Wikipedia talk:Requests for adminship/Archive 34

message: I tried to nominate User:Hermione1980 for adminship but found the new instructions somewhat unclear and might have goofed up. What I did was:
#Create a new page Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Hermione1980, filling out the template with the ending time and my reasoning,
#Add my support vote,
#Add the RfA-nom template to Hermione1980's user page.
Was this the right procedure or have I (as I suspect) goofed up somewhere? Why does the RfA-nom template say "a page will be created for you at Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Hermione1980" when I already have created it? Or should I have waited until she accepted the nomination? — JIP | Talk 12:05, 11 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Huh? People use templates? I just cut n' paste the thing and adjust as needed - easym scheemzy! Ryan Norton T | @ | C 18:04, 18 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Confused over the new nomination instructions 

message: ...again is not working for me (at the new link BDAb passed along). It gives a long caveat about edit count not being important and does not provide a count. My general thought on the issue, incidentally, is that the overall number is indeed over-rated but comparisons between namespaces are not. It's handy to be able to see if people make edits in the Wiki namespace often and also if they use talk (or over-use it at the expense of actual editing). Marskell 15:30, 11 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I looked at it this afternoon - it gave a long caveat, but also a button to press to generate the count, which looked fine to me... Shimgray | talk | 17:39, 11 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I done tried the button and it don't work for me. *shrug* Marskell 18:20, 11 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: ..."if you're checking your own edit count… well, do you really care?" Um, yes, I care - now can I see my numbers?  BD2412 talk 18:26, 11 October 2005 (UTC)

text: Works fine for me in Opera and IE. Try in a different browser? Shimgray | talk | 18:33, 11 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Firefox here, all is fine. --Sebastian Kessel Talk 18:34, 11 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: It's a little different now. You have to get to the I understand, show me the edit count prompt.  --hydnjo talk 23:04, 11 October 2005 (UTC)

text: I too use Opera. It works ok. Note, if the spelling of the candidate is incorrect, you'll get a blank page. =Nichalp «Talk»= 08:26, 12 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: And that "spelling", in this case, requires the initial capital. If it's still glitching, might be worth dropping Kate a message. Shimgray | talk | 14:56, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

text: Good job how? Creating and helping popularize something and then creating a glitch? As stated above, it is a very convenient way to check relative contributions across name spaces which, I'd say, isn't editcountitis as such. Marskell 17:32, 12 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: When you get to the page with the I understand, show me the edit count you must click on that and not the go prompt.  --hydnjo talk 19:25, 12 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: As stated, I have tried that. So it goes. Marskell 19:56, 12 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Look, I'm sorry you can't check the edit-counts that easily, but what does it really matter? If you're seriously wondering if a guy has enough edits in a particular namespace, go to the contriutions, select a namespace, select an appropriate limit, if there's more than say 100-200 edits, what more do you need to know? If you want to know your own edits......why do you care? gkhan 10:14, 13 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Click Kate's tools, type in user name, see all the namespaces neatly laid out, versus type in username, click user contribs, select a namespace, do a quick count up, select the next namespace, do a quick count up, select the next namespace, do a quick count up, select... it should be obvious why people want Kate's tools to work and work simply. Grutness...wha? 14:45, 13 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm not saying it isn't convienient, it's just that, you only really need to know if a user has a substantial number of edits, and you can find that out pretty quickly from just looking at the contributions. That is, if Kate's tool go down, it's not the end of the world! Calm down! Try to rethink why you are accessing it in the first place. gkhan 15:13, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

text: To see if someone is admin-worthy, you don't "only really need to know if a user has a substantial number of edits". You need to see that they have contributed to a wide range of different namespaces. it's by far the best way of judging whether they know enough about the intrnal workings of the wiki to make a good admin. Actual editcount is irrelevant to a large extent. But If an editor has contributed almost entirely to article space, they won't know enough about how to interact with the community or deal with problems that an admin would have to deal with. Clicking once on Kate's tools was the perfect way to see this. Clicking on user contribs is messy and time consuming. As to "calm down", I am calm. I'm just annoyed. Grutness...wha? 22:45, 13 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I use the tools for other things - checking to see whether an AfD voter has enough experience to know what he's talking about; quickly checking to see if a dubious edit was made by a possible vandal; moving editors up on the Wikipedia:List of non-admins with high edit counts. All of these tasks are now more difficult.  BD2412 talk 23:23, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

text: Kate is apparently User:Kate, a former Wikipedia admin who gave up her AdministrativePower because she didn't have enough time for it. But I find it strange that not being able to check your own edit counts makes your hands quiver... — JIP | Talk 07:23, 13 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Kate Turner is also a he, or so I've heard. encephalon 10:37, 13 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Blimey, these confusing first names Anglosaxons use. I'll never get the hang of them. — JIP | Talk 10:40, 13 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I'll see your Blimey! and raise you a Bugger!, i was sure Kate was a woman. gkhan 14:25, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

text: That would be serious editcontitis, and the only known cure is pure cold turkey. gkhan 10:14, 13 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Erggg, that new message is annoying. Yes, I understand. Why do I care? Because I'm anal retentive, OK? Why do I want to know about other people's edit count? Because I want to nominate them as admin, but I know that if they haven't reached a certain number, a, lot of people will vote against. Yes, I know that's not the way it should be done, but it is the way that it is done, and until that changes, I need to... OH JUST SHOW ME THE ÐING EDITCOUNT, OK? Grutness...wha? 14:41, 13 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Look, you don't have to feel alone in this. Many of us has gone through this and has come out on the other side. If we can work together we can break through that barrier. Sure there'll be relapses, the occasional RfA-candidate you never heard off and people keep talking about their edit-count, but let's not let that dissuade you from the uniting goal. We can fight this! There are some programs....... gkhan 15:20, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

text: Oh good grief. I'm entirely with SqueakBox on this one. It's a form of political correctness gone mad. There are only two reasons for wanting to use an edit counter - personal curoisity (which is perfectly OK... the sort of people who would contribute to a project like this will be naturally curious people anyway), or to get statistics that will help them to reach a decision. I don't think anyone regards editcounts as the be-all and end-all for adminship (have a look at the standard requirement page - almost everyone there lists it as just one part of their specifications,usually with a note saying that it is hardly a particularly important one). I do think, however, that editors checking Kate's tools should not be insulted by a message that makes it sound like they shouldn't be there and don't know what they're doing. Grutness...wha? 22:45, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

text: Um-hm. And I don't understand this sudden implication that to look at edit counts is something to be ashamed of. Why do people care about their own? Because they spend time here and want to see how much editing they've done—so fucking what? It's quick and it's easy with the tool. People do it anyway with contribs and it just saves time. And indeed without the tool, as Durin suggests, you actually spend more time edit counting rather than evaluating edits themselves. I'm not going to cease doing it—say what you like but it will always be one part, if not the primary part, of RfA voting. Marskell 14:52, 13 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Actually, it only shows you the namespaces to which you've contributed, it doesn't the others. --TimPope 16:46, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

text: *Agreed. I implied that above. It is however a way in which Kate's tool could improve. --Durin 18:24, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

text: Kate has no monopoly on information. Everybody has access to the edit information- just view the contribs! What kate's tool does is to count information that is availlable to everybody. You can write your own program if you want. (In fact, User:Durin apparently has one that graphs the edit history.) Borisblue 14:52, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

text: *Yes, I do. But, it takes several minutes for me to produce. I do it almost exclusively for admin nominees with less than 2,000 edits to help pull people away from editcountitis. Kate's tool has direct database access. I do not. I think Kate's tool is very important. See my rationale above.--Durin 14:45, 17 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Kate's tool... 

message: All the recent nominations have had broken "Vote here" links. --Durin 04:47, 14 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Seems so. --hydnjo talk 05:14, 14 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I fixed . Please report any bugs to me at my talk page as I'll probably know how to fix bugs (I created it knowing there may be a problem or two, but I think I got all the kinks out now.) Redwolf24 (talk—How's my driving?) 03:28, 15 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Vote here" links are breaking again 

message: With 29 active nominations on the list of RfAs right now, I really wonder if this process is scalable. Consider what this process might look like just a year from now. I'm not suggesting any particular changes at this point. I just want to point out that perhaps we need to consider what could change to make this more scalable. --Durin 05:44, 14 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Well a few down at the bottom have passed their closing time and are just awaiting closing by a bureaucrat. Otherwise, I think it's likely that as the wiki grows, and more people join, you will see a corresponding increase in the number of nominations, which I personally welcome, as I think Wikipedia can't have enough good admins. That being said, perhaps the transclusion could be adjusted to not transclude the full RFA to the main page, but instead perhaps the main RfA page could simply link to current nominations, with maybe a high level status indicator on the main page to show the current vote tally for a given candidate, with the actual discussion taking place in the individual articles but not visible from the main RfA page. Ëvilphoenix Burn! 05:51, 14 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I think this would be a good idea. Especially with really long discussions taking place on some people's RfAs, this would allow this page to load faster, etc. The name, the vote here button (if it works), the vote tally, and perhaps the nominators comment. Link to the RfA page, and that would be plenty. --Lord Voldemort (Dark Mark) 14:45, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

text: I think the way to do it would be to have a template on the RfA sub-page that would transclude information to the main RfA page, then everything below it would just stay on the sub-page. Ëvilphoenix Burn! 15:22, 14 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Just put the actual votes within a <noinclude> tag block.  I think that works. Kelly Martin 16:10, 14 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: That would have to be done manually to each nomination, as it obviously can't be in the nomination template. ~~ N (t/c) 16:16, 14 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Actually, it can, because subst: ignores <noinclude> and <includeonly> blocks. – ABCD✉ 01:37, 15 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  RfA a scalable process? 

message: I have extended ScottyBoy900Q's by a day. 31 support and 9 oppose votes gives us a tally of 77.5% of the votes, bang in the middle of no-man's land. Since the oppose votes do have some substance, I feel a day's extension might give us a clearer outcome. I request the candidate (and the general community) not to solicit pro and oppose votes. =Nichalp «Talk»= 06:22, 15 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: So the message is "could people please vote on this and could everyone stop asking people to vote on this?" :-). But seriously, it sounds like a good call. --fvw<SMALL>*</SMALL> 06:25, 15 October 2005 (UTC)

text: I've also CC'd the candidate. =Nichalp «Talk»= 06:31, 15 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I've got no prob with extending, but I just wanted point out the RfA page says that "the threshold for consensus here is roughly 75-80 percent support."  77.5 looks like its right in that consensus range. --ScottyBoy900Q 16:22, 15 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: It's a threshold, not a range for defining consensus. Otherwise, your statement would seem to imply that nominations with more than 80% support lack consensus. What it really means is that below 75% generally means the nomination has failed, above 80% is usually clear success, and in between is a marginal case where it's up to the bureaucrats to determine whether you've crossed the threshold. --Michael Snow 18:26, 15 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  ScottyBoy900Q's nom extended 

message: I am a little bit worried that those who posted neutral votes are not having their votes counted. I know the guideline is that the bureaucrat takes them into account when the voting is marginal, but it isn't obvious which way they are counted. I have seen a few cases where a candidate's support is given as the fraction of supporting votes to the total of supporting and opposing votes: neutral votes not being counted at all. I'm not entirely sure what those who cast neutral votes think they are voting for (very weak support, very weak oppose or "I don't care"), but I'm sure they probably wouldn't do it if their vote was uncounted. Thinking it over, if I may, I can see three ways to deal with this:
#Scrap neutral votes: if they don't really make difference, we shouldn't suggest that they might.
#Count each neutral vote as half a vote in support and half a vote in opposition: this suggests total abivalence.
#Count a neutral vote as a supporting vote when calculating whether a candidate's election should be extended(~75%), but as an opposing vote when calculating whether to promote the candidate (~80%): thus, being a vote against promotion, but for extension.
For example, if a candidate received 70 supporting votes, 20 opposing votes and 10 neutral votes, we could say that the support was 70/90, or 77.8%, ignoring all neutral votes. If we counted the neutral votes as half each way, the candidate would have 75/100, or 75% of the vote. The third method would see that support is at 70% of total votes cast, and not eligible for promotion. However, counting the neutral votes as support gives 80% in favour of extending the election.
I believe the first example is just wrong: neutral votes count for nothing, and the support is slighly inflated by it. The second system works quite well, and gives a fairer representation of the voting pattern. However, I believe the third oprtion allows voters to be more nuanced: "I'm not sure if this candidate should be promoted, but I'm also not sure whether this candidate should be dropped so quickly". Of course, bureaucrat judgement should not be done away with here, but simply given a more accurate tool for measuring support.
I apologize for the essay! --Gareth Hughes 15:24, 16 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Good point raised. But in some cases its is difficult to gauge in which way the neutral vote should count. The 70% part is not applicable as the neutrals are not opposing the nomination. =Nichalp «Talk»= 15:46, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

text: Interesting thoughts, but in my opinion neutrals shouldn't be anything other than a way of saying "yes, I've seen the nomination and I've thought about it and I can't really go either way." Andre (talk) 18:28, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

text: I'm for option #3 - RfA is not a vote, its purpose is to find community consensus for promoting someone to adminship. That's why only those votes that clearly support the candidate should be counted as supporting. For someone to vote neutral clearly suggests that there's something wrong with the candidate that would possibly be a problem if they were promoted. However, they shouldn't be treated as opposing votes, but they shouldn't be ignored either. That's why the third option sounds best to me. - ulayiti (talk) 20:58, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

text: None of the three are relevant because the Bureaucrats shouldn't be merely counting votes in such close cases. There's no need to chaneg the way RfA works because it's working just fine. -Splashtalk 21:05, 16 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: How about changing it to support/oppose/abstain?  BD2412 talk 22:53, 16 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: That's possible. But I think at the moment there are 4 ways I can respond to an RfA. I can support, oppose, be neutral or abstain. Being neutral is taking an interest, writing a few sentences that say why you don't want to or do want to. Hoping that what you write will be read by others and by the Bureaucrats if it becomes close. It's saying also "persuade me one way or the other". Abstaining is rather different to that. -Splashtalk 23:18, 16 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: True, but strictly speaking we abstain from every RfA in which we don't vote - so casting a vote that says abstain carries a different message, specifically that the voter has enough interest in the RfA to comment, but does not feel that either active support or active opposition is justified on their part. I'm parsing words excessively here, stop me any time.  BD2412 talk 23:22, 16 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: The very phrase "cast a vote of abstain" is a contradiction.  One cannot "vote abstain"; rather, one abstains from voting.  A neutral vote is not an abstension; at best it's an abstension with a speech.  We might as well just call them "neutral". Kelly Martin 14:41, 17 October 2005 (UTC)

text: Getting back to Gareth's question - if people wanted their vote counted, they would vote Support or Oppose.  A neutral vote without an explanation is nothing - literally - but a neutral vote with an explanation may convince another voter one way or another.  It's simply a way of saying, "I have an opinion, but not a strong enough one o go one way or the other", or "I lean towards Support (or Oppose)", and I would like my vote heard.  Unless you know someone very well, chances are when they come up for RfA you only have partial knowledge to go on.  If you look through the Oppose and Neutral votes, you may find some red flags which either send you to their contribs, or you may choose not to vote.  I have found that neutral votes have much more influence on my voting than do Support or Oppose.  Guettarda 19:45, 17 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Do neutral votes count? 

message: I saw that Jguk added to the questions to be asked 'Have you edited under any other accounts? (). I happen to know a user or two who once was a vandal but then went straight. Of course if they say that they once controlled that vandal account, you'll see waves of oppose, so I'm not really for this question. Plus do we want to make it precedent that anyone can add in new questions? We'd probably end up with about 30 questions, taking a day's time just to answer them... A bit too bureaucratic for the likes of me. Redwolf24 (talk—How's my driving?) 18:52, 17 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I think it's a valuable question, actually. Andre (talk) 18:54, 17 October 2005 (UTC)

text: I don't see why people shouldn't be able to question the candidate. The candidate is under no obligation to answer any questions presented to them. But I don't think they should be added to the standard questions template without consensus from the community; the standard questions were put together after some large debates I believe. Talrias (t | e | c) 18:56, 17 October 2005 (UTC)

text: I agree that adding more questions was a mistake. Frankly, I don't think the questions should be required at all, but as it stands they are a mandatory part of the adminship process. That means additions to the mandatory questions should have a consensus backing them. Christopher Parham (talk) 19:16, 17 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Without a consensus, extra questions shouldn't be added. Jguk can append his questions to the individual RFA, that isn't a problem. =Nichalp «Talk»= 19:34, 17 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree - the standard questions are standard for a reason, and any change to the status quo should be agreed upon by the community - else chaos will reign over the template.  BD2412 talk 19:58, 17 October 2005 (UTC)

text: I think any user should be able to ask questions of the individual canidate who may or may not choose to answer but I think that this question shouldn't be one of the default ones. Jtkiefer T | @ | C  ----- 20:15, 17 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: It may make more sense to ask if users have vandalised under any other account rather than just edited under another one. This would (assuming people answer honestly) highlight problem users without needing to remove privacy from users who have genuine need to edit under another account. Considering someone (or someone who shared the IP, opinion, and editing style of a user here) was recently made an admin after vandalising the September 11 memorial wiki, it may be useful to ask if they've vandalised any Wikimedia wikis, rather than just this one. Angela. 02:21, 19 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Template:RfA]] 

message: Was consensus ever established regarding the removal of a clearly failing nomination (Oppose Votes = Support Votes + 10)? Misterrick's nomination is one of the worst cases of piling on that I have ever seen. Normally, I would remove it by the time he got 13 oppose votes. But after removing A Link to the Past's nomination, Durin left me a comment, telling me not to remove nominations as consensus was never reached. Just to have it down in writing, is it easy to remove a failing nomination like this? Does a Bureaucrat have to do it? Acetic'Acid 06:57, 18 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I think a candidate should be entitled to their full seven days no matter how bad they're loosing. I would have thought that it has to be up to the candidate to withdraw. All anyone else can do is suggest that they may like to withdraw early. Of course, in a case where someone is nominated without good faith it might be possible to pull the nomination as a case of vandalism. --Gareth Hughes 10:35, 18 October 2005 (UTC)

text: Wouldn't it be easier just to leave the decision to withdraw to the candidates (even for non-self nominations), instead of trying to create a consensus for an automated withdrawal which you probably wouldn't get? Lectonar 12:04, 18 October 2005 (UTC)

text: "commonsense should prevail - we should not be slaves to process." I think we should all repeat that 5 times a day when we wake up in the morning. Or possibly "die bureaucracy, DIE!" either will do. Martin 12:17, 18 October 2005 (UTC)

text: I agree that this seems the only reasonable way to go, but rather than asking the candidates permission, I'd say we should suggest removal by the candidate themself. Filiocht | The kettle's on 12:55, 18 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text:  I'll second that; btw, does anybody else get the impression that 'piling-on' is also a phenomenon in the support votes, and that the whole RfA process is getting more and more a sort of popularity contest? Lectonar 13:05, 18 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, with the danger being that "popular" candidates may not always be the best ones. Filiocht | The kettle's on 13:14, 18 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Consensus Regarding Pile-Ons 

message: I think it is mildly strange that there are lots of users who clearly would benefit the 'pedia if they were admins, but have just never been nominated and don't nominate themselves for one reason or other. I also think the 'pedia is in pretty desperate need of more admins to help with AFDs, Copyvios, speedies etc. Therefore I want to start nominating more people, but people who I don't know and have had no interaction with, basically starting with the Wikipedia:List of non-admins with high edit counts, of course making sure they are suitable candidates first. I think I am pretty good at finding candidates (of the 4 I have nominated, including myself, non received a single oppose) but would it seem odd to nominate people like this? Martin 18:40, 18 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Why not try to get to know them first? If you look at their contributions, you'll surely find some page that you have a personal interest in and could start contributing to. (And personally, I think how people interact with others on Wikipedia is far more important than a high edit count, which can come from not using the preview button, or even from engaging in edit wars!) Ann Heneghan (talk) 18:52, 18 October 2005 (UTC)

text: Just zip them a little note saying that you thought they might make a good admin, but haven't really interacted much. If they are interested, then go ahead and nominate them. It never hurts to ask. --Lord Voldemort (Dark Mark) 19:04, 18 October 2005 (UTC)

text: As someone who has nominated people with whom I've not had a personal history of interaction with, I see no problem with doing so.  In such cases, it does pay to spend considerable time reviewing the potential candidates contributions, especially in talk space, to make sure there are no personality problems.  Unfortunately, because people changed the RFA process, it is no longer possible to nominate and run.  I once nominated someone and the first message I ever left on her talk page was that I had created the nomination .  Dragons flight 19:05, 18 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: In that case I'll try and find some good candidates! Don't worry, I will check their contribs thoroughly. Martin 19:28, 18 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Nominating people you don't know 

message: (Edit conflict) I totally agree with Fvw. There is something about thanking people for supporting that's a little off, IMO. It's too much like implying the person supported to please me, and against their own better judgement as to what kind of admin I'd make. I do realize that's not what people mean, but still. In my own case, I wrote a general note saying I was overwhelmed and grateful for getting such nice, friendly  comments on my RfA (i. e., not for being supported). I was, too, the whole thing was just heartwarming--I was awarded a   commemorative toaster by JRM, and valued myself so on it that TenOfAllTrades then awarded me the Pufferfish for Most Conceited New Admin. Anyway, I put this note prominently on my own talkpage, not on anybody else's. I reckoned if people wondered what was holding up their thank-you note, they'd come to my Talk to see if I died, and see the message in its pretty pink box. That was appropriate, I thought, though I've always wondered how many people, if any, did see that message of mine. Bishonen | talk 19:48, 18 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I did thank people and would do it again, but with so many new admins being promoted, maybe we should save the disk space and add the "Closing Statement" section... --Sebastian Kessel Talk 21:28, 18 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I guess I would be for that, and that wouldn't necessarily stop you from continuing to thank close WikiFriends, or the like. I suggest we add it to the template. Any objections? --Lord Voldemort (Dark Mark) 21:41, 18 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Yeah, I suppose I object.  Then, on one hand, it looks like we expect people to say thank you (for "no big deal") and on the other, it discourages thank yous which have, on occassion, led to productive conversations - or at least amusing back-and-forths.  Guettarda 21:46, 18 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Hmmm... you may be right. Is there some way we could inform nominees that they could add something like that at their own desire, but not make it standard? And it wouldn't necessarily have to be a "thank you" section. It could be a "I won't mess up" or a "I shoulda got this" section. --Lord Voldemort (Dark Mark) 21:58, 18 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't feel super strongly about this, but I do think a template suggesting that people not thank people individually is a little counterintuitive, considering that Wikipedia flourishes best when lines of communication are open. Should we be encouraging less communication?  I realize this is sort of an absurdist discussion, but I just don't see the harm. · Katefan0(scribble) 22:01, 18 October 2005 (UTC)

text: And I had such a nice acceptance speach lined up too — purely Paltrow-esque it was! --Gareth Hughes 22:37, 18 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Or, you know, people can do as they please. There are contexts in which enouraging and discouraging particular actions makes sense—this doesn't seem to be one of them. Marskell 00:20, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

text: When my RfA passed, I had 49 supports, and I gave every person a customized thank you note based on how well I knew 'em. I believe Splash and NicholasTurnbull have done likewise with the customized thank you's. Redwolf24 (talk) 02:11, 19 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: What would Emily Post say?  I didn't feel obligated to thank anyone for their support in my recent promotion.  However, I felt a desire to acknowledge those people who voted (support, oppose and neutral).  I've not communicated with many of these individuals directly before and sending any sort of message (thanks, hello, howdy) to them definitely opens a line of communication that did not yet exist.  I have even received a nice comments back further clarifying their neutral/oppose vote--which made me feel better.  Also, these folks often go through a great deal of effort to research a candidate prior to voting--thank them for taking the time to do that instead.  Is it necessary to thank someone for voting?  I don't think so.  Is it polite?  Probably.  Does it foster the idea of community, communication and comradery?  Of course!!  >: Roby Wayne Talk • Hist • E@ 02:23, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

text: Naive new admin: I didn't thank anybody personally for voting for me ... Am I gonna get deadminned   now ... ? (I should have at least thanked the bureaucrat who promoted me I guess... ) Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 04:10, 20 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Thanks for all the pufferfish

message: Someone has just suggested that checkuser requets be merged here. I appreciate that this page is already big enough as it is, but on the other hand I do think that way it would get a lot more attention, which is a good thing as it's a fairly big responsibility. Any objections here? --fvw<SMALL>*</SMALL> 23:02, 18 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: None from me. I had supposed this would be where it was done. -Splashtalk 23:03, 18 October 2005 (UTC)

text: Indeed, append it at the end, after bureaucratship. Andre (talk) 23:23, 18 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Merge requests for checkuser? 

message: I just have one question.  How the hell did checkuser voting become policy with only a 5 day vote, if this is the state of the wiki please tell me and I'll take a very long vacation right away because frankly I think it is a bullshit decision, all other reasonings aside in terms of checkuser rights. 50 votes (plus 4 neutral/comments) does not make a consensus by any means especially when we have no policy currently on it's use and the process so far of using checkuser and the guidelines for it are not layed out and nobody has even attempted to lay out.  I propose that we immediately close all checkuser votes and remove the option from the main RFA page until a clear consensus for or against can be seen and if a consensus for it is achieved then until a clear policy regarding it's use can be found. Jtkiefer T | @ | C  ----- 02:03, 19 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Agree, seems Raul654 removed it.  Checkuser is a very vital process, and it's important to set out guidelines for it.  Ral315 WS 02:07, 19 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Checkuser 

message: Well, I see the need of this checkuser thing since I do lot of patrolling, but after thinking a while, I realize we dont' actually need to know the IPs. What we need is just the ability of knowing if 2 given users are from the same ip (true or false) for making sure of sockpuppets, not needing to know the ip itself. So I propose that admins are given only this ability (deciding if 2 edits come from the same ip) and not the ip itself. -- (drini's page|☎) 02:32, 19 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: That doesn't do as much as you might guess at first blush to protect user privacy. We need to decide to change our privacy policy first, then we can grant tools. Our highest obligation is to be honest to our users, and not place the project in legal peril with a dishonest privacy policy. --Gmaxwell 02:44, 19 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't know if I'd trust the 600 admins to never abuse this power. Also this wouldn't be undoable (much like page history merges (which not everyone knows how to do, which may be a good thing) and image deletions) as you can't erase minds. There's too many legit sock puppets, like that Cute Little Doggie one. But at the same time having a requests for checkuser system might not be too great as every person running may get opposes such as I DON'T THINK ANYONE SHOULD HAVE THIS POWER... etc. People like Rainbowwarrior1977 are pretty rare, and needing to checkuser is too, and when you need it, get evidence and ask a developer. Yes the sockmasters seem common (like murderers played up on the t.v.) but there aren't as many as you'd think. Now I should stop procrastinating my homework... Redwolf24 (talk) 02:50, 19 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: It's not even so much about abuse. It's about being wrong. What I want to see is a solution that doesn't permit the user of the private info for fishing, because fishing (i.e. finding users that we'd have no reason to suspect otherwise) is where the false hits of the system will bite us the worst. There are many ways to inhibit fishing, one is to simply give access to very few people. There may be others. The existing proposals do nothing to inhibit fishing. --Gmaxwell 03:09, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

text:  I'm not proposing anything  dishonest here. I'ts not like it would be a secret tool. It's just another proposal. -- (drini's page|☎) 02:52, 19 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Our privacy policy isn't the clearest thing in the world, but it's clear that the proposed systems wouldn't be consistant with it. As far as I know we need the board to change the privacy policy. I'm not saying anyone here is trying to be dishonest, but if we were to impliment such a change we would make the project dishonest. --Gmaxwell 03:09, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

text: I'm not sure what the point of a such a simple sockpuppet check would be in a case such as the recent vandalbot attacks (which, incidentally, are the reason for this whole mess).  It should be blatantly obvious that the users k8932kj3@as and as0d9r!23, both of whom replace WP:VIP with identical nonsense, are sockpuppets, even without a formal check; but blocking the underlying IP, as was done in the recent case, obviously requires knowing that IP itself. Kirill Lokshin 03:01, 19 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Bots are pretty much always going to require developer intervention. If someone goes through the trouble of making a vandal bot, they are going to make sure they circumvent all our normal tools. Perhaps if we worked on making less enemyes this would be less of a concern? --Gmaxwell 03:09, 19 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Wikipedia:Be nice to the vandals and Wikipedia:Don't make enemies are both redlinks. Pity. You could go and pre-emptively slap  tags on either of them if you happen to dislike them, though. -Splashtalk 03:24, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

text: It has always been well said that prevention is far better than cure, and it seems to me that most of this checkuser controversy (and, indeed, other measures against miscreants) is an effort to cure the problems with vandalism - which, incidentally, is already coped with moderately well by Wikipedia's existing immune system. What we really need to do is pour energy, effort and time into coming up with ways of preventing the vandals from making vandalism edits; or better yet, prevent them from having vandalistic tendencies at all, and making legitimate editing more worthwhile than scatological efforts. Such measures would, of course, not entail the creation of further risks through wider allocation of sensitive information. Let us, rather than wrangling over checkuser, apply the  cliché and work on making strategies to preempt vandalism via prevention. I propose some kind of Vandal Reduction Initiative to further this cause. If any of you fine Wikipedians would care to join me, I would be greatly honoured. Regards, --NicholasTurnbull | (talk) (e-mail) (cabal) 03:29, 19 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Vandalism is like Death. It will always exist. As long as the wiki is open, and "YOU can edit this article" remain guiding principles of the wiki, which if I understand Jimbo's opinion, it will, we will have vandals. There will always be stupid people with nothing better to do than engage in destructive behavior, just as there will always be termites eating wood. Our only recourse is to maintain vigilance and effort against vandalism, and to work as a counter-force to vandals. Fortunately, the system is designed to give those on the side of constructive rather than destructive change the advantage, but to assert that we could possibly stop vandalism is inaccurate, in my view. Ok but maybe we could reduce it... Ëvilphoenix Burn! 06:53, 19 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: That being said, I still think a reduction initiative is a good idea. I'd love to help. Ëvilphoenix Burn! 06:58, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

text: So great!! vandals are actually kids in need of wikilove :) -- (drini's page|☎) 22:10, 19 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: '''Alternate proposal'''

message: We really need more admins with the right access to cope with vandal-bots like the one some days ago signing up accounts from a large number of different IP's. It was frustrating to see how much trouble that bot made without anyone here being able to tell if the bot was using a specific IP-range and what IP-range that was, or if it was some zombie net or some other random collection of IP's. Many people here wasted a lot of time doing reverts and blocking all the different vandal-accounts the bot signed up. The whole thing was utterly silly, frustrating and a case of overprotection of a vandals privacy not getting to know his IP's. By simply choosing to vandalise through user-accounts he suddenly got all these privacy rights and was basically untouchable and immune to all the good people doing vandal-control. To have people with access doing sock puppet investigations is fine and well, and I believe we have enough people doing that. But we need more admins around who can react on clear cases of mass vandalism like that bot. I'm quite sure this isn't the last time someone with access to a large IP-range doing vandalism like this, no matter how nice we are to people, and when it happens again we should be able to kill it right away, and not having to sit around powerless and wait for some of the few people with checkuser access to come around and take notice. Maybe make a version of the tool only available on new and blocked accounts, or something else that will cover this need. But we must stop overprotecting vandals and waste the time of all the people who work hard to keep vandals from ruining wikipedia. Shanes 03:33, 19 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: The vandalbot hasn't gone away... just a few hours ago today it created nearly 300 new "garbage" accounts (see Special:Log/block or Special:Log/newusers around  01:13–01:32 UTC today).  Supposedly, creating a new login account on a blocked IP address has now been disabled, so this would mean that the vandal burned through nearly 300 separate IP addresses (can we get a verification?).  At peak, he was creating about 30 new accounts per minute.  And don't forget that back on August 26 a Willy vandalbot was doing about 75 pagemoves per minute.  If it seems like the level of vandalism is rising, it's because it is.  Like it or not, we seem to be caught up in some kind of arms race and things are indeed getting worse. -- Curps 04:26, 19 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I guess you missed the part about 30 new accounts per minute?  We're seeing escalated bot-driven vandalism that is very hard to cope with by any traditional means, and I believe it's getting worse. -- Curps 04:50, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

text: I just want them to be blocked so they stop vandalising wikipedia. But we can't block them if we don't know which range they are vandalising from. Shanes 04:33, 19 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I do think Tony has a point.  Attacks happen.  They're a pain (and do seem to be worsening), but they get dealt with.  Wikipedia's still functioning, so they couldn't have been too terrible.  But as much as I agree with those statements, I think they miss a nuance -- to me, the real problem here is that, yes, we have people who stand ready to help beat back the tide of vandals.  But wouldn't we rather have those people spend more of their time building an encyclopedia?  It's a resource issue.  Given that, I think there should be more efforts made to find ways to help people stem the tide more efficiently. · Katefan0(scribble) 04:53, 19 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: The past is not a guarantee of the future.  We are in an arms race that we will eventually lose if we stand still.  Tony is far too complacent.  Recent changes like the move log, newuser log, pagemove revert were good, but we need to keep moving forward and add more security and integrity features.  I would strongly urge that fundraising monies should perhaps be used to hire a full-time Mediawiki programmer who could work on such things (starting with captchas for account registration) and a full-time or part-time ISP liaison person who would be on a first-name basis with the abuse contacts at the major ISPs and whose responsibility would be IP address tracebacks and vandal accountability issues (and just in case anyone was wondering, no, I would absolutely not be a candidate for either position). -- Curps 05:32, 19 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text:  I completely agree with Curps. Attitude seems to minimize the problem. When I commented on the warning of an impending botnet attack ( at the bottom) most people just shrugged and moved on. If we can take actions to prevent these events, why wait until they happen? -- (drini's page|☎) 22:23, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

text: I remain opposed to the use of captchas for registration because of their impact on disabled users.  Kelly Martin 15:42, 19 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Me, as well. It completely contradicts the WP philosophy. Now, perhaps if people were given the option of captchas, email verification, or hashcash, I would like that (even though it's a lot of programming). We need a few more checkuserers, but we shouldn't let the vandalbots force us into a compromise if at all possible. ~~ N (t/c) 23:57, 19 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: And another section

message: As a supplement or alternative to the expanded use of Checkuser (see above discussion), I'm thinking of proposing an idea which could be called, for lack of a better name, retroactive IP or reveal IP (acronym: rip).  That is, in cases where vandalism was serious and persistent enough, the IP address of the sock puppet in question would be retroactively made public and would appear in all log files alongside the username for the edits in question (the latter would require a software upgrade, though).  For instance:
: 09:56, 18 October 2005 Astor family (diff; hist) . . William on wheels IP = 123.234.123.234 (Talk | block) (→Members)
This would be restricted to cases of prolonged, egregious, and seriously disruptive vandalism (willy etc) that if unchecked would threaten the integrity of Wikipedia — especially vandalbots — but would not apply to garden variety vandalism.  It would also be restricted to edits made in the past week or so (for practical reasons, because apparently logs aren't kept much longer than that, and also because a statute of limitations would be desirable).
The appeal of this idea is that it would not create privacy worries for ordinary users (or even garden-variety vandals); it would only affect the "privacy" of those who richly deserve to forfeit it.  The Wikimedia Foundation privacy policy does appear to explicitly allow public release of IP information under such circumstances (item 5 in particular would apply).
The decision to "rip" a vandal would have to be made quickly (within a one-week time window, before the log information is lost), so prolonged debate, voting or committee discussion would not work.  For this reason, such decisions would probably have to be made by individuals belonging to a restricted group of persons in position of high trust (bureaucrats?  arbcom members?  some new level with a "revealuser" privilege?).  Next to each edit in a log file, such users would see a "revealuser" link, and clicking on it would flag that edit (or all edits by that user less than a week old) for IP reveal.  Such "rips" (or "reveals") would be logged, and the logs would be publicly viewable the same way as blocks and page deletes, providing accountability.
The followup would be that once the IP addresses are public for all to see, anyone sufficiently motivated could use ARIN or RIPE or APNIC to contact the ISP abuse contact and notify them of a terms of service (ToS) violation by their customer (we could call this two-step process "ripping and ToSsing" vandals... for some reason, this violent imagery is oddly appealing at the moment).  Each ISP knows the name, address, e-mail address and phone number of each of its customers and logs their Internet browsing activity: if we provide a list of IPs and timestamps from Wikipedia logs, that's all the information the ISP need to identify the customer in question.  Note, we would not be subpoenaing the ISP to supply us with this information, we wouldn't engage in RIAA style litigation; we would simply ask them to apply their terms of service (ToS) to the customer in question, whose identity would remain unknown to us.  The ISP could decide to boot their customer off or at least give the customer a stern warning by phone or e-mail.
On the other hand, we might discover that the IPs in question are open proxies... so much the better, we can then block them.  Worst case, we might discover a zombie botnet, but I would hope that anyone who controls a resource like that would have enough plain common sense to stick to extorting companies and financial institutions and leave us alone... would anyone really be silly enough to risk getting Mitnicked with no possible reward (financial or otherwise) other than to annoy us?  And in this case, the ISP would notify their innocent customer that they have a spam/spyware/virus-infected computer and encourage them to disinfect their machine, so a botnet puppetmaster wasting his time on us would end up losing resources as a result, a financial opportunity cost with respect to whatever other fun-and-profit activities he uses the botnet for.
Of course, this would require a SMOP ("small matter of programming"), to modify Mediawiki to allow flagging edits for retroactive IP reveal.  But it might be considered worthwhile if it helps mitigate the vandalism problem without the privacy issues that would result from expanded Checkuser use. -- Curps 05:10, 19 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Why a technical solution? If this is ever justified, just request that a checkuserer do it. ~~ N (t/c) 12:55, 19 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Concur with Nickptar on this; if there is cause for a vandal's IP to become a matter of public record the user who does the checkuser can add an appropriate template to their user page.  No need for this, and the risk of accidental or malicious misuse is too high.  Kelly Martin 15:35, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

text: When you put it that way, it sounds like a good idea. ~~ N (t/c) 19:54, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

text: Curps, just a quick comment to say I think this is a superb idea. Very neat and effective. And furthermore, the log and user limitations should allay all the PP concerns folks expressed about that other proposal. Very fine work. Now if only someone would code it :) encephalon 21:18, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

text: Agreed, excellent idea. I particularly would like to see this done. Andre (talk) 21:44, 19 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Agreed also and well put. Implementation remains. Would existing bureaucrats be grand-fathered into it? Should it be a general vote or (heaven forbid) an essentially unilateral power granted? I actually favour the latter. I didn't like yesterday admins suddenly swarming to grant particular admins new abilities. Give it to stewards to start with perhaps, and work from there. Marskell 00:20, 20 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Rip"ping and ToSsing major (Willy-style) vandals