User:Useight/RFA Subjects/Editcountitis

Immortal Words (Archive 21)

One of the most amusing (and perhaps insightful) comments I have seen on Wikipedia on the issue of edits-as-voting-qualification was made by Ezhiki during his adminship voting:

I could stop using "Show preview" button for a while :)

func(talk) 13:51, 6 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I agree. Some people IMO put far too much stock in edit counts. I've noticed something over time about this page. When the page was new people were made admins with but a handful of votes.(I think I had about 6) This was partially due to the fact that wikipedia was smaller then but also IMO partially to do with the fact that the only people who voted were those who actually knew the candidate concerned. When only actual friends and foes vote, then edit counts tend to be irrelavent, because people can actually discuss how trustworthy the candidate is based on the behaviour they have seen. Theresa Knott (Nate the Stork) 16:01, 6 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Editcount-itis (Archive 28)

So when did editcountitis take over WP:RFA? -Fennec (はさばくのきつね) 03:39, 29 August 2005 (UTC)

Over a year ago, now. Andre (talk) 03:40, August 29, 2005 (UTC)

Incidentally, I consider it amazing to have gone through RFA without anyone either stating my edit count or linking to Kate's tool. I though that was impossible at this point. Dragons flight 03:47, August 29, 2005 (UTC)

Every once in awhile I will see one w/o it, which I think is good in some ways. I am not interested in how many edits, but am interested how much someone has contributed. ∞Who?¿? 03:52, 29 August 2005 (UTC)

While I don't think edit counts matter all that much, I feel that at the very least there should be enough so that users such as myself can gauge the quality of their edits as well as be able to recognize the user as being responsible. K1Bond007 06:03, August 29, 2005 (UTC)

Editcountitis standard used in RfA process. (Archive 30)

(Contradicts: Gut Feeling)

"Editcountitis is particularly bad. There was a case recently where someone had been around for two years, made lots of good (and lengthy) contributions, never caused any trouble, had helped people out, but was blindly rejected because he had only made 1,000 edits or so...In short, adminship should still be no big deal. We should work at loosing the RfAd culture up. Pcb21| Pete 09:02, 16 September 2005 (UTC)" (From Jimbo's talk page) [1] I have no reason to disbelieve Pete, here.

More Data:

• User:GordonWatts, (apparently prematurely failed) RfA candidate [2]
  • Total edits 2801
  • Distinct pages edited 238
  • Edits/page (avg) 11.77
  • First edit 2005-05-02 16:20:23 Kate's Tool for GordonWatts
• User:Phroziac, successful RfA candidate [3]
  • Total edits 1605
  • Distinct pages edited 965
  • Edits/page (avg) 1.66
  • First edit 2005-06-02 01:29:59 Kate's Tool for Phroziac
• User:Robchurch, "failed" RfA candidate, but it was close, and many (like Pete, quoted above) say that someone of his caliber would make a good Admin: (33/9/4) his vote his failed nomination
  • Total edits 2183
  • Distinct pages edited 1211
  • Edits/page (avg) 1.80
  • First edit 2005-07-01 22:43:42 Kate's Tool for Robchurch

Conclusion: I've only listed three (3) candidates, to keep things simple, because each one is representative of a larger sub-group. GordonWatts was criticised harshly for his rebuttals in his failed RfA, but his initial problems centered around his "stats," so we look to the other two groups for clarity. Robchurch was in the same boat as user that Pete described in the quote off of Jimbo's page: A good editor who failed but did not complain about it. GordonWatts also had other complaints about the way that he handled his recent FA-nomination, but those critiques are minor and shall be discussed in the "Double Standard" section here. (Criticisms of Watts' constant rebuttal to each and every answer also were a factor in his failed RfA, but they did not come initially, because the RfA's voters could not have anticipated this in advance, and thus could not vote on this.) Now, assuming all of the foregoing was correct, we can conclude one thing: All three of these candidates, Robchurch, Watts, and the anonymous editor described by Pete, were experienced at the outset, but "did not have the numbers," either in total edit count or "diversity." This does go against the "no big deal" policy for every editor in good standing, but moreover, it goes against gut feeling: What used to be an open club has become a closed clique of insiders, who arbitrarily raise the bar, when arbitrarily denied users would probably be good admins: Although the writer of this analysis has his personal differences with User:Phroziac, successful RfA candidate [4] described above, he feels that Phroziac's promotion was deserved: Phroziac is qualified to be an Admin according to current Policy, and this is proof that the "editcountitis" method is just plain wrong.--GordonWatts 16:55, 18 September 2005 (UTC)

• Special note on differences: In looking at the above, it is apparent that GordonWatts started editing exactly one month before Phroziac and has almost twice as many edits. Phroziac, on the other hand, has edited 1211 "Distinct pages," many more than GordonWatts, which is more "diversity," by far. However, GordonWatts has edited 238 "distinct pages," and with the many months and many edits of experience, 238 is not a small number. It surprised Mr. Watts when he saw that number, and since he was criticized for being too focused on the Terri Schiavo articles, it is apparent that these would only comprise at most 10-15 pages; the other 223 or so pages (238-15=223) would be "non-Schiavo-related" and thus still very diverse (even if not as "diverse" as others like Phroziac). Before Watts began objecting (protesting the RfA process as applied to his RfA), his "edit numbers" were the main criticism, which also caused Robchurch to fail, but the "numbers" that Watts and Church have are still very strong, and neither one was a "newbie" when they were failed. This is additional evidence of "gut feeling" speaking.--GordonWatts 17:25, 18 September 2005 (UTC)

Why are you talking about yourself in the third person? Aquillion 21:29, 19 September 2005 (UTC)

"Why are you talking about yourself in the third person?" Well, Aquillion, it is because I am not defending myself in this post (where I'd use first person), but, instead, defending a standard. (I am writing an article, and good writers, of which I hope I am one, speak objective third person, not "subjective' first person, to avoid being myopic or giving the impression of bias.--GordonWatts 12:01, 20 September 2005 (UTC)

Kate's tool... (Archive 31)

...isn't working for me and I notice a comment on the page about it's removal. Is it gone? Marskell 00:02, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

It's working for me as of 01:49, 29 September 2005 (UTC). A few days ago it wasn't working with a notice saying something like, "To remind you what Wikipedia is about, Kate's tool is down for now. Why don't you spend some time contemplating what Wikipedia is really about? I'm sure it'll be back up tomorrow." Is that similar to what you're getting? --Blackcap | talk 01:49, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

The newer version is down, but this one still works. Cheers! -- BD2412 ^talk 03:07, 29 September 2005 (UTC) (warning, this user is infected with editcountitis, engage with extreme caution)

Editcountitis (Archive 31)

Considering the fact that so many voters are suffering from a serious case of editcountitis, should we not indicate on the top of the page that 3000 edits is an expected minimum for admin candidates? If an good user and admin candidate is voted down because s/he only has about 2000 edits, such a warning could spare the candidate a lot of suffering. I would hate to see great candidates leave because they have been voted down by people afflicted by editcountitis.--Wiglaf 07:19, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

I would rather not. 3000 edits seems far too high for me. I was nominated for adminship right when I passed 1000 edits, and no one commented on my "low" edit count; of course, that was six months ago, and RfA voters seem to have become more picky since then. — Knowledge Seeker দ 07:25, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

No I don't think it is too high based on observing votes. Many voters base their votes NOT on the qualifications of the candidate but on whether the candidate has an even edit pattern during many months, and enough edits. Some will even vote against, if the edit pattern indicates a little enthusiasm for the priviledge of becoming an admin. I do think we should consider the fact that candidates are people with feelings and try to spare them rejection for having too few edits during a certain period of time.--Wiglaf 07:29, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

This would only give editors the incentive of making bad faith edits to blowup their edit count. I have seen a lot of very good editors with less than 3000 edits, that I would trust as an admin. There are several other things to consider, style, copyedit abilities, personality, policy understanding, being bold, and many others I consider over edit count. When I even look at edit count, I look at where the edits have been and for what. If you look at some of the current RfA's you will see that there are these same questions. ∞Who?¿? 07:32, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

Yes, but based on past observations, I fail to see that such qualities really count. Edit counts and edit patterns appear to be more important to certain voters.--Wiglaf 07:34, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

I recognize and understand your point of view. It is just sad that this is the case with some users. I think its better to stay away from more restrictive and discriminating rules; ie m:instruction creep. ∞Who?¿? 07:47, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

I'm assuming this is a semi-complaint about the oppose votes on Wikipedia:Requests_for_adminship#Shauri. I still insist my oppose has nothing to do with editcountitis and encourage people to read my reasoning in the comments section Ryan Norton ^{T | @ | C} 07:45, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

This is not based on your vote, but it is based on the contrast between the support votes and the oppose votes. The support votes claim that this is a good candidate, whereas most oppose votes pay more attention to edit patterns and edit counts. The nomination page says at least 1000 edits and three months, and I think this is misleading.--Wiglaf 07:51, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

It can be sometimes - but not for that candidate. According to edit history the candidate has only really been here around two months - and the two months have an unusually large amount of time seperation between them. For example, I've only technically been a little over two months, but I did one edit back in march - does that somehow mean I've been actively editing for three months? Ryan Norton ^{T | @ | C} 07:57, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

OK, but I had no clue about that technicality when I nominated her and I would never have put her through this if I had had a clue. If you think this is important enough for rejecting the candidate I think we should state clearly that edit patterns over several months is a criteria.--Wiglaf 08:00, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

No, a fixed number does not determine the true worth of a candidate. Its possible to rig up your stats by fixing minor errors, repeating a procedure repeatedly, or even surreptitiously using a bot. What about those users who actually compose a full article offline and paste it here? No fixed counts please, please also go through the archives. 1000 seems to be a rough indicator that the person knows more or less about the wiki process. =Nichalp «Talk»= 08:08, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

Alright, what about an editcountitis and edit pattern caution?--Wiglaf 08:10, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

You may read this: Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Standards =Nichalp «Talk»= 08:26, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

Thanks! Unfortunately, I see that they have forgotten to mention that wikibreaks during the last six months may disqualify an otherwise deserving candidate.--Wiglaf 10:06, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

I find that Editcountitis is a contentious issue. Thus, a moderate page may be created with just one edit, whereas a sentence may result into several edits. Naturally, there must be several other factors which the community may be taking into account while deciding such matters. --Bhadani 11:12, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

it should be noteded that someone "fixing minor errors and repeating a procedure repeatedly" would logicaly be a better janitor than someone who writes big articles. In my role as an admin I've just made over 100 changes to wikipedia that involve nothing more than "repeating a procedure repeatedly" and they won't even show up in my edit count.Geni 12:06, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

Look, you're only inviting unwanted debate on which department in WP is more valued. Lets nix the debate right now. =Nichalp «Talk»= 12:29, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

what on earth does what makes a good admin have to do with which department in WP is more valued? Adminship does not exist to reward good editing.Geni 14:02, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

Well, you claimed that those who fixes minor errors logically make better janitors. Well, by using the term janitor, I assumed you meant admin, since both the terms are more or less linked here in WP. Anways, if you do mean that janitor=admin, I'd politely disagree. =Nichalp «Talk»= 17:34, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

I don't think having a specific number of edits is any kind of reasonable measure. For what it's worth, in a study of 126 admin nominations over the past few months, I've observed that 2,000 seems to be the point at which nominees gain acceptance. Please see [User:Durin/Admin_nominee_charts#.22Isn.27t_2000_edits_pretty_arbitrary.3F_Why_not_3000.3F.22]. But, as noted by several others here, edit counting is a horrible way to evaluate a nominee. An "edit" is too vague of a definition of a contribution to Wikipedia. Use of it as a measure equates all edits as equal, when in reality the value of a given edit is highly subjective and impossible to measure in any objective way.

The root issue seems less to be about the number of edits than about the ways in which WP:RFA voters make determinations about the acceptability of a nominee. I don't think we should be in the business of warning people off from being nominated or nominating themselves. Instead, I think we should be proactively looking for ways in which to encourage people to not focus on edit counts, but instead focus on subjective measures. Please see my User:Durin/Admin_voting_measures, which bend strongly towards subjective measures.

I do think there is probably room for developing a page notionally titled "What makes a successful admin nominee". I think Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Standards focuses far too much on number of edits and time on Wikipedia. For the article I'm suggesting, substantial research will need to be done to establish patterns of behavior common to successful admins and admin nominees and similarly for unsuccessful admins and nominees. Even before that, some moderately strong definition of what "successful" and "unsuccessful" within this context means would need to be determined. The concept for this page is still nebulous; I've not begun any work on it, just some thought experiments.--Durin 13:51, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

It's pretty clearly spelled out that voters may use their own criteria. For some, edit counts are important. For others, they are not. For some, edits in the Wikipedia namespace are important. For others, they are irrelevant. I don't see how we can spell it out any clearer. If your observations indicate that 3000 edits are required to pass, you clearly haven't observed very much. Jdavidb 13:57, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

Perhaps not, but we really should warn about editcountitis and 3000 was my suggestion.--Wiglaf 15:29, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

FWIW, if an nominee with 1500 edits - half your suggested number - and otherwise an excellent candidate, was voted on by the 60 Wikipedians who currently list their standards at Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Standards, they'd pass 49/11. They'd still pass with 1000 edits. If they had 2000 edits, they'd romp in 59/1. Grutness...wha? 07:52, 1 October 2005 (UTC)

Since when is it 3000 edits? My RfA passed July 22 and I had 49 support votes and when I was first nominated I had 2000 edits (I think at the end of the week I had like 2600). But who decided 3000?? Redwolf24 (talk) 07:55, 1 October 2005 (UTC)

3000 does seem to be the number now for some reason. I just saw one person oppose because there wasn't 10,000. The standards seem to be jumping, except for "popular" people (which I still assert popularity alone is really bad to evaluate a candidate by, even though it is tough to buck the norm, as it were). Ryan Norton ^{T | @ | C} 08:00, 1 October 2005 (UTC)

Back in the good old days, 2004, there was no such thing as Kate's Tool, and as a result, this editcountitus disease didn't exist. People were nominated for their work, judgement and experience. =Nichalp «Talk»= 08:06, 1 October 2005 (UTC)

My question is, hasn't anyone got the idea, from the number of responses and arguments contrary, that to the majority of us edit counts aren't as important as what they've edited, how they have acted, etc.. Administration, when it boils down to it, has nothing to do with editing articles, its about ADMINISTRATION, you dont' need a mop to make pretty articles. ∞Who?¿? 08:49, 1 October 2005 (UTC)

WHOA - that is not good! Lest someone forget that at the end of the day there's an encyclopedia to build - someone's gotta actually wikify an article rather than just tagging it. Not only that, but an ideal administrator is not an administrator - rather an ideal administrator is a good editor with administration tools. I.E. the user would ideally spend most of the time thinking about/editing the articles he likes, then take care of a little bit of vandal-hunting linkspam etc., then have time at time at the end of the day to give a peer review. Ryan Norton ^{T | @ | C} 09:06, 1 October 2005 (UTC)

Dont' get me wrong, the main reason I have so much enjoyment from working on Wikipedia, is the fact that it is an encyclopedia. I feel that every users contribution helps a great deal of people in many ways. But lets look at it from another perspective for just a moment, the bad paper version first. If you were publishing a paper encylopedia, well for that matter any media format, you would normally have writers, researchers, copy editors, editors, etc. Would you also not have systems engineers and programmers and technicians that work on all of the equipment, are they not as important to the produciton of said project? Yes, that is to the extreme technical side of things, but it boils down to each user has certain talents, some users write very good articles, and have a very high edit count. Maybe they just add a great deal of one time entries for further improvement, but don't contribute in any other fashion. Would this person necessarily be familiar with or comfortable with dealing with other users, categorization, vandalism? Does this make them less or more important to Wikipedia? Now take the opposite of that, you have another user that has a "low" edit count, but enjoys dealing with other users (welcoming, VIP, VfD, ANI), does RCP , maybe categorization and templates, but is not very good at writing articles. Does this make this person less or better on Wiki? The answer to both is no, there is no better, all users are equal, except maybe to those who think editcounts count as more. As stated, we are here to build an encylopedia. However, the latter user case maybe better suited as an administrator, even though they don't really add to the content of the encyclopedic portion. That's mainly what I meant, I didn't mean to imply that the encylopedia was not important, its the reason we're all here. IMHO. ∞Who?¿? 07:44, 2 October 2005 (UTC)

Extreme editcountitits! (Archive 32)

Look at Wikipedia:Requests_for_adminship#RoySmith. Is the standard for admins now 2000 edits? How do we reconcile that with the apparent cosensus here: Wikipedia_talk:Requests_for_adminship/Archive_29#Do_we_need_more_admins.3F — Preceding unsigned comment added by Borisblue (talk • contribs) <insert date here>

There's no consensus, nor should there be. Its a highly personal thing, varying person to person. If there was a consensus on how to vote then every RfA would be either 20/0/0 or 0/20/0 ;-) If you're wondering for when you should run, try about 2000. Redwolf24 (talk) 01:28, 6 October 2005 (UTC)

Exactly. Personally, I got in after a month and with maybe 200 edits max. Course that's unlikely to happen today, but I'm just bringing it up as an example .— Ilγαηερ (Tαlκ) 01:33, 6 October 2005 (UTC)

IIRC you were the fourth person ever mentioned at RfA. Redwolf24 (talk) 01:35, 6 October 2005 (UTC)

Yes, but my request was still made on the mailing list. — Ilγαηερ (Tαlκ) 22:55, 6 October 2005 (UTC)

I just wanted to third, fourth, fifth, sixth and seventh the comment that there is emphatically no consensus on any part of the reasons for supporting/opposing candidates, but particularly not on edit count (non-)requirements. -Splash^talk 01:37, 6 October 2005 (UTC)

I eighth that comment. Just look at NicholasTurnbull's RFA. He doesn't even have 1000 edits, yet he is clearly going to get promoted. Titoxd^(?!?) 01:57, 6 October 2005 (UTC)

A backup for Kate's Tool? (Archive 36)

Would it be possible for someone to make a backup for Kate's Tool? It is down now, and has gone down for days at a time before. 'Ere any editcountitis contentions arise, by the way, I actually use it primarily to scope possible vandals/sockpuppets, and to update the list of non-admins with high edit counts - and, of course, to obsessively track my progress towards personal editing goals in various namespaces! ;-D  BD2412 ^talk 04:46, 30 October 2005 (UTC)

Keep it down, I'm tired of seeing qualified candidates get piled on opposition for no reason. It's not an error that it's down, it's Kate being 1337 ;-D and as for sockpuppet checks, Special:Contributions/Foo, is there a link to "next 50"? Redwolf24 (talk) 04:56, 30 October 2005 (UTC)

Hey, he's not the only one who uses it for those purposes! Especially the "various namespace" one, that's my main use for Kate's Tool. Titoxd^(?!?) 04:59, 30 October 2005 (UTC)

Kate's counter is important to check the mix of contributions someone has made when they're standing for adminship. It's not so much the overall numbers, as the percentages to main, talk, user talk, project. There's no way we can work that out manually. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 05:03, 30 October 2005 (UTC)

I will concede, actually, that it is possible to sort contributions by namespace - but it's a fairly arduous task.  BD2412 ^talk 05:12, 30 October 2005 (UTC)

I wish people wouldn't nominate people for adminship on the basis of high edit counts. That's really quite irresponsible, in my view. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 05:04, 30 October 2005 (UTC)

Of course not. Just like one should not nominate solely on the basis of contributions, ideology, gender, seniority, age, or any other of the myriads of factors that we (should) consider in an RFA. Edit counts are only a piece of the puzzle- but they are a piece. --Maru (talk) Contribs 05:14, 30 October 2005 (UTC)

I was referring to the list that someone set up of editors with high edit counts who aren't admins. I think it's irresponsible to nominate people from that list, unless you know them well i.e. unless you'd have nominated them anyway. Many of them have their high edit count precisely because they never bother to discuss their edits on talk pages and just go charging ahead; others have them because they make mostly minor changes; others again because they never use preview. I think looking at the balance of edits is important, but not the totals. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 05:52, 30 October 2005 (UTC)

Yes, I agree. --Bhadani 10:12, 30 October 2005 (UTC)

But, at the moment, we can not even look at the balance of edits! What if Kate were to leave and take her tool with her? (not saying that would happen, but I've seen solid participants burn out and disappear many times). As I noted above, it has uses beyond evaluating potential admins. I'm not up on the programming end of things, but surely someone can replicate what Kate has done...  BD2412 ^talk 13:44, 30 October 2005 (UTC)

I don't understand why people act as if Kate's tool were the only way of looking at a person's editing history. Go to User:BD2412 and notice the "User contributions" link on that page (at the bottom in the skin that I use). Click on it. You can view the editor's entire editing history from there. 500 edits per page is too little? Edit the URL parameter to say "limit=5000". Want to see the earliest edits? Click on the "Earliest" link. Want to look at only article edits? Select "(Main)" in the namespace dropdown. It's far more versatile than the widget known as "Kate's tool". --Tony Sidaway^Talk 14:41, 30 October 2005 (UTC)

Tony, it's a matter of convenience as opposed to toil - really, can you look at my contributions and in just a few seconds tell me just how many edits I have in each namespace?  BD2412 ^talk 14:56, 30 October 2005 (UTC)

So we can spend more time contributing. --Celestianpower ^háblame 15:00, 30 October 2005 (UTC)

Muy caliente!  BD2412 ^talk 15:02, 30 October 2005 (UTC)

There's nothing wrong with having multiple tools, each with its own benefits and drawbacks. I also seem to remember a developer mentioning that displaying thousands of user contributions was somewhat of a strain on the server. Perhaps I'm mistaken or maybe it's not an issue anymore. Carbonite | Talk 15:07, 30 October 2005 (UTC)

Frankly I'm as tired of editcountitis as Kate apparently is. Edit count (or edit distribution) is a weak proxy for what people SHOULD be doing to evaluate admin candidates. There is no substitute for actually checking a candidates edit history, no substitute for actually talking to and getting to know the candidate. RfA has not been doing a good job of screening admin candidates lately; hopefully Kate's removal of this tool will encourage more appropriate methods of review that will perhaps reduce the strain on RfC and the ArbCom. Kelly Martin (talk) 15:19, 30 October 2005 (UTC)

In the last 10 days I opposed one nom with 4000 edits largely based on lack of Wiki edits (and edit summaries) and supported another with 1200 edits who actually had more in Wiki (and looked more conscientious and uncontroversial generally). Kate's tool allows me to do this in half a minute. This isn't editcountitis and I'm not "piling on" anybody. And I can only suppose Kate gets a certain satisfaction condescending to people--these stupid warnings like we're signing up for medical trial and it suddenly going down all the time without explanation. I know nothing about the development end either but it would be nice if someone made a new one and we could forget Kate. Marskell 15:22, 30 October 2005 (UTC)

Truly, I have little use for the edit counter for RfA's (most nominations mention the overall number anyway) - but I would like to be able to check my own edit stats!!! BD2412 T 15:29, 30 October 2005 (UTC)

Kelly, I won't ask you to name specific users, but could you be more specific about RfA's poor screening of candidates? When do you think the screening started to break down? What percentage of successful nomination do you believe should have failed? Are there changes to the RfA process you believe could improve screening (other than the removal of Kate's tool)? Thanks! Carbonite | Talk 16:20, 30 October 2005 (UTC)

Responding on a number of points:

• Kate's tool provides a fast way for ascertaining information about a candidate that is otherwise difficult to put together. Distribution of edits, total # of edits, # of edits per page, time on Wikipedia...these are all pieces of the puzzle for evaluating a nominee. They are not the only means. SOME people use them as the only means, but it is unfair to the people who use it as one piece of the puzzle to say they suffer from editcountitis, and the only way to cure them it so remove the tool. If I have an itch to scratch it doesn't mean I have skin cancer.
• Nominating people on the basis of high edit counts is irresponsible. However, it does serve to give a very rough idea of the experience level of an editor. It's entirely natural for people to look at someone with 1 edit and think "they are not experienced" and look at someone with 10,000 and think "they are experienced". Not only is it natural, it's virtually guaranteed to be accurate. As a large granular evaluation, it is very useful as one criteria in deciding to nominate of support someone.
• It isn't irresponsible to nominate someone from WP600 not admins if you are not using edit counts as the sole criteria. That list provides a long list of people who most likely are experienced enough to be an admin. Furthermore, you do NOT have to be familiar with someone to nominate them or vote for them. You can do extensive reviews of that person to develop your own opinion of them. Recently, I nominated User:Edcolins. I'd never had a single interaction with him before. I came to him because he was listed on WP600 and had indicated desire to be an admin there. I spent literally hours reviewing his contributions, comparing it all against my (insanely?) high standards. It was only after I asked him some questions and reviewed his contributions against my standards that I nominated him. His nomination cleared 27-1. This was not improper. In fact, far from it. I will continue to evalute editors on that list. Once again, if the only criteria someone uses to nominate someone is edit counts, then they are making a mistake. But, using such a list as a means of helping to identify experienced editors is not flawed.
• I think we can expect Kate to keep the tool down permanently. Whether it is now, or later, it will disappear. The community has come to depend on that tool for a variety of reasons. Some of them have been laid out here; most have not. In a microcosmic way, we've been given wheels for our cars, used them for a while, and have now had the wheels ripped out from underneath us. Kate's tool was very important. There is now a vacuum, and it will be filled (the sooner the better in my opinion).
• Kelly Martin has indicated that RfA has not been doing a good job of screening admin candidates of late. Without some basis in evidence, I find this comment lacking in validity. If there in fact is a feedback loop to evaluate the success of administrators, I would LOVE to see it.

--Durin 16:08, 30 October 2005 (UTC)

The only feedback mechanism I can think of is the number of RFCs filed for mis-use of powers and/or requests for de-admining. There really doesn't seem to be that many. Either there isn't a problem or not very many of the issues reach the level it would need before someone wants to take the effort to file something. Rx StrangeLove 17:34, 30 October 2005 (UTC)

I agree with Durin's points about nominating a candidate with high edit count, as it does indicate experience, and if one is responsible and does spend a long time looking through contributions and determining whether or not an editor really will be a good candidate before nominating I don't see a problem in that. (I prefer myself to nominate only candidates I have personally interacted with, but even then I do look carefully before doing so, though my standards differ from Durin's!)

Edit count is a tool. And it's not an intrinsically bad tool but rather a useful one; I use(d) Kate's Tool myself even as I bitch and moan about "editcountitis". It's useful to know whether someone has 20 edits or 2000, and what the distribution is. (FWIW, I rather liked the disclaimer message.) But when I see people on RfA say things like "looks like a good candidate, but I can't support someone with less than 2000 edits", then I really question how people see it. Even with the namespace breakdown, it's not the end of the story. Someone may have 500 Wikipedia: space edits that all consist of "nn, delete", and someone else only 5, well-reasoned contributions to policy discussion, and the latter will get opposition for having too few Wikipedia: space edits. I'd prefer not to make a case study out of anyone in particular, but I'd think the trend is apparent.

As for evidence of unsucessful admin behavior, how about WP:AN/I, Special:Log, and WP:RFC? I don't think it's proper to name specific incidents publicly outside of personal communication with the user or a dispute resolution process, but I do not find Kelly's point invalid. The process encourages people to give the benefit of the doubt, and to regard adminship as "no big deal", and I wouldn't change that—but as a result, some candidates have been promoted (both recently and further in the past) whom I believe were better off without admin rights than with. Do you disagree? Mindspillage (spill yours?) 17:43, 30 October 2005 (UTC)

People decry editcountitis as if there's something wrong with wanting someone to have a decent amount of experience before supporting their RfA. Should I sit and count the 2000 edits someone has by hand? Is that any different from having it packaged in a tool? Am I not allowed to want a decent level of experience as well as goodness of contributions, and am I not allowed to want that they be distributed in a manner so as to show that experience extending across several fields of Wikipedia? Of course I am. If that information can be provided easily, then why insist that it be provided the hard way? If some people are incapable of handling statistics adequately then educate them: the tone of many of the above messages is that anyone looking at the numbers must be a mindless zombie when, really, most people are not. Kelly Martin's reference to admins before ArbCom sounds a little like sour grapes in light of recent events given the fact that all of about 7 admins have ever been down that road. -Splash^talk 16:25, 30 October 2005 (UTC)

Back to BD2412's question about a replacement, how did Kate get direct access to the database? Once you have that, a replacement is rudimentary.--Commander Keane 17:09, 30 October 2005 (UTC)

By being a dev. -Splash^talk 17:11, 30 October 2005 (UTC)

How do I figure out my % edit summary usage, methinks it has gone way up over the last few weeks.Voice of All ^{Talk|@|Esperanza} 17:18, 30 October 2005 (UTC)

• You ask me :) It's not a publicly available tool, though I've asked Kate to add it to the tool. Unfortunately, I think that's gone the way of the Dodo. Your edit summary usage overall across 2160 edits; 46%. First 500 edits, 27%. Last 500 70.8%. Last 100 85%. Thank you VERY much for your hardwork improving this. --Durin 17:52, 30 October 2005 (UTC)

We don't have to be a dev to put a tool in place to do what we want. We have to get a dev to give the tool the access that it needs. Kate's often referred to the tool as "my tool". I think it's high time we made a tool that belongs to all of Wikipedia, rather than just Kate...even if Kate's tool comes back. Kate opened a pandora's box that can not be closed again. Kate can remove the tool, but the need of the tool is apparent. --Durin 17:54, 30 October 2005 (UTC)

Yes, I was more directly answering how Kate himself (yes) got database access. I would agree that we should simply write ourselves one, and I would help if could speak Perl, but it's not a language I've yet had cause to learn. -Splash^talk 17:57, 30 October 2005 (UTC)

I still don't think that anyone has adequately addressed my point that the existing user contributions tool is far superior to the widget known as "Kate's tool." We shouldn't be commenting on an RFA without looking at their contributions, so the objection that this puts a strain on the database is a spurious one--it doesn't put an unnecessary strain on the database. It's perfectly adequate for obtaining a rough count of user edits, and much better, it shows exactly what those edits have been, whether the editor uses the "minor edit" flag well, whether he provides good edit summaries, whether he edit wars (this always sticks out a mile) and so on. Kate's tool discouraged a proper examination of the fitness of a candidate, and I don't miss it. --Tony Sidaway^Talk 18:32, 30 October 2005 (UTC)

Tony, I don't think anyone has adequately addressed my point - I would like a tool to quickly count and sum up my own edits - and counting contribs is an unnecessary pain. I put a lot of work into Wikipedia, and it's a strong motivator to be able to see a snapshot of my progress, and particularly to set benchmarks and surpass them. It also happens to be useful for getting an RfA snapshot, but to me, that's very secondary. BD2412 T 18:46, 30 October 2005 (UTC)

The two are complementary. "Ok, these look like decent contributions, but I think there are only a few of them and I'd like more experience. But am I getting that right? I wish I could see quickly how much good experience they have".-Splash^talk 18:51, 30 October 2005 (UTC)

As far as I'm aware it's actually impossible to look at someone's contributions without also being exposed to the buttons and links that, if one clicks on them, give one a pretty good picture of the amount of experience an editor has. Knowing the precise number of edits is unnecessary; if the editor has thousands of edits that's quite a lot, if he has dozens that's a few. --Tony Sidaway^Talk 19:48, 30 October 2005 (UTC)

There used to be a time when admins were elected without editcountitis problems. =Nichalp «Talk»= 18:41, 30 October 2005 (UTC)

Times change. -Splash^talk 18:51, 30 October 2005 (UTC)

That's right, nowadays we look for teenagers with the gift of gab on IRC who can manage a few thousand edits in the course of hangin' out on wikipedia. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.58.21.107 (talk • contribs)

Personally, I regard both IRC and mailing list activity as poor second cousins to on-Wiki activity. I do not and will not import any judgement on RfA candidates from IRC, where I only turn up irregularly anyway. I agree that others do, and have noted that several recently failed RfAs appear to have stemmed from knowing someone on IRC rather than studying them on-Wiki. But that is all secondary to the debate in this section, really. -Splash^talk 22:13, 30 October 2005 (UTC)

• Tony; Perhaps you're aware of a tool (other than Kate's) which showed distribution of edits over namespaces. I'm not. Perhaps you're aware of a tool that shows average # of edits per article. I'm not. Perhaps you're aware of a tool that shows the number of edits a user has anywhere near as fast as Kate's tool does. I'm not. Perhaps you're aware of a means to ascertain time of first edit that's as fast as Kate's tool. I'm not. You see, it ISN'T about edit counts. There was a broad range of things that were shown on Kate's tool, and they were produced rapidly. By ripping away Kate's tool, sure we've "solved" the problem of editors being addicted to the # of edits a means of determining the suitability of a person to be an admin. But, we've also ripped away a highly useful tool for a broad, broad range of other very valid activities. --Durin 22:01, 30 October 2005 (UTC)

Last time I looked at Kate's tool, it only gave some raw edit counts. If it has been modified to do the other things then those are recent modifications. In those circumstances, I don't see how it can possibly be regarded as some essential tool in deciding whether a RFA candidate is any good. Indeed if it's become so sophisticated recently, and people were relying on it, I regard that as sufficient reason in itself to deprecate its use. --Tony Sidaway^Talk 22:40, 30 October 2005 (UTC)

No one thinks is "essential", no one "relys" on it, it is useful thats all. Call me crazy but you can look at contribs, talk interactions, user pages and (now heres the crazy bit) kates tool! Martin 23:07, 30 October 2005 (UTC)

Sour grapes? Why would I have sour grapes about anything having to do with RfA? My own RfA passed 72/1/0 last June, and the one candidate I nominated passed easily as well (despite a relatively low edit count). No, I just happen to be one of the few people on Wikipedia who pays attention to the conduct of other administrators, and lately I've seen more instances of administrative misconduct leading to problems on the 'pedia, including several which have come to my attention through RfCs and a couple that are now RfArs. But I've been more involved in conflict resolution for the past three months than anything else on the 'pedia, so I see more of these problems than perhaps most other admins do. Kelly Martin (talk) 23:30, 30 October 2005 (UTC)

The counter isn't working, and hasn't been for the last few days. I've known that happen before, and I wouldn't give it a second thought, except that from reading these posts I get the impression that some of you "know" that Kate is withdrawing the edit counter. Is this just speculation, or have some of you got some inside knowledge that I don't have? Kate's last contribution was 26 October, so surely it's just a question of a tool being (temporarily) broken, and the person who created it and could fix it being (temporarily) away. I don't see how the fact of this tool not working – something that has happened before – should have led to such a long discussion of what we'll do without it. Ann Heneghan ^(talk) 00:50, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

Hope for the best, be prepared for the worst. Even if Kate's Tool comes back on line in the next five minutes, what harm in having a back-up? And one that is under the control of the community, rather than under the control of one person. BD2412 T 00:59, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

(edit conflict) It opens up the larger idea of whether or not it's a good idea to have such an important tool: a) outside of MediaWiki (and so more likely to break, etc) and b) under the control of one person (who has shown a bias against its use). I imagine a Special: page to do everything KT does would just require a few small SQL queries. ~~ N (t/c) 01:01, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

I agree with making it a Special page. But aren't SQL queries currently disabled? Titoxd^(?!?) 01:38, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

Queries using Special:Asksql are... but WP wouldn't work at all if it couldn't make them internally. ;-) ~~ N (t/c) 01:51, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

I agree as well. -- Svest 01:42, 31 October 2005 (UTC)  ^{Wiki me up&#153;}

I for one am glad it's gone. Edit counts alone, even when broken down by namespace, are at best a poor analytical substitute for actually reviewing contributions and hitting the "diff" link a bunch of times. There are users who have made thousands of ephemeral additions to pop culture articles, whose net contribution to the project is less than that of editors who have made perhaps a few hundred more substantive contributions to articles where rather more research is required to contribute.

In a technology-mediated community, technological features affect culture. The effect of Kate's tool, culturally, has been negative. The Uninvited Co., Inc. 01:53, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

• I'd like such a tool primarily to keep track of my own edits. Is that a negative? BD2412 T 01:57, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

• The EC doesn't harm anybody! How come it is considered negative, Uninvited? -- Svest 02:04, 31 October 2005 (UTC)  ^{Wiki me up&#153;}

• I can't agree more. Of course nothing beats looking at a few diffs and seeing some recent contributions, but it is definitely useful to get a brief summary of the user's activities over a period of time. The contention that it causes bad decisions to be made doesn't quite size up; by removing the tool from the equation, you limit the information available to other editors to make decisions on RfA. Checking one's own edit count, while it may be a sign of an unhealthy addiction, doesn't do any harm for most of us; if anything, it's worthwhile because it brings some sense of satisfaction of reaching personal milestones. I would definitely support the placement of Kate's tool in public hands. Enochlau 10:52, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

hi. i'm not particularly interested in this discussion, but i hear on the rumour mill that the edit counter is gone for good. well, it's not, it just broke while i was away over the weekend. it's fixed now... kate.

• No offense intended - however I do strongly believe in having a backup for every useful tool that, for whatever reason, may go on the blink. Cheers! BD2412 T 17:22, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

er, well, yes, i'm not going to be offended if someone else wants to make their own edit counter  ;) kate.

• Would you be interested in donating your counter to the project then rather than us having to recreate the wheel? --Durin 19:20, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

i don't understand what you're asking. the source is already in CVS if you want it... kate.

Basically, can it be made into a Special: page easily? (I admit it would be slower, but then, it would be just a backup.) Titoxd^(?!?) 23:33, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

yes, it could. (i think someone may have done that already, actually, although i don't know any details). kate.

• Proposal - Let's back up Kate's Tool - but send Wikipedia:List of non-admins with high edit counts to WP:MD now.--Doc (?) 00:07, 1 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Now see Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:List of non-admins with high edit counts --Doc (?) 02:32, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

Death of Editcountitus, usher in account age-itus (Archive 40)

Well there's good news: Editcountitus votes seem to have died. But there's bad news, or at least bad in my mind, but obviously many people will disagree: people opposing based on account age. There seems to be two plausible reasons to oppose on these grounds: not enough experience, and 'better safe than sorry'. As for not enough experience: I believe if you can trust someone to ask before acting when they're not sure, they'll be fine. Plus adminship isn't a big deal, there's nothing to worry about. As for 'better safe than sorry' - yeah, it's also better safe than sorry if we ban every user who hasn't been here since 02. Every adminly activity can be undone instantly and none can cause enough damage to really worry about, excepting image deletions. But I figure if you're gonna spend 3 months just to delete some images, you wouldn't have too much trouble waiting yet another three months, but can you really picture someone putting in 3000 edits just to vandalize like that? Adminship is no big deal, and even if a user only has rights for a month, and uses em well, and then runs off... Wikipedia still had that much help (referring back to the lazy admin thread). Really, why not set two year standards? RFA's can be stressful enough, this just contributes and I never find it a valid reason to expect someone to wait 8 or 10 months. sorry for the rant Redwolf24 (talk) 23:37, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

Raw edit count is not a good or accurate way to guage how trustworthy someone is; how long they have been around definitely is -- particularly when taken in conjunction with the answer to the question - "has this done anything to suggestion (s)he is not trustworthy". →Raul654 23:48, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

My problem is drawing the line way too far ahead, like 6, 8, or even 12 months. Redwolf24 (talk) 23:56, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

You know, like the people whining about editcountitus likely wouldn't want someone with 40 edits to be an admin. Redwolf24 (talk) 23:58, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

• Well, we can all keep citing the mantra "adminship is not a big deal" but the obvious fact is that it's not a small deal either. We're just not sure of the exact size of the deal. And since admin candidates are held to higher standards than admins themselves, it doesn't hurt to be careful. Radiant_>|< 00:34, 10 November 2005 (UTC)

It hurts if someone gets so annoyed they run off... and I had to laugh at the candidates are held to higher standards than the actual admins. Redwolf24 (talk) 00:39, 10 November 2005 (UTC)

• It's bad if people leave (or indeed, get angry) over a failed RFA. However, it is fact that candidates are held to higher standards. A nomination can fail over a recent incivility, or lack of edit summaries - and reactions are scant if admins are uncivil or lack edit sums. For instance. So it seems that a nom is a bigger deal than the actual adminship. I'm not sure if that's a bad thing though, but the dichotomy is funny. Radiant_>|< 00:54, 10 November 2005 (UTC)

I don't believe I explained my main point, or even mentioned it (heh <_<): The problem I have with this is the same as the problem I had with editcountitus. I get annoyed when people judge someone based on ONE criteria. How about you pay attention to some other merits, it's truly infuriating. Redwolf24 (talk) 01:06, 10 November 2005 (UTC)

• Oh, I entirely agree with that. I was surprised to read (above here) that someone thought we once had a requirement for admin candidates to have made a featured article, when this in fact was a sole person's criterion (who stopped using it after some people pointed out what was wrong with it). Wise words from some book I read, the penalty you pay for wanting simple answers is being wrong - consistently. Radiant_>|< 01:12, 10 November 2005 (UTC)

• Agecountitis has become the same as editcountitis in that people use it as an automatically disqualifying factor and as soon as they see that this user hasn't been around for a full year or this user has less than 1000 edits then they stop even looking to see how good of an administrator (or bureaucrat) the user might be just because they don't fit this one criteria. That's a very flawed way of looking at things and making a decision. Jtkiefer ^{T | @ | C} ----- 06:38, 12 November 2005 (UTC)

• Having lost my previous RfA due to editcountis and agecountis, I know just how unfair it was. Durin helped to try and persuade users not to use these for the basis of their votes and to instead concentrate on the quality of edits. I have now applied again for adminship and Aranda56 has kindly agreed to help me out in adding my RfA since I had trouble entering it in.Wikiwoohoo 20:44, 12 November 2005 (UTC)

We're sorry we already have enough administrators and if we voted one more up then the entire wiki would collapse seriously though, good luck on the nom. and if you don't get it this time it's probably not you it's everyone else. Jtkiefer ^{T | @ | C} ----- 21:29, 12 November 2005 (UTC)

It is necessary to participate in Wikipedia for a considerable duration in order to understand the community. "The way things work around here" is not well captured by the policies, and though there are a number of resources to help with this, there is no substitute for participating. Because many Wikipedia processes inherently take days or weeks -- AfD, RFA, featured articles, and the very process of consensus editing itself -- high levels of activity alone are insufficient. Unlike using edit counts, using duration of participation doesn't reward any unwanted behaviors (such as serial edits) and is difficult to game. It also takes to to judge someone's editing style and style of engagement with the community. I have long used six months as a guide, though in some cases I'll support a little sooner. The Uninvited Co., Inc. 16:42, 14 November 2005 (UTC)

I would also add editsummaritis - I saw one candidate fail mainly because of using only 60% of edit summaries, and another is deep trouble for that. Renata3 13:13, 17 November 2005 (UTC)

While no "-itus" (so no editcountitis, no agecountis, no editsummaritis and certainly no vote-recorditis) should play a significant role in RfA's, I think editsummaries ARE important, for both other editors and RC patrollers. Since admins are often viewed by the newbies as 'role models', they should try to set a good example. I would never vote against someone for just a lack of editsummaries, but I can imagine it could play a role in determining a vote. --JoanneB 13:55, 17 November 2005 (UTC)

Agree with Joanne. They are one part of my vote not a clincher in themselves. Summaries show the conscientiousness I expect of admins and help others watching a page. Marskell 13:58, 17 November 2005 (UTC)

They are important, I suppose, but I think those who vote oppose becuase of a lack of edit summaries are either being lazy (and not looking beyond the surface) or are just looking for a reason to vote no. Being an admin is no big deal, so why would someone vote oppose for that reason? Just bring it up as a piece of advice in your support or neutral vote (if you feel THAT strong about it), but don't vote oppose because of it. Looks petty.Gator (talk) 14:21, 17 November 2005 (UTC)

Or, you know, people who don't bother with them are being lazy. As a watchlist starts to bloat edit summaries become more and more helpful. Marskell 14:46, 17 November 2005 (UTC)

I agree with JoanneB, but it's more than that. The use of edit summaries is often indicative of an editor's attitude towards WP guidelines and policies. There is a strong correlation between someone's ability and willingness to follow Wikipedia:Edit summary and their adherence to other WP standards. It is no coincidence that many admins named in RfCs for civility also have poor edit summaries.

At my job, I often reject candidates based on the fact that their resume is riddled with typos or poorly formatted. This is not because the prospective engineer's job would include a lot of prose writing or copyediting, but because an engineer who can't be bothered to proofread their resume will often exhibit the same attitude on the job as well. Use of edit summaries is a "marker" associated with the ability and willingness to follow our policies, guidelines, and common practices—all crucial for a successful admin. Owen× ☎ 14:53, 17 November 2005 (UTC)

Maybe, but on a scale of 1 -10 of importance in my decision to vote to support or oppose, that's a 3. Much more important things.Gator (talk) 14:57, 17 November 2005 (UTC)

Kate's Tool (Archive 41)

Kate's tool appears to be down and I say good riddance, I am appreciative toward Kate for making it and it has had it's good uses however since the beginning it has been misused and fostered a community wide outbreak of editcountitis (now replaced by it's evil cousin timecountitis) which resulted in RFA's that failed solely due to the time a user was here. Unfortunately there is no way to know whether Kate's tool will ever be up again since Kate has apparently left the project indefinitely but I'm glad that people will now have to put some work into it (manual edit counting) if they want to continue their editcountitis sprees. Jtkiefer^{T | C | @} ---- 22:06, 2 December 2005 (UTC)

I believe it is just one of Wikimedia Deutschland's discs (where KT etc is hosted) that is broken, rather than anything more drastic such as it being taken down purposefully. The tool itself is useful; what is not good is what people do with it. The editors who use it well should not be punished for others' using it badly. [[Sam Korn]] 22:15, 2 December 2005 (UTC)

I completely agree with Sam Korn's views. Just because it may be misused by a certian portion of the population does not mean we should limit the tool. For the record, I'm considering writing a Java program for those with Java and an IDE to count the number of edits, count the edit summary percentage, percent minor edits, and other stats, serving mainly as a backup to Kate's Tool. Of course, such a method would be extremely crude (copying and pasting all the contributions into a txt file and parsing each one) and would also require the downloading of the Java compiler and other freeware, making it very limited. Would people be interested in me programming this and making the code available? Thanks! Flcelloguy (A note?) 22:20, 2 December 2005 (UTC)

Yes! In fact, I had been working on a complete edit analyzer in Visual Basic, but if the code is available in a CVS, I'll be able to help tweak it too. Titoxd^{(?!? - did you read this?)} 22:28, 2 December 2005 (UTC)

OK, I'll start some work on it when I have some free time. (Which may be a while, though...) Some complexities: making it user friendly, and the many different ways Wikipedia uses to log a user's contributions (i.e. minor edit, the "default" edit summary when you edit a section, many parenthesis, etc.) All of that will make for a much longer algorithm to do stats. Flcelloguy (A note?) 22:51, 2 December 2005 (UTC)

Replied on your talk page (for those who want to follow and help :) ) Titoxd^{(?!? - did you read this?)} 22:53, 2 December 2005 (UTC)

I think that even though Kate's tool indeed has it's good uses it's good uses have long since been overwhelmed by it's use as a tool to foster editcountitis and more recently (when the first edit feature was added) as a tool to foster agecountitis. I doubt this is a technological issue, it's more of a severe attitude issue that needs to be dealt with. Jtkiefer^{T | C | @} ---- 22:33, 2 December 2005 (UTC)

Anyone who gets anally retentive about edit count or age of the account needs their head banged against a brick wall. I actually don't think it's really that common, and I expect bureaucrats don't value votes based solely on either of these two factors very highly. If people get told when they make such comments that they are not appreciated, things might work a little better. On the other hand, edit counts and account ages are useful for assessing the suitability of a user for adminship, and KT is a good way of acheiving this. [[Sam Korn]] 12:59, 3 December 2005 (UTC)

We had all this last time the tool went down too. -Splash^talk 22:34, 2 December 2005 (UTC)

As far as I'm concerned it will be quite a happy day when we no longer have to have these debates as to whether Kate's tool is a good thing is a bad thing but until either a workaround is created to prevent it's usage in the pursuit of editcountitis and/or the attitude of people in general changes to the point where they don't judge people solely on their edit count then these discussions should must continue. Jtkiefer^{T | C | @} ---- 22:41, 2 December 2005 (UTC)

Definition of Editcountitis and Agecountitis (Archive 41)

• Editcountitis:(n.) an uncurable mental disorder which results in uncontrollable bouts of judging individual editors based solely on the the number of individual edits that they have made to Wikipedia. editcountitis may vary in severity and severity may flucuate. editcountitis may also be overpowered or replaced with agecountitis

• Agecountitis:(n.) an uncurable mental disorder which results in uncontrollable bouts of judging individual editors based solely on the amount of time (usually using a measure of months) that they have been an editor on Wikipedia. agecountitis may vary in severity and severity may flucuate. agecountitis may also be overpowered or replaced with editcountitis.

Just what I think the definition of Edictountitis and Agecountitis is, I'd be interested in seeing what other editors think the definitions of them are and what they think of these definitions and/or the two subjects or terms. Jtkiefer^{T | C | @} ---- 22:33, 2 December 2005 (UTC)

Erm... when have begun to slam using edit counts and account age as a factor? Sure, they shouldn't be the sole factor, but they help to offer a complete picture of a candidate. In addition, there are some things that experience can bring; as such, account age and edit counts are completely valid criteria. While I certainly agree that just looking at those factors or deciding based on those factors is wrong, we shouldn't slam the people (as your "definitions" do) who do. Thanks! Flcelloguy (A note?) 22:50, 2 December 2005 (UTC)

I've always defined editcountitis as an uncurable mental disorder centered on an obsession with one's own edit count - at least that's what I suffer from. ;-) BD2412 T 22:51, 2 December 2005 (UTC)

Well that too. Jtkiefer^{T | C | @} ---- 22:56, 2 December 2005 (UTC)

Agreed; -itis indicates an inflammation, a personal condition. Perhaps Editcountism when applied to others? —Bunchofgrapes (talk) 23:00, 2 December 2005 (UTC)

The issue I take with them is that they are all too often used as the sole factor and even when they aren't the sole reason they are the main part of the reason, whenever edit counts are mentioned there are never second to the other reason. Jtkiefer^{T | C | @} ---- 03:50, 3 December 2005 (UTC)

How about letting people vote in good faith and leaving them be? Maybe save some unneeded edits on this talk. Marskell 23:07, 2 December 2005 (UTC)

At what point does it stop being editcountitis and agecountitis? What I mean is, if there is a user who has made 100 edits, all good, and submits an RfA, would you Support? How about at 200 edits? Conversely, what if there were a user who made an account just a week ago and made 1000 edits in that week, all good? Would you support? How two weeks? A month? If these extreme cases count as editcountitis and agecountitis, then I suppose I suffer from them, because I would certainly oppose the nomination of a user who has made just 100 edits solely based on edit count, and I would also oppose the nomination of a user with a week-old account based solely on the age of the account. --Deathphoenix 00:15, 3 December 2005 (UTC)

I think the main reason there's more claims of "editcountitis" and "agecountitis" is that many current and recent candidates have less experience than past candidates. I don't think voters are more fixated on these counts than in the past, but I do believe that more candidates have low edit counts and/or a short tenure on Wikipedia. Even if the percentage of inexperienced candidates is the same as a year ago, the huge number of RfAs (26 active right now) means that the absolute number of inexperienced candidates will be greater. Carbonite | Talk 01:17, 3 December 2005 (UTC)

• Hey! ;-) BD2412 T 01:28, 3 December 2005 (UTC)
  • Yep, back in the good ol' days every user had 50,000 edits and 3 years before they'd even think about accepting a nomination. ;) Seriously though, while BD2412 is an extreme example, when candidates have ample time and edits, there's usually landslide support. There's nothing wrong with expecting admins to have a bit of experience under their belt. I mean, we're ranked #35 in the entire world right now [5]! Whether Jimbo thinks so or not, adminship is a bigger deal now than it was years ago. Carbonite | Talk 01:39, 3 December 2005 (UTC)
    • I'd say it's a bigger deal - in the sense that we need a few hundred more admins! And few dozen more bureaucrats too - it's better if we have more hands to do the work than work to fill the hands. On the other hand, we have plenty of experienced editors for whom neither age nor edit count would be a concern, so we should work on prompting them towards adminship first. BD2412 T 01:49, 3 December 2005 (UTC)
      • Well... granted, we do need one or two more admins, well, maybe 1000-2000 or so. The current admin/user ratio is silly. Kim Bruning 01:55, 3 December 2005 (UTC)
        • I think the more pertinent ratio would be active admins/active users. I don't have these figures, but I bet it's fairly respectable since admins tend to be active users. Carbonite | Talk 03:26, 3 December 2005 (UTC)
          • I'm not so sure, what with the huge numbers of people demanding that they get more say than admins, or some such. Kim Bruning 03:30, 3 December 2005 (UTC)
            • I took a look at Wikistats [6] and found out some interesting info. The most recent data was for October 2005. There were 1854 users who made at least 100 edits in October.[7] I think this is a pretty good definition of "active", since that's slightly more than 3 edits/day. There are currently 576 "active" admins (see here), so let's estimate that there were 500 back in October. Thus we get a ratio of 1854/500 or 3.7 active users for every active admin. Of course, this doesn't take into account anonymous users or those users who made less than 100 edits in October. Still, I think this shows that while we'll always need new admins, we're not really in an emergency situation at the moment. We can afford to examine each candidate thoroughly and possibly request that they get a bit more experience before being promoted. Carbonite | Talk 03:54, 3 December 2005 (UTC)

Backup to Kate's Tool (Archive 41)

I've created a crude and rudimentary backup to Kate's Tool. Please see User:Flcelloguy/Tool. Comments appreciated. Thanks! Flcelloguy (A note?) 17:48, 4 December 2005 (UTC)

Edits per day: why does it matter? (Archive 43)

I'm confused at the emerging trend of using number of edits per day (or month etc.) as a way of judging the candidate. I notice this for Simetrical and especially EvanProdromou. What does it matter if the edits are good ones? These candidates have both been around for at least a year (3 years in the case of Evan) so I don't feel their commitment to the project can be questioned (Evan is a Developer!). These two candidates want to help the project, so why should we deny them that? Not everyone has the time to contribute for hours a day, but that should not reflect on them as users, nor should it deny them the opportunity to contribute in the way they choose. It's not as if we have a limited number of adminships to hand out or anything. Any reversion of vandalism or clearing of VFD backlog is valuable, however small.

The main thing that worries me about this arguement is that the quality of the candidate's edits is not under question, nor has anyone suggested they are likely to abuse admin tools. We seem to be losing sight of the real issue in RFA's: is this candiate likely to abuse admin tools, or will they put them to good use? Could someone please tell me how frequency of contribution is relevent to this question? Raven4x4x 04:15, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

Actually it bothers me too. There's nothing wrong with being a "part-time" vs. a "full-time" admin. People have lives outside of this web site. Antandrus (talk) 04:21, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

It's also very hard to check 2000+ edits to find out if someone has done something really nasty. Kim Bruning 04:26, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

Editcountitis is something that I honestly dislike and do not take into account when voting. Some feel that it is a measure of how well-seasoned an editor is, though; the more they edit the more they are likely to understand and follow official policy. --Vortex 04:32, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

With respect, there's an underlying philosophical issue at the core of this debate. A number of users hold to the ideal that adminship is "no big deal". A number of other users hold that adminship is no longer "no big deal". I could put forth arguments why edits per day may have a basis in the worthiness of a candidate. In fact, I have in the past. What I have found is the arguments tend to fall on deaf ears, and regardless miss the mark of addressing the core philosophical difference. Before we can come to terms with whether or not edits per day is any reasonable basis on which to judge a potential admin, we would need to come to some agreement on what adminship is today, and what it means on average to the community. But, I doubt such agreement is possible. --Durin 04:44, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

Well, I feel that admins should be exactly what the RFA page says: "trusted users who are familiar with Wikipedia policies", who will use the admin tools to make the encyclopedia better, and who are able to work well in discussions with other users. That's what matters in my mind. By the way Durin, I'm interested in those arguements as to why you feel edits per day does matter, just for interests sake. Also, is there anything in my arguement above that you disagree with? Again, I'm just interested. Raven4x4x 04:54, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

Edits per day might matter, I'm thinking, because policy (however you want to define policy) changes relatively quickly on Wikipedia, and a part-time admin might soon find themselves believing in and enforcing an outdated set of rules. Yes, they'll be pointed to the new rules, and it's not a big deal, but the desire to not need caretakers for the caretakers makes some sense. —Bunchofgrapes (talk) 05:00, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

Indeed. I just fail to agree with many that the yardstick must be the number of edits. It'd be like finding a psychologist. Do you pick someone for the job who has counselled hundreds of people? Or someone who appears to be proficient at it? If you're hiring for a legal firm, do you find someone who's got millions of cases under their belt or who has the skills necessary to win? Both? Neither? You see my point. I rely on edit counts if and only if I can't determine that the user is goig to benefit Wiki by being an admin. As for what adminship is today -- it depends. I think that adminship is taking care of custodial duties but also being a more public face than a regular editor. You decide. --Vortex 05:03, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

[Edit conflict] But adminship is primarily about extra editing tools. Most admins do not choose an administrative role. This isn't what adminship is about. In addition, I don't think that policy does change all that quickly. AfD might replace VfD, formatting might change, but there are clear instructions on the page. Someone who was heavily involved in X (say, VFD) who left for a few months might have some initial shock of re-adjustment, but someone who is only a part-time editor doesn't assume that X is done this way because s/he didn't have such deeply ingrained habits. In addition, of course, someone who reads is not likely to be someone who edits all that much - it takes a long time to work your way through WP:AN or to figure out what's going on in some dispute. Try reading an Arbcomm case - your edit rate falls pretty quickly if you really want to figure out what's going on. Guettarda 05:09, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

I mostly agree; I was just trying to answer Raven4x4x's curiousity as best I could. I do wonder what you mean when you say "but adminship is primarily about extra editing tools", though. Except for the rollback button and perhaps the ability to edit permanently protected pages, every other admin ability — blocking, deleting, protection — is tied up in a vast web of policy. —Bunchofgrapes (talk) 05:19, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

We have extra editing tools that we don't want untested users to have. For convenience, the collections of tools were given names: Administrator (or Sysop), Bureaucrat, Developer. Unfortunately (at least in my view), the title Administrator has taken on a life distinct from the tools. Now if a valuable editor only wants to roll back vandalism on the pages on his watchlist that he has so diligently worked on, we are telling him that because he doesn't visit AfD, contribute to policy discussions or meet some other criteria du jour that he can't have the tools. Counting recent edits is just one more of those hurdles that only make sense if you buy into the notion that being annointed administrator has some special meaning apart from the tools. Personally, I don't buy in. -- DS1953 05:22, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

[after edit conflict] That's a good point Guettarda raises. I've spent three-hour evenings reading and not making a single edit, but those were the times I really learned policy. Edit counts, strictly speaking, remain misleading. For me there is a minimum involvement threshold where I perceive dedication to the project -- I'm not sure if I can quantify it, I just intuit it from the candidate's history and behavior. Antandrus (talk) 05:24, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

I just wanted to point out that your position that there is a minimum involvement threshold and then edit counting doesn't matter is strongly consistent with the past probability of pass/fail RFA. --Gmaxwell 15:20, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

Christopher Parham has it pretty close to dead on when he says "unlikely to abuse admin tools" on an RFA. There's not much else to decide. Rx StrangeLove 05:52, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

I agree with DS1953. It's about the tools. The hurdles do not make a better encyclopedia. Tedernst | talk 06:09, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

(Another edit conflict here. Good grief, maybe we need subpages.)

Let us consider: what factors into the decision to make someone an admin? On the one hand, we have the benefit: how much more will this person help out Wikipedia by being an admin? The answer to that is, to a point, dependent on edit rate; if someone only checks over a few pages once a week or something, he's probably not going to be using his admin powers much. However, the most important factor in this part of the assessment should be whether the user pledges to use his admin powers in answer to Question 1—assuming, of course, that the user has contributed productively for some time, the chance of their lying in answer to that question is low. If a respectable user with few edits says he'll start checking RC ten times a day from work, say, that's far better than if a respectable user with many edits says he probably won't check any of the places where admins are needed.

Now for the second part of the decision: cost. What is the risk that this person will abuse his admin powers? Well, if he's contributed many productive edits, it's extremely likely that he's only out to help the project, no matter what his edit rate. Possibly there are people who would contribute a thousand productive edits for the sole purpose of getting an adminship so that they could to delete all uploaded images, say, for the sake of causing havoc, but these people are going to be vanishingly rare if they exist at all. But the critical thing about this part of the assessment is, anything an admin does can be immediately reverted by any one of hundreds of other admins. The one exception is image uploads, of course; I believe those require a developer to retrieve. But other than that, any abuse of power will result in a brief moment of chaos followed by a reversion, desysopping, and permanent blocking.

So we have two components, cost and benefit. The cost, I say, is negligible for anyone who has contributed extensively and productively, no matter what their edit rate: they're unlikely to do anything wrong, and on the off chance they do, they can be quickly dealt with. The benefit may not be great for someone who doesn't edit much, but it will still exist, and so any Wikipedian who has contributed productively and is even semi-active should be given adminship. This is why Jimbo Wales said it's "no big deal": because the software doesn't allow admins to do much harm. —Simetrical (talk) 06:14, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

Well said. Tedernst | talk 22:50, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

Edits per day is a nearly meaningless metric. We measure it because it is easy to measure and it's fun to bandish about numbers. If you assume it means anything important, you're making a huge mistake. Statistically, edit rate beyond a certian minimum threshold (which most people have) has no correlation with pass/fail of RFA, nor does it appear to tell us anything about how likely someone is to be deadmined. It doesn't do much to tell us about how often will use admin abilities. ... Frankly I think the only hunk of data about adminship and edit rates which is actually interesting is that people who pass adminship on average have a greater decline of edit rate than people who fail... even though some who fail have their edit rate go straight to zero. Some users are high volume editors and demonstrate poor judgement as admins, some users are low volume but always seem to have teriffic judgement. It's the quality of a users actions that count, not their volume. --Gmaxwell 07:02, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

One thing I'd like to point out is, given two candidates with approximately equal edit counts, I'd prefer the editor who'd been here longer, that is, the editor who got their 2000 edits over six months rather than three. That is, if I used numerical standards, which I don't. Demi ^T/_C 08:11, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

• Agreed. But your volume isn't important concensus is far from correct. In theory, that's what should be the deciding factor in a rfa, but it isn't. Like Mr.Sidaway said on his talkpage, "Its a Aunt Sally bar. Its a coconut shy. Its a duck shoot." The amount of edits is perhaps the best factor we have to go when considering somone for adminship, because it shows how active they are, it shows constructiveness, and most of all, it shows where (and how) they're upholding wikipedia. Just look at the current nominations for instance- WhoKnowsEmperorNorton is failing miserably because of his lack of edits, and that says to the voters he's not qite suited to the position yet. Its because we cannot go by a person's views and thought processes (this is the internet). So "by the numbers" is one of the best deciding factors. Also I quote from Mr.Sidaway: "That's the way it is until we think up a better way to decide who will be an administrator." -MegamanZero 08:15, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

• • It isn't at all a good metric. Are you saying that we would prefer to admin someone who stub sorts 50 articles a day over someone who writes one complete featured article a week? --Gmaxwell 14:37, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

• • • You're right. That's exactly what I'm trying to say, and its not fair. But..that's what a large number of voters look at, and there's little we can do to change that mindset. Then there's the second most terrifying problem withh rfa- bandwagoons. It's an undisputed fact that a lot of voters simply aren't thinking for themselves, and merely vote the same position thier friend or aqantince did. Again, I quote, That's the way it is until we think up a better way to decide who will be an administrator.-MegamanZero 15:24, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

• • • • But how does that make edits per day a good or useful number? ... I don't think people are being quite as stupid as you suggest, but even if they were it would just be all the more reason to NOT provide a count of edits/day. --Gmaxwell 16:58, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

• • • • • It doesn't. But, that's how it is...-MegamanZero 17:04, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

  "That's the way it is until we think up a better way to decide who will be an administrator." Is that so? Then how about this: any Wikipedian in good standing of at least six months with at least 750 edits who expresses a commitment to remain on Wikipedia for the near future and who has read the various relevant policy pages should be made an admin. Now can we toss posts per day out the window?

Yes, posts per day expresses commitment and time spent on Wikipedia per day. It does not indicate any kind of familiarity with Wikipedia policies, necessarily; it does not indicate responsibility. But above all, as noted above, the cost of making someone an admin is negligible if they're any member in good standing. Who cares how much they'll use their abilities? Most will use their abilities at least occasionally, the rest are no harm. If they meet the criteria I mentioned, 99% won't abuse their powers, and the remainder will cause no lasting damage and can be easily dealt with. —Simetrical (talk) 20:45, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

If you're being serious about your conjecture, then there are quite a few people who fit that thesis of yours, Simetrical. If only it were so simple...Unfortuntely, that's not concensus,a policy, or an requiste for adminship, and I quote again, "that's the way it is....", you know the rest. :) -MegamanZero 22:49, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

Nobody is denying that some people do vote based largely on edit rate. What people are discussing is whether they should. And no, my counterproposal is not consensus or policy, but neither is judging based on edit rate. If this discussion is any indication (which it may not be), it seems consensus is substantially against judging based largely on edit rate. "That" is not "the way it is". —Simetrical (talk) 02:47, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

Familiarity with policy

In my opinion, one of the reasons activity level is important for an admin to be successful is, as others have noted, ongoing familiarity with policy. A part time admin who applies policy could cause considerable problems among users who feel they are following policy, only to find they are violating policy as the part time admin sees it. Policy changes, and rapidly. Anybody...anybody...can change policy. Personally, I think this is a shortcoming of Wikipedia. Policy pages should be protected. Let's have a look at how often policies were edited over the last month:

• Wikipedia:Account deletion: 0 edits
• Wikipedia:Arbitration policy: 3 edits
• Wikipedia:Assume good faith: 2 edits
• Wikipedia:Banning policy: 5 edits
• Wikipedia:Blocking policy: 34 edits
• Wikipedia:Civility: 5 edits
• Wikipedia:Copyrights: 8 edits
• Wikipedia:Criteria for speedy deletion: 141 edits
• Wikipedia:Deletion policy: 51 edits
• Wikipedia:Edit war: 11 edits
• Wikipedia:Image use policy: 4 edits
• Wikipedia:Naming conventions: 31 edits
• Wikipedia:Naming conventions (categories): 23 edits
• Wikipedia:No binding decisions: 1 edit
• Wikipedia:No legal threats: 3 edits
• Wikipedia:No original research: 11 edits
• Wikipedia:No personal attacks: 10 edits
• Wikimedia:Privacy policy: 3 edits
• Wikipedia:Profanity: 4 edits
• Wikipedia:Protection policy: 9 edits
• Wikipedia:Resolving disputes: 2 edits
• Wikipedia:Sock puppet: 22 edits
• Wikipedia:Three-revert rule: 4 edits
• Wikipedia:Undeletion policy: 7 edits
• Wikipedia:Verifiability: 40 edits
• Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not: 37 edits
• Wikipedia:Wikipedia is not a dictionary: 0 edits

Of the 27 policies shown above, more than half averaged at least one edit per week. Even if we assume half of all edits on policy were vandalism and reverts, we'd still have more than one third of policy changing on average on a weekly basis. Note that this is just policy as taken from Category:Wikipedia official policy. This does not show Category:Wikipedia guidelines. There is a great deal of material that an admin not only needs to be familiar with, but needs to maintain a familiarity with. As many have, it can most certainly be argued that a conscientious and trustworthy admin will not attempt to enforce policy until they read and understand current policy. However, it can also be argued that due to the frequently changing nature of policy and guidelines, an inactive admin is hamstrung and nearly incapable of applying policy in a conscientious manner because of the frequently changing environment. An inactive admin is thus either going to make mistakes in the application of policy or self-prevented from using admin tools..so why have them? This is just one aspect of why an inactive admin candidate is of concern to some people. There are others. --Durin 14:42, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

While I don't disagree with the point, there are a good few existing admins who don't know up-to-date procedures, and who are probably implementing policy as it was rather than as it is. I'm not sure what conclusion, if any, one should draw from that! The Land 14:56, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

I disagree with this point. There is no reason to believe that someone's edit rate is strongly related to their *reading* of policy discussion. I do agree that people engaged in some admin activities need to say current with our policies and practices, but edit rate isn't a good metric there. Why don't we ask people what admin process related subjects they stay current on and how they keep up with the flood of changes rather than try to guess at their behavior by looking at electronic chicken bones? We also must keep in mind that little of what we do can not be reverted, so if someone does fall behind it is easy enough to correct their mistake and clue them in... We'll have to do that in any case, because people are simple not going to read every single change. --Gmaxwell 15:14, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

• In response to The Land, the main point is that policy is not dictated by what is written on the policy page. Policy is what exists in the mindset (yes, consensus) of most editors. Of course that's hard to gauge unless you're a telepath, but that's why we write it down. If I were to add to policy that people whose username starts with T may be permablocked, then it wouldn't be policy even if nobody bothered to revert it (and yes, that happens a lot, albeit in less extreme examples than I just stated). So being level-headed is far more important for an admin than knowing policy pages by heart. Radiant_>|< 22:43, 12 December 2005 (UTC)
  • Very funny. All users that have a username that concludes with an exclamation mark will be permablocked on sight, beginning now. </sarcasm> Titoxd^{(?!? - did you read this?)} 02:46, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

Most admins stick to one or two areas so they don't need to know every bit of policy. On top of that not all policy is about admin actions.Geni 11:01, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

edit history tool (Archive 45)

I've written a tool that gives an alternative view of a user's edit history, see here. As far as I'm aware, it gives more insight into a user's edits, and allows easier viewing of conversations on AN/I and such than existing tools that I'm aware of. Here is an example of AN/I tracking, click on the "context" link, and the user's edit will appear at the bottom of the history, allowing you to see anyone that may have replied to the user.

The sort-by-name feature [8] allows one to quickly look at just AfDs, or WP:AN comments, or just WikiProject contributions, etc.

The tool is somewhat targeted to the RFA process, and if anyone has any suggestions to improve its applicability to RFA, please let me know. --21:58, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

• —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Interiot (talk • contribs) .

That's handy, having a link to the various articlespaces like that. Makes things very handy for checking out someone's contribs. --Deathphoenix 22:13, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

Absolutely. Already bookmarked. · Katefan0^(scribble)/mrp 22:14, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

That is pretty rad. --LV ^{(Dark Mark)} 22:23, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

Great job! Flcelloguy (A note?) 23:05, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

Wow. How much of a server impact is there? Does it cache? KillerChihuahua^?!? 22:54, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

Heh, Kate will tell me soon enough if anything is being abused too much. :) Nope, no caching except for what mysql does itself. People on the toolserver do run queries that take some time to run, and this tool ends up being fast because I was able to pull the data off of indexed fields (eg. in the second view that lists the individual articles, I would have liked to have included date-first-edited and date-last-edited, but that field didn't seem to be indexed). Still, it's pushing some number of bytes over HTTP. Maybe it should have the "(next 50)" links like the Special: pages have. On the other hand, if it's really popular, maybe somebody should code it in PHP so it is a Special: page. --Interiot 23:08, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

very useful - good work that interiot! Grutness...wha? 23:38, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

re-indentingExcellent work without doubt. In fact, I've used this tool in its previous avatar to understand the nature of my contributions. I have some concerns, though, but doubt if these can be addressed by the tool. If I look at my contribs to article space using the tool, the top four articles in terms of edits [9] are those where I have been fighting vandalism, link spam and POV. Whenever I create articles, I use an off-line editor and hence even full-length articles started by me are in the region of 5 to 8 edits - e. g. Aruna Asaf Ali and Tanguturi Prakasam. Hence, we should not be blindly following the tool but using it in conjunction with answer to Q.2 + with the statistic of edits per page. Thanks to the current version of the tool, we can dig deeper and we should do so, probably at least for the top 5 on the list and the bottom 5 on the list, to get a flavor of the editor's contribs. --Gurubrahma 05:28, 12 January 2006 (UTC)

Certainly, automated tools can't/shouldn't be a major influence on RFA's. Any tool will certainly distort your own edit history, and probably others too, and not always in immediately-obvious ways. But hopefully it moves a little beyond unvarnished editcountitis at least. --Interiot 05:47, 12 January 2006 (UTC)

Nice!! Very nice indeed! Editcountis may be mitigated somewhat because you can check out what lies BEYOND the plain numbers. Good work! The Minister of War ^(Peace) 10:11, 12 January 2006 (UTC)

Good vandal fighter not necessarily = good administrator (Archive 46)

I think it's time to make a point about this. Many recent nominations (my own in part as well) have been because the nominee is a "tireless vandal whacker" or some other. Remember, people, good vandal whackers are not necessarily good admins. If all they keep to is vandal fighting there is no way to trust that the nominees understand Wikipedia policy enough. Please, people, only put forward nominees because they have shown commitment to actually showing an effort to understand policy; we're getting more rogue admins and I wonder how much part this has had to play. NSLE _(T+C) 12:45, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

I agree that NSLE has a point—reverting vandalism alone does not a good admin make. To be fair, dealing with vandals and trolls is a good chunk of what a lot of admins do. Vandal whacking is much easier with rollback and blocking tools, and a familiarity with vandal tactics is definitely useful to a prospective admin.

I would argue that new admins need not be familiar with all the policy minutiae of Wikipedia. More important is that they be prepared to ask other admins for assistance if they are unsure of what to do in a particular situation, and ot explain their actions calmly and politely if asked. If our new admin wants to avoid the policy discussions and limit himself to rolling back vandalism and blocking vandals, I see no problem with that.

I'd be careful about begging the question where the issue of 'rogue' admins comes up. Is our judgement at RFA becoming worse, or are there just more admins in total? Further, is the problem one of new admins, or old admins who can do no wrong? The names I see attached to controversy on WP:AN/I are seldom wet-behind-the-ears newly-raised raw-recruited admins; usually they have months or (often) years of experience, many thousands of edits, and insufferable smugness. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 14:21, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

I agree, TenOfAllTrades, but I believe the point NSLE is trying to elaborate (or rather bring to the table) is that administratrs are being selected for all the wrong reasons. A admin should be aware of most policies and guidelines, should be a fairly competent mediator, knows when to keep their cool, and has the well-being of wikipedia in mind. Reverting vandalism is of course a valid part of my last point, but NSLE is correct in assuming that has little to do with the selection of an administrator. After all, rollback is not mandatory regarding the removal of it. -Zero^Talk 14:37, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

Not really sure. I would argue that the admin tools aren't strictly necessary, not with popup-assisted reversions now available. I would agree with you that a good vandal fighter doesn't necessarily mean a good admin, and we've been getting a lot of vandal fighters who do little else. I'd feel more comfortable voting in someone who's done a little more non-vandal-fighting activities around Wikipedia. However, I agree with TenOfAllTrades: these vandal-fighting new admins aren't necessarily the problem: these folks tend to stick with what they're most comfortable with, and that's reverting vandalism. Some (if not most) also spread their wings to blocking vandals, but so far, the only real mistakes I've seen these guys do is maybe blocking vandals a little too early (ie, before sending a test3 or test4), but I have to say that jumping the gun a little on blocking vandals isn't as serious a crime as, say, wheel warring or blocking Jimbo from editing. Unless there is more evidence that pure vandal fighting admins are causing a lot of the new wheel-warring problems, I'd have no problem with the several recent nominations of specialised vandal-fighters (though I won't necessarily support these candidates because of my own personal standards). --Deathphoenix 14:31, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

• Nobody is familiar with all Wikipedia policy. Have a look at this please. If all they keep to is vandal fighting, then what's the worry? If they decide to venture outside of vandal fighting, then we presume they exercise good judgement; and that's part of what RfA is supposed to do - see if the candidate exhibits good judgement. Besides, as has recently been shown by ArbCom and Jimbo, policy is meaningless. What matters is common sense and tradition. The problem isn't people knowing policy or not. The problem is rogue admins willfully ignoring process and policy, and being supported by ArbCom in doing so. --Durin 14:32, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

From Deathphoenix's statement above: as serious a crime as, say, wheel warring or blocking Jimbo from editing.

Since when has blocking Jimbo become a crime? Jimbo himself is very clear that in matters that do not involve his personal capacity of WP chief, he is same as any other user. He can unblock himself like any admin can; but my guess is that he wouldn't.

So, while wheelwarring may be a crime, blocking Jimbo or any other user is not a crime. I am assuming that a user gets blocked when he is in the wrong. If the blocking is not done per policy, blocking a noob or an anon is as serious a crime as blocking Jimbo. Please let us not perpetuate a hierarchy of users - this is what makes people believe that we form a cabal. --Gurubrahma 15:57, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

• I would argue that there is a cabal, if unintentional and not organized as such. There are people who can literally get away with anything, and have nothing come of it. We as humans tend to stratify. The more we know someone, the more likely it is that we will trust them (or distrust them) and give them the benefit of the doubt. Same applies here at Wikipedia. Users with whom we are familiar get our respect and trust. Meanwhile, the new user is often judged quickly, chastised, blocked, etc. However, the reality that this is normal human behavior does not make it acceptable here. What we are trying to do is unique, and requires us to move away from these norms and insist that we treat others with the same respect we treat ourselves until such time as that trust is broken. Current practice at Wikipedia is not strongly enforcing the notion of equality for all. In fact, rather the opposite in some cases. --Durin 16:07, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Re: blocking Jimbo, can't I make a joke without it being taken seriously and being jumped on? ;-) How about I change it to deleting the Main page? --Deathphoenix 16:08, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

I might not go so far as to call blocking Jimbo "a crime", but I also can't think of any reason that blocking him would be warranted (except perhaps if there was credible evidence that his account had been hijacked). As the founder of Wikipedia, there's an overwhelming assumption that all of Jimbo's actions are made in the best of faith. Even when I've disagreed with his actions, I've never doubted that he was attempting to improve Wikipedia. I'd probably have to question an admin's judgement if they decided that blocking Jimbo was the best way to handle a situation. Carbonite | Talk 16:11, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

In a nutshell, I completely agree with NSLE. Now that folks are using popups-assisted software to revert vandalism, the rollback button isn't needed for folks who like to spend their time fighting vandals. (Of course being able to enforce a test4 warning is nice too.) I need to see how someone has handled themselves in a conflict with other editors -- usually, over content -- before I'm comfortable saying yes. Generally, of course there may be exceptions. But generally. How someone handles themselves in conflicts and a basic knowledge of Wikipedia's policies and workings are the most important factors for me. · Katefan0^(scribble)/mrp 16:14, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

Well, I don't know if it was warranted or not, but Jimbo was blocked for a token 1 second by Celestianpower recently; it had to do with Category:Living people. --Gurubrahma 16:20, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

Popups-assisted reverts are considerably slower and server-intensive compared to the one-click function enabled for admins; I still maintain that reversion is a tool, not a power, though, so my objection is technical, not substantive. -- nae'blis _(talk) 20:54, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

I'm going to have to disagree with you, NSLE. I have recently had a change of heart on this subject. I used to want participation across many different kinds of project namespaces and talks. Now, I'm completely content with heavy participation in just one project namespace and its talk page (for policy discussion). If all a person deals with is vandals and AFD, I don't see where the problem is. Why does a person have to be involved in everything on Wikipedia? What's the deal with these high standards when most normal people haven't got enough time to explore every crevasse of this website. Let's relax on the standards, folks, and make a judgment call on each individual. One month, four months, two years...it shouldn't make a difference as long as the person has exhibited a massive amount of understanding and devotion to a certain Wikipedia project. Think about it...if a person has made 5,000 edits, half of which are not minor, in one month, are you really going to say, "I just don't have enough information to see if he'll abuse his powers." He's done 5,000 edits in 1 month! No vandal is that devoted. Let's all take a deep breath and get over ourselves, ok? JHMM13 (T | C) 04:01, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

I'm going to have to strongly disagree with you here. There are plenty of users that make tons of edits that would be entirely unsuitable for adminship. It appears you are either not looking hard enough or haven't been around long enough to see that. Some of our most problematic admins make a ton of edits. Admin candidates should have broad experience accross the project because the admin tools are broad in what they can do. No one should get the ability to block another user without demonstrating they have some maturity, understanding of policy, and ability to work through a conflict. So basically I'm agreeing with NSLE, but I'll never agree to a hard edit count limit as the above section proposes. - Taxman ^Talk 14:14, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

I don't think you understand what I'm saying, which is essentially that it's possible for a person to be here for a month and understand enough to be a pretty good admin. Since when has adminship been an exclusive club? If a user makes a whole bunch of good edits, and shows good conflict resolution abilities, I think we can assume good faith and allow the user to have admin abilities as long as they promise not to overstep the limitations of their skill set (which is what EVERY admin does when he gets the job because no single user knows everything about everything on Wikipedia...if I ever became an admin, I wouldn't go anywhere near images because I'm just no good at it). I don't see why anyone here gets to say how long you have to be here in order to be an admin. And though you say I have an inability to "see that," and I assume you are implying that I suffer from editcountitis, I don't know how else you can determine a user's future without looking at his past. However, suffering from minimumtimeitis is BY FAR worse because it assumes that youth alone is a determining factor in the abilities of a user. A user who does 5,000 good edits in one month with lots of participation across a few different areas of Wikipedia will get less support votes than a user who has done 2,500 good edits in six months. Please explain to me how the second guy has more experience, because it completely baffles me. JHMM13 (T | C) 15:35, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

If I can take a stab at it, the latter may be seen as having more experience because edits =/= page views. Someone who has been here for one month and done 5000 non-bot edits gives the appearance of having had their nose almost entirely in the edit screen; someone who has done less total edits in a longer period of time has had more time to, potentially, read policy/guideline pages, research sources offsite, etc. It's unquantifiable, but that'd be my guess. -- nae'blis _(talk) 20:54, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

I'd like to see a user that makes 5000 edits in one month. -Zero^Talk 20:56, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

User:RexNL tool. :-) --LV ^{(Dark Mark)} 20:58, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

Is that a dare, Megaman? An experienced user who focussed solely on categories, RC, and AFD, could easily rack up that many in a month if they had too much free time. After all, that's only about 136 edits a day, and there have to be at least that many AFDs and actionable recent changes in a day... --maru (talk) Contribs 21:00, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

Getting slow, are we, Maru??? ;-) I already provided a user who is pushing 9000 edits this month alone. And he still has a week to increase his number. --LV ^{(Dark Mark)} 21:15, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

Hey- I never said I was going to take the dare. --maru (talk) contribs 18:14, 24 February 2006 (UTC)

Mathbot (Archive 48)

I'd like to see Mathbot stopped from adding the usual bunch of statistical nonsense to the bottom of nominations. For starters, it promotes needless numeric criteria. We're not here to vote for the person with the most interesting edit summaries. We're here to discuss people who we think would find the administrator tools useful, and who wouldn't abuse them. If people want to impose numeric criteria, let them; but let them also go and get their own facts. Having them lurking about promotes bad feeling; RfA is enough of a mudslinging contest at times without having to accept that you missed an edit summary at some point. In addition, it means newcomers to RfA (who would otherwise put forward useful points) resort to using numeric criteria. Rob Church (talk) 18:55, 19 February 2006 (UTC)

Would it be feasible, I wonder, if Mathbot's computations were converted to a tool just like (or integrated with) Interiot's edit counter? That would still make the information accessible for those who feel it's relevant, but it wouldn't make it the first thing you see on a new nomination. (ESkog)^(Talk) 18:58, 19 February 2006 (UTC)

Well, provided it wasn't linked to, I suppose that would be OK. People would still be aware of it if it was useful to them. I just don't like the stigma attached to a lot of RfA's these days, and am working to cut it down; this is part one - beginning to remove the reliance on pure numbers. Rob Church (talk) 19:12, 19 February 2006 (UTC)

Now that there's assistance (in most major browsers) to ensure 100% completion of edit summaries, I think it is significant when an editor chooses not to give summaries, and absent an explanation why not, I'd tend to see that as a factor (a semi minor one, and one of many possible factors, mind you!!!) suggesting oppose. So I appreciate having the stats there in the nom so I don't have to follow links. It gives more time to spend looking at other things relating to the nom, which is goodness. Why make info harder to find? ++Lar: t/c 19:35, 19 February 2006 (UTC)

Just like to point out that I rarely give edit summaries. Probably I should for main article namespace, but for talk pages and user pages? I don't really want to and I don't see the need. - Ta bu shi da yu 02:07, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

Why not? I find edit summaries quite useful. Even on talk pages. In fact, especially there, sometimes, as the summary can give you a clue where to look in a long long section to see what new comment was added. For example THIS comment was added in the middle (to preserve threading) and the summary I used will help readers find it. I think that "because you don't want to do something" is not a reason not to do it. ++Lar: t/c 18:20, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

For the record, the bot looks only at the article and category namespace in calculating the edit summary usage, as those are most important (and I may remove the category, not sure). But I agree with Lar that edit summaries are important in general. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 18:50, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

Per TBSDY, I'd like to say I almost never use edit summaries on talk pages. I strive to use them as much as I can in my article edits, but on talk pages they seem kind of pointless. If I'm editing Talk:Foo, section ==Bar==, it's plain to see I'm talking about Bar, which relates to Foo in some way. Szyslak ( [ +t, +c, +m, +e ]) 06:58, 23 February 2006 (UTC)

I had promised to myself to not get involved in this discussion, but can't abstain. :) I don't care a thing about the fate of my silly bot, but I am not happy with Rob's suggestion about his intent in "beginning to remove the reliance on pure numbers". How often a user puts edit summaries is a number, how many edits he/she has is a number, how many of those are in the Wikipedia namespace is a number, how many months the admin nominee has been here is a number, how many times a user reverts an article is a number, and so on. Surely the numbers don't tell the whole story, maybe not even a tenth of it, but they are of some importance, albeit each person has his own views on how much weight these are worth. If you remove any quantitative analysis, what are you left with? Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 20:17, 19 February 2006 (UTC)

The Mathbot results were probably the last straw that killed my first RfA, but I still support Oleg. The more objective results are provided, the more informed are the voters. If somebody would write a similar bot that would provide other objective summaries (number of reverts, number of articles ever reverted, number of AfD votes, number of edites per categories, etc. it would also help) abakharev 22:23, 19 February 2006 (UTC)

My own feeling is that the mathbot is useful but can be easily gamed. It gives edit summaries for last 150 major and minor edits - how difficult is it to notch that 100% over a period of 15 days (esp. given the fact that people tend to get active just before getting nommed)? I'd believe that we should have a look at edit summary usage throughout the history of the user - we should probably be ready to accept that we may need to be ready to embrace a lower % as the standard in such a case. --Gurubrahma 20:32, 19 February 2006 (UTC)

All numerical criteria can be gamed. For example, it takes only a couple of weeks to get more than a thousand Wikipedia space contributions by just voting with the majority in AfD's that have a couple of votes already. That's why the quality of contributions should always play a role, more than their number. Also, increased edit summary usage immediately before the RfA is only bad if the candidate stops using edit summaries after having been promoted. Kusma (討論) 20:42, 19 February 2006 (UTC)

• Eh, I've observed that a candidate can easilly appease the edit summary crowd just by installing software to force edit summaries. The candidates who've done this have all been promoted, as far as I know. The recent candidates who haven't, and instead have either challenged the opposers or ignored them, have all been unsuccessful. So it's not like someone is doomed to fail if they have a poor edit summary score, they can just pledge to change their ways and most people will be happy with that. Edit summaries are good, after all... --W.marsh 20:44, 19 February 2006 (UTC)

Numbers are important, but they are not critical. There is a problem when a nominee is analyzed completely with numbers. However, there is also a problem when a nominee is analyzed just by nepotism, so eliminating the statistics isn't the best solution. Titoxd^{(?!? - help us)} 20:45, 19 February 2006 (UTC)

I wonder if it would be possible for Mathbot to provide a history, like Interiot's edit counter does? That would help answer the objection about gaming the system, I should think. Also, I'm curious if Rob Church is proposing eliminating all numerical criteria? I think that might be a good thing. However, as long as edit count is emphasized, usually as part of the nomination, I think that use of edit summaries provides another dimension to those who are inclined to weigh numbers heavily. To respond to ESkog, Mathbot is available in a manner similar to Interiot's edit counter. [10]

Well, we provide a link to the edit count rather than transcluding the number in the RfA itself. It seems to me that a fair compromise would be to link to this report as well, unless server strain and other concerns would outweigh this. (ESkog)^(Talk) 21:15, 19 February 2006 (UTC)

Providing a link to the edit summary usage may give some strain on the server, as my bot now sheepishly goes through the user's contributions fetched with an HTTP request, instead of Interiot's tool which talks directly to the database. I will talk to Interiot about absorbing my tool into his edit count tool. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 22:31, 19 February 2006 (UTC)

Of the current RfAs, I count 7 where the edit count is quoted in the nomination and 5 where it is not. The edit count for one of the 7 is in bold-face. For those 7, including the summary usage numbers explicitly helps to broaden the numerical picture of the nominee. I think Oleg Alexandrov's work is commendable. Walter Siegmund (talk) 23:25, 19 February 2006 (UTC)

When MathBot began doing the numbers, I noted that there would be significant flack. Well, above you can see I was right. Edit summary usage as an RfA metric has been and will remain controversial. In fact, all numeric metrics for evaluating a candidate have been controversial. As most of you know, I used to do charts for admin nominees with <2000 edits (example). I did a few dozen of them over the span of a few months. I was roundly attacked by a small, but vocal minority who were adamantly opposed to the charts. Eventually, I stopped making them. Interestingly, I later on looked at the success/failure of those RfAs compared with other RfAs in the same category that I did not do charts for. The comparison showed that RfAs with the charts had a ~10% greater chance of succeeding than those that did not. The point in my making the charts was to reduce people's utter reliance on arbitary numbers (999 edits is unacceptable, but 1,001 is...). It seems it was working. Interiot's tool has largely replaced the efforts I was engaging in. I think the general stance "number metrics suck" is flawed; they can and have helped. --Durin 14:57, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

I agree with this. Metrics are like any data, like any tool, they can be misused, or used wisely. Work to change the usage, not the tool availability. (when numbers are outlawed, only outlaws will have numbers!!!) ++Lar: t/c 18:20, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

I dislike people giving too much weight to purely statistical things (edit count, edit summaries, time at project) but in general people should be able to post whatever they want on people's RfA (vandalism, obviously, excluded). If even one person feels like its relevant, then they should be able to add it in the comments section. That having been said, these newbies that you speak of: if they are going to make uninformed decisions based solely on this data, then they are just as likely to make equally uninformed decisions without it. Many editors do care about these facts and theres no reason they should have to go trace all of it down themselves every time. This discussion seems to be addressing a symptom, not the problem. savidan^{(talk) (e@)} 17:44, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

Okay, seriously, enough editcountitis (Archive 51)

Editcountitis is completely out of hand. I'm seeing people opposing candidates for not editing at a sustained rate of over 600 edits per month. If people can make edits that quickly, it's because they're never undertaking anything difficult, or (if they really are making 600 high-quality edits) they're so obsessed with Wikipedia that they never do anything else, and may not have the necessary perspective ("it's okay, it's just Wikipedia") to step back from a conflict when one arises.

We need more admins who haven't been spending months on end tailoring their edits to the RfA mold. (As I see it, the mold is something like this: large numbers of edits per month, predominantly on AfD to get name recogition among the crowd that does both RfA and AfD, and on RC patrol to get easy quick edits, with enough article and talk edits to make people happy.) Having some admins who predominantly do AfD and RC patrol is fine, of course, but the state of RfA is making them thoroughly overrepresented. I want to see more admins who do cleanup, work on WikiProjects, and handle disputes: actions that are not reflected in a number.

For those who oppose due to a "low" editing rate, what are you hoping to accomplish? What desirable properties does an editor who makes 600 edits a month have over one who makes 150 or 200? And given the warning that "editcountitis can be fatal", what would you consider editcountitis? --rspeer / ɹəədsɹ 17:54, 9 April 2006 (UTC)

I'd consider over 2000 editcountitis. After that, one gets diminishing returns- a person will show warning signs between 0 and 2000, but after 2000, they are vastly less likely to melt down as a regular editor. Rates have a similar argument. When you undertake large complex tasks like wholesale reorganizing and improving of a large category, it simply can't be done in a few spare minutes on the weekend. Plus, spending a lot of time editting stresses the editor, and letss us see whether they will "break", so to speak. --maru (talk) contribs 18:02, 9 April 2006 (UTC)

I don't quite understand your response. Over 2000 what? I'm using "editcountitis" to mean "putting an unreasonable emphasis on edit count in adminship decisions", and I'm assuming that those who do emphasize the edit count so much don't see it as unreasonable. I'm asking, how far would it have to go before you see it as unreasonable?

On a high edit count being a test that an admin won't "break", I'd say that it only shows they haven't broken yet. I think that by demanding high edit counts, you get admins with a much higher probability of burning out. rspeer / ɹəədsɹ 18:29, 9 April 2006 (UTC)

Naw. If we enforced really high edit rates, then perhaps. But this is like tempering metal- sure, if you tempered continually until it shattered, then there is no point, but if you temper once or twice, it comes out better. And besides, if they were going to burnout quickly, wouldn't they do so while attempting to attain that high edit count? --maru (talk) contribs 03:37, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

As I see it, the answer was just that -- any standard over 2000 edits is unreasonable. I would put the threshold around that mark too. Fetofs ^Hello! 02:43, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

Oh, okay. I still can't tell if it's 2000 edits total (a reasonable standard to me, but I'd still support a good contributor with less) or 2000 a month (e-freaking-gad!) But I'll assume it's in total. That's fine. My beef is with the fact that people with, say, 3500 edits are getting opposed for making them too slowly. rspeer / ɹəədsɹ 03:06, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

Read my comment again, rspeer. I address total edits first, and then another sentence addresses rates. Any standard demanding more than 2000 edits total is pointless, but I'm not too sure what the rate for edits should be. At least an average of 5 a day, I would think, since just watchlist monitoring and occasional prose cleanups would give as much. --maru (talk) contribs 03:37, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

I suspect that RfA is harming the community at times by forcing those who are predominantly editors into other tasks which they may not be interested or good in, just for the sake of getting through the RfA. Someone like Tyrenius (I am assuming that what he said about himself in the RfA was true) was rejected because - to be frank - he did not know the tricks. When someone is rejected for a reason like that he will probably go back and do the things that rspeer said (a few AfD votes, a few reverts, slice his edits thin), come back two months later and win easily. All that the RfA succeeded in doing would have been to decrease the quality of the contributions of a good editor, possibly permanently. I would love to see some study on the changes in editing patterns of people who are predominantly editors just before and after standing in an RfA. Tintin (talk) 05:25, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

I have to agree. Some of my first edits were complete articles. I remember working all evening on a page and only hit the "Save Page" button once. The first time I saw RfA and people were saying that candidates needed over a thousand edits, I was in awe. How could anyone possibly do that much work?! Recently, using AWB I racked up several hundred edits in a day doing some recategorization. So what are we looking for people who can make a minor change to an entire category or people who write articles? If we are going to accumulate statistics, we should look for things like how many paragraphs a person added (defined as text of some minimum length with two or more periods). -- Samuel Wantman 06:59, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

For me (see my question on Tawker's rfa) I like to see a consistent level of contributions. I'd be happier supporting someone with 300 edits a month for four months (for example) then one who has fluctuated so much like Tawker's, which is why I went neutral. Its not the overall level, its an indication that the contributor's current level work - the one we are judging them by - is one that they will be continuing at. Robdurbar 08:26, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

I can assure you that what I wrote in my abortive RfA was true. I have been putting a lot of work into building up a weak area of Wiki, namely contemporary UK art and am amazed at how little is being contributed to these articles, and how some important subjects have no entry at all. My RfA was primarily so that I could be more effective contributing to this area of Wiki with some of the facilities available to admins, such as rollback, moving articles where there is a redirect, blocking consistent vandals etc. I am constantly patrolling and rv vandals through my watchlist, and think this is a major problem on Wiki. I have to contact admins for assistance over some matters, and it seemed to me that it would ease the workload if I could do it myself,as well as saving my time.

I felt I had demonstrated a good standard of contribution, with material properly researched and referenced etc, and had also shown myself able to intervene helpfully in disputes, both activities acknowledged by others with whom I had interacted — see latest on my talk page. There is, as far as I can see, nothing in my history to indicate that I would use any admin rights in a harmful way. Surely that is the only problem that needs to be considered. The statistical yardstick for judging RfA can, as has been pointed out, be counterproductive to Wiki's prime purpose.

Tyrenius 22:16, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

Editcountitis surely can go wrong. However, Tyrenius, Interiot's tool gives you 85 user talk edits. I would think that this number is too low to have a reasonable certainty that you as a user interacted enough with the community, and as such, can be trusted to not abuse the tools. Edit counts are a bad yardstick by which to judge people, but it may be a sign of how much the user has been around, however imperfect. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 22:45, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

In the ideal world there is little need for user talk, if, for example, article edits are done with accurate, relevant information from NPOV and properly referenced. Articles are the only reason for Wiki's existence; everything else has come about in order to deal with the issues arising from them, but the ancillary activities have now become a purpose in themselves, and it is easy to forget the reason for their existence. The reliance on quantitative over qualitative assessment "penalises" editors who, for example, take care not to make edits which will lead to complex discussions, or who settle disputes quickly and cleanly. I find that people reveal themselves and their attitudes very quickly in Wiki, as in life, and that this is apparent in an editor's work in whatever field they have focused. Article edits are just as effective in judging an editor's disposition as user talk or other edits. The current mode encourages the "tricks" referred to by Tintin, and does not acknowledge properly those who maintain Wiki's primary focus on reliable encyclopaedic material. This is also a perception I have encountered with colleagues, who have been put off as a result from contributing.

Tyrenius 00:29, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

I'll sign my name to any end to editcountitis proposal. Use of the Show preview button should keep edit counts down and would be a good indicator of care in editing but editcountitis rewards making a major edit and then following it up with a series of minor ones that obscure significant changes in watchlists. MLA 09:33, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

If I can just chime in, I don't think that an absolute limit at 2000, or indeed any absolute limit is any good. As I say in my admin criterion subpage, Wikipedians are not Dungeons & Dragons characters who are suddenly imbued with twice the power and understanding when they reach 2000 edits (=experience points). I personally think that a person with an "average" amount of article writing, RC patrolling and a fairly conscientious use of "show preview" will have sufficient experience at 1500, but variations here are enormous. Hermione1980 stands as a shining example of a good sub-1000 edit candidate, while an editor who makes 500 substubs is not as experienced as one who has made 20 good articles with 100 edits. If you find yourself voting based on Interiot's tool, stop using it and go through the contributions list instead and check the diffs out. Are the contributions in policy and deletion discussions well-thought out, demonstrating understanding of Wikipedia's "behind the scenes" working? Are there good edits to the encyclopedia demonstrating understanding of Wikipedia's mission to be an encyclopedia? That type of search says much more than neat graphs. Sjakkalle (Check!) 12:06, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

I would definitely agree with the top quote. 600 edits per month?? I think this is going out of hand. Maybe a few years from now, the opposing side will say I oppose because this user edits less than 500 times a week. Funnybunny 14:50, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

This is getting out of control (Archive 53)

Hypothetical questions and "I would like to see more of..." votes are two ways voters are trying to exercise power over admins. There is at least one voter who votes no if any admin refuses or otherwise fails to answer his long, extremely hypothetical questions (involving god, a priest etc etc) within 24 hours. Then there are the others who dangle the ever diminishing carrot "I'd vote for ya, but I'd like to see just a few more edits...". 500 edits was once enough. Then it was 1000. Now 3000 is a more reasonable target. Why? Because adminning is suddenly harder? No, because voters simply want to extract more from their candidates.

I was considering applying for admin. Hell, check out my edit summary stats, I've been suckered into commenting all my minor edits, even when they're creation of redirects, or in my own user space! What for? To pander to the voters. Will it make me a better admin?

Could we all get our minds a little bit more on the task of simply deciding whether someone is too risky to have as an admin? Low edit summary usage, edit counts in the 1000's, and failure to answer improbably hypothetical questions have nothing to do with that. Thanks. Stevage 23:19, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

Some questions have merit but the time limit on responses (aka I will vote oppose if no response within 24 hours) are pretty silly. Someone quoted CIVL as a reason, I don't get how its not CIVL to not respond to a question within 24 hours, admin (and candidates) are allowed to have lives too. Edit summaries, well, I'm 50/50 on em, they do help in RC Patrol but a lot are very very trivial. -- Tawker 23:32, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

On the other hand: "If you were admin, an angel, a prophet, and a priest all claiming that you must do something on Wikipedia behalf of your deity. One the page you was to work on they all contradict each other, the angel say save, the prophet say delete, the priest says rewrite a page. Who do you believe, and obey?" is definitely not helpful, especially the "believe, and obey" part, which suggests doing whatever they want rather then following policy. Prodego ^talk 23:37, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

That's certainly an interesting question. Candidates always have the right to pass over a question or indicate that they'd prefer not to answer it, though, if they choose. Thanks! Flcelloguy (A note?) 00:36, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

I don't think anything is out of control. I see it as just a low level of static. X number of people will vote oppose for silly reasons, and you will be asked a bunch of questions. Not too many people are going to care if you don't answer the silly question, those that do would probably have voted against you anyway. We still end up promoting good candidates all the time. Candidates and their supporters should just grin and bear it, and not worry about it too much. NoSeptember ^talk 00:46, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

I also think Stevage is exaggerating things a bit (and the comment about edit summaries was not quite accurate). Your adminship nomination failed for some good reasons. If you reaply at the end of May (two months since your last nomination) and don't do any big questionable things in between, from my experience you will have a very smooth sailing. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 01:31, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

Hi Oleg, just wanted to say I totally accept my RfA getting killed. My complaint isn't so much about that, but about the process in general - and how it will apply if/when I am nominated again :) Politics is always a dirty business, but these unreasonable demands are really unnecessary. Stevage 08:11, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

It doesn't matter if candidates have the option of foregoing answering the "optional" questions, since people will vote them down anyways solely for not answering the questions. --tomf688^{talk} 01:38, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

I think it may be a little crazy, but it is not yet near out of control. Prodego ^talk 01:39, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

• In plain english, with all these farfetched voting patterns.....I find RfA silly now. I look at some of the opposes and laugh, and think, "Thank god my RfA was in early March..." Something needs to be done if this spiral continues. — Deckiller 01:44, 21 April 2006 (UTC)
  • Perhaps de-admin all those promoted before March, and see if they can still hack it? -Splash^talk 02:56, 21 April 2006 (UTC)
    • Hmm? What I was saying was that I'm just seeing a lot more awkward opposes lately. Not enough to really affect the stats, but just enough to be noticable to me. — Deckiller 03:06, 21 April 2006 (UTC)
      • Yeah, in the last few days we have had opposing because questions werent answered in 24 hours, opposing basically because a candidate wasn't defensive enough, and opposing because a candidate thought that for content disputes admins are at the same level of other editors. And those are only the worse examples. JoshuaZ 03:09, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

This must be about the millionth thread on this hyperbole. Not a lot has changed in a couple of years, and Durin has produced graphs that prove it. Not much to do with edits, not much to do with behaviour. Sure, there are more questions lately. Don't answer them if you don't want to, and don't read them if they are answered if you don't want to. Don't complain that it's a pure vote at the same time. The comment above about "early March" exemplifies this: I find it more-or-less unbelievable that the world has shifted so much that you find things unrecognisable since 6 or 7 weeks ago. You just haven't been around here enough, that's all. To Stevage: yes, if you can't write an adequate edit summary for near every edit, and answer those questions skilfully, I do think you will be less of an admin for it, and you will be less likely to earn my support as a result. Good editors would be able to handle those things entirely gracefully, and all in a day's wikiwork. There'd be no need for "World is ending, must stop spiral of doom" threads, because they'd spot the flaws in the questions, and just have the good manners to summarise their edits. Extracting more from candidates is also reasonable. There are more of them to choose from; it's natural market forces, even though Wikipedia is not a market is a should-be bluelink. We need more admins, sure, but it's not like the current corps is cracking at the seams and on the verge of sinking (with some notable exceptions like WP:CP, but that's not a function of how many admins we have). -Splash^talk 02:56, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

• Hmm? Not trying to jump on you here but I think Durin's charts show substantial change in the past year on RfA. In 7/05 there was over an 80% success rate for candidates, by the end of 3/06 there was under a 50% success rate. Candidates being expected to play 20 questions is a new phenomenon, at least in my RfA a scant 4 months ago, I got the 3 default questions and that was it. It's true that candidates can skip the questions... but I highly doubt even a well qualified candidate would pass an RfA if they did that. --W.marsh 03:32, 21 April 2006 (UTC)
  • But these graphs draw straight lines through essentially random noise. Also, I did not talk about success rate. One explanation for that is that candidates are less qualified at the point of application than they used to be, without standards having shifted. That would tally reasonably well with a larger number of Wikipedians being around and thus those who have a weak appreciation of the hypothetically static standards being more likely to turn up here. The "average edit count of RfAs over time" graph exemplifies the fact that statistical techniques need care in their application: I find it more or less meaningless to draw a straigh line through a thing that goes up, down, round about and finishes up more or less where it started. Don't always blame the RfA participators for a candidate being rejected: it may well be the candidates fault entirely. I already dealt with the questions, and anyone saying that they are a problem should go and mark their ballot paper in the polling booth and wait for the results of the vote. If a well-qualified candidate can't answer those questions, then I disagree that they are well-qualified. If a well-qualified candidate thinks themselves above community scrutiny and feels no need to respond when information is asked for, then again I disagree that they are as well-qualified as the assumption in your statement. -Splash^talk 10:55, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

You know what should also be a bluelink? Wikipedia is not a contest. While our community shouldn't hesitate to set standards for adminship, you shouldn't have to have a jaw-dropping edit count, a huge portfolio of featured articles or 100% edit summary usage. Reading through the oppose votes on some current RFAs, it seems to me that a few users here and there are digging pretty deep to find reasons to oppose. I mean, a couple of editors think admins are not allowed to name themselves after a fictional character. Really, where do people come up with this stuff? Apparently some expect potential admins to be absolutely perfect Wikipedians in all possible ways, picking out outlandish, contrived "flaws". szyslak (t, c, e) 07:21, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

Done, I just created a proposal for Wikipedia:Wikipedia is not a contest. Pegasus1138^{Talk | Contribs | Email} ---- 07:27, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

There doesn't really seem to be any consistancy to some people's comments either. For example, User:Lord Voldemort and User:Can't sleep, clown will eat me were given oppose votes for having supposed "copyrighted" usernames yet I wasn't? Jedi6-(need help?) 07:35, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

The old addage "WP:NOT consistent" comes to mind here. Oh well, what can you do. 8-) Can't sleep, clown will eat me 07:58, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

On edit summary usage, I agree with Splash that an editor who always comments is better than one who only sometimes does. But is a non-commenter too risky to be an admin? If it becomes a big problem, perhaps someone could just tell him: hey, you're an admin now, mind using a few more edit summaries? Splash argues that given the oversupply of admins and the smaller demand, then "natural market forces" leads us to oppose them? I disagree. We have a policy to apply that says that anyone vaguely trustworthy should be acceptable. Until that policy changes, I don't believe "natural market forces" have a place here. Stevage 08:11, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

Which policy says that? Never have I read a page on Wikipedia that says "anyone who is vaguely trustworthy shall be an admin". And, anyway, policy is what people does. The "give it away to anyone" thing has probably never been true, and it isn't now. Jimbo's "no big deal" comment requires a great deal of interpretation, not least to elevate it to a policy, to reach the kind of conclusion you're demanding. The problem, most often, in a failed RfA is with the candidate and not the process or the community (not always, no, but most often). -Splash^talk 10:55, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

Indeed. It is only natural that when admins are in rich supply (acting admins, not inactive accounts with admin rights), there is no need to appoint anybody, except for people with a potential to be extremely useful and very unlikely to become problem users. Otoh, when admin tasks are piling up with no-one bothering to do them, the community will be eager to promote anybody vaguely trustworthy with an interest in doing them. Yes, these are market forces, and yes, the community should select admins from a rationale entirely biased towards the maximum benefit of the project, and no, there is no inherent right to be an admin. I would be open towards unbureaucratic de-adminning procedures for less than useful admins (viz., bitching/wheel-warring to mopping ratio; disclaimer: I know I'm no showcase admin, but I am here to write articles first and foremost; my occasional admin actions are next to always uncontroversial, so I argue my admin rights continue to be slightly beneficial at zero cost to the community). dab (ᛏ) 11:22, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

Re no need to appoint just anybody, recently a certain user has been supporting candidates with the reason

"Currently, there is only one admin to every ~1,224 articles and ~1449 users. I.E., they number at just ~0.07% of the total population on Wikipedia. I'd say that is too few. At least 0.1% would be adequate. An idea you should apply if deemed necessary- Watch any new admin's actions closely for the first thirty days to make sure they are fit for the job"

Can we ignore these supports as disruption? This user clearly does not observe usefulness of candidates before deciding upon his "vote". Otherwise we could just admin everyone for the sake of it already. NSLE _(T+C) at 12:09 UTC (2006-04-21)

I would slightly WP:AGF and say that the voter possibly means "we really need admins for these reasons and (implied) I don't see any strong reason why this person shouldn't be one." A more serious problem is that one of the user's unstated premises- that the above numbers are somehow bad- is questionable. There is no obvious reason why this should be too few or too many. How many admins we need is a function of many different things, how active the admins are, how much vandalism we have, how many admins are willing to do which admin duties etc. A backlog based argument might make sense. Furthermore, many of the users in the user total are blocked accounts, and it is highly unobvious why one would need a high admin/article ratio. An argument founded on these ratios is simply innumerate. JoshuaZ 13:17, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

• (Responding on several points above); Once again there's claims that the edit count standards are skyrocketing. As noted before, I'm slowly working my way through all RfAs done through WP:RFA. I've got the first 28 successful RfAs now. Average edit count at time of RfA: 3638. So far, there's only one unsuccessful RfA, and that user had 9 edits at time of RfA. There's lots more data to be mined here, but the average good candidate does not look all that dissimilar to current standards. It's going to take a while to collect all the data. But, when it's done I'll post my findings here (and, finally, all the raw data...you can start drooling now JoshuaZ, NoSeptember :))
• As to the ratios of users/admin and articles/admins...I've thought about these ratios as well, and keep track of them. However, I don't think they're particularly illuminating. There are plenty of articles on Wikipedia that never see edits. They're essentially static. So, the burden of such articles on the admin corps is zero. Similarly, there are literally hundreds of thousands of inactive accounts. Again, the burden is zero. What is probably more illuminating is how much activity there is relative to how many admins there are (though it'd be nice if we had a good read on the number of active admins). I've been keeping track of that ratio as well for a considerable length of time. I gauge this by the number of edits per day vs. the number of admins we have. While the number of users per admin keeps going up and up, and the number of articles per admin keeps going up and up, the number of edits per day divided by the number of admins we have has remained essentially flat for the last half year.
• Over the history of RfA there have been a number of trends regarding the ways in which people comment on RfAs. Some of you may recall the time period last year when people frequently did things like EXTREME LESBIAN SUPPORT!!! and the like. Right now, it's the fashion to add lots of questions to RfAs. I don't know that this is wrong per se; often the questions are good, and the answers illuminating. If a question is in bad faith, it should be treated as such. Maybe this is another way in which bureaucrats could help the process; shepherd the RfAs by monitoring what questions are asked and remove those that are inappropriate to the task at hand. Regardless, I think this fashion will probably pass, especially if the bureaucrats step in and begin culling inappropriate questions. --Durin 13:46, 21 April 2006 (UTC)
  • • Averages of all RfAs is less revelatory than a close inspection of close RfAs (both close successfuls and close failures).
    • I would note that a lot of the past failed RfAs were not properly recorded in the past as they are today, so a calcualtion of the success rate of submitted RfAs is also not truly accurate. I found 7 Failed RfAs from May/June 2004 that are not listed at Wikipedia:Unsuccessful adminship candidacies. NoSeptember ^talk 15:12, 21 April 2006 (UTC)
  • As someone who often adds questions and is slightly annoyed by the guilt by association with the more ridiculous questions, I would strongly support bureaucratic removal of unproductive questions. As to your other comments, as usual, they are very insightful. JoshuaZ 13:58, 21 April 2006 (UTC)
    • I concur. I extremely lesbian appreciate your statistics. Puts current fears on potential admins and number of admins in an objective perspective! Have bookmarked you stats page now as well, and look forward to drooling along with the rest ;-) The Minister of War ^(Peace) 14:26, 21 April 2006 (UTC)
    • I would strongly oppose bureaucrats removing questions. Their role is to determine what the outcome has been, not to control the process itself. Any editor can remove trollery when they see it, and all editors should avoid edit warring over a given question. -Splash^talk 14:48, 21 April 2006 (UTC)
      • Bureaucrats already do more at RfA than just resolve whether a person is given adminship privileges or not. I take your point though, in that if bureaucrats make subjective calls about such things there will be opposition. I agree. I'm just thinking that might be more palatable than non-bureaucrats removing bad-faith questions. It's a subjective move no matter how you do it, and bureaucrats are highly trusted individuals thus more likely to be non-controversial in removing such questions. --Durin 14:56, 21 April 2006 (UTC)
        • I think we overuse the term "highly trusted" about bureaucrats. They are trusted, yes, but the second they make a mistake, that trust goes out the window (at least from many who feel shortchanged by the mistake). Rather than setting them up as supermen of trustworthiness, we should just accept them as being human. Increasing their involvement during the RfA process is not necessary, they should not remove questions except those that anyone could remove as obviously silly or trollish. I don't see a bureaucrat removing a marginal question as being any less controversial an action just because they are a bureaucrat. NoSeptember ^talk 15:20, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

Low-edit-count welcoming template (Archive 54)

I had considered creating a template message to send to all candidates with under 1500 edits to pleasantly tell them that we never see someone with such limited involvement in Wikipedia succeed in RfA, and then give some suggestions for trying again in the future, and encouraging some other areas of the community they can become involved in in the meantime. I never put this together, but I think it would be a good idea if someone wants to do it. NoSeptember ^talk 12:15, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

1500 might be a little low for that - If there's a good reason for having such a low count many people will support at 1000, or at least change their usual oppose to a neutral. Discouraging people with low edit counts from trying would mean the editcountitis has won. --Tango 12:42, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

You mean a little high, surely? --Celestianpower ^háblame 12:56, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

Yes, high. Thanks. --Tango 14:57, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

The assumption is that once you reach 1500, you should be familiar enough with Wikipedia to know whether your RfA has any serious potential of success. This is about one user informing another user about the realities of life, not setting any sort of formal standard, so nothing needs to be agreed upon as to what the cut-off should be. Someone who decides to do this could pick another level, but it should not be too low to miss some of the uninformed candidates. NoSeptember ^talk 13:43, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

Sounds like a good idea, but maybe it should be used for editors who obviously do not understand the Requests for adminship process (if they think it's required to edit articles, for example). As Tango says, it would be tragic for editcountitis to win, even if it can be used (in some/many cases) as a rule of thumb to determine the capability of a user. -- Tangotango 14:04, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

For the reason that editcount isn't the end all that people think it is and for the fact that it isn't and shouldn't be absolute and we shouldn't be encourging editcountitis (which is what this would do) I think this is a bad idea. Pegasus1138^{Talk | Contribs | Email} ---- 15:30, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

• Since June 23, 2005 23 RfAs for users with less than 1500 edits have been successful. I have to agree with Tango. --Durin 14:06, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

  How many in 2006? I don't seem to remember any recent ones. NoSeptember ^talk 14:40, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

  Two. User:Wgfinley nominated on January 4, and User:Joke137 nominated on January 31. Wgfinley had 1414 edits with 47 support and 3 oppose, Joke137 1438 with 34 support and 5 oppose. --Durin 15:17, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

Ha ha. So if I said the cut-off should be 1400, I would have been spot on to say: RfAs of users with so few edits never succeed these days ;-). And both were nominated in January, so it is now almost 3 months since a sub-1500 RfA has passed. NoSeptember ^talk 15:39, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

How many with between 1000 and 1500 edit failed then in 2006? --Celestianpower ^háblame 15:38, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

• Does it matter how many failed or passed? ANY bar you choose to establish as a metric by which users should be encouraged not to apply sets an arbitrary standard. I could wrack up 2000 edits in a couple of hours if I really set out to do so. EDIT COUNTS DO NOT MATTER. You want to narrow it down to 1400? Fine. No, nobody since January 1, 2006 has passed with less than 1400 edits. So, I guess that schmuck who wants to apply who has 1390 edits is just totally unqualified and therefore we should stomp upon him for even thinking of applying for adminship. But, get 10 more edits and he's suddenly magically blessed enough to not get a warning template? Boy it sure is a good thing that User:Wgfinley applied when he had 1414 edits and not 20 less! He'd be a serious cretin if he'd done that! I say enough of this. No warning templates. Period. --Durin 16:04, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

  All this discussion about edit counts misses the whole point, which is to politely inform uninformed candidates that their nominations are not realistic because they are well short of general standards of the community. It has nothing to do with edit counts, that is just an arbitrary number anyway. Plus it is not a warning template, it is a welcoming template intended to not bite the newbies who apply for adminship. Do we want to scare people away because they stumble into making a poor decision to submit an RfA? <Rhetorical question ;).> A timely message to an uninformed newbie could bring them to a quick understanding of the situation. NoSeptember ^talk 16:14, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

• True, the template is a good idea but we should bear in mind that edit counts are NOT an absolute critirea. What matters is the quality of the edits. --Siva1979^{Talk to me} 16:22, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

I put together a Sample newbie template for everyone's review. Please feel free to edit and improve it. NoSeptember ^talk 16:35, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

• I understand the intent, but do not approve of the template. --Durin 17:08, 27 April 2006 (UTC)
• I also do not approve of the template. KillerChihuahua^?!? 17:12, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

I think this information should just be incorporated into Wikipedia:Guide to requests for adminship, though that page could probably do with a trim. After all candidates are supposed to read it before placing their request, which is better for all concerned than template-talking at them afterwards. the wub "?!" 17:05, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

I agree that the information is useful for editors considering throwing their hat in the ring. I don't think pasting a template on their talk page is the right way to go about it. I agree with the wub that the proper place for this information is in the guide. —Doug Bell ^{talk•contrib} 17:35, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

I disagree with using that template. This is yet another attempt at imposing more rules, either on candiates or on voters. It is not helpful, I think. Besides, edit count is a poor metric. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 17:17, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

This stuff can't be a rule, nor can if be added to WP:GRFA because it is not generally agreed to (and honestly, the newbies we are talking about are not reading that anyway). The idea is that since any of us as individuals can leave a message on someone's talk page, it may be a nice thing to do, and it does not require community support to do so. The template is just a way of saving the effort of typing each time. Anyone who is looking at this as a policy proposal is not looking at it correctly. A few people who want to help inform the newbie candidates can do so without the need of a policy to do so, indeed there should be no policy to do so. The bottom line is that we should be seeking out and contacting those who apply for RfA without understanding the process. NoSeptember ^talk 17:40, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

I for one will make sure if I see a template like this on a person's talk page notify them that the template is blatantly incorrect and that they can run for any time and still have a chance to succeed (even if it's a lesser one) as well as admonish whoever put it there for "biting the newbies" as they are unduly discourging them for no credible or substantial reason and from this discussion I assume there are plenty of other people here who will do the same. There is a good reason why this hasn't been officially codified anywhere and that is because doing so and doing something like this not only discourges people but also encourges editcountitis and the feeling that you have to have a certain amount of edits to be an admin which is a blatant lie even though people with editcountitis will strongly disagree with me. It's also idiotic that we instill this sense of unworthiness "oh your not good enough to be an admin" "oh just wait until you magically have 1500 edits, 1499 isn't enough" on people just because they don't have a huge number of edits. Whatever happened to adminship being "no big deal"? Pegasus1138^{Talk | Contribs | Email} ---- 17:51, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

Repeating the facts about past results that Durin has helpfully provided is not the same as telling someone that they are not permitted to have an RfA. Your suggesting that telling someone this is a blatant lie is over the top. You can wish that Jimbo's statement about adminship not being a big deal were true, but what actually is true can be determined from the actual RfA results. I agree that we are too strict on such standards, but I am not going to pretend that these de facto standards do not exist. Also, suggesting that there is a big contingent of strict editcounters here isn't true as far as I can see. Finally, communicating with other users without your text being officially codified is not inappropriate, and you will run into problems if you try to censor what communications others are allowed to make. You should think hard before you try to do that. People are permitted to communicate with newbie RfA candidates without Pegasus1138's explicit permission. NoSeptember ^talk 19:42, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

Also, per my previous statement, if people are going to do it anyway (which I'm sure some people will) I'd prefer an official template since that at least gives a centralized list of people to warn about the nature of the message. Pegasus1138^{Talk | Contribs | Email} ---- 17:53, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

So if I put together some sort of template I can subst in, and keep it in my userspace, so as not to forget important points, you want to track me down and give me a hard time about it? I hear you about impersonalness but a good template that includes good information may be better than hastily scrawling down some, but not all, of whatever it is you wanted to convey. ++Lar: t/c 18:21, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

I'll give you a hard time about it if your doing it in a way that's discourging the person to even try to become an admin just because they don't have the "right" amount of edits but otherwise no. What people are proposing above would pretty much set an unwritten ceiling (or floor if you'd rather) wherein anyone who goes up for adminship with less than say 1500 edits or whatever would get this notice and would feel pressured to withdraw. We shouldn't be pressuring RFA candidates to withdraw, I've seen nice and friendly ways to recommend that they might want to withdraw but nowadays there seems to be an attitude that you should withdraw if you don't have this many edits and you get called on it anything like that which puts undue pressure on the editor in question and makes them feel quite frankly small and isolated. Pegasus1138^{Talk | Contribs | Email} ---- 18:32, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

Please point to the comments in this discussion where the suggested communication with the newbie has been anything but friendly. You seem to be putting a negative spin on what has been a discussion about friendly communication with people who are unfamiliar with RfA. NoSeptember ^talk 19:47, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

What's the point? You probably won't know they intend to nominate themselves until they do it, and by then a) it's too late and b) you can tell them on their RfA. If you know someone intends to nominate themselves then chances are it's because they've asked about it - in which case, by all means advise them against it. --Tango 17:59, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

Such a template is a bad idea because it is implying, albeit in a weiled manner, that there are or should be some minimum standards for people candidating for admin, and that is something I would disagree with.

Any member of the community who has been here for a while can attempt to be nominated or nominate self for adminship. The community will decide in a case-by case basis if the given person can be trusted with the tools. That's how things are now, and I see no reason to add more to this. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 01:58, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

NoSeptember, I think it's a good idea. Perhaps an alternative is to alter the text at the top of the RfA page to more forcefully make the point? A safer 'cutoff' would be 1000 edits. The two editors who succeeded with 1400+ votes are exceptions, that prove the rule. - Richardcavell 07:01, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

Last I heard there wasn't any sort of policy dictating when you could and could not leave helpful messages on someone's talk page; not everything needs an official procedure behind it. If someone wants to watch RfA and send a little "hey, looks like you're new here" messages to inexperienced candidate—with no arbitrary cutoff for edit count, just looking for the combination of factors that suggest someone is too new to be an admin—then great, why not? 1500 edits is far too high as an arbitrary absolute cutoff (I nominated Wgfinley when he had only 1400 edits, yes), but some with more than that are not ready and some with fewer are. So long as it's not being done in a botlike fashion based on edit count, I like the general idea of a gentle message to newbies who stumble in. Mindspillage (spill yours?) 12:59, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

CSD T1.Geni 03:34, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

Have a look at Joan53's RfA for evidence as to the fact that this template is needed —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Richardcavell (talk • contribs) 02:08, 1 May 2006.

Well, it's evidence that someone would help a lot if they were able to take a little time and talk to the user, soften the blow and so forth, but it's not necessarily evidence that a template is the only way to do it. Oh, and Mindspillage, I perked my ears up when you said "policy"! Surely you're not saying one is needed! (grin) ++Lar: t/c 12:01, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

The area of policy she was mentioning (whether you are allowed to communicate with other users on their talk pages) is not really an RfA related topic, nor was she proposing a new policy. NoSeptember ^talk 12:37, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

Man, nobody gets my jokes these days. I think I'm keeping my day job, life as a comedian is not for me apparently. ++Lar: t/c 12:41, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

I felt it was necessary to be explicit in this section, since a lot of people have already demonstrated a confusion over the simple idea that we can use templates to save us from typing the same message over and over, without that action moving from the area of personal communication with a user to being some sort of formalized policy on notification :P. NoSeptember ^talk 12:51, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

Contributions analysis (Archive 55)

My edit count tool for history pages now looks at a whole crapload of things[11]. I am already starting to get editcountitis. That "significant article edits" number is soo harsh on almost everyone :)!Voice-of-All^T|@|ESP 01:40, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

Updating the edit count (Archive 60)

Apparently a new phenomenon is emerging: updating the candidate's edit count during the RFA, like here: [12]. I think this is a bad idea for several reasons: it gives the impression that the exact edit count matters, and it causes a lot of editing of an RFA, which is not just pointless but also a bit irritating to the people who have it on their watchlist. I just reverted one of those incidents, then I realised that I made the situation only worse (another pointless edit ;)) - but am I completely missing the point of having completely up to date edit counts here? It doesn't really help that the links that are provided with some of them look like this:

• *See Where's _{(Talk ▪ Contributions ▪ Logs ▪ Block Logs)} contributions as of 21:38, 25 June 2006 (UTC) ^(Update*) using Interiot's tool*

where the 'Update' is read as a request by some. --JoanneB 20:00, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

Update is now read as Source for a better interpretation. G.He 20:29, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

Essjay's tool as the new count (Archive 67)

Recently, Taxman noted that the edit count pasted on the page encourages editcountitis. I replied, saying that unfortunately there was no toolserver to generate a count like there used to be, when Mathbot simply added the link to Interiot's tool for that user. ReyBrujo suggested Essjay's tool (something I didn't previously know about), so I suggested that to Oleg Alexandrov. He replied saying it was slow and everyone using it might strain the server, so I'm now here. Oleg is right that it's slow, though much faster than tool2- it just took about 40 seconds to get my bot's count, which is only about 12,000. Still, 40 extra seconds for the removal of edit counts from RfAs is a trade I'm willing to make. Is the rest of RfA? --Rory096 17:28, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

(I can easily have Mathbot link to Essjay's tool (which would reduce the amount of pasted edit count text) if people think that's the best decision. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 19:55, 25 August 2006 (UTC))

I already use that method as soon as a candidate shows up. This can be implemented simply by changing the style in which the candidate displays their name SynergeticMaggot (talk · contribs) -->SynergeticMaggot (talk · contribs · count). Or even better: SynergeticMaggot (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) - can be used in order for those who want to check more than just the count. SynergeticMaggot 17:42, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

We can create our own specialized RfA user template to show something like: NoSeptember (talk • contribs • count • block log). NoSeptember 17:47, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

Add logs to it also from SynergeticMaggot (talk · contribs · logs) and an e-mail check from SynergeticMaggot (talk · contribs · email). Unless of course, I'm the only one who might see it as important :-) SynergeticMaggot 17:55, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

Editcountitis IS a terrible affliction, but it has its uses for some assessment purposes. After Kate's tool, Interiot's development of that was THE BEST by far. I always found the monthly breakdown by namespace particularly invaluable, allowing better candidate assessment by easing the strain of wading through Special:Contributions manually. Now that it's broken, Essjay's implementation provides a pretty much up to date, working version, but with reduced functionality - pure numbers. It's faster than Interiot's javascript version, and all all credit to Essjay for that. Some questions though - why is Interiot's tool still broken, and can it be fixed; Why does Essjay's tool work, and can it be developed to include the original Interiot functionality? --Cactus.man ✍ 18:02, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

From what I understand, Interiot's tool worked with the replication database, that is, the queries the tools make do not affect Wikipedia. Essjay's tools is basically quering all the contributions of the user from the live server, which may impact if (in example) we have ten >30k contrib users and several are trying to vote. I am guessing it is possible to add Interiot's functionality to Essjay's tool, but it would not be cached (that is, it would have to be calculated everytime someone clicks the count link), straining the server even more. -- ReyBrujo 18:19, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

By the way, I suggested the tool based on a previous suggestion that was apparently overlooked :-) -- ReyBrujo 18:22, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

Please be aware that screen scraping is generally frowned upon by the sysadmins. If you start getting hundreds of people scraping edit counts off people's contribution pages, it's possible that that would result in an IP block of the scraper (assuming it was a single server) and/or removal of the scraping tools from WMF-hosted sites. That's routinely done to those who scrape content for mirroring; you're supposed to use data dumps. Note that I certainly can't speak for the devs or sysadmins, but it might be wise to ask Brion or Tim before doing this (I'm not sure they're even aware of current edit-count scrapers). Either that, or take Tango's suggestion below. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 22:42, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

If the only problem with just putting a link is the extra load, then why not run the counter once, put that on some other page (the talk page has been suggested before as a good place for it), and link to that? --Tango 20:40, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

I think we also have to keep in mind that if we use the suggested method above, that the viewing will no longer be "fixed", as it would if we just moved it to the talk. Having a link to the count would provide up to date information, where as a fixed system does not account for a candidate taking the suggestions of an opposer/supporter. Examples would be if I said I oppose for no portal edits and the candidate goes and creates or edits a portal. I could then check up on his count and see that he has taken my advice, reached my criteria, and I then change to support. Also note that I know that portal edits are trivial, but then again, so are some editors criteria. SynergeticMaggot 21:07, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

I think if your critera are such that they can be reached during the RfA, then they should be discounted. If someone is X edits below your minimum and they go and make X edits to the appropriate namespace, then chances are they are trivial edits just done to jump through the hoop. RfA should not be about creating hoops. --Tango 21:13, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

I agree with Tango to a point. When the candidate presents himself, he brings his "CV" with him of what he had done until then to become an administrator. Whether he decides to spend the seven day doing what he usually does, relaxing at beach drinking beer and answering the optional questions or accumulating edits because he discovered he could live sleeping just 2 hours instead of 4, I do not really for purposes of editcountitis. If you had 0 Wikipedia edits and suddenly edit in the current 700 AFDs, sorry, that is not what I personally am searching for. -- ReyBrujo 21:18, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

I'm merely bringing it to the attention of the participants in the conversation, as the topic hasnt been brought up yet. The proposal moves the edit count from a fixed point to a dynamic in which the first viewer will see something totally different from the 10th (depending on the candidate of course). Its something to think about. SynergeticMaggot 21:26, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

Of course, that would've been the case back when Interiot's toolserver counter worked. I don't really see fixed vs. dynamic as an issue, as long as RfA participants who care about editcounts look carefully enough at a candidate's contributions to see any last-minute resumé padding. Having said that, until the toolserver issues are ironed out I think the talk page would be a great place to drop the count as Tango said, since it avoids the server load issue, reduces the importance of the editcount somewhat, and encourages people to actually look at the talk page as a side benefit. BryanG^(talk) 06:14, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

This looks like a good compromise. People can still paste in their favorite data, but on talk. And the server performance is not affected. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 06:26, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

Agreed. Put it on talk at the start of the RfA with a link to de-clutter the main page, and any edits since then can easily be reviewed using Special:Contributions. --Cactus.man ✍ 06:29, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

Down with editcountitis! (Archive 69)

I've been thinking about the statistics in Wikipedia:Adminship in other languages and about problems we might solve from looking at the other language Wikipedias. It turns out that one of our persistent problems is mostly absent in the other languages, and that we could easily remedy it for us as well. I'm talking about editcountitis.

Since everyone at RFA is free to make up their own metrics, we frequently get metrics all over the scale - should a candidate have nine months of experience? How about 200 edits to the wikipedia talk namespace? Maybe 10% of all edits to policy-related discussion? Or is it all "no big deal" for everyone? All the differences combine to make RFA a haphazard and confusing place. Adminship is supposed to be about two things: experience, and trust. By focusing too much on arbitrary metrics for experience, we lose sight of the important issue of trust. It also means we're disqualifying trustworthy people on the basis of arbitrary metrics.

Thus, what I propose is to make a unified metric for experience. Make it clear at the top of the page that to become an admin you need X months time and Y edits and community trust. Make RFA focus on the latter. By choosing, for instance, two months and 1500 edits, we weed out the obvious beginners while keeping the barrier low for serious editors. This should make RFA less newbie-biting, less confusing, and more fair to those involved. Incidentally this is what the Dutch, French, Italian, Norwegian, Polish and Russian 'pedias do, and it works fine with them.

I'm sure that someone will yell "instruction creep, we don't need no stinkin' metric", but I'd say that any metric that is reasonably agreed upon is better than dozens of random metrics depending on who is active this week.

Comments please? >Radiant< 17:02, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

I don't put much credence in edit counts themselves, I prefer to look at the breakdown. (Counters like Voice of All's or mine can give more detailed information). I also look at the contributions by hand (especially seeing where the Wikipedia:-space edits are and how inflated the mainspace count is). After all that, I usually don't vote! However, I agree that WP:BITE will be met better if there is some way of discouraging very new users from applying, but am worried that people may apply as soon as they meet the threshold. --ais523 17:09, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

Yes. I would prefer a higher metric, but surely everyone can agree to two months and 1500 edits as a lower bound. —Centrx→talk • 17:11, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

Edit counting is a bad idea because it attempts to quantify something that is unquantifiable, namely experience. Your proposal is another manifestation of that bad idea. If you're looking for a unified experience metric, edit counts aren't going to work no matter how high you set the number. Christopher Parham (talk) 19:13, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

Looking at edit counts is bad for saying that the 10,000-edit user is better than the 5,000-edit user, but the fact remains that 1500 edits is a very low number if the person has been doing any administrative tasks that would demonstrate the experience and use for admin tools; it is indeed "highly unlikely" that an editor with such a number would be granted admin tools, if not impossible. The reason for the time length should be self-evident. —Centrx→talk • 19:31, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

I don't think he's looking for a universal metric for experience, though. What >Radiant!< seems to be saying is, "Look. Anyone with less than 2 months time or 1500 edits is going to get avalanched anyway, so why not state that explicitly?" All this does is describe why we've been closing newbie RfAs early, so I don't think it's particularly controversial, though I might lower the edit threshold to 1000 (or less, per discussion below -- nae'blis 22:07, 19 September 2006 (UTC)), even still - someone with a lot of experience on another language/wiktionary/commons might conceivably pass at 1200-1400 edits. -- nae'blis 19:47, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

I'd agree with Nae'blis's interpetation. All this notice/guideline would do is inform people that if they have less than a certain amount of quantitative experience, it will not be possible to fairly judge their qualitative experience, so we will be unable to pass them. --tjstrf 19:57, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

If you are suggesting some firm minimum below which RFAs are automatically rejected, I'm not opposed to that in principle (for some value of minimum), but if you are calling on people to generally stop thinking about a candidate's edit count distribution, I think that is pretty much a lost cause at this point. Dragons flight 19:41, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

I totally agree with Nae'blis' suggestion. An explicit statement that nominations which don't meet the stated minimum suffrage will be removed as invalid seems to be a positive step. Removal for failure to meet the suffrage should be permissible for all editors. The threshold should be low to allow genuine borderline cases, but high enough to weed out joke/frivolous/malicious nominations. Beyond those minimum criteria, everyone can still apply their own personal metric if that's how they operate in assessing candidates. --Cactus.man ✍ 20:25, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

• Over the last year, we've had 18 successful nominations for nominees with less than 1500 edits. 4 of those have been nominees with less than 1,000 edits. The lowest was 767. To my knowledge (I could be wrong) none of these admins has been on the short end of an RfAr since being adminned. While I understand the desire behind this idea, it sets a barrier to adminship that would have prevented these 18 individuals from being admins when they wanted to be. Adminship is inclusive, not exclusive. By Jimbo's own desire, it should be liberally given to people who have earned the trust of the community.
• I fear that if we do place such an instruction, and peg it at 1000 edits and 2 months, that two years from now it'll be 3000 and 6 months. Currently, 3000 and 6 months is when the editcountitis types stop having a negative influence on RfAs (per various studies I've done). Thus, until it reaches that level, there will be people advocating for this "standard" being higher. This entirely misses the point.
• Edit counts are absolutely meaningless, always have been, and are especially meaningless in the context of a number of semi-automated tools now available to editors. Give me a few hours and I can rack up 2000 edits no problem (stub sorting, fair use vio's, etc). Give me a few hours and I can write an article from scratch and do it with one edit [13]. Which is more valuable to Wikipedia? Neither and both; it doesn't matter.
• Putting a figure on who is acceptable here, while laudable for its intent to refocus attention on trust, isn't going to change the culture here. Even if we were very draconian and said "Any oppose votes for a candidate with >1500 edits that bases the oppose on too little experience will be ignored", regulars at RfA would come up with some vaguely equivalent stance that had to do with experience, and not focus on trust. Focusing on trust requires some heavy lifting (read: going through a heck of a lot of diffs to evaluate someone). Few people want to wade through a few thousand edits on someone to discover problems. That won't change by having even a low barrier to being able to be nommed. --Durin 20:49, 19 September 2006 (UTC)
  • Could you link to the 4 below 1000 that you mention? Dragons flight 21:01, 19 September 2006 (UTC)
    • Sure. They are: Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Hermione1980, Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/NicholasTurnbull, Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Extreme Unction, and Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Orioane. --Durin 21:16, 19 September 2006 (UTC)
      • Hhmmm, well my first observation is that they are all 9+ months old. (Evolving standards?) My second reaction is to ask where were the edit count nazis when Orioane was going through? No one even brought up the issue, apparently. That, more than many things, strikes me as a sign of how arbitrary and capricious the system can be about this. Dragons flight 21:46, 19 September 2006 (UTC)
        • Yes, evolving standards. A year ago I would have said 500 rather than 1500. I do not intend to forbid anyone to use any kind of metric for voting - however, this is a matter of educating new people: if at the top of the page it says two months, people will be less inclined to use a metric of eight. Playing the Jimbo card doesn't cut it; if we were actually applying adminship liberally, we would give it to every serious user after a month or so, and remove it only after demonstrated abuse. >Radiant< 22:10, 19 September 2006 (UTC)
          • Sounds like a step in the right direction to me. Let's remember that anything an admin does can be undone. Also, if you would have said 500 a year ago, a year from now you might be saying 2500. Where does it stop? --Durin 00:47, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

• I applaud any effort to eliminate editcountitis and refocus on trust, but I'm baffled why your plan to eliminate it includes a hard editcount numerical standard. That's editcountitis in the extreme because someone with 1500 category adding edits gets in while a person with 1000 extremely well thought out large edits gets canned. Remove that, and anything else we can do to focus on the trust factor I would be for. I'd almost be for any comments referring to edit count get shot on sight so that people have to come up with something better, but I'll never get that one through. - Taxman ^Talk 20:25, 20 September 2006 (UTC)
  • Can I have one of those guns with the magic silver bullet please? Oh, and a few cases of rounds too. :) --Durin 20:31, 20 September 2006 (UTC)
    • Indeed! No permit needed, just lots of <s></s>'s. And here's where I wish I knew the color codes to get those to be in silver. :) - Taxman ^Talk 21:09, 20 September 2006 (UTC)
      • This works. As does this. --tjstrf 22:18, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

• • Edit counting will never go away. People will always just run the data using Interiot/Essjay's tool. Often, just to make sure that it is not just some new user with <500 edits. Since the total edit count and namespace break down will also be out, it would be rational to try to stem misinterpretation of stats. My stats tool shows how many small and AWB edits a user made, which kills any AWB distortion. This is a good thing. Some things however can be misinterpreted and I've seen people oppose over such mistakes. For example, my tool used to count deletion tagging, but because deleted pages don't show in the contribs, then people get punished for flagging page for deletion that often actually get deleted (a good thing usually). I removed that count from it, and I hope that any other edit counter no longer includes that either. Additionally, certain stats are useful for getting a snapshot of the user's edits and where they focus. However it is only one factor, and is not enough to prove readiness/experience. Unless the counts are very very low, it is not usually enough to oppose over either. They are just a factor.Voice-of-All 22:07, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

I suggest that we apply the same standards as for board elections - currently 400 edits and 3 months. The only real purpose of edit counting as far as I can see is as a troll filter - to infer anything else from it would be unreasonable. If we can trust someone enough to vote in a board election, we can at least consider them on their merits and not their numbers. - Stephanie Daugherty (Triona) - Talk - Comment - 07:06, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

Editcountitis redux (Archive 72)

I think I found one of the causes for the rampant editcountitis... the page Wikipedia:Requests_for_adminship/Standards actively encourages people to set an arbitrary cutoff point in months or amount of edits. Additionally, the list is long enough that most people wouldn't read much past the beginning, but the first couple of entries happen to have excessively high standards. I would strongly recommend deprecating this page, or cutting out the editcountitis columns. >Radiant< 13:28, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

• I'd deprecate it; delete it outright or leave an historical footnote on it or some such. The page advocates editcountitis, it's true. Another bad facet of it is that many of the entries are out of date. Anyone can add themselves, and years later that entry as a "standard" is still there, yet standards have changed over time. This gives a false impression to people considering adminship. For example, have a look at the standards list as of January 2005...1.75 years ago [14]. Of the 19 listed on that old version of the page, just two are not on the current list (Neutrality, ShaneKing and Tuomas). Only one changed (Scott Gall). I.e., the vast majority of the standards people put in are never touched again. --Durin 15:42, 12 October 2006 (UTC)
  • If editcountitis is the worst problem we have to deal with on RFA, we're doing pretty damn good. As for the content of the page, I think it could probably be userfied, much like the silliness seen here. —freak(talk) 16:15, Oct. 12, 2006 (UTC)
    • IMO this is the worst offender. --Alex (Talk) 16:23, 12 October 2006 (UTC)
      • We have a list like that? That's odd. Rather pointless as well, since the list is woefully incomplete. --tjstrf 16:29, 12 October 2006 (UTC)
        • Inevitably outdated as well... I can't find it, but Durin made a graph of admin nominees. The edit-counts of both successful and unsuccessful candidates have risen steadily over time. (though there's perhaps a chance they'll decrease if the admin backlogs get too large). --14:41, 16 October 2006 (UTC)
          • I think you may have meant this chart: Image:AverageEditCountatRfA.png. --Durin 16:31, 16 October 2006 (UTC)
• Deckiller's sixth law: People enjoy making RfA standards because it makes them feel empowered. — Deckiller 17:43, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

Perhaps. But that people are free to vote in any way they wish is a good thing rather than a bad thing. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 04:12, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

I think the idea of the standards page is a good one, and I like to point misguided self-nom's to it so that they get the gist of what people are looking for... The fact that some of the standards are old and are from people who may not participate with RFA (or even the project) anymore is indeed worrisome. Perhaps some kind of refresh of the standards page needs to be made... I don't know. But to wipe it out would take away the opportunity for aspiring admins to get a feel for what people at RFA are looking for - which I think would be a disservice. Themindset 08:28, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

I am not certain the standards page really tells you what people on RFA are looking for at the moment. The standards that are actually applied do change with some fashions -- at one point, edit summaries were very much in fashion, or featured articles, or image tagging, or namespace editcountitis. The only way to find out what standards are actually applied is to closely follow RFA for a couple of weeks or months. Kusma (討論) 10:11, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

• We could replace the standards page by some of Durin's statistics to show what the actuall standards are. >Radiant< 14:35, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

• I understand the concerns, but to me these "standards" pages aren't the cause of "editcountitis" (assuming for the moment it is a problem, or a problem that really needs to be worried about), they're a result of it. They wouldn't exist if there had not been a pre-existing concern or fascination about edit counts. I will conceed that they might exacerbate the problem; however, if editcountitis really is a significant enough problem that it need fixing, focussing on these pages isn't the solution. As to whether or not the problem of editcountitis is as significant as its made out to be, I'm not yet quite convinced it merits the amount of electrons spilled discussing it. Agent 86 16:53, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

I'd support unlinking that page, making it historical, and creating something in its place that takes a more global view: Hard facts/data about pass/fail ratios, examples of personal standards that are relatively common (1FA, etc. But I wouldn't in any way cry if the entire section on personal standards went away; people can link to their own in their !vote of they really want to. I think this page exacerbates the problem and sometimes reinforces unhealthy perceptions of false consensus. In addition, it's well-nigh unusable in its current format anyway. This page didn't scale. -- nae'blis 20:17, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

The editcountitis rampant on WP:RfA has an extroardinary effect of dissociating sister projects. The idea of making someone an administrator has quite a few facets: recognition of someone who is trustworthy, the ability to view deleted articles, the ability to return improvements made (or found) elsewhere. The arbitrary edit count limits, seen in this light, are insane. The only effect they have in this regard, is to make people (such as myself) who are very active on sister projects, avoid Wikipedia whenever possible. It is taxing to briefly visit here, just to clear out the Transwiki to Wiktionary category. Much like rubber-necking at a highway accident, it is hard not to notice the drama of the hour, on RfA. It very strongly alienates me from Wikipedia. --Connel MacKenzie - wikt 03:09, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

• Changed the standards page per the above discussion. I'm not sure whether to deprecate, blank or delete the subsidiary pages. >Radiant< 13:46, 16 October 2006 (UTC)
  • I'd suggest deprecation with {{historical}}. --ais523 14:01, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

Just a question... (Archive 74)

I see a lot of people oppose RFA's because the user has a low amount of WP edits, thus meaning they have low knowledge of policy. But, what's the correalation between those things?--Ac1983fan^{(yell at me)} 17:01, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

Well, the correlation is certainly there. If someone has only made 100 edits to the Wikipedia namespace, just purely on that they're less likely to be knowledgeable about policy than someone with 5,000 edits. But hey, I think I have ~5,000 edits to the WP namespace, and the other day I didn't know Wikipedia:Subpages existed. I remind people that you can get many project namespace edits just from mindless comments in AfD and any number of other ways... so the quality of someone's edits is going to be vastly more important than the quantity.

Low WP editcounts doesn't actually mean a candidate doesn't know much about process and policy. So votes like "low wikispace edits suggest a lack of policy knowledge" kind of bother me... it's entirely based on a hunch, did you bother to check whether they actually have signs of policy knowledge beyond their edit count? Does the candidate demonstrate a lack of knowledge, by being confused or incorrect about important policies? Have you looked at their edits and there simply isn't enough evidence to draw a conclusion? Then I can understand an oppose. But voting on an editcount alone is kind of silly... it really is just one step away from opposing because someone doesn't have enough portal talk edits, so obviously they can't administrate portals! --W.marsh 17:09, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for an answer. I've always thought that WP edits have nothing to do with policy knowledge. I've almost never edited a policy page, yet I'm pretty sure I have good grasp on essential policy.--Ac1983fan^{(yell at me)} 17:34, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

With all due respect to User:w.marsh, I have a different perspective to offer. Let me preface my response with the following disclaimer: I am not an admin although I am in preparation for an RFA in the not too distant future.

OK, here goes...

Edit count in WP space alone does not determine familiarity with policy. However, consider the two obvious ways that an RFA voter can determine your knowledge of policy:

1. Ask you a lot of questions based on hypothetical situations and see if your answers evidence such knowledge.
2. Review your votes on XFD,WP:AN,WP:AIV and the associated explanations supporting your opinion.

Option (1) is not very practical because there are too many questions to ask and so it would be kind of hit or miss.

So, let's look at option (2). I'm not convinced that every RFA voter who cites low edit count in WP space actually reads the various edits made by the candidate. The argument runs more along the lines of "If the candidate hasn't voted in XFD or reported vandals to WP:AIV, then he/she probably doesn't have sufficient experience in admin-related tasks." Now I grant you that you can get a lot of knowledge from reading the XFD and WP:AIV pages without actually voting. However, we can't easily test whether you have read those pages and how much knowledge you've gained from reading them. So, we are forced to fall back on looking for your votes as the only reliable and practical means.

I understand that this isn't a perfect criterion but it is all we've got. Besides, until you have voted on an AFD and seen the opposite side win or reported a vandal and seen the admins ignore your report, you don't really understand how policy is applied "where the rubber meets the road".

Hope that helps.... --Richard 07:17, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

Good explanation. Put simply, though: more edits = more experience. Just like anything else, people who have more experience doing a thing are probably better at a thing. So, people look at high edit counts and assume the person has come in contact with policy either directly or inadvertently. My feeling is, you just have to reach a certain threshold and above that it really doesn't make much of a difference how many edits you've made. --Wolf530 (talk) 05:59, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

Links to edit counter - suggestion (Archive 74)

Several current RfA's have links to the edit counter tool posted, sometimes with the note that it's operating a bit slowly. Meanwhile, the edit count is available rapidly, just by hopping over to the talk page for that RfA, but often there's no cross-reference to that. Not to encourage excessive importance to the edit count or the edit counter, but it probably would be more helpful for the first person who wants to to run the counter, post the results to talk, and then post a link or cross-reference to the talk at the top of the RfA rather than post another link to the edit counter itself. Newyorkbrad 01:14, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

Agreed. Or even better (not sure if it is possible), link directly to the talk page, where the link to the tool is found. Whoever arrives there first, clicks on the link, gets the data, and pastes it there. People would not forget about removing the tool link and replacing it with a link to the talk page that way. -- ReyBrujo 02:06, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

I also agree. The (non-database) edit counters actually use a lot of resources on the server side, and it's not healthy for people to be clicking the links all the time. -- Tangotango 08:08, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

Most of the RfAs Ive seen users like myself or Voice of All link to a table on the talk page but also link to the counter for verification purposes. This seems ideal to me? Glen 00:25, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

Mathbot edits the page of each candiate anyway, I could have it as well as a note that the edit count is available on talk (assuming that people are actually commited to adding the edit counts on talk). Would that be a good idea? Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 05:48, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

Yes, please; I was going to suggest that but forgot about it. --ais523 09:58, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

• Can we get the opinion of a Dev about this allegedly problematic server load? >Radiant< 10:29, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

  Oh please...what do we average, two-three new RfA's a day? The server load would be too small to measure if Mathbot simply ran the edit count for every RfA and placed it on the talk page. —Doug Bell ^{talk•contrib} 12:14, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

  Mathbot doing it has been suggested as the solution the the server load problems, not the cause of them. Apparently, people loading the count themselves takes a lot of load, but I doubt that's true - it's the equivalent of one page for every 5000 edits. Assuming 5 new RfA's a day, 200 people checking the edit count for each and each candidate averaging between 5000 and 10000 edits (all gross over estimates), that's 2000 page loads a day. If I'm reading [15] right, the backend servers (so, non-cached pages) send out about 3000 pages a second. So edit count requests would be an extra one thousandth of a percent. I may well be misinterpreting the stats, though. --Tango 15:32, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

  It's by no means an ordinary request, though. All of the editcounters read edits from Special:Contributions in 5,000-edit intervals (the maximum allowed by MediaWiki), which is not the same as a query requesting 20 KB of text during a page view. These queries are expensive, and due to the relational nature of the database, it older edits take more to parse than newer edits (just look at my contributions in the Image namespace... it takes forever to load, even though the amount of edits is only 50). So, these queries shouldn't be abused, as they can be a tax on the servers. Titoxd^(?!?) 16:00, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

  Even if the contribs page strains the servers by 100 times as much as a regular page, it's still only a tenth of a percent of total usage. RfA is a tiny part of Wikipedia, so it's not likely to make any noticeable difference to the servers. --Tango 16:26, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

  While I agree that the server load issue is probably lost in the noise, perhaps a more germaine issue is the amount of time it takes to load × the number of people loading it. That's a lot of wasted Wikipedian time that could be spent, say, having a discussion on RfA policy.  ;) —Doug Bell ^{talk•contrib} 17:31, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

  Yes, the load on Wikipedians is probably more significant than the load on Wikipedia. --Tango 22:08, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

I made mathbot mention that the edit count is available on the talk page, see Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Opabinia regalis for an example. I agree with the above comments that finding the edit count each time using Special:Contributions is kind of a waste of resources. (My bot also checks the Special:Contributions for the edit summary, but only the most recent 500 or 1000 edits.) Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 05:17, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

I think that's good. Now just one picky thing...do you think you could change the formatting to use spaces instead of tabs so that the column of numbers lines up? It looks a little shabby the way it is now. —Doug Bell ^{talk•contrib} 05:35, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

The bot does not create the edit count table on the talk page, it just adds a comment in the RfA nomination saying that people can take a look on the talk page for the edit count. This assumes some people actually bother to put the edit count on talk -- and they usually do. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 16:32, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

(Indenting is about to wrap my window width. :) Oh, I thought having Mathbot add the edit counts to the talk page was part of the discussion here. Why make it a manual process if it can be automated? —Doug Bell ^{talk•contrib} 16:46, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

When I mentioned the load, I meant the load on the toolserver (hemlock), which is a single server handling a lot of requests for a lot of different uses. While I'm not sure whether the edit counters cause a significant performance impact, they are known to leave behind zombie processes (when users start a request and don't hang around long enough for them to finish), and use more memory than most web-based scripts (3 - 4 MB for each page of 5,000 contributions downloaded). As many people have mentioned, I'm sure the main Wikimedia servers can handle the extra strain being put on them, but the load on the toolserver is, I think, an issue that needs to be considered. - Tangotango 07:29, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

I thought the edit counters didn't use the toolserver anymore... --Tango 17:16, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

They do... at least the ones with URLs starting http://tools.wikimedia.de/ (hemlock's address). None of the edit counters used on the English Wikipedia use the toolserver (zedler) database anymore, though. - Tangotango 17:50, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

RFA is t3h evil! (Archive 74)

Given the high number of succesful nominees the last few weeks, several of which passed with near-unanimous support, I'd say that the rumors of harshness, negativity and impossibility of RFA should now be a thing of the past. Yay for us! (Radiant) 15:43, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

Either that, or all the candidates that would have been opposed have been scared off... From what I've seen, the editcountitis seems to have improved (as evidenced by the complete lack of editcount related opposes on my RfA, despite me having less than 2000 edits, which was where the stats said people stopped opposing because of it), which is a very good thing (esp. for me!) --Tango 18:57, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

It's good that people don't need to be paranoid about their edit count to become an admin. Sure quite a lot of edits are needed but 5000 is no longer neccessary which is nice to see. James086 ^{Talk | Contribs} 00:54, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

Let's wait for the video. I've seen a fair number of people recently withdrawing early, perhaps in the face of being in the small subset of people without 97%+ support. Once we see the total statistics I'll be happy we've overcome some of the pendulum-swinging. -- nae'blis 15:57, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

The withdrawals tend to be from non-serious (joke) nominations, candidates who aren't remotely qualified (50 edits, 2 weeks of editing) and those who are marginally qualified but have significant opposition. Withdrawals seem to be happening very quickly, usually within the first 12-24 hours of an RfA. Those candidates that are well-qualified are passing their RfAs with astounding support percentages. I'm also looking forward to seeing some comprehensive statistics, but when 8 of 9 current candidates have 97%+ support, it's fairly safe to say that things are going well. SuperMachine 17:16, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

And magically the number of "RfA is broken we need to nuke it ASAP" threads drops dramatically. Looking at the candidates now at a glance, I see one with past civility issues that he's learned from and another with a "too low" editcount, both passing. While this hardly means RfA is perfect, at least two of the glaring problems with RfA (elephant memories meaning only the roboticly polite could be promoted, and editcountitis encouraging all the wrong things) don't seem to be present this week. How about we keep it that way? --W.marsh 18:09, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

We musn't count chickens before the eggs hatch. Fresh complaints could arise if there are a spate of noms where otherwise-good editors are rejected. Owing to the sense of "victory" or "rejection" involved, I don't think that trend is likely to change. Rama's arrow 16:32, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

As a recent RfA survivor, I have to say that the experience was a lot more pleasant than I was expecting. I kept checking it obsessively in part because I was sure someone was going to come right along and rip me a new asshole, which never happened. Not that I'm disappointed, mind you... EVula // talk // ☯ // 16:46, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

• Well, I think we could keep up the current good atmosphere here by finding a capable candidate or two and nominating them. Keep 'em coming :) (Radiant) 16:59, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

Talking about preserving a healthy atmosphere and success rate, I'd just like a few comments (not trying to open a discussion) on why nomination floors are a bad idea. I can understand admins being appointed with only 1,000 or so edits back in 2003, but is it such a bad idea to ask people with less than 1,500 edits to wait a bit longer? Given the growth of the project and its administration, its not like we lose that much by asking a few editors to wait for a bit. Again, not trying to flog a dead horse, but its just a doubt in my mind I'd like to vent. Surely the atmosphere and success rate would be better if we had fewer of those 0-10 rejections. Rama's arrow 18:08, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

I bet you're really thinking but is it such a bad idea to ask people with less than 15,000 edits to wait a bit longer? :-P —Doug Bell ^{talk•contrib} 18:19, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

Not really... some half-wit was willing to oppose me because I didn't have 20,000 edits... :)) Rama's arrow 20:57, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

• I know you're not trying to rouse that horse after it's been beaten so bad it'd make a roman coliseum look like a picnic. But, whatever it is you *are* trying to do, isn't going to work :) --Durin 21:03, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

I'm not *trying to do* anything. I'd just like to check base on exactly why this idea was never accepted. Rama's arrow 22:23, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

I'll offer my RfA as an example. I currently have 100% support, yet I have only around 1600 edits. Clearly, the community doesn't automatically reject people with low edit counts. The only reason I can see for not letting someone be nominated is if they don't stand a chance of succeeding, which isn't the case. Most noms that don't stand a chance get withdrawn pretty quickly anyway, so there's no need for more instruction creep. If we had grossly unqualified noms refusing to withdraw, there might be a reason to stop them, but even then, I think the solution would be early closing by crats (I think that already happens, in theory, but never seems to be required these days), not arbitrary cutoffs. --Tango 23:30, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

PS: After checking the recent history, I see one early closure, but that was after less than 24 hours, so the nom didn't really have a chance to withdraw, there's a good chance he would have done if Essjay hadn't been so quick off the mark. --Tango 23:36, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

What you say is true - you're a good nominee and there would be a degree of "instruction creep." I guess most people think about this becoz of the number of doomed noms RfAs get. Rama's arrow 00:42, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

• Tango, the idea behind this was the opposite. The point of setting a "floor" of e.g. 1000 edits is not to bar people below that from running (but the floor should be low enough that they wouldn't have a chance anyway); the point is to discourage other people from employing arbitrary floors of their own. It seems to have alleviated now, but several people used to oppose everybody with less than X edits or Y months, for unreasonably large values of X and Y. (Radiant) 08:56, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

  Unless you imposed a rule which said you weren't allowed to oppose based on edit count, that just wouldn't work. And if you ban edit count votes, you have to come up with very complicated rules about whether you can oppose based on main space edits, or wikipedia edits, or portal talk edits, etc. All such a floor would do is cause Wikipedia to lose the few potential admins with low edit counts in return for a little less work opposing obvious failures. Nothing more. --Tango 13:49, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

  • I don't think forbidding it altogether would work. The point is to educate people towards what reasonable standards are, rather than letting them guess. Wikipedia can be a bewildering place for new users. If we state plainly "an admin needs 1000 edits" that will encourage people to look for other reasons to support or oppose, without requiring us to forbid people from saying "well I think he needs 2000". (Radiant) 14:05, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

  (ec) I think edit counts are just a cop-out for people who are too lazy to actually go through the contributions. I generally try to keep it at a reasonable number (1500-2000), but that's mainly so I can see plenty of instances of helpful contribs. Which is why I support Tango. On a related note (sort of), I'm glad to see there's a return to pleasantries and jokey oppose !votes, like some of the older RfAs I've read. Things were getting pretty tense around here a few months ago, so it's great to see that people are lightening up a little. riana_dzasta 14:09, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

Edit count is easy to boost. I made about 500 edits today reverting a lot of vandalism. Edit counts don't indicate quality. My contributions today don't require very much experience, but I now have more than 2000 edits. That's the flaw with edit count. However, I wouldn't want a user with less that 1500 edits. I do think that an admin needs a lot of edits, to show they are commited and would use the tools, not just have them incase they need them. James086 ^{Talk | Contribs} 14:43, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

Are Edit Counts that important? (Archive 77)

In my opinion, edit counts do not necessarily reflect the value and faithfulness one is toward Wikipedia. I questioned that why is everyone opposing someone from becoming an administrator if their edit count is only 1500? You can create 1500 articles and only counts as 1500 edit counts. Unlike some others, who is "faking" edit counts, they created 1500 articles with an edit count as high as 15000. Why? What is the difference between the two? The only one I could think of is that one does not have an adminship, but the one with 15000 edit count does. This is VERY unfair, I am sorry to say. --Smcafirst or Nick • Sign • Chit-Chat • I give at 00:02, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

It's edit count plus a lot of other factors, such as where you make your edits (i.e. the different namespaces), how long you've been around, how active you are etc. --Majorly (Talk) 00:08, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Yes (to Majorly). If someone 20000 edits, but little participation in the Wikipedia, Wikipedia talk, main, and/or talk namespaces, I and likely many other users would oppose. –Llama man^{sign here} 00:11, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Edit numbers alone will not earn you adminship, but they make a good indicator of who isn't ready yet. If you have a ton of edits and aren't blocked, that in itself goes a long way towards showing that you are able to get along with people. After about 3,000 edits I don't think you'll catch any real opposition for low edit count, unless you've totally neglected one of the major namespaces (no user talk edits or something). --tjstrf talk 00:15, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

What Tjstrf said. 5000 edits doesn't guarantee a user is ready for adminship, but 500 edits is sure a good sign that one is not ready. Likewise, a year on the project isn't going to be a surefire pass, but 1.5 months is a good sign that it is too early. If you want to eliminate consideration of edit counts and time (basically what makes up your entire record of existence here) then there is not much else to go off of. -- Renesis (talk) 00:33, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Clearly this user is not ready for adminship, as evidenced by the interrogative tone with which this message was posted. --Deskana (For Great Justice!) 00:35, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

If we are anywhere suggesting that we are going to be "fair" in determining who we trust to give admin tools to, we need to edit that out. Jkelly 00:50, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Words cannot quite convey how much I adore the previous sentence. --Deskana (For Great Justice!) 00:52, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Deskana, do not make revenge attacks on people just because they support different policies than you do.

As for edit count: A person may make a single edit that contributes 1000 words of text, or 100 edits that each contribute 10 words of text. Edit war edits and vandalism also appear in the number of article space edits. Not all edits are of equal value to an encyclopedia. Edit count also does not indicate how much wikipedia policy a person has read. While edit count may be weakly correlated to the total value of one's contributions, the value should be gauged with a much more accurate method. We do not have the god-like power to deduce the value of a user's contributions based upon edit count and join date alone, but we must investigate the contributions themselves to deduce their value.

HalfOfElement29 05:33, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

{edit conflict} Even if you limited yourself entirely to the submission of high end B and GA class new articles and rewrites, and managed to build up a set of 10+ recognized articles in less than a thousand edits, it wouldn't necessarily mean you were ready for adminship.

Sysop is not the same as senior editor, and the requisite skills have far more to do with communication than they do writing ability. Ideally they both write excellent pieces and work well with others, but the priority skill set for adminship is a cool head, understanding of the principles behind rules, and ability to work with frustrating people. If I can write the perfect article, but cannot keep my sarcasm in check when working with the newbie who doesn't get it, I will not be a good admin. --tjstrf talk 05:37, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

I generally agree that dealing with controversy and conflict well is the most important trait of an admin. In said controversies and conflicts, admins should demonstrate the traits of honesty, objectivity, fairness, efficiency, and constructiveness. HalfOfElement29 06:59, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Revenge attacks? What on earth are you talking about? I seriously adored what Jkelly said. It's an accurate description of RfA. Where is the revenge attack you speak of? --Deskana (For Great Justice!) 14:10, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Correction: it should be an accurate description of RfA. In reality, people sometimes do garner "we have to be fair" supports. -Amarkov ^blah_edits 00:27, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Deskana, acting oblivious and diverting attention to different statements does not help you. HalfOfElement29 05:33, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

It's not so much the edit counts themselves, more where the edits are. 500 edits sounds like an auto-oppose, and it probably would be. 300 wikispace edits seems to be the minimum, but how would one balance the other 200? Even 1000 in this case would be difficult. I don't think there's a problem though (Look at Crystallina's RfA and you'll see that edits aren't an auto-accept). --Wizardman 00:42, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

• Durin made a quite detailed analysis about the promotion rate of RfAs with respect to edit count. Beyond a certain threshold, (I believe somewhere between 2,000 and 3,000 edits) editcount, as well as time since account creation, do not matter as much. That said, what I would like to see is a breakdown of that analysis into successful nominations, full-term failures, withdrawals, and bureaucrat early-closures. Durin, are you still reading this page? Titoxd^(?!?) 02:47, 9 January 2007 (UTC)