Forum:Removing rollback requirement for admin candidates

Our present policy requires that all prospective candidates or nominees for administratorship first attain rollback rights on the wiki. I am proposing that this requirement be removed.

It's important to understand both why the requirement was originally put into place, and the effects it currently has. Several years ago, the wiki's request for administratorship process was much less developed and often got little input from other users when new applicants put their names forward for consideration. It fell to the active bureaucrats of the time to decide whether a user was qualified to serve as an administrator; in some cases, a bureaucrat would deny full admin rights but offer instead a promotion to rollback, with the idea that the candidate would gain more experience and reapply at a later time. Eventually the rollback prerequisite was put into practice, largely as a means to filter out unqualified applicants and preserve some power for the bureaucrats. At that time, admin promotions were moving towards wider community input instead of simple yes/no decisions from bureaucrats. By adding a rollback prerequisite, bureaucrats could limit the pool of eligible candidates for administratorship, ideally preventing a popular but inexperienced user from gaining community support for promotion despite being unqualified.

Today the processes for selecting users to promote are significantly different. Rollback promotions are no longer under bureaucratic control, but are instead based on consensus just like other promotions. The administrative promotion process has been heavily reformed, and administrative promotion discussions are taken very seriously by the community. These discussions are focused on selecting highly qualified candidates, not necessarily people who are popular with community members. In the meantime, the rollback prerequisite continues to function as a valve, slowing down promotions by erecting barriers to new users moving into leadership positions quickly. In this way, the prerequisite is functioning exactly as intended. However, I would argue that this function is outdated for the current reality of the wiki.

It is essential that we bring new administrators on board regularly, injecting new blood into these positions and replacing administrators that leave our become inactive. However, we have had a difficult time getting new applicants for those positions, and have had no new applicants for rollback rights as well. I feel this is due to the limited scope of rollback, coupled with the fact that applying for rollback is essentially a declaration that you intend to seek administratorship at a future date, which can be perceived as ambition. Even if these assumptions are incorrect, i still feel the prerequisite is unnecessary, as it is a solution in search of a problem. As mentioned, the RfA process here is well developed and taken seriously by the community. Therefore, it seems unnecessary to limit the pool of applicants by use of this prerequisite, since the RfA process is robust enough to quickly filter out any applicants who are unqualified. The slow growth rate of the wiki in past months and the lack of interest (or at least public interest) from newer users in applying for rights makes me believe that lifting the requirement won't result in a flood of new applicants that overwhelm the process.

Overall, I don't know that this change will spur a substantial increase in applications. However, it may help ease the perception among active community members that they are under-qualified for user rights even though they are qualified enough to serve. Making this change will also enable us to reconsider the roles and responsibilities of the rollback position, and develop it into one that focuses more heavily on spam and vandalism prevention, both with the rollback tool and with other methods. The rollback position should still have a valued place on the wiki, but it shouldn't be relegated to being used as a stepping stone to full administrative rights.

-  LiR talk • blog  •  contribs 04:16, July 14, 2016 (UTC)