Wikipedia:RfA reform 2012/Proposal by TomStar81

Below are my proposals for reforms to the rfa system. I have no idea how successful these proposals will be, but as they say "nothing ventured, nothing gained". Please feel free to weigh in on these ideas, and we will take it from there.

Mark the current RFA page as Historical

The first step (IF this is accepted) would be to disband the rfa page in its entirety. We would mark the page as historical and keep it on for retainer only in much the same way that pages for VPC and Esperanza are currently marked as historical, and note on the rfa page this process has been super-ceded.

Split out editing rights

The second step would be split all additional rights on Wikipedia up so that none on them are bundled. Under this plan then, all rights must be individually sought by editors interested in obtaining additional rights. This will be a long term benefit for Wikipedia because it will allow those editors who seek additional editing rights on site to select from the current list those rights that they feel they will have the best use for and pursue them rather than go through the current process that endows editors with multiple rights that they may or may no have a need/use for in the course of their wiki-life.

Under the current system admins have three different additional rights, but as we are all aware not every admin works in each admin identified area. Some admins do not delete, some admins do not protect, and some admins do not block. By splitting up the additional editing rights here on site we will be allowing the editors themselves to select form the current list of additional editing rights those that each editor judges that we will have a long term use for, which will allow us to obtain a much clearer and more precise picture of whose has which additional editing rights. This in turn will allow editors to bring to up protection, blocking, deletion, and other such issues to people who can and will take action on a issue rather than leaving a message for one of the current admins and hoping that the problem is one that they are willing to deal with.

If implemented, this system will also help provide an additional check against accounts possessing additional rights in the event that the editor's account in question is compromised. Right now, if an admin account is compromised, the person using the compromised account has access to all of the admin rights, which is one of the reasons why we have emergency desysoping. Under this new scheme, accounts with additional editing rights that are compromised would reek less havoc because of the specialized nature of the additional editing rights request would make it harder for hackers to find an account with all the current admin rights to disrupt our site.

Create an entirely new process for obtaining user rights

In place of the current rfa page I am proposing that a new page be created: Wikipedia: Requests for Additional Editing Rights. If this plan moves forward then I intend to create a series of sub-pages for each individual additional editing right (ie Wikipedia: Requests for Additional Editing Rights/Page Protection). Each page will contain a link to relevant pages for the request right, as well as a section for candidates to file a nomination for the editing right in question. In my minds eye, I see the layout for this scheme as similar to what we have at Operation Majestic Titan, where the main page explains the purpose of the following subpages, lists resources, provides a brief history, etc, and the tabs at the top would be named protection, deletion, blocking, etc.

When an editor decided that he or she wants an additional editing right they will be required to self-nominate on the relevant user rights request page. When filing for the request editors will be required to write a statement of purposes in which they must explain why they want the additional editing rights and where they intend to use them. As the editing rights would be unlocked, those seeking these additional rights would be able to justify a need for them based on editing contribution history (for example, those looking for deletion rights would probably have a lot of experience volunteering at Xfd, those looking for page protection rights would probably have logged some time at Requests for Page Protection, etc.) A week of question an answer would then follow the request, where candidates would have a chance to ask questions, review edits, etc. After a week, the request would move to a voting phase in which users would support or oppose based on their own research into the candidate.

In addition to the above, a page will be created to allow users to voluntarily request that their additional rights be removed. This process will be a simply request page, where a user can list his or her name, the rights they are requesting be removed, and if applicable the reason why. If there is a need for privacy on the matter coordinators who have e-mail enabled can deal with the matter through the email system.

Executive Oversight for Additional Rights

Under this new scheme of mine a team of nine coordinators would be elected once a year in a Wikipedia-wide vote to oversee the request for additional rights process. This board will be endowed with executive authority to close all open request for additional rights and to promote or not promote all candidates for additional editor rights. The group will be required to include at least one bureaucrat, one admin, and one user who has no additional editing rights. This is to be done to ensure that there is a member on the board who can offer a view from the perspective of one who has no additional editing rights, and since there are people on this sight who have declared loudly and proudly that they do not want to be admins we should not have too much trouble finding people to fill this spot. I should note here that I am actually adamantly opposed to a closed group doing the selecting for candidates, which is why my proposal is intended to let everyone self nominate, the only closed portion would be the closing part, which is why there are coordinators in this proposal: the coordinators would be responsible for closing the nomination and determining wether there is a consensus to promote. Essentially, this borrows from the milhist A-class review process, which allows everyone to nominate for the A-class rank, but reserves the closing and promoting process to our currently elected coordinator tranche.

The coordinators elected to oversee the requests for additional editing rights will be authorized to draft proposals to help ensure that the process remains current and fair to all editors, however they will not be allowed to implement any proposed changes that effect the process as a whole without a Wikipedia referendum on the proposal(s) in question.

In addition to closing and promoting successful requests for additional rights, these coordinators will be entrusted with revoking additional rights granted to users when the users in question surrender their additional rights, have not used additional rights for more than a year, requests via email that their rights be revoked, or when a user is sanctioned by arbcom (if arbcom members have not already dealt with the matter themselves).

Ideally, I would also like to see this group tasked with maintaining a alert box, bot, or some other form of wiki-wide notification to help spread the word to interested persons that a candidate is being considered for additional editing privileges. As an example of what I am talking about here, the Military history Project maintains the {{WPMILHIST Review alerts}} template that lists all of the open higher review articles, and a similar such scheme could be used to list each editor's nominations for additional editing rights in the template. If a bot was used then those interested in being notified when people are up for additional rights can be notified by the bot when a new candidate has filed for an additional rights request. (Personally, I think the template would be better than the bot.)

Addressing Current Admins and their Additional Editing Rights

Lastly, if this scheme is accepted, all administrators and bots currently running admin rights would be required to report to the new page and declare whether they want to retain all of their additional rights or if they wish to surrender one specific group of rights that they rare use or judge that they have no further use for. In the case of the bots, the users running the admin-bots will be asked to select the additional rights that they need for the bot and the rest can be voluntarily surrendered.

By mandatorily requiring all admins to list which of the editing rights they wish to retain we will be able to firm up existing numbers for users willing to exercise those editing rights they wish to retain, which will as noted above help us obtain a clearer picture of which editors are willing to block, delete, etc.

Discussion

Please be specific with your comments so I do not have to guess about what you are commenting on. Also, I am on here schizophrenically these days, so if I do not get back to you quickly please be patient.

• My personal thoughts on this are that I doubt there will be support for getting rid of the system of adminship. Generally, we want to change how you get there. In addition to the three broad rights that you presented, admins have a litany of other rights, listed at Wikipedia:User access levels, so the proposal is a bit more difficult to implement. In addition, I don't exactly like the idea of somebody running for the Block userright. It is a situation where I think that a majority of the admin tools are based on trust, and should remain bundled together. That being said, seeking some unbundling, while unpopular in the past, could be a solution. Have you viewed Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Proposal by Jc37? It doesn't provide for the unbundling of the 3 userrights you defined, but it does provide for some useful unbundling. Ryan Vesey Review me! 18:25, 21 June 2012 (UTC)
  • If this was successful I would like to see all additional rights save those delegated through election (oversight, checkuser, and the like) be run off this page for ease of uniformity. This would allow for one designated group to oversee the entire additional right spectrum from a centralized location rather than have a widely scattered cluster fuck of pages, process, and people trying to oversee small portions of this independently. As for the village pump proposal, no I have not seen it (I will look at it though), but consider that having blocking rights unbundled and up for individual user use would help increase the number of people who would have the right and actually use it rather than risk someone obtaining the right as part of package and then misuse it accidentally or otherwise trying to block someone or some isp. Now I grant that this is all just a grand idea, and that since we are now conservative in our thinking and our actions it matters not what we think because there will be no change to the rfa process; the community will not allow it. This is just my idealized version of how we should run an additional rights process here on wikipedia. TomStar81 (Talk) 22:14, 21 June 2012 (UTC)
• My view is that unbundling the tools, in spite of some possible valid arguments for it, is a solution looking for a problem. The real issue with RfA, and the one that has caused the dearth of candidates of the right experience and calibre, is the standard of voting - and by that, I am not referring to any claims as to whether the bar is to high, just right, or too low. Any unbundled rights would need some process to accord them, thus multiplying the venues for nastiness. --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 01:16, 4 July 2012 (UTC)