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Features and admins

RFAs and active admins—concerns expressed over the continuing drought

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By Tony1 and Dabomb87
Jim Devlin, c. 1873, from the new featured list Philadelphia Phillies all-time roster (D), which lists all players with surnames starting with the letter D. The Phillies are the oldest continuous, one-name, one-city franchise in all of professional American sports, dating to 1883.
Red Dooin was the Phillies' catcher for 13 seasons (1902–14). This baseball card showing his portrait is held in the Library of Congress. The age of the team and its history of adversity have earned it the distinction of having lost the most games of any US sports team.
This week's "Features and admins" includes Saturday 5 – Friday 11 February. Our regular coverage of new featured content appears under the special story.


RfAs and the decline in active administrators

RFA trends January 2010 – January 2011

The number of successful RFAs has continued to fall over the past year, despite a temporary spike last August after The Signpost's story on the RFA drought, and a sudden (but not statistically significant) upswing at the start of this month. Over the past four years, the fall in numbers is significant: 408, 201, 119, and last year just 75 promotions. The author of that Signpost report, WereSpielChequers, maintains a page of information on RFAs. We asked him to comment on the trends over the past six months: "RFA is perhaps not as gloomy a story as the raw figures might suggest. A good trend is that self-nomination, once seen as a bit of a negative, is emerging as almost the norm at RFA; and I'm happy to see the drop in unsuccessful RFAs, as I hope it's largely the consequence of changes such as semi-protecting WP:RFA and other measures to dissuade the WP:Notnow candidates with only a few hundred edits from running."

Possible reasons

However, WereSpielChequers is concerned about the declining number of successful RFAs, and his experience has led him to an original view. "RFA has been in a deepening drought since the unbundling of Rollback in early 2008. Having spoken to editors on a few other projects, I think we could operate with far fewer active English Wikipedia admins than now, but only if we are prepared to make adminship a much bigger deal than it once was, shifting from the model of admins as ordinary editors who mostly do non-admin stuff, to the more full-on model that one of my Spanish Wikipedia contacts described as 'appoint a new admin, lose a good editor'. I think this future would work, though we wouldn't be the sort of community that I'd like us to be."

WereSpielChequers asks what he sees are six critical questions: "(1) With total edits broadly stable at 200,000 a day, how long can we afford to have our number of "active admins" dwindle by 1% a month? (2) What would the trend be and how much of a safety margin would we have by defining active admins rather more strictly than one edit in the past 90 days? (3) Active, uncontentious editors with more than a year's experience can usually get through RFA without difficulty, so why are so many editors waiting three years or more? Should we do more to persuade editors with between one and three years' experience to become admins? (4) WP:Admin coaching seems to be moribund; would it be worth reviving? (5) Does the community want adminship to become the big deal that the RFA crowd are making it, or would people be happier with adminship being a less exclusive club? (6) Would people prefer a large number of active editors who also happen to be admins and occasionally use the mop, or a small number of admins who have little or no wikitime for non-admin activity?"

Bureaucrats respond

Our bureaucrats are primarily responsible for managing the RFA process. The Signpost asked their opinions on the issues raised here. For Dweller, the relevant issue is not the definition of active admins, but "workload and queues; the stats are just one way of measuring problems, [and anyway,] bots do a lot of work previously done by admins." He thinks "a lot of people have been scared off RfA, with good reason. Others are simply waiting to be asked, because they're too modest to self-nom." On WSC's last point [6], he says that obviously everyone would prefer a mix between those two extremes, "which is the status we currently have". How much of a big deal should adminship be? Dweller believes the current balance is about right. "The problem lies with the small number of RFA participants." He emphasises that above all, "RfA's biggest problem is that too few long-standing editors frequent it."

Anonymous Dissident says: "The promotion rates over the past few years are concerning, and the issue merits immediate attention by the community. If the number of active admins continues to diminish while Wikipedia continues to grow, we'll have major problems on our hands. What strategies might be considered? I don't think a reformatting of the system or a paradigm shift are in order; the RfA process is not "broken", as has frequently been asserted. Instead, we need to look for ways to adapt the culture to these dire conditions. We need to be more open when evaluating candidates, especially on matters of time served and experience in particular areas. We need to dispel the notion that adminship is for a privileged and powerful few, so that more editors will have the courage and inclination to lodge candidacies. In short, we need to revive the attitude that adminship is not a big deal, clichéd though its mention may appear."

WJBscribe says RFA is currently failing in its role of creating new admins. "Either attitudes at RFA need to change or we as a project need to consider other ways of appointing new administrators. The cost to the community in terms of too few active admins doing too many tasks is hard to see but I believe it is there. In particular, I worry that there is now too little capacity for admins to double-check the work of others and ensure that 'routine' blocks/deletion/protections are being done correctly."


New administrators

The Signpost welcomes two editors as our newest admins.

At the time of publication there is one live RfA, for ErrantX, due to finish 18 February.


From the new featured article, English composer Frederick Delius, aged 45, photographed in 1907
From the new featured article, User:Edgar181's adaptation of the crystal structure of a rhodocene derivative, after Donovan-Merket et al. (1998). The element rhodium is shown in purple, and the characteristic two rings of five carbon atoms on either side of it can be clearly seen.
From the new featured list, Grammy Award for Best Rock Song: Bruce Springsteen, 1995 recipient, performs in 1988 in the most unlikely location, East Germany.
Fourteen articles were promoted to featured status:
  • Frederick Delius (nom) (1862–1934), an English composer in the Romantic tradition. (Nominated by Brianboulton and Tim riley; picture at right)
  • Battle of Towton (nom), fought on Palm Sunday 29 March 1471, has been called the "largest and bloodiest battle ever fought on English soil", in which King Edward IV "chased his opponents out of England or killed them", according to nominator Jappalang.
  • Adelaide leak (nom), the revelation of a dressing-room incident that occurred during the third Test match of the 1932–33 Ashes series between Australia and England, more commonly known as the Bodyline series. As nominator Sarastro1 puts it, it's the story of "the people involved, and how much they hated each other".
  • Tales of Monkey Island (nom), a 2009 graphic adventure video game. (S@bre)
  • 1950 Atlantic hurricane season (nom), the first year in which hurricanes received names. The season saw many very strong hurricanes. (Hurricanehink)
  • Rhodocene (nom), a molecule containing an atom of rhodium – a transition metal – bound between two planar "ring" systems of five carbon atoms. The hydrogen atoms are omitted for clarity. (EdChem; picture of a derivative at right)
  • Adenanthos cuneatus (nom), a shrub native to the south coast of Western Australia and originally described by French naturalist Jacques Labillardière in 1805. It is grown in gardens in Australia and the western United States, and a dwarf and prostrate form are commercially available. (Casliber and Hesperian)
  • Stark Raving Dad (nom), the premiere of the third season of American animated television series The Simpsons, originally aired in 1991. (Scorpion0422)
  • Startling Stories (nom), an American pulp science fiction magazine published from 1939 to 1955, with characteristic cover art by E.K. Bergey. (Mike Christie)
  • Thomcord (nom), a seedless table grape variety developed in 1983 by Californian grape breeders working for the US Department of Agriculture. The article has received an expert review by one of the men who created the variety, Dr Ramming. (Visionholder)
  • U.S. Route 30 in Iowa (nom), a major east–west US highway that spans 330 miles (530 km) across Iowa, from the Mississippi River to the Missouri River. (Fredddie)
  • Allegro (musical) (nom), one of the most eagerly awaited Broadway musicals ever. Nominator Wehwalt says "it just could not live up to expectations and closed after exhausting its advance sale and a bit more. Perhaps ahead of its time, perhaps fatally flawed because of a poor plot?"
  • Entoloma sinuatum (nom), a poisonous mushroom found across Europe and North America that causes primarily gastrointestinal problems that have been described as highly unpleasant. (Casliber).
  • Monticolomys (nom). Nominator Ucucha says, "In 1929, someone caught a nondescript little brown mouse on Madagascar, which landed in a museum full of nondescript little rodents. However, this particular little brown mouse turned out to be unknown to science."


Eight lists were promoted:


Quentin Matsys's The ugly duchess (c. 1530), a satirical oil-on-oak painting possibly based on a drawing after Leonardo da Vinci.
An écorché (flayed figure) of a horseman and his horse, prepared by anatomist Honoré Fragonard and on display at the Musée Fragonard d'Alfort in Paris.
Six images were promoted. Medium-sized images can be viewed by clicking on "nom":
New featured picture: death masks are wax or plaster replicas of a person's face made after the person's death. Here, two workers, circa 1908, use plaster to create a mould of the deceased person's face. This mould will then be used to make the death mask.
Information about new admins at the top is drawn from their user pages and RfA texts, and occasionally from what they tell us directly.
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What has been seen cannot be unseen. How unfortunate, given some of this week's featured pictures! --Danger (talk) 02:23, 15 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Before I start, I'm a huge fan of this page, and would like to say thanks to everyone who works so hard to put this together week-in, week-out.
Now, RfA. While the statistics here are well compiled and on the whole relevant, nothing in this piece points to a specific problem with the rate of promotions slowing.
Let's say for argument's sake that it is a problem. In my humble opinion, people are failing at RfA because while the tools are not a big deal for 98% of the possible tasks that they could be used for, making difficult blocks and judging consensus is considered to be a big deal. Granted, ANI is a great venue to deal with the former (although it is not manditory for admins to use it). But while deletion review arguably deals with questional deletion decisions, in practise it merely acts as a rubber stamp for anything short of a blatant, no-research-needed wrongdoing. Meanwhile, there is no practical way to overturn a dodgy RfC call.
Although admins rarely vote en-masse, in any well-participated community discussion, !vote or vote they are the swing block. I'm pretty sure that Jimbo has said so with regards to arbcom elections. Similarly, it's inconceivable that an RfA could pass if >25% of the admins involved in the discussion were opposed. Or that a well participated AfD discussion would end up being deleted if the majority of admins participating in the discussion argued that it should be kept. I have no issue with any of this. But if there are enough admins to be the key to most discussions, how can we so definitely assert that there aren't enough admins, period? —WFC— 04:28, 15 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I concur, and find the whole premise that the declining number of promotions is a problem to be a concern; participation in many Wikipedia processes is declining, and the premise of this (somewhat biased article) is that we need to promote lesser qualified admins, while other processes are also in decline. That won't bode well. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 04:38, 15 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I think you've hit upon the important issue WFC; is this a problem, or simply an observation? Maury Markowitz (talk) 12:44, 15 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
It seems to me that WFC has identified another symptom of the problem - admin voices carry far too much weight in a discussion. The fewer they are, and the larger the editor-to-admin ratio becomes, the more perceived authority admins will carry. There should be a sufficient number of admins that their opinions on any subject would reflect a similar range of opinions of ordinary editors. Anything else is evidence of a disconnect between the administrators and the consensus of the editors. This is a result of a policy that says that, unless they are using the tools or determining consensus, admins are ordinary editors. The common perception of their status gives their comments additional weight. IMHO, it is the policy that has a disconnect from the community and should be changed to follow the perception - i.e. all actions performed by an administrator are "admin actions" and reflect upon that status. Jim Miller See me | Touch me 15:01, 15 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Just to take a practical approach for a moment, what are the specific areas in which we don't have enough admins at the moment? If I asked people to provide in order of decreasing urgency, say, the current top five backlogs/duties for which admin input is either essential or important but too thin on the ground, what would they be? Tony (talk) 15:30, 15 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
And, how would the answer to Tony's question compare to the similar backlogs at all content review processes? For a frightful example, see WP:GAN, consider that very few editors do the bulk of work at WP:PR, and note that we have long been in a mode of holding down the FAC backlog by archiving nominations that aren't gaining support or getting review, and requiring nominators to wait two weeks before subsequent noms. All Wikipedia processes are backlogged-- why is RFA special, and how can we avoid promoting unqualified admins simply because of an issue that is Wiki-wide? Can someone explain why this alleged dearth of admins is such an issue when ANI continues to be a circus, while worthy content review processes are lacking participants? What I'm missing here is why adminship continues to be a "very big deal", while content review is so important and not as highly valued. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:50, 15 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Who's suggesting promoting unqualified admins? Everyone quoted above talks more about getting more qualified editors to apply. Powers T 15:55, 15 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Ask WSC that question. Or ask the right questions: if we have increasingly fewer editors actually engaging content, where are we to find these "qualified editors", without encouraging them to learn policy and understand why we're here? If some of the endless bickering at ANI were focused on content, we'd see much less bickering at ANI from editors who haven't ever engaged content. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:17, 15 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Agreed. Although I think there are technical problems with the current solution, I think the idea implemented at DYK is interesting. I gave up on FA and GA due to the problems outlined above (I'm primarily interested in esoterica, good luck finding reviewers!), but have kept up with DYK because it seems the process is being driven forward. Maury Markowitz (talk) 17:34, 15 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
What "idea [was] implemented at DYK"? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:18, 15 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe "the idea" refers to the new DYK system in which all editors who submit a nomination must now review another nomination in return. Dabomb87 (talk) 22:34, 15 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Yep, DYK has a pretty good system (in terms of how smoothly the process itself runs). FAC is close behind, although as I understand it a candidate with two well reasoned supports and no actional opposition would be archived and the nominator subject to the two-week rule, which seems somewhat draconian. —WFC— 23:42, 15 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks, Dabomb-- I can see how that would work well for DYK (while not so well for FAC). WFC, if it indeed happens that an otherwise fine nomination is archived on two supports, and must wait two weeks, I can't recall a case like that. If a nomination has nothing else discernibly wrong, and two solid supports, I usually let them ride, or go to WT:FAC and ask for more review. or ping someone and beg for a review. Anyway, sorry for the off-topic query there; I didn't know DYK had enacted that idea; FACs are harder to review and won't necessarily benefit from obliging others to review. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 23:57, 15 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

"I can see how that would work well for DYK (while not so well for FAC)." Why? Anyone who has nominated a reasonable FA candidate should be capable of reviewing another in at least one respect of the criteria. And there's a significant learning aspect from experiencing the process as a reviewer. Tony (talk) 04:48, 16 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

WFC didn't say anything about "avoid[ing] promoting unqualified admins". You suggested that a goal of increasing the number of admins would make it hard to "avoid promoting unqualified admins". I don't see how that follows. Powers T 19:44, 15 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I wonder how closely you follow RFA? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 23:59, 15 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Not at all, actually. I don't have the time or patience to peruse candidates' contributions. Powers T 02:58, 16 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Re Ltpowers point "Who's suggesting promoting unqualified admins?" I don't think anyone is suggesting that - certainly not me, I'm an RFA regular who rather frequently winds up in the oppose section. Appointing a batch of regulars as admins is the normal tactic on wikis with insufficient admins, and if that happens some are bound to be underqualified. I hope that even with a 1% monthly decline in active admins we may be some way from that happening, and if we can fix RFA we can avert it.
Re Tony's query, Currently there are permanent backlogs of admin work only at a few unfashionable areas like history merges, though occasionally AIV or cat:speedy are unmanned for more than a few minutes. We need enough admins 24/7 to promptly delete attack pages and block vandals; I suspect that if the decline in active admins continues until we have a serious incident it will be a gap in coverage of one of those areas. Things like AFD closes, prod deletes, userights requests and most speedy deletions can if necessary hang around a few hours until a time when we have lots of admins about, and I suspect that will be the case long after we hit serious gaps in our coverage. As for how long we have before we reach some sort of tipping point, no-one really knows, if we were employing people you could organise shifts to make sure you always had the right number of people, but we are volunteers who just turn up - inevitably that means you need more people to be sure of 24/7 coverage.
WJBScribe made an important point, we could already be at a point where admins are not being sufficiently scrutinised by their fellow admins. Of course that isn't important if the community is comfortable that all our admins are making good decisions in their blocks and deletions, especially deletions as non-admins can take a view re blocks unless deleted content is involved. But my experience and some of the off wiki criticism is that deletion mistakes are happening.
I hope we can fix RFA before we run short of admins, hence my current focus on trying to find out why so few editors who joined us in 2008/2009 are now running at RFA. As for unqualified admins, you only have to look at Snow closed debates such as the recent WT:RFA proposal to autopromote admins after a couple of years editing to see how the community won't buy that. Underqualified admins are a different matter, not least because, as I keep pointing out, RFA criteria vary dramatically between !voters and debates as to what we expect of candidates at RFA keep breaking out in individual RFAs rather than being thrashed out at WT:RFA. So one editor's excellent candidate is another editor's hopelessly unqualified candidate. For example one of our recent crop of admins had several opposes per WP:Notnow... ϢereSpielChequers 02:15, 16 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Please don't get me started up on that specific NOTNOW discussion. Wikipedia does not have the technical ability to cope with the amount I could write on it. Suffice to say that, despite a vocal minority (that may or may not represent the majority) makinng a big deal out of it, some of the NOTNOW'ers had valid grounds for NOTNOW'ing in that specific case. —WFC— 04:27, 16 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
WP:NOTNOW is for newbies who stand for RFA despite having so few edits it simply isn't practical to see if they are ready for adminship. If people use it for a candidate with several thousand edits then I'd suggest they read Wikipedia:When not to link to WP:NOTNOW. If someone meant to say "having checked the candidate's edits I don't think they are ready for the following reasons:" then it is unfortunate that what they actually said was in effect "the candidate has only a few hundred edits - far too few to assess their suitability for adminship". ϢereSpielChequers 16:34, 17 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
The present draft of WP:NOTNOTNOW has the foundations of a good essay; the overarching set of principles is one that few reasonable people could disagree with. The problem is that (whether by design or oversight), the wording used has the effect of acting as a substitute for this failed proposal. Several editors interpret NOTNOW to mean "I consider your contribution history insufficient to judge your suitability as an admin. The best advice I can give is to give us a bit more to go on." Crucially, "contribution history" is loosely defined. In 95% of cases, NOTNOW clearly does not apply to someone with 3,000, 4,000, 5,000 edits. But in the particular case that you have eluded to, the judgement of several was that it did, due to the nature of what that candidate intended to do balanced against what the candidate had done with his time here. —WFC— 01:26, 18 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Obliging FA writers to do FAC reviews

Sandy, writing a review, even a Sasata-Wehwalt length review is WAY less work than writing an FA article itself. Depending on the level of care, it's an evening's work. Maybe a long evening. But still. Not that big a deal. Give people something to do instead of RFA/RFC/ANI slapfights.  ;)

Why not give it a shot? You complain about dearth of reviewers, but when an idea comes up that's different from what's done before, it gets shot down. I totally appreciate that you are operating the bucket brigade, but I don't see why this would not work.

Are we better off with the open review and Piano-56es as reviewers? I mean even if the reviews are indifferent, they can still be discounted by the delegates that do the close. And I really doubt that someone who has produced an FA can not with an evening's work, produce a decent review. People that do an FA are EXACTLY the kind of people that would take a review responsibility seriously. I'd be MORE worried about the DYKers gaming the process and gaffing off the responsibility than successful FA authors.

Are you worried that the few reviewers you do have, will be pushed away from there being more people on the page? I doubt it. And besides the whole thing could use a shot of new life.

Even if it's a failure, why not try it for a couple months and then get rid of it or keep it? If you want some skin in the game, I'll bet you a bottle of bubbly or whatever, and we can just see who's right. Could be a fun experiment. What's the worst that happens? It works? If not, you can just go back to using your same small stable and occasionally putting out begging notices.

Here's what I propose. Make anyone submitting an FA from now on (or when you enact it), who has already been a SUCCESFUL FA author (ever), to have to give a general review (we can define it and give an example, not a dablink check, you can even require a source spotcheck...more dead birds from your rock), before they may submit an FA. Say between the dates of the previous pass and the new submission. I would hold "conoms" responsible too. If they want to put two names on an article, then they can suck up doing a review each. TCO (talk) 18:40, 17 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

That's not my decision to make: it has been the subject of extremely long RFCs, and rejected. That I happen to agree with the reasons it's been rejected is tangential, since I'm only one voice in consensus. Quid pro quo may work for DYK, but the feeling has been that it's not desired at FAC. We have long archives on this, but you could open a new discussion at WT:FAC if you want. We used to have a Dispatch workshop as part of the The Signpost that helped further interest and info for reviewers, but that was cratered. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:43, 17 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
This is a volunteer site, and I'm not convinced that obliging volunteers to do anything is a good idea. Or that distracting FA writers from FA writing is in the interest of the project. If FA needs more reviewers I can think of a couple of ways to recruit them, when I've worked up the thought I'll post it at WT:FAC. ϢereSpielChequers 20:42, 17 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
The Signpost needs your help putting together the next issue.
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