Wikipedia:RFC on RFA Reform

This page is being started as a long-term discussion on Requests for Adminship reform. This is a bit different from other RFCs because of the protracted nature of this dispute, in that it is a bit more "directed" in order to focus on productive discussion. This is not a vote, and I've tried to outline several phases where discussion should take place as well as several places where it is counterproductive.

This is likely to attract a lot of comments, so please keep it on topic, and keep commentary outside of the discussion phases minimal. The outline basically alternates between fact-finding and discussion to keep the discussion from drowning out everything else, I encourage moving irrelevant or premature discussions to sections on the talk page and will try to do so myself to keep this from getting cluttered. Triona (talk) 00:44, 7 September 2010 (UTC)

Rationale

Reforming the Request for Adminship process is an issue that has refused to go away. There has been constant discussion of what problems exist in the selection (and removal) of administrator rights almost since the beginning of the on-wiki RFA process. The length of this debate demonstrates that at least a sizable number of people believe this to be an area for reform.

Supporters of the status quo have successfully derailed virtually every proposal to have come before the community, both through tendentiousness, as well as reasoned debate - with the majority of proposals failing due to lack of interest or "no consensus".

This RFC is intended to persist until agreement is reached of one form or another, whatever that may be. Ultimately that could be a new process, changes to the existing process, or even an endorsement of the status quo, but for the sake of reaching a resolution on a contentious matter that has persisted for years and years, I respectfully ask that we continue until an actual agreement is reached - there are matters that need to be settled that we can't keep sweeping into archives and under rugs and "historical" tags.

Proposed Format

• Phase I: Fact finding. Discover what participants in past and current discussions believe to be flaws in the RFA process.

  During this phase, we try to uncover what the perceived problems are, with no discussion of solution, and as little discussion of the validity of those problems as possible. The goal is not to debate what problems exist, but to find a list of what problems have been observed. Diffs and specific reference to prior discussions and debates are welcome. A list of past proposals should also be an outcome of this phase.

• Phase II: Discussion of perceived problems. Determine which perceived problems have merit.

  Information gathered from the fact finding phase is put to debate on the validity of each problem. Again. leave solutions out of this at this stage, because with so many failed proposals, we need to come to order on what the problems are.

• Phase III: Brainstorming of possible solutions.

  At this stage, discussion will go to brainstorming of possible solutions. Criticisms are welcome at this stage only if they propose alternatives other than the status quo, other discussion should be struck.

• Phase IV: Discussion of proposals.

  At this stage there will hopefully be proposals worthy of further discussion, which will be discussed on their merits against the current status quo. The goal will be to find proposals worthy of either directly going to long term implementation, or which are promising enough to put to a limited trial period.

• Phase V: Trials
• Phase VI: Discussion of Trial outcome
• Phase VII: Long term implementation of solutions.

Phase I: Fact-finding

This stage is strictly fact finding. We aren't debating anything yet - the point is to create a list of problems people wish to discuss, essentially to set an agenda for the next phase.