Wikipedia talk:Requests for adminship/Danny/Bureaucrat chat

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< Wikipedia talk:Requests for adminship | Danny

1 Request to the bureaucrats
2 Talking
3 Thank you
4 It quite honestly pisses me off
5 Discussion of closed RFAs
6 Centralizing discussion

[edit] Request to the bureaucrats

As you are aware, this is a delicate situation, and a firestorm will result regardless of what you do (although I suspect it will be worse if you promote).

I'd like to note that I am very uneasy with the idea of discounting votes. That is a bad precedent, and it will be interpreted as the bureaucrats formed a cabal to pick and choose the numbers and promote against community consensus.

If you do so discount votes, I would suggest you carefully make a list of which votes you discount and why, rather than by simply stating as Redux that it will result "probably closer to somewhere between 74% and 76%."

Sorry for the possible implication that I am telling you what to do. I just hope that you will follow the text at Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Giano#Bureaucrats which says that

Bureaucrats are bound by policy and current consensus to grant administrator or bureaucrat access only when doing so reflects the wishes of the community, usually after a successful request at Wikipedia:Requests for adminship.....They are expected to be capable judges of consensus, and are expected to explain the reasoning for their actions upon request and in a civil manner.,

Thank you. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 03:25, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

Never mind. This was closed too much in a hurry I think, but the general agreement of the bureaucrats was towards promotion, that was clear enough. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 03:47, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

I, too, would be curious as to the actual percentage of "sockpuppets" among each camp. If canvassing the population for an opposed vote is to be frowned upon, then canvassing the population for a support vote should be equally frowned upon. I did not notice sockpuppetry being notated for those who supported after a long inactivity in edits of Wikipedia. (Personally I opted to abstain from the vote despite daily usage of Wikipedia, as my edits are relatively few and far between.) --AndyFinkenstadt 04:17, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Talking

Thanks for coming together and talking about the issue. Everything else aside, I think it is a lot better for Bureaucrats to approach controversial issues that way than for a single 'crat to simply decide. Dragons flight 04:09, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

I would like to thank you as well, and encourage such a model for any/all future such promotions of a dicey/questionable "consensus". -- nae'blis 04:50, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

Agreed. Much better having a record of your discussion here than doing it in IRC, even if the content of the discussion and the outcome are the same. Thatcher131 11:46, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Thank you

for doing your part to break the culture of "one moron one vote" - David Gerard 09:30, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

My thanks as well. Hopefully this will set a precedent for future controversial RfAs; it's pretty helpful to have a transparent look into how 'crats sort these things out. Johnleemk | Talk 11:24, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

No, thank you, David Gerard, for doing your part to break the culture of having respect for those you may disagree with. —Bunchofgrapes (talk) 15:49, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

The 'crats' discussion is at a level of discourse you pretty much don't see on Wikipedia these days; I shall be endeavouring to use it as a personal example henceforth. And respond with measured words when outraged rather than just cough up my skull. I'm sure I won't do a perfect job (being an arsehole as I am), but I do promise to try - David Gerard 16:40, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

Throwing out all of the "me too" votes would have affected the support column more than the oppose, & the vote tallies would have been much closer. If I may use David's figure of speech, there were morons with voting on both sides of the issue. -- llywrch 17:39, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

There has always been this distinction between support and oppose votes. In general, supports can be interpreted validly as "I see nothing wrong here and think he would make a good admin based on what I know", which is an obvious default, whereas opposes require some answer to the question "what is wrong with this candidate?" even if it is something as simple as "I don't like him" (though that's not likely to convince anyone else). —Centrx→talk • 17:42, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

I don't think the bureaucrats really threw out the "me too" votes on other side, and I think that doing so even for oppose is problematic, because if the first oppose voter raises a serious concern in a well-written comment, there's often no need to explain one's rationale beyond a simple "per X", or "X said it better than I could", which I've seen a lot of. Ral315 » 22:04, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

Llywrch, it's in the nature of interwebnets discourse that the morons are always on the other side. Dave's only expressing that truism. And I'm going to treasure "The 'crats' discussion is at a level of discourse you pretty much don't see on Wikipedia these days" because "whoops, sorry, I just promoted the guy I voted for just as you were saying you didn't think we'd agreed" truly is a height of something. Grace Note 03:52, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] It quite honestly pisses me off

That my vote was made to be some how less valid then any other of a number votes made for less. I have no personal vendetta against Danny and I made a valid point that would have been acceptable in any other RfA. This page shows that there was a bias towards promoting from the begining and it didn't matter what came up in the opposition, Danny was going to be re-promoted. Thanks for not listening to the concerns of quite a few people, and giving back someone a mop that has proven in the past to abuse it because he feels like it. Now I just wonder how many of us on the oppose side will find ourselves mysteriously banned, or if we ever go to RfA denied, because of this RfA.EnsRedShirt 11:24, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

To be clear, under the normal percentages for promotion, support votes are counted as three times "less valid" than oppose votes. Your one oppose vote still counted in this case to "invalidate" two support votes. —Centrx→talk • 15:09, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

While I won't comment on the validity of your vote because you raise a valid issue, I'm not sure it's wise to suggest that opposers, even if their votes were discounted, will find themselves "mysteriously banned" — as far as I know, that would be a first, because I have never heard of anyone who voted against the tide in any RfA being "mysteriously banned". Similarly, I don't think anyone keeps a track of who votes their preferred way in RfA, let alone a number sufficient enough to deny consensus to promote in a future RfA. I hope we can leave the conspiracy theories out of this; TINC. Johnleemk | Talk 11:27, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

Oh I didn't say a cabal, but I quite honestly wouldn't be surprised with his past uses of the mop if Danny didn't quietly block some people for some time, not any time soon of course, but maybe a few months down the line?EnsRedShirt 11:33, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

As far as I know, the only people Danny has been accused of unfairly blocking are newbies and people he was supposed to block under WP:OFFICE. If he does block any people opposed to his RfA - and I would think that insinuations that he would behave in such a manner, contrary to past behaviour, border on a violation of AGF which so many people have been using to (rightly) whack him over the head with - nobody's said you can't bring the matter up and have it rectified. If you truly believe that Danny can get away with abusing the mop, the indirect implication is that you believe there is a cabal of Wikipedians who will let him get away with it. Johnleemk | Talk 11:49, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

Bollocks. It's impossible for anyone to quietly block someone, and it's going to be impossible for Danny to quietly do anything from now on, with the level of scrutiny that there will be. --bainer (talk) 14:46, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

The fact is if they closed it the other way, then other people would be pissed off. My advice is to watch Danny's contributions, that should assuage your fears. ^High_InBC^{(Need help? Ask me)} 14:50, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

They should have just told him to wait a couple of months.. Like I suggested in my comments..EnsRedShirt 02:27, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Discussion of closed RFAs

Can I just say I like this approach? Sane, sensible, quiet, transparent discussion on how to decide the RFA; is there any chance of it being implemented for future close or contentious requests? Shimgray | talk | 20:36, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

I agree. I came here thinking that this was another decision to promote another admin with less than 70% support. I'm not sure that I like the decision but I feel this sort of transparency is much superior to the mess we had after the Carnildo re-adminning debacle. Please make this a standard procedure for all RFAs which are marginal. --Richard 22:58, 11 April 2007 (UTC)