Wednesday 16 April 2008

RfA ideology

One of the many, many reasons RfA sucks is the ideology many people have. These are editors who, instead of coming to the request to look for reasons to support, will look for reasons to oppose. This is the complete wrong way to go about things. When RfA was created, it was not so much as a poll, more of an "OK then", perhaps like rollback. If people had an objection, it was done in reluctance, and normally with a good reason (not "he forgot to sign his self nomination acceptance" or "doesn't have enough edits to WP:AIV", but more like "he's only been here a week, maybe after a month's experience"). Some people actually set out to find a reason to oppose. I find this crazy. Why the negativity? Is it some sort of power thing, where it makes people feel better by opposing someone? I can't think why people seem to feel it necessary to look for reasons to oppose someone, instead of support. This is why supports tend to be more "votey" than opposes. Supports should be automatic, and the editor should be promoted bar any significant objection. Those who mass oppose who complain when someone questions their oppose, will sometimes say "Why don't you question the supports without a rationale?" The answer is, it should be up to the opposers to show a proper argument, and not the supporters. Adminship should be given unless there's a significant opposition, and it should be up to the opposers to prove that the user is unsuitable.

4 comments:

Nousernamesleft said...

Another thing is that any attempt at discussion with the opposers is seen as "heckling" or "harassing," and is usually replied to with an obnoxious "User:____ is entitled to his/her opinion!", which pretty much squashes discussion in RfAs, and is the primary reason they're mostly a vote.

Anonymous said...

RFA, as it has become in the past few months, is an utter joke. And then you have people saying "well, things were different back then", but give absolutely no weight as to WHY things were different. The old admins, who skated RFAs with 20 "yea, why not?" are probably still around and contributing positively. The newer admins who go thru the current process, deemed Ok, given access, then go ballistic, even tho he was viewed as "trustworthy" by the community. I won't post these thoughts on the WT:RFA page, because, regardless of how many times people toss out WP:NOBIGDEAL, it IS a big deal, otherwise there should not be this constant perennial issue.

RTh said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Anonymous said...

Yes it's a big deal and yes I completely agree. I agree with nousersnames about the "heckling" too.

RfA is a total joke. Many RfAs have are littered with bad faith/nonsensical opposes and no crat analyzes to see that that is the case.

I liked Majorly's comments on Giggy's talk:

"I have opposed people before. It would be dumb to support every single user that requested, of course. I don't criticise every oppose. I criticise the ones with weak reasoning, that either involves edit count, "experience" (when the user is clearly experienced), question to answers etc. We should be answering one question: "Will this user abuse or misuse admin tools?" No counting x namespace. No "he reported a username badly once last January". No "only been here since 2003". No "doesn't have experience in x area" (I had no experience with page protections when I requested adminship - yet I put it as something I intended to do. I only found out the page to request on literally weeks before my RfA iirc.) Basically, people looking for things to oppose by, which makes RfA a horrible place. Look for reasons to support. Al Tally talk 19:58, 17 June 2008 (UTC)"