User:Triona/Limit participation in RFA

This is a very rough draft. A lot may change, and much more input is needed. - Stephanie Daugherty (Triona) - Talk - Comment - 17:52, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

Introduction

One of the common complaints of the RFA process is that people !vote for spurious reasons, and that regular participants "RFA dwellers" usually dominate the process, making it overly political.

By limiting the frequency of participation in the process, or at least limiting the frequency of sufferage, the overall quality of participation may increase, and the relative "cost" of participation may encourage a more well thought response.

Proposal

Participants in RFA discussions would be limited to editing the support and oppose sections of a single RFA per 30 day period. Any edit to the "support" or "oppose" section of an RFA counts torwards this limit, even if it's just a reply to another comment.

Participation in the "Comments" section, and the talkpage would not be restricted, but would not be binding for determining consensus.

Pros/Cons

Pros

• Limits political influance.
• Increases cost of participation to a meaningful level. Participants would be encouraged by the limitation to save their "!vote" until truely needed.
• Encourages diverse participation

Cons

• May encourage sockpuppetry to circumvent the limit.
• Consensus works best when all interested editors accurately and appropriately describe the different views on the subject. Limited participation reduces the ability to achieve true consensus.
• The RfA process' value as a training tool for potential Administrators is reduced if their participation is limited to once per month.
• Editors who have participated for the month would be discouraged from participation, even when they observe obvious miscarriages of justice.
• Candidates could 'game the system' by waiting until people they have offended are disqualified before standing

Implementation

Any comments that exceed the one per 30 day limit may be struck or removed. A minimum level of participation may be needed to maintain the same level of scruitiny.

Discussion

Restricting on what grounds people vote and how often they vote is I bad idea I believe. And I doubt it will make for better admins. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 18:51, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

That's something I still have to answer, whether or not this will improve the quality of admins. I do think it will make for more insightful and level-headed discussion though, and remove some of the politics, as individual influence in the process would decline sharply. One thing that I think we'd need to require if we do this is minimum participation, such that one needs a certian minimum support to pass RFA. Another viable approach I see is prohibiting those who have recently particpated in RFA from themselves being nominated for adminship, perhaps for 3-6 months. This would also negate some of the political influences, and exclude people who are more interested in gaining support for their own adminship from participation. - Stephanie Daugherty (Triona) - Talk - Comment - 19:41, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

Too many rules which will be very burdensome. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 20:05, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

On the contrary, since you'd be dramatically cutting the number of participants in a given RfA (probably to less than 10), individual influence would become enormous. Christopher Parham (talk) 20:22, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

One or two problems: there aren't any details as to how on earth this is going to be policed - it looks a little impractical - and the other flaw is that I don't see as there are enough people who vote at RFA - it's usually just the same people over and over again - for this to work. Otherwise you'll wind up with RFAs with 10 votes each - not really enough to properly determine consensus. Moreschi 19:38, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

See above, I think we'd have to set a lower bound on participation for an RFA to succeed. - Stephanie Daugherty (Triona) - Talk - Comment - 19:41, 14 October 2006 (UTC)