Commons RFA is turning into English Wikipedia RFA

Yes, you read right. It's a bit of a late post really because it's been happening slowly but surely for months, but I thought I'd write about it now. People try to promote the idea that Commons is a lovely place to work, where everyone works together in peace and harmony. Frankly, I prefer English Wikipedia. This is one of the reasons I resigned on Commons. While English Wikipedia is far from perfect, its community is larger so there are a larger variety of people.

While not strictly an RFA, ABF is having an RFB on Commons. People make a huge deal out of bureaucratship. I wish I knew why. Perhaps it's because they have the only irreversable action that can be given to just anyone (as opposed to Checkuser/Oversight where one must be identified and over 18). I have never understood why bureaucrats do not have ability to reverse +sysop. So much so, I managed to get the ability added on Meta-Wiki.

Anyhow, this RFA has had three opposes in particular that bother me, all by respected admins on the project, one a bureaucrat, two checkuser and two steward. Such people have influence, and they know it. So it is very important they use it wisely. Let's look at the opposes in question:

Oppose. ABF is a very good contributor to Wikimedia Commons, but I feel unsure about giving him the big mop. While I have no reason to believe he'd be unfit for user renaming or SUL stuff, I am really uncomfortable with giving him the ability to promote sysops. Nothing personal, I think ABF is a good sysop, but I happen to think we have much better candidates for bureaucratship. guillom 19:14, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

What's wrong with this? There's no evidence or examples. Not a single one. While RFA is of course about giving ones opinion on a candidate, it would be immensely helpful for the rest of us to give some kind of reason for this "bad feeling". Guillom has simply not explained how ABF would be bad choice, just that he would be.

Oppose I believe ABF is a hard worker and I am grateful for all the time he puts into Wikimedia Commons. I wish, however, he would have asked the advice of sitting bureaucrats before accepting this nomination. This is a completely different role than sysop; and while I trust ABF's abilities for the sysop role, I have to oppose his nomination for bureaucrat. This is not personal, nor is it an indictment of my faith in ABF's good faith and honest intent. Bastique ^demandez 19:18, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

What's wrong with this? Since when do people need to ask advice before nominating? We don't ask before making an admin nomination - why are bureaucrats so special? Bureaucratship is indeed a completely different role, but only as an historical accident. If things had gone differently, admins and bureaucrats could share the same abilities. It does not require any better judgement than an admin, even less so. I trust ABF to evaluate consensus on RFDs, as we should since he's an admin. Therefore, he should be trusted to evaluate consensus on RFAs, which are really a vote count anyway. Any sensible person with a calculator can do it. Bastique continues, explaining he trusts ABF as an admin, but not bureaucrat. He neglects to explain why though, and that it isn't personal (though of course it is personal, it's ABF's RFB...)

Oppose - ABF is a fine administrator but simply is not the best choice for this role. Despite ABF's activity in nominating users for adminship (and his participation in other RFAs where they are not the nominator), I do not think they have the requisite judgement to perform promotions. This is not to say that they are untrustworthy per se, however they are not well suited for this role. I too wish ABF had consulted some trusted users (whether bureaucrats or not) prior to this request. I would have much preferred to avoid making such statements in public, however given that this is a live request, I find myself unable to support this candidate. — Mike.lifeguard | ^@en.wb 20:16, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

Mike does not think he has the necessary "judgement" to perform promotions (though promotions are not difficult at all). As with the other two, he does not explain how he gets that idea, just that he does. And again, who is to suggest that ABF didn't contact anyone first (not that it's necessary)? He is supported by Cecil, a bureaucrat, who clearly thinks differently to the others. And there are other trusted people supporting him.

I am currently supporting him. I don't have issues with people opposing, but opposing with improper or lack of reasoning is unhelpful to the candidate, other voters, and merely looks like well-poisoning. Being opposed is not a pleasant thing, I assure you, especially from well-respect users. Pull your finger out and oppose properly if you have to do it.

Template RFA opposes

There's a lot of people who like voting in RFAs. Contrary to popular opinion, I have never been one to vote in every single RFA up there. I, like many, only tend to comment on people who I am familiar with, or who I have seen around. I also started extending support to candidates whose RFAs were getting tanked by opposers with poor rationales.

There's a particular poor rationale I can't stand and that's the old "lack of project space edits". I'm not entirely sure how Wikipedia: space matters in the grand scheme of things. We could run our project well enough without the entire project space for certain. This is fairly old news, but to those who are unfamiliar, Stifle, a Wikipedia admin and OTRS volunteer, is a regular RFA voter. What's wrong with that, you may ask. It was brought to my attention some time ago, that Stifle uses an algorithm (as can be seen on his userpage) for voting on RFAs. He has just opposed Kanonkas with a templated rationale, that he often uses (Lack of Wikipedia: space edits indicates likely lack of knowledge policy). There are several things wrong with that. First, it's an oppose that is uncertain. Stifle has no idea of the knowledge of the user, as indicated by the word "likely". He is simply assuming that because a user has fewer than 500 edits in the Wikipedia: space, they must automatically be stupid and completely clueless about how Wikipedia works. Second, knowledge policy is gained not by making tons of "per nom" edits in Wikipedia: space. It's gained by writing the encyclopedia, something that Stifle does very little of. It's also gained by reading the policy pages, something that cannot be proved the candidate did, even through the use of questions. Even as an admin myself in later days, I still had to check the policy page just in case when I wasn't sure. I'm certain many admins do the same. It's unreasonable to expect admins to know all 40+ policies by heart.

I'm sure Stifle is a lovely person, but in my opinion, his ideas and approach to requests for adminship is all wrong. Candidates need reviewing properly, not just judged by their edit count in one namespace.

RFA community is broken

It's fairly obvious, but it's not the RFA process that's broken. The same system has been used ever since it was created in mid 2003: propose a candidate, support or oppose, promote if there's consensus. Of course, it's not quite like that nowadays: over time, people were able to go "neutral" (a pointless concept if you ask me, if you can't decide, don't vote); a set of standard questions were added to every request; the bureaucrat group was created; and of course the whole "!vote/vote" thing. It is a vote, always has been. Trying to claim a numbered list with a tally on top is a discussion is astounding. Then of course, trying to initiate a discussion will get a disgruntled opposer to bite your head off with "Wah!! Stop badgering me!". So, it is a vote, and always has been.

So trying to claim RFA is broken is like saying RFA has never worked, which is simply untrue since we have created nearly 1500 admins by that process. Though our community is larger, and there are more automated tools available such as Huggle, it is silly to say RFA is broken; though numbers have been dwindling as of late, people have still been passing RFA with flying colours. If it was truly broken, no one would not be passing.

What the main problem is, causing RFA to crumble, are the people who vote. Ultimately, it's their fault numbers of promotions are low, because they oppose so often, and so easily, therefore preventing RFAs from passing, and causing anyone considering it to think again.

RyanGerbil10, a relatively quiet and uncontroversial admin, expresses his thoughts about the process here. I do agree with him - it is fairly ridiculous he would probably fail an RFA if he requested now with the experience he had when he ran. This is even sillier. It is suggesting that some of the project's most respected admins would probably fail an RFA, if they ran today with the same experience they had when they did.

I do not blame the process. When Ryan ran in July 2006, the RFA looks fairly similar to today. That's because it's more or less the same. The process has not changed. The people have. I don't know why, I don't know how. But it's for the worse.

Checkuser and Oversight appointments

I just realised that the proposal to allow the Community to give proper input into who gets the most "big deal" rights is strikingly similar to a proposal I tried to push through almost a year ago, but failed when ArbCom vetoed it. Mine was slightly different at first, because it didn't involve ArbCom unnecessarily. Apart from that though, it is essentially the same. Why has it taken a year for this to get going? And why did people like Mackensen, Sam Korn and FloNight dislike the idea so much in January 2008, claiming all sorts of things: such as it was illegitimate, it would never work, the current system worked fine, the appointing was ArbCom's "gift", and an RFA-style process would not work because it's a popularity contest. And yet... it's going to happen, thanks to the 2009 Committee, who have so far impressed me immensely. 2008 was an extremely disappointing year arb-wise, which is probably why they caused my proposal to fail. But it won't now, which is good. But it's a year late, thanks to the 2008 arbcom who were pretty poor if I'm honest.

Enigmaman's RFA

The latest drama to hit enwiki RFA is Enigmaman's RFA. It's his second RFA, that was apparently going well. Very well actually, at 46/0/1 when it was put "on hold". Last month, a record 12 admins resigned, as well as two bots, so I'm not exactly sure if we do have enough admins at the moment. Anyway, Deskana put the RFA on hold, and posted the following message to the talk page:

I have placed this RFA on hold.

During the course of a checkuser investigation into an IP that would be editing in violation of Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Privatemusings#Sockpuppetry if it belonged to a user that was editing while logged out, it became apparent that this IP was infact owned by Enigmaman.

I strongly suspected that many of the supports in this RFA would be retracted if they could see the edits in question, but the privacy policy prevents me from disclosing the IP without the permission of Enigmaman. It does not seem appropriate for me, as a bureaucrat, to allow this RFA to continue when many of the supporters were unaware of the entire situation regarding Enigmaman. Therefore, I see two options.

1. Enigmaman refuses to allow me to disclose his IP. This means that I restart the RFA with a note that the user has been making inappropriate edits while logged out, but am unable to provide diffs due to the privacy policy.
2. Enigmaman allows me to disclose his IP, meaning the RFA can be restarted with the diffs in question in plain view for people to review.

The edits themselves aren't actually that bad, but I know the RFA crowd can be quite scrutinous when it comes to incivility. I actually think option 2 would work out better for Enigmaman, but that's just my opinion. The edits themselves were probably not blockable, but I imagine people would oppose his RFA for the edits. I probably would.

I hope people understand my actions here. They're not normal bureaucrat actions, but desperate times...

--Deskana (talk) 21:54, 6 January 2009 (UTC)

He actually took a while to post this, so people were fairly curious at to what the issue was. On IRC I asked Deskana jokingly if this was going to cause drama, he said "maybe". I think that was an understatement.

I was fairly surprised when I saw what was written. It was then revealed that Deskana had not contacted Enigmaman in private first, before posting this statement. This is similar to an incident I was involved with in 2007, when Deskana publicly pointed someone out as a sockpuppeteer, without discussing with them in private. While Deskana has not revealed any private information himself, this whole fiasco has indirectly lead the IPs to be revealed by others, through pressure, something which is explicitly forbidden in the checkuser policy. It is my firm belief that checkuser is most certainly a big deal, unlike adminship, and even oversight. Oversight is mostly random phone numbers, addresses, and libellous information about people. Nothing about the actual editors, for the most part, and when it is there is trouble (think Zoophilia). Checkuser is for making catching sockpuppets easier, not publicly humiliating good editors. Deskana's post suggests that many people would switch to oppose if they could see the edits made. This is not the case, at least so far. Several have stated they will be switching from support to strong support (as I shall be). I had a look at the edits, of course. I certainly do not see them as problematic in a way to make me oppose. They aren't Enigmaman's greatest moment, but then who am I to say anything? :-)

The whole thing was handled extremely poorly. It is obvious to all that Deskana should have contacted Enigmaman in private before publicly humiliating him on the RFA. I do not believe Deskana has the integrity skills required for the checkuser role. Tiptoety comments, asking "You feel he should resign because of this single incident? I see no pattern of mistakes or breaches of policy by Deskana, let's not get ahead of ourselves". Yes, I do. Checkuser is not like adminship or bureaucratship, where a few mistakes may be tolerated. I'm afraid this one mistake could have cost EM adminship, which he was easily on the way to getting at the time the RFA was paused. He was put under a lot of pressure, basically forced to reveal his IP, and has been unnecessarily embarrassed and humiliated on-wiki, in a situation that could have been solved without the general wiki population knowing about it. Surprising as it may seem, I agree with Jennavecia's post. The whole thing was a lot of shit-stirring for very little benefit indeed - and it looks like it'll have the opposite affect of what Deskana intended, because people will support because of how poorly Deskana handled this, and how well EM handled it. The whole thing was biased, as Deskana holds both checkuser and bureaucrat right, and apparently used both to unilaterally put a stop to EM's RFA, merely because he "suspected" a lot of people would switch if they saw the edits. I've seen the edits. My opinion has not changed at all. Well, it has - of Enigmaman, my opinion of him is higher. Of Deskana, he's a nice person with good intentions, but I feel he is not suited to continue with Checkuser.

New leaf

Well it's nearly the end of 2008. It's been a tough year for me, both on and off wiki. Off has seen three deaths in my family, one especially close to me. I had been fortunate to never have experienced the death of a loved one until May 2007 when my friend died suddenly at the age of 16. Along with three family members passing away this year, a lot of work, personal problems, and stress IRL, I let myself go on the wiki, possibly around that time. I said a lot of stupid things. I did a lot of stupid things. I was angry at life, and sometimes took my anger out on people who didn't really deserve it. Things didn't help when my home was burgled recently, and my laptop was taken. I don't wish to excuse my behaviour, but these are simply some likely reasons why I might have changed from a highly respected editor to someone who many consider a troll.

So I shall be turning over a new leaf for 2009. I apologise for all comments and actions I made that were unconstructive, ever. I do not consider myself a "bad person" or a "troll", and I wish to regain the respect I lost from people over the past year. I wish for forgiveness, and put the past behind me.

Majorly RfC

So I created an RfC on myself. Following a rather disasterous RfA that I nominated, it was felt by some people that my actions on, and surrounding that RfA were inappropriate, or in some people's word's "despicable". Now, I offered to nominate Jamie months ago, after noticing her good work on articles on Christian Music. I started to talk to her on IRC, and after much persuasion she accepted a nomination. I regret very much that I did this. If I'd known how vicious the RfA crowd were this week, I'd have kept well away. As it happens, I didn't. Jamie unfortunately had the kind of username that gives away age. It seems the age crowd only like coming out at certain times: just a couple of months ago, another editor passed his third RfA without a big problem. And of course, we all know of Anonymous Dissident, who passed with 165 supports and a single oppose, in 2007. The age crowd must have been on vacation that week. I wonder if they'd have opposed if they had seen it, or knew his real age? I can only guess yes. Looking at some of the age opposes, some of them are well-reasoned, but others are just really awful. Consider oppose #1: "Kid admins have generally poor judgement". This shows that this particular opposer is already biased before they voted. OK, we all have our standards. This editor has made it clear they never support teenagers. But my issue here is not the fact they have their standards, or their opinion. It's the blatant abuse of the process. When voting, you are supposed to review the candidate yourself for a good idea of what they're like. It's rather clear that this editor, and others neglected this important part of the process. It's all very well them saying they did afterwards, but the fact is, they have generalised, and stereotyped this editor without giving them a fair analysis.

So, since my candidate is getting this rather poor treatment, I am naturally angry. I make a few comments, to the point of proposing that people don't actually have to look at contributions anymore, but can oppose for whatever reason they like (it's a vote after all). I start "badgering" a few people. Such people would not need badgering if they gave the candidate a fair review. You don't see me questioning the user who had issues with Jamie's AfD votes do you? That's because it's a completely fair oppose, and shows the user took the time to review her fairly. I'll "badger" votes that do not do this. It's incredibly easy to vote on an RfA. You can vote with "per above", "Not enough experience", "needs more time" etc - all are more acceptable that someone stating "Kid admins generally are immature". The funny thing is, I've not seen one smidgen of evidence proving that statement is true. Judging by some of the voters on the RfA, and the behaviour I've seen of some adult admins, I'd say the opposite is true. Jamie's conduct through the RfA was pretty exceptional. Obviously, hardly anyone noticed this under the dust cloud.

What is now really irritating me, is that some of the opposers are using me as the scapegoat for causing her RfA to go downhill! The only people causing her RfA to go anywhere are the opposers. If they want to make frankly ridiculous votes saying "The nominator's behaviour is less than satisfactory", that's their lookout. I would hope such votes are discounted in the end - even the age ones are better than that. Really, these people are that desperate to oppose someone, that when they find nothing wrong with the candidate, they move to the nominator! Actually I've seen similar - where people oppose per whoever is supporting, and their contributions. It's so unbelievably negative. And to think that if she had simply left the fact she's in school of her userpage, she'd probably be doing so much better now! It really sucks.

And now on to me. An admin by the name of Jennavecia, probably better known as LaraLove has decided I should be desysopped. This is following from nearly 9 months of particularly unpleasant encounters with this woman - I had, for a while been considering to create a requests for comments page on myself - I know I'm controversial, and have done some stupid things. She told me that an RfC was in the works. However I have grown impatient, and wish to get this thing out in the open, so I created it myself. Soon after its creation, Giggy whom I nominated for bureaucrat on Commons, spewed out a load of diffs, dating back to late 2007. There were so many! I went through each and every one. There was, perhaps, fewer than 5 really serious incidents. Each I admitted to and apologised for as necessary. There were a great many where he presented the evidence in a skewed manner, apparently deliberately linking to logs in such a way to make me look worse than I was. There were cases where I did minor things like endorse the block of someone, expressed my feelings about the BAG process and protected a page, which I began discussion on a mere 19 days later. Others were more major, but I don't need to discuss those here. I admitted I was wrong there and then, and no more needs to be said there.

Anyway, a bunch of people have turned up, and if I wasn't all too awake this morning, I could have sworn I most of those people somewhere else - wait, I remember - RfA! Yes, it's every chronic opposer on the block, from Iridescent to Kojidude, to Malleus Fatuorum to Friday! They're all there, and they're all agreeing. I don't know what to think of this. I really don't.

Then Jenna, aka Lara showed up, and proposed I be desysopped. Unlike the other people who made statements or proposals, Lara had nothing pleasant to say about me. This doesn't surprise me. She has told me before that she doesn't like me, and the feeling is mutual. What I don't understand, is why does she dislike me so much? I mean, I don't think Friday and I will ever agree on anything, but at least he had something positive to say, along with a lot of negative. Her description of me sounds like that of a vandal, or banned user. Now, as someone who has been on this site for over 2 years, and dedicated a hell of a lot of time to various aspects of the site, I am pretty offended to be described so harshly. Perhaps it's all true, but still, it's not nice to read. Then again, with my experience of Lara, she does say exactly what she thinks, though on-wiki she's mild compared to off (and where she thinks I can't see).

Anyway, I was given the choice - RfA or ArbCom? It was an easy choice. Just looking at the shithole I threw poor Jamie into, I'd go for ArbCom any day. If they desysop me, so be it. If not, I'll take the points from the RfC into account, and step back from RfA for a while. I actually want to do something else for a bit anyway, so it works out well either way for me.