Battlestar Wiki:Think Tank/RfA Amendments

This is the overview. Basically, a summary of what the idea is about. You can get into the details later on.

RfA Amendments

The process for Battlestar Wiki:Requests for adminship has significant flaws that create inefficiency, bias, and confusion. Unlike, for example, an election as done in United States government, the RfA process fails to sufficient define the following:

• Minimum prerequisites that establish eligibility for any contributor to vote.
• A minimum length of time that must elapse before an RfA can be resubmitted for a candidate of an unsuccessful RfA.
• Limitations or restrictions to vote commentary to avoid issues with an article, as well as the establishment of an RfA moderator (any administrator that will not vote on the RfA and who remains neutral throughout the process).

Proposal criteria

• What is the benefit of this proposal to the wiki?

The proposed amendments will aid in smoothing out the process for RfAs while minimizing bias and votes from contributors who have not contributed to the wiki in such as manner as to warrant their legitimate dedication to the success and quality of the wiki. In short, the privilege of voting should be limited to contributors who have likely interacted with the RfA candidate and thus have a more legitimate perspective in determining the contributor's merit and effort to become an administrator.

• What is involved in implementing this idea?

This will require a policy definition as well as tools necessary to allow a moderator to quickly identify voting contributors who do not quality to vote.

The establishment of the powers of an RfA moderator are needed. The moderator's duties would include: truncation of any vote commentary of greater than 200-300 words; determining a voting contributor's eligibility to vote for an RfA; and the moving, editing, or deletion of excessive or inappropriate commentary from the primary RfA page.

• Who is going to do it?

All administrators, contibutors and the bureaucrat are welcome to submit ideas to the process. The actual tools should be created and tested by anyone with permission from the bureaucrat.

• Why should we do it at all?

Please see the third RfA for User:The Merovingian. Many elements of the RfA process became biased, and the article itself suffered technical issues that hampered the process and created inappropriate discord and confusion.

• How will we use the idea?

The results will be amended to Battlestar Wiki:Requests for adminship as official policy. When an RfA is submitted, any administrator can volunteer to be the moderator to oversee that the RfA requirements are met.

• Should the proposal pass, when will work start on this idea?

Much of the concepts are already shown here. All contributors will be encouraged to submit ideas, but I (Spencerian) will volunteer to serve as the amendment proposal project leader.

• Where will this idea be implemented? (e.g. Will it be on certain types of pages or the entire Wiki in general?)

An RfA, of course, establishes qualifications as administrators for the wiki, who have special responsibilities for maintaining the quality and stability of the wiki. Likewise, this process ultimately affects the spirit and body of the wiki.

Notes

To avoid "reinventing the wheel," I recommend review of RfA processes on other MediaWiki-enabled sites. This situation is bound to have already happened before, and will happen again here unless action is taken.

[[Category:Think Tank proposals|Template:RfA Amendments]]