User:Friday/bcrat
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[edit] some problems
We promote bad admins sometimes. A certain amount of this is unavoidable, but I don't understand how we got to a situation of "When in doubt, promote" (citation needed) when this action is not reversible. Do we not agree that bad admins are a huge time sink?
Some people seem to want crats to judge only what the community thought. Some people want crats to judge the suitability of candidates. These different notions can probably lead to all manner of disagreement.
Would people feel better if the bcrats made decisions as a group, rather than one individual sticking their apparently single neck out? It looks like this is already being done sometimes, in questionable cases. This is almost certainly a good thing.
Certainly there is no shortage of criticism and panic when crats act boldly. One probably legitimate point: if crats are planning to promote outside a normal range, they should so say well in advance. Otherwise, many people who disapprove will refrain from opposing, in order to not pile on. Once done, this skewing of results is unknowable and unfixable.
Particularly bizarre was the disagreement with some of the opposes on Riana's RFB. Some people wanted to reject any that mentioned her nomination of a particularly unsuitable candidate as being irrelevant and not about Riana. On the contrary- someone demonstrating piss poor judgement on who should be an admin is very relevant. This is the area that crats operate in. How could it not be relevant? This must be due to people making a huge separation in their minds between the crat's opinion and them "reading consensus". I don't believe such divisions are realistically possible. I want crats to have good judgement and not make decisions that are contrary to it. Community consensus is mainly a rationalization to please the masses.
I think crats should promote only when there are no substantial, valid objections. In AFD, we expect closures to be policy-based, and to overrule majority vote as needed. We can't easily do this at RFA because there are no policies about who should be a sysop. There are some best practices, but the community already commonly ignores then.
[edit] Examples
Examples of controversial crat decisions:
Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Carnildo 3
Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/^demon 3 (see also Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2008-02-25/Controversial RFA)
Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Elonka 3
Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Gwen Gale 2
Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Philosopher
Other weird stuff:
Wikipedia:Requests_for_adminship/Archtransit - not "controversial"- nobody saw this coming.
Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/ST47 5 - maybe not controversial, but a good example of how all you have to do is keep running, and people will give up on opposing.
this travesty is good evidence that yes, things are screwed up with RFA. How can we discourage fan-club-ism and encourage actual evaluation of candidates?
[edit] crat overhaul
The simplest thing that could possibly work: Crats hand out admin tools liberally to those who seek them. There should be some opportunity for community objection so that editors who've already displayed problematic behavior don't get them, but nothing resembling RFA. Perhaps some objective standards in terms of (sigh) tenure or (double sigh) edit count. Or maybe they need a nomination from a trusted editor who's willing to vouch for them.
Then, the crats should remove them either 1) upon seeing a prima facia case for misuse of the tools or maybe 2) upon community showing a lack of confidence in the admin in question. Perhaps #1 is already covered by emergency desysop procedures and the crats should focus on 2. I don't think 1 is adequately covered- this happens only in extreme cases. Negligence or incompetence should get the bit pulled too.
[edit] This is too big a change
Too radical; can't be done in one step. Second best(?) option: Get crats to take responsibility for their promotions. If a promotee goes off the tracks, the crat tries to fix it. But how? Worst case: The crats asks arbcom to ask a steward to desysop, by saying "I promoted this guy but have since then changed my mind, given new evidence. I don't have the technical ability to do it myself. Wanna help me out?" Would arbcom go for it? (Would a steward go for it directly? Maybe, but it's be best to OK this with established authorities.)
[edit] Could an individual crat do it differently?
This is questionable. It's going to be seen as a problem if different crats have vastly different standards. How a given RFA is closed is going to depend on who grabs it first. This is bad, but then again it's good if the other crats are OK with it. Could allow a more gradual change in process- there could be an unspoken agreement between crats. What if the other crats don't like it? We don't really know what happens much if crats disagree on crat matters- it's pretty rare (or else it's not very public).
[edit] Possible platform
One way to approach crat overhaul is for someone new to run for crat, along with a platform of "here's how I plan to do things, if given the ability to do it." The downside is this blends things together- people will be voting on the new crat and the new process at the same time. Some people may like one but not the other. It may still be worth trying, though, as a way to cut through the stagnation that otherwise gets in the way. A simple platform for overhaul may be: "I will promote whoever I think is a suitable candidate, without RFA. Then I will take personal responsibility to ensure that the new admin stays on track. If they show themselves unsuited to the tools, I'll ask a steward to demote them. The steward should be able to see that there's no consensus for them having the tools in a case like this, so the demotion should be uncontroversial." Could it possibly really be this simple?
[edit] What to focus on today
The de-adminship side of things is too difficult to move forward with. Perhaps the best a crat can do is mentioned above- recommend that a promotion be overturned. It's possible this could become unnecessary over time if the simple application of social pressure becomes effective. What a crat can do right now today is try to be conservative in promotions. Working with the other crats is probably necessary here. Not all of them see it as their duty to try to make sure unsuitable candidates are not promoted. Is it worthwhile trying to encourage them to see this as a proper responsibility of a crat? Anything that smells of "protecting the community from itself" will be subject to unpopularity and cries of elitism.
[edit] older stuff
[edit] blah blah
(post this somewhere useful when it's more baked) What is the role of bcrats? Well, they're the only ones who make new admins and bcrats. (The other duties are not controversial as far as I know).
Why don't we just have admins close RFAs? Well, admins have software functions we like to protect. Therefore, we protect who becomes one. (Apparently admins wouldn't be trusted to judge consensus? I'm not so sure about that, they do it on Afd, which, granted, is less of a big deal) If there are so few bcrats and they guard important access, I think we should be able to reasonably depend on them being rather conservative with how they wield their abilities.
Also note that other bcrats cannot undo a promotion. They could ask the stewards, but wouldn't the stewards be in an odd position if some bcrats told them to promote and other bcrats told them to undo it? So, while almost always, what's done can be easily undone, perhaps this is less true in this case? Again, this sounds like all the more reason for bcrats to be conservative. (But if the crat who promoted asked the steward to undo the promotion, this should work.)
So, famously in the somewhat recent Carnildo case, the bcrats were way less conservative in the use of their power than they'd previously been. This was a surprise to many.
Should they be conservative or not? Should they rely on feedback from non-bcrats to decide this question, or should it be all amongst themselves. Those who may "vote" on future RFBs want to know, I would guess.
[edit] newer older stuff
Crats judge consensus for adminship. Consensus can change. Why have we ignored the obvious consequences of this till now? There's a cultural resistance to the idea of a de-adminship process, but from where I sit, it's clearly seen as necessary also. Why the insistence that only arbcom or Jimbo can do this? Is it because they're the only ones who ever have? Big fucking deal! Every established process had a first time- that's how it became an established process.
