Wikipedia talk:Requests for adminship/Archive 83

message: It appears to me  there should be a policy and regular check on the various non-completed RfAs that did not even make it into the RfA process, with a maximum time permitted before they are deleted, with a note to the submitter/nominator. It seems without a regular cleanup, there will be more than a few incomplete, un-accomplished RfAs as tme passes. I saw recently (and actually commented upon) one of these where the submitter was  appealing for attention, yet failed to have the transclusion occur (and did not understand the process, as s/he had less than 100 edits). -- Yellowdesk 23:04, 21 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Do they really do any harm?  I think they should fall in the in between area.  If they have never been accepted and have no votes and the nominee would like to get rid of them, I see no problem with a speedy ... but if nobody cares about them and there's no other reason to delete them (an attack page or something), there's no harm in leaving them out there.  Also, there's one really good reason to leave them there.  Occasionally, when someone declines an RFA, they say, "I will reconsider in six months" or "I appreciate it but I'm really not interested in ever being one".  By leaving it out there, we ensure that the nominee will not be asked against his or her wishes. --BigDT 00:58, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

text: They are harmless. Any such policy would be instruction creep. Awyong J. M. Salleh 06:20, 22 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Not exactly harmless...when these things do cause confusion to the submitter who fails to complete the process that they think is done, and confusion by commenters like me who encounter the non-RfA through accident, such as  this for the first time,  and don't notice that it is not connected to the RfA page. The subtle difference between a "#" (section marker) and a "/" for the non-transcluded ones in the title of the item in limbo. I have to wonder, how many are there in there.  Recognizing that some of the items in "Wikipedia:Requests_for_adminship/" (with a slash) are intended repositories of statistics and edit counts candidate  discussions, there are more than a few limbo items cluttering up the "directory." Doing a search on "Wikipedia:Requests_for_adminship*" (with an asterisk).  I had about 11,000 results on my search.  When I clicked randomly on about 15 of the results items, somewhere near one third were failed non-submissions, certainly a non-scientific sampling. It does have the appearance of an iceberg, with lots of hidden failed submissions below the waterline. Does it really make sense to have this kind of cruft lying about? -- Yellowdesk 08:14, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

text: *If a submitter fails to properly submit their RfA, I do not see how having a policy to delete such RfAs will prevent them from making the mistake and suffering the consequences; unless we delete the RfAs before they've even had a chance to screw up :) As for the other impact, that of having 11,000 pages in that listing; that listing is inherently non-scalable in usability. If you're interested in seeing failed/successful RfAs, you can see them at Wikipedia:Unsuccessful adminship candidacies and Wikipedia:Successful adminship candidacies. Trying to scan through thousands of pages (which, even if the 11,000 were cleaned up there'd still be thousands) is not terribly usable. --Durin 13:52, 22 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: * I'll ask from a different point of view.  Suppose several editors decided to compile a list of old--say four-plus months old--non-properly submitted (un-transcluded)  RfAs, and  submitted them for  speedy deletion or for ordinary deletion.  What reasons might there be for not doing this, beside the view that it's harmless stuff not worth attending to? -- Yellowdesk 06:33, 23 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: *That becomes a deletionist/inclusionist debate, of which I am neither. Personally, I'd like to see clear reasons why they should be deleted. --Durin 14:08, 23 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  Costs time and storage space. (Deletion on mediawiki does not "clean things up") --Kim Bruning 14:14, 23 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  Disk space is cheap, and there's plenty of it; a few terabytes last time I checked (of course, IANAD). Deletion in MediaWiki just sends the offending revisions from the revision table to the archive table. The contents of the archive table are liable to be deleted at any time, as Brion has previously said. So, disk space isn't an issue here. Titoxd(?!?) 18:55, 23 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Disk space is not only cheap, but also can be heavily compressed when stored. =Nichalp «Talk»= 18:57, 23 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Need for standard policy for incomplete RfAs not transcluded 

message: What do you guys think about adding instructions on the Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/nominate page instructing people to use standardized numbering for second, third, fourth, etc. RfA's? For example, if a person is up for RfA after not succeeding the first time, doesn't it make sense that their second RfA simply be WP:RfA/User 2? And the third WP:RfA/User 3? For some reason, I see a lot of RfA's that don't follow this (to me intuitive) numbering scheme, and this can make RfA's pretty difficult to find if you don't already have the link.
Some examples of why it can be so aggrivating to find 2nd and 3rd RfA's without a link:
*Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Can't sleep, clown will eat me too
*Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Aaron Brenneman (second nomination)
*Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Chanting Fox (2nd)
*Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Bigtop (2nd nomination)
*Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Darwinek (2)
Anyway, it'd be a relatively simple matter to implement a standardized numbering scheme. We wouldn't have to go back and change old RfA's or anything... we'd just be adding instructions to the RfA creation page to do it a certain way. Anyway, just an idea. Let me know what you guys think. – Lantoka (talk) 05:58, 22 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Unneeded instruction creep, we don't need a Wikipedia:Adminship naming conventions. thanks/Fenton, Matthew Lexic Dark 52278 Alpha 771 13:55, 22 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: We need something to allow people to easily find a particular RfA without a link to it. -Amarkov moo! 17:51, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

text: *If it's an active RfA, it will be listed at WP:RFA. If it's never been active, there's not much purpose in seeing it. If it's already closed it will be linked at Wikipedia:Unsuccessful adminship candidacies or Wikipedia:Successful adminship candidacies. --Durin 18:08, 22 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: *There's a technique for this: use Special:Allpages/, change the namespace to Wikipedia, and put in "Requests for adminship/Name of Candidate" for the starting point.  (This is particularly useful for finding all subpages of pages in User and Wikipedia namespace, I've found.)  -- John Broughton   (♫♫) 00:00, 23 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: *That's a pretty nifty trick. Too bad it's not better publicized. Thanks for the tip bro. – Lantoka (talk) 04:23, 23 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Standardizing RfA Numbering 

message: I've become quite enamored of the "wannabe_kate" tool for examining edit counts.  While I am aware of the dangers of editcountitis, this tool has the advantage of listing people's top-15 pages of interest in each namespace, which gives a good sense of what they specialize in.  While it would be an awful load on the toolserver to include a link to a search for every RfA,  going forward we could replace the current edit count summaries on RfA talk pages with the full output of this tool.  While it uses fancy formatting, a simple cut-paste of the output inside a  block gives decent results.  What are people's thoughts? —Dgiest c 22:11, 22 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Proposed new standard format for edit count 

message: Hi,
I wish to be an admin. What I am supposed to do? I will appreciate some feedback. --- SciAndTech 14:43, 24 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Keep editing for about three more months at minimum, and build your edit count to over 3000. Write articles most of the time, but be sure to participate in process such as articles for deletion and do the odd bit of recent change patrolling. Whatever you do, don't request it now as you've been here just a couple of days and so you have almost no experience of anything. Good luck with your wiki-career! Majorly (o rly?) 15:24, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

text: Thank you Majorly. --- S&T 15:47, 24 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  I am not new to wiki but yes new to wikipedia. I have added those pages in my watch list and will try to follow your instructions. Thanks. --- S&T 15:49, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

text: Please don't suggest an edit count, as that gives the mistaken impression that that is the important part. The important part is demonstrating a track record of positive contributions and an understanding of the policies. - Taxman Talk 19:51, 24 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: It is only a suggestion, and it's something that !voters will look at generally. Majorly (o rly?) 19:57, 24 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: The user asked what they are supposed to do. In light of the question, your answer was misleading. Enough so that I though it was valuable to point out what they should really do. - Taxman Talk 00:09, 25 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  How to be an admin 

message: I've been looking into the evolution of RFAs during the course of their run.  Looking at 400 recent RFAs, it appears the de facto SNOW threshold has been less than 20-30% support after a day or so.  This is actually quite generous.  During that period, no RFA with less than 50% support after 1 day posted has passed.  Similarly, with the exception of Carnildo 3, no RFA with less than 65% support on or after 2 days has passed.
Maybe SNOW should be used more, maybe not.  At the least, we should be able to tell people at 40% support, etc. that their odds of passing are essentially nil.  More stats later.  Dragons flight 22:45, 25 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: IMO, the point of WP:SNOW isn't to stop discussion the instant someone can determine what the result will be. If the discussion is beneficial, then regardless of the fact that a certain result will almost certainly be reached, it should be allowed to continue. With those 20% support RfAs, it's obvious that nothing will come, except for massive pileon about how the candidate did something bad. But when you get significantly higher than that, there is probably going to be significant discussion on some points, and maybe some more suggestions from opposers. -Amarkov moo! 22:53, 25 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Very good point. -- Renesis (talk) 07:01, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

text: *Yes, but it's been debated before. The people in opposition say that RfA is not an editor review, and should not be treated as such. Not saying I agree with that, just that this is one of the points in opposition to that. --Durin 13:46, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Sure, that could be up for debate, but regardless, I think that it is a very good point that WP:SNOW should be reserved for RFAs that stand to do more harm than good (pile ons) or are obvious mistakes, but not for good-faith RFAs just because someone "is sure it will fail". -- Renesis (talk) 16:37, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  A note on SNOW 

message: I would like to help wikipedia by becoming an Admin, but I am not sure if I am ready for it.  I do not know how much experience on wikipedia is needed, nor do I know what I should do to be accepted if I were to apply.  I would like to talk to an admin about this.  I will be watching this page and my user talk page, so contact me either way.  Thanks in advance, --Savant13 01:22, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Unsure of Self