continued to run. By 2013 a renewed effort was made to reform the process to end the drought, but as with its predecessors, the attempt failed. Now in 2015 the absolute failure of the RFA process has finally reached critical mass – on the Administrator's Noticeboard, reports surfaced of vital admin-related sections of Wikipedia having backlogs going all the way back to April, and there is an now an ongoing RFC to mandate minimum admin activity levels for the existing administrators. We are sitting on a Chernobyl-level event here, and the failure to address these long-identified problems has left us teetering on the brittle edge administrative overload and collapse.

Then there is the overall atmosphere at RFA. In 2003, the atmosphere was very warming and welcoming. By the time I obtained the tools in 2008, it had become a little more rigid due to the additional questions, but the material discussed limited to admin-related activity. The RFA process still permitted users to publicly broadcast their RFA by adding templates to their user pages and through generic announcements on project pages. Today, that process is long forgotten. Just going through an RFA feels like walking down death row, or being interrogated for a capital offense. I've watched editors cower before admins on this site as though we were gods of some sort. I've seen more harassment and bad faith on RFA pages than I have anywhere else on Wikipedia, and it's due in part to the fact that editors have taken to making personalized attacks of RFA candidates by commenting on the candidates instead of their edits – or in some cases dwelling far too much on a very specific set of edits to the exclusion of all else. The bar has been raised so high that aspiring admins cannot even tell how high they have to jump to get clear of peoples' varied and at times outrageous RFA standards. It seems to me that the regular contributors at RFA have also become bullies without realizing it, and the people who participate seem to have all but forgotten how to assume good faith. I've seen people who would be outstanding admins refuse to have anything to do with the process because it’s too radioactive, and I've watched veteran editors who have tried their hand at RFA fail for reasons not even remotely related to their qualifications to be an admin. Let’s be brutally honest for a moment here: who cares if veteran editors edit talk pages, or have red links in user spaces, or for that matter if they are not 100% familiar with the processes; these are the people who built the encyclopedia, and they are in some cases terrified to participate in a process that was designed to help them better the encyclopedia because that process has long since passed the point of no return.

Like Esperanza before it, this is a process that was meant to serve the community – the editors, the observers, the anons, etc. The fact that it does not do this reflects the failure of the community as a whole to agree on a course of action. Having failed time and time again to reform the process, and having finally reached a point where the failure of the process is now affecting the community – all of us, editors, observers, and everyone in between – the time has come for every anon, editor, contributor, admin, and bureaucrat to place our keyboards upon the pages and templates, and upon the guidelines and the processes, and we've got to make it stop. And we have to indicate to the community – the editors, the contributors, the admins, and the bureaucrats – that unless a new process is developed by community consensus that fixes the faults of this failed process, there will be no further administrators here on the English Wikipedia. While I know not what this new process should (and hopefully will) look like, I for one know that it will not be the existing RFA page, and I hope that others reading this will agree with that sentiment. TomStar81 (Talk) 01:00, 1 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Speedy Close, there's no doubt that RFA is broken, but this is not the proper venue for this discussion to take place. Nakon 01:08, 1 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
- This is in fact the only venue for this discussion to take place, otherwise nothing will ever change, or did you bother to read anything above before posting here. All the same, I never expected The Elitist Defenders of the Most Excellent Order of the Existing Broken Process to allow this to survive much past an hour. I gambled on WP:IAR and WP:BOLD, both of which have long since been disregarded on Wikipedia in favor of Wiki-Feudalism, so do what you feel you must to do to undermine reform. I've said my (already forgotten) piece on the matter. TomStar81 (Talk) 01:24, 1 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  - I'm not sure why you're assuming that I'm trying to "undermine reform". There are plenty of other venues that get higher traffic than MFD that would be more appropriate for this discussion to take place. I'm just now closing some old MFDs that have been sitting around for over two months. Nakon 01:34, 1 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
    - @Nakon: My tower is getting iffy again (although I think it may just be the anti-virus program which is running) so I'll make this brief: I am sorry for my attitude, I just got back from a family funeral at the other end of the country, and we were...not exactly welcome at the funeral (lets leave it at that). I'm still somewhat jet lagged, and I'm trying to do too many things at once, so I'm going to jettison a few things and with your help focus on this one. <deep breathe and exhale> Where can I take this to get it deleted? If you are closing MFD's then you've obviously got a good idea about where this would get more publicity, and that is in fact exactly what we need (what I need, I have no idea where you stand on this). If you were me, what would you recommend? I'd prefer a deletion venue because as we have all seen an RFC or similar process does nothing to help, all the same if that is what you recommend I will take your advice under advisement. TomStar81 (Talk) 01:53, 1 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Comment It's interesting to read your historic analysis, TomStar81, while I am going through the excruciating process right now. I obviously am involved to a great degree. I mainly came and read your nomination and to let you know that the MfD tag had been removed from the RfA page so you probably won't get a lot of traffic here to discuss your proposal. Be well, Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 01:56, 1 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the page's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.