Proposal:Wikipedia:Requests for adminship is clearly too stern, too lenient, too arbitrary, too much of a vote count, and/or not enough of a vote count.
Reasons for previous rejection: While RfA is our most debated process and nearly everybody seems to think there's something wrong with it, years of discussion have yielded no consensus on what exactly is wrong with it, nor on what should be done about that.
Proposal: Limit the number of questions asked at RfA, limit the number of questions a person can ask, limit the types of questions asked, not allow additional questions to be asked, or ban canned questions.
Reason for previous rejection: RfA is a discussion and people may need to be able to ask questions they find pertinent towards making a decision. People should be able to ask the questions they want/need to ask to make an assessment based upon their individual criteria.
Note: While there has been no consensus to ban canned questions, they have routinely been criticized as not being effective or adding much value to the process.
Proposal: Administrators should have their status reconfirmed through RFA or an RFA-like process, either periodically or on demand.
Reasons for previous rejection:
There are 146 administrators. Periodically reconfirming them would be an onerous and time-consuming process. For example, with annual reconfirmation, there would be 5+ reviews per week. Endorsements of uncontroversial admins would consume much of the schedule, while the "wait time" to review admins who are controversial could be on the order of months.
Reconfirmation "on demand" has faced objections about potential abuse. Although no proposal for mandatory reconfirmation has achieved consensus, some administrators have voluntarily joined Category:Wikipedia administrators open to recall, agreeing to stand for reconfirmation if requested to do so by a sufficient number of editors in good standing.
The Arbitration process can address problems that arise from accusations of administrator misconduct.
Proposal: There should be some kind of "partial admin" that gets certain admin powers, but not all of them, such as only being allowed to block IP users or only being able to delete pages. Or, new admins should undergo a probationary period, which may include limited abilities or desysopping on demand.
Can't be done: The proposal doesn't solve any of the problems.
If we can't trust people to use their tools sensibly, they don't become admins. Period.
A "partial admin" process would at least double the already considerable frictional effort expended at WP:RFA, as users debate who gets full administrator powers versus who gets only partial abilities.
Many common problems require access to multiple tools (e.g., RevDel, blocking, and page protection for BLP vandalism). Having only a small subset also results in non-optimal responses due to the Law of the instrument. This means that a protection-only semi-admin, for example, would sometimes deploy page protection when a user block would be far more appropriate, because page protection is the only tool available to them.
It would also increase wasteful overhead, because even admins with the "wrong" powers would have to find, explain the situation to, and request help from someone with the correct power, instead of stopping the problem instantly themselves.
It's confusing. People won't know who can deal with a problem, especially inexperienced users.
Proposal: To reduce the number of failed RFAs, all candidates should meet certain requirements, such as a minimum edit count, contributions to featured content, or participation in internal Wikipedia processes like articles for deletion.
Reasons for previous rejection: While candidates with few edits and/or a lack of project-space contributions often fail per WP:SNOW or WP:NOTNOW, there are always exceptions. The encyclopedia should not lose out on a good candidate just because he or she has not achieved an arbitrary number of edits or does not frequent a particular area of the encyclopedia. Having a set minimum edit count may not lower the number of failed RfAs substantially, because an otherwise poor candidate could edit just for the sake of meeting the requirements. In addition, edit counts are not a reliable indicator of an editor's experience or competence. It is better to evaluate candidates on the quality of their contributions, not the quantity of their edits. Finally, no one agrees on what the prerequisites should be.
This is one of the issues that was discussed in depth at WP:RFA2011.
Proposal: There should be a community-based process for removing adminship. Currently, the only way to involuntarily remove adminship outside of emergencies is by Arbitration Committee action or by bureaucrat action. This would make adminship really "No big deal".
Reasons for previous rejection: Many admins object that a system like this would be too open to abuse by editors who have been disciplined by admins for violating policy. Also, nobody can agree on the requirements for filing a request for de-adminship. Many want very strict requirements for a desysop, while some want it no more difficult, or easier, than the requests for adminship process.
Proposal: Allow non-administrators to administer their user space, with the tools technically limited to that space only. This has been proposed in a number of different ways, ranging from individual abilities (such as deletion), to full admin abilities.
Reasons for previous rejection: Lack of need; admin workload is not high enough to justify this. There are possible security concerns; if users could delete pages in their namespace, they would be able to move pages to their user space and delete them. Gives the impression of user space ownership and has been rejected by the developers and the Wikipedia community.
Proposal: Administrators should either indicate or prove at their request for adminship that they have reached the age of majority in the country in which they reside. This would provide legal protection for the editor and possibly also for the Wikimedia Foundation.
Reasons for previous rejection: No consensus to implement this; editors are free to use age as a personal rationale for opposing adminship on RfA.
Automatically grant adminship to users with a certain number of edits or time editing[modifier | modifier le code]
Proposal: An editor who has edited for a certain period of time and made a certain number of edits would be automatically granted admin rights
Reasons for previous rejection: This would create major problems for the Wikimedia Foundation's legal department. The legal department requires that admin rights only be granted to users who have undergone community review.
