コメント依頼/Confirmation of stewards

The following request for comments is closed. There is no clear consensus on the proposal. Just over 50% of the participants supported the change, so closing this RFC as unsuccessful in gaining consensus to change the policy. --Jyothis (talk) 23:08, 27 December 2015 (UTC)

---

スチュワードの年次信任投票では次のように述べられています。

Steward status is granted until the next yearly elections, where users will be invited to comment and in particular to ask for removal of status.

Should the stewards determine that consensus exists for a steward's rights be removed, the steward will lose their status.

（現在の日本語訳）

利用者が必要とするならばそれを得ることができ、人々に信用される場合は保持でき、必要でなくなった場合や信用できなくなった場合は権限を失います。スチュワード権限は次の選挙まで付与され、利用者が権限の除去を求める場合は信任投票時にその旨を表明することができます。

この部分について次のように変更することを提案します。

Steward status is granted until the next yearly elections, where users will be invited to comment on every steward as to whether they should keep the status or not,

preferably giving reasons for their opinions. Should the stewards determine that no consensus exists for a steward's rights to be kept, the steward will lose their status.

（現在の日本語訳、暫定）

スチュワード権限は次の選挙まで付与され、その場所に利用者は招待され、すべてのスチュワードに対し、彼らが権限を続けるべきか否かをコメントします。 好ましくは、その理由と主張が与えられます。 Should the stewards determine that no consensus exists for a steward's rights to be kept, the steward will lose their status.

変更する理由は次のとおりです。

• 現在の文書では、強い反対がある場合においても、スチュワードの権限を除去することが不可能です。強い反対があるということは、もはやウィキメディア上で本当に「最も信頼できる利用者」ではなくなっていることを意味します。権限の除去について合意がないため、スチュワードは40～50％の信任であっても権限が保持されています。
• 新しい文書は、スチュワード選挙とスチュワードの確認（信任確認）の両方で、今よりもプロセスを論理的にするので、スチュワード権限の管理のために合意が必要と考えています。
• 現在のスチュワードは、しばしば作業の結果として論争の相手がいる可能性があることも主張できますが、そうであっても信頼に不足するという意味ではありません。報復のケースは、コミュニティ全体に関わる意思決定について反していたり、作業内容について過小評価したり、無視するスチュワードに対して不信任としたり、裁定についての明らかな不信任があてはまります。
• 同様の内容には、グローバル管理者の権限除去に関する規定があります。チェックユーザーとオーバーサイトの権限では、再選挙や確認で一定数以上（70～80％）の信任を得る必要があります。

--MF-W 15:48, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

Comments

• Против--6AND5 (talk) 16:27, 10 April 2015 (UTC)
  • Can you please elaborate? (it may help other users to make a decision) Caliburn (talk) 16:55, 10 April 2015 (UTC)
•  Support: Consensus to keep approach gives more weight to community opinion, whilst active community is actually in the long-term benefit of all Wikis. -- Frhdkazan (talk) 16:41, 10 April 2015 (UTC)
• Neutral, both hold it's own demerit and it's own merit. I can't decide.--AldNonymous^Bicara? 16:43, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

  In light of Natuur12, Ajraddatz and Ankry comment I change this to  Oppose, it's true that many user left either a rather useless comment or revenge-like comment, I also don't want to see Steward to be scared and feel insecure to execute their task, this would backlog many things. Steward is a critical position that affect many things, and from time to time they need to act swift and often "merciless", like locking hundred of LTA in a single week.--AldNonymous^Bicara? 17:55, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

•  Support. This is not perfect, by any means, but the argument MF-W makes is unimpeachable: 40-50% opposed to confirmation shows a problem with community trust. Okay, what to do? An unconfirmed steward should be suspended. In practice, the bit is removed, but the suspended steward could request an RfC to examine behavior. After that RfC has collected evidence and argument, then there would be a poll, on the question of lifting the suspension, and I would have that be a majority vote, under clear rules. Votes would be Yes or No or Support or Oppose, no comments would be allowed in this kind of vote (at this point, they would just continue to debate and argue, when the facts and arguments have already been presented). A deliberated result, like this, is very different from an unsupported poll, with no evidence other than scattered remarks in votes. Secret ballot? --Abd (talk) 16:44, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

  I Oppose secret balloting, you can't detect revenge oppose !votes that way, not to mention, confirmation pages was meant for consensus building that's "not" actually a votes.--AldNonymous^Bicara? 16:50, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

  No way man.. I strongly oppose secret ballots. This makes it harder to detect votes from trolls... Jianhui67 ^{talk★contribs} 16:59, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

This is not the place to debate this, nor will it be decided here, but ... the open voting for steward has a discouraging effect on those who might object to a steward's actions, because of fear of retaliation. Currently, the WMF board is elected by secret ballot, and individual board members don't have the power to globally lock your account, or oversight your work. Individual stewards do, and stewards are sometimes unrestrained. If it is a majority vote, rather than supermajority, and "troll votes" are important, something is drastically off. Those "trolls" might be users who have been unnecessarily offended by the steward. This is what I've seen for years on WMF wikis: the accumulated experience and wisdom of centuries of democratic process was tossed in the trash. We created our own traditions, and then locked ourselves into them.

If this RfC shows adequate support, a policy and procedure will be written and presented for approval, I'd assume. The proposal was not specific enough to create, by itself, a new process. For example, as mentioned below, "consensus" wasn't defined, only something that was not consensus. --Abd (talk) 17:25, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

• I hope you are not conveniently forgot that secret balotting exist for political reason, why do this apply on consensus building !votes pages? I don't understand this part!--AldNonymous^Bicara? 17:30, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

Classic democratic process, in consensus organizations: Officer elections are not "consensus building," they are simply expressions of trust or lack of same. Because that expression can be warped by a wish not to offend, or, worse, by fear of retaliation, it is always secret ballot. When setting up the WMF wikis, existing and known consensus process was ignored in favor of something called "rough consensus," thus setting aside decades of experience in consensus process, and centuries of experience in democratic organizations. We see the result. Good in some respects, not in others. --Abd (talk) 18:24, 19 April 2015 (UTC)

•  Support--Dzianis Niadbajla (talk) 16:51, 10 April 2015 (UTC)
• Comment You need to define "consensus" before asking for a vote. I would agree that a majority of 70% or 80% is needed to keep the status, or that a minority of more than 20% or 30% is needed to loose it. Regards, Yann (talk) 17:03, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

  Well, the term "consensus" is already used in the current policy. A page consensus exists but is quite vague about it, probably because it's impossible to give a really good definition of what consensus is. That is especially true when talking about things like the Confirmations, where there is no voting, but commenting, so it can't easily be said to mean "a certain level (e.g. 80%) of support". --MF-W 17:37, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

  In my opinion, using the word "consensus" without any set percentage gives the ElectCom the ability to account for irrelevant or bad-faith opposes, unlike the steward elections themselves, which has a hard limit of 80%, no exceptions. --Rschen7754 01:15, 11 April 2015 (UTC)

  Exactly. So until this is written precisely, I  Oppose. Yann (talk) 10:35, 11 April 2015 (UTC)

  @Yann: Unfortunately, this is not the question here. The question is, if you prefer stewards to decide based on consensus for removal, or based on consensus to keep. The process itself is not subject to this RFC and may not be changed here. Vogone (talk) 10:39, 11 April 2015 (UTC)

  I assume that is what we want? Otherwise, I could oppose a steward for "He wrote an article on Candy" and it would be given the same weight as "He violated someone's privacy". --Rschen7754 15:02, 11 April 2015 (UTC)

• Same requirement for confirmation as it is for newly elected stewards means, that each steward is elected again during each confirmation phase. And they would be under continuous pressure as it is not often to have support significantly higher than 80% for new stewards. Moreover in conflict situation it might be quite easy to gather 20% opposition voting against any steward. So I  Oppose 80% support for confirmation, but I would  Support lowering current requiremets. I think that 50% support required for confirmation may be quite fair. Ankry (talk) 17:04, 10 April 2015 (UTC)
•  Oppose when you look at the confirmations you can hardly call this community consensus. You see regulars voting and some users there to get their revenge over some dispute. When we create a 70-80% support rate it would be way to easy to get rid of stewards and given the hard tasks they execute from time to time. (Croatian wiki for example.) This will likely result in stewards being more reluctant to act when they are needed when the case is controversial. We would have lost some great stewards in the past if we had a 70-80% support rate. I agree with Ankry. Natuur12 (talk) 17:48, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

  Looking at the past confirmations, I see no remove-comments ever because of a steward's action in the hrwiki affair. Also other controversial cases have resulted in hardly any revenge "votes" for removal. And as said above, these obvious revenge things would be discounted anyway by ElectCom in closing the discussion. I do not think that hrwiki users exist who would have wanted to oppose some stewards out of revenge, but were deterred from that because they thought the current policy made a removal of the steward unlikely anyway. --MF-W 21:52, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

  Other example, stewards doing a CU at DE-wiki. I know, it's an oldy. But you really believe this is going to solve the problems you have with the current system? Natuur12 (talk) 20:05, 19 April 2015 (UTC)

  The issue there was not necessarily that the check was done by a steward (as technically allowable per policy, but that the proper notification/logging to the community was not given per local policy, and that requests to provide some sort of reasoning or explanation were ignored for several days. --Rschen7754 20:18, 19 April 2015 (UTC)

  Thanks for correcting me Rschen7754 :). Natuur12 (talk) 20:57, 19 April 2015 (UTC)

  FWIW, Barras even managed to CU on dewiki without generating any opposes (confirmation). Vogone (talk) 20:35, 19 April 2015 (UTC)

• A steward should be more focussed on doing the right thing (as defined by policy and consensus) than taking popular actions. I fear that changing it from "consensus to remove" to "no consensus to keep" will force stewards to limit their actions based on what is popular instead of taking the best action possible. That said, I do think that it is a bit too difficult to remove stewards at the moment, so something like a 50% oppose rate to me could be interpreted as consensus to remove, depending on the strength of the arguments. As always, I would prefer secret ballots to the current system. Ajraddatz (talk) 17:55, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

  I am also not happy that this proposal still leaves the final decision to confirm / not confirm with the stewards. All it does is re-imagines the end goal of our own internal consensus-analysing process. I would prefer that the community be the ultimate arbiters of whether or not a steward remains a steward, rather than it being based on consensus within our own group. Ultimately I'm not sure how I would like steward confirmations to run - I think the current system favours stewards who are barely active, and I would like more qualitative evaluation of steward actions rather than a free pass for anyone who is still "trusted" after a year. Maybe this proposal would help with that, despite some concerns raised over what consensus is. Please note that I am not supporting or opposing this RfC, because I feel that as a steward I have a conflict of interest, and as I said above I would prefer that the community decide how to confirm us rather than it be an internal process.

  One side comment I would like to make regarding popular actions: I agree that stewards solely focussed on retaining their internet powerz are probably here for the wrong reason, but there will always be people like that. Simply saying they shouldn't be here won't remove them. So better to not promote a system which might active encourage them to take only popular actions, and stay barely active like the majority of the stewards we have. Ultimately, we need people who are willing to put time and effort into internal discussions and performing difficult actions, and there are few enough stewards involved with that as-is. Ajraddatz (talk) 17:24, 14 April 2015 (UTC)

•  Support: --Gloria sah (talk) 18:26, 10 April 2015 (UTC)
•  Support To be between 70-80% could be better. We need to remember that. The applicants who do not have a vote in strong against argument can be successful with 70%. An applicant may fail with a very strong argument against 70%. In fact, arguments instead of numeric data should outweigh. --Uğurkent^talk 18:33, 10 April 2015 (UTC)
• I agree with the proposal.--Ssola (talk) 19:10, 10 April 2015 (UTC)
• Support This totally makes sense. I personally would even go as far as to support a merge of SE and SC. It would make the process better understandable, more transparent and fair to the community. But this proposal is definitely a step towards the right direction. Good to see it comes from a steward. Vogone (talk) 19:29, 10 April 2015 (UTC)
•  Support. --Asger (talk) 19:44, 10 April 2015 (UTC)
•  Oppose current practice had no issue till now and I see no reason to change it Mardetanha ^talk 19:49, 10 April 2015 (UTC)
•  Oppose So we're going to switch confirmations into a popularity contest now? Definitely not with my support. Per Ajraddatz. If you require consensus in favor to appoint somebody to a position of trust, the just and fair is to require consensus to remove in order to demote somebody from any position of trust; otherwise the confirmation process will be totally botched and a vaudeville. -- M\A 21:06, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

  So you are of the opinion that the Global sysop, Oversight and CheckUser removal practices are all unjust and unfair? Anyway, if "confirmations" weren't about continued trust, what else is to be confirmed then? Only the flag? Using that approach, one could just as well abolish the entire SC process as a useless formality and add the line "In case of serious concerns about a steward, open an RFC" to the policy. Vogone (talk) 23:55, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

  Hi. Any policy that leads to arbitrary interpretation is unfair, and those policies you mention are the examples of what policies shouldn't be in my opinion and I hope that we can discuss in the future about clear and fixed requirements for appointment and removal. At least CU/OS says that the communities can vote for removal of access, which will be done according to the voting policies of such wiki. But, in case of GS, what is a significant minority? Leaving appart that steward confirmations are not votes, I prefer to apply the principle in dubio pro reo. Should you want to remove somebody rights, you must get consensus for such removal. Should you want to convict someone, you need the jury to vote for convicting that person. Thanks. -- M\A 14:59, 11 April 2015 (UTC)

  I can understand your position, though the other question still remains, considering you oppose the process being a "popularity contest". My impression is that the current form has the exclusive purpose of applauding the stewards for their superb deeds during the last term, at least one cannot really call it a "confirmation" since the 80% trust from the original election are not being confirmed in that poll. If we indeed decided that stewards are only to be removed in case a clear majority opposes them, no yearly confirmations would be needed, far too much a process. A simple community-initiated RFC for individual stewards at any time would do it as well, the rest is a pure "popularity contest", as you call it. Regards, Vogone (talk) 15:08, 11 April 2015 (UTC)

  This makes it sound like continuing as a steward is an unalienable right, not a privilege that is extended by continued community support, and that by removing a steward, we take away a steward's freedom and happiness. Having not been a steward for a month now, that is far from the case. You have adequately described the process where we ban an editor, but being a steward should not be given to as many people as those who are allowed to edit this site. --Rschen7754 15:21, 11 April 2015 (UTC)

  MarcoAurelio, how is the current process (i.e. the last confirmations) not a popularity contest already? --Rschen7754 01:10, 11 April 2015 (UTC)

  Well, in part you're right that they're somewhat now already, with the difference that you need consensus to remove somebody based on evidence of wrongdoing, not vice versa. Anyway, I think that real problem in steward confirmations lies in the ElectCom, created years ago out of nowhere with some obscure purpose, and that substracts the stewards as a whole the analysis of the steward confirmations. -- M\A 14:59, 11 April 2015 (UTC)

• Question: (e.g., MF-W): How frequently have later votes failed to produce a consensus to remove, but also failed to produce a consensus to not-remove? Granted, people might vote differently if they knew they had to vote against removal in order to keep it from happening, but this would seem to be an important statistic in understanding the consequences of what we're being asked about here. For example, how many current stewards would have lost their current rights if the revised criterion were applied to the historical vote counts? --Pi zero (talk) 21:09, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

  This is difficult to say because the Steward confirmations were in the past few years closed by an Election Committee whose members individually weighed the consensus, the results were then put together (see here for this year's results). So they looked whether there was consensus to remove or not; we cannot say now what the individual persons would have said if the question to them had been "is there consensus to keep?". — As an ElectCom member in this year, I think there were 2-3 stewards where there was no consensus to remove, but also no consensus to keep [so they were kept]. But that is just my interpretation, others might have seen it differently. --MF-W 21:52, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

•  Oppose Which is the problem for this solution? --Martina Nolte (talk) 21:20, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

  That it is nearly impossible to remove a steward when even half of the community might not trust him anymore. --MF-W 21:52, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

•  Support. This makes sense. It's not good, when steward (or other kind of sysops) is unimpeachable. A small detail: if some are afraid of that stewards should be forced "take popular actions instead of doing the right things", this could be solved needing some higher quorum for remove, than quorum for confirmation. I am more afraid of that some users are called "trolls" when they simply disagree with actions, which make their editing more complicated or imposibble in case, when they really want do good input without unneeded obstructions. Nice, that it comes from a steward. --Kusurija (talk) 21:35, 10 April 2015 (UTC)
•  Support in theory, because "appointed forever until they retire or manage to screw-up royally" is just wrong. But annual confirmations are far too often, how about some nice series, e.g., 1st election for one year, 2nd for two, and so on. –Be..anyone (talk) 21:51, 10 April 2015 (UTC)
•  Support it is not respectful that someone can keep a delicate flag with a 25-50% minority opposing. Of course it is fine with me if we don't take in account comments referring to actions occurred before the previous 12 months, and it is ok if we don't consider very much negative comments based on the simple "rudeness" of the steward if his/her actions are correct. I also think that overall it is a matter of coherence with other flags and I see this as the most simple strategy to adopt immediately to balance the situation. Different options would require the introduction of a completely different system of election (secret ballots, compulsory sabbatical with a reelection...) and that's too complicated. In any case, if the effect will be to have less active stewards, this will lead to more stewards (we have enough good candidates), which will shape a more integrated and cooperative group, which is on the long term a good thing.--Alexmar983 (talk) 21:59, 10 April 2015 (UTC)
•  Oppose Stewards are there to take sometimes unpopular decisions and they take them despite the certain increase of more or less interested opposers, whose number in the course of time grows; the same happens the same way with regard to veteran admins in single Projects. Opposers will not miss the opportunity to let their voice heard in confirmation pages, but those who feel fine with the steward usually don't stop there to say anything; by now, confirmation pages are not populated with a truly representative sample of the whole Community. Most of us don't even know that User:Soandso is currently under re-evaluation, and are not there because of this. Therefore, to seriously consider this proposal, first of all a central notice should inform all the users in all the projects every time a steward is going under confirmation, so to ensure that those who come to a confirmation page could be really representative of the Community; but honestly I think that this would be quite a nonsense practice, when not simply an instruction creep. On another side, consensus is not at all a matter of numbers and percentages, "50%" means nothing in terms of consensus, nor "80%" could. Consensus keeps its grounds on objective facts, on clear policies and on the sharing of common sense views. A hypothetical 80% comments eventually not coherent with these points, is 0% (zero percent) in terms of consensus, and nothing should be influenced ever by anything so irrelevant. Since stewards are triple-trusted users (being admins in their home projects + being personally identified for legal reasons + being so much trusted that they have been elected here), given that they do what they do regardless of their own popularity, and considered the importance of what they do, I would instead work on limiting unproper influences in service procedures. No one is unimpeacheable, but no one is here as a target for trolls. --g (talk) 23:50, 10 April 2015 (UTC)
  • A central notice already is put up everytime the steward elections and confirmations happen. Always everyone is invited to comment. --MF-W 00:02, 11 April 2015 (UTC)
•  Support. Each steward needs the trust of most of the Wikimedia's community. Therefore it makes more sense to require consensus to keep a steward, rather than consensus to remove one. Currently we stewards mostly decide among ourselves whether to retain a steward's rights, which is rather absurd. The proposed change would give a bit more decision-making power back to the community, I hope. SPQRobin (talk) 00:07, 11 April 2015 (UTC)
•  Support In recent years, it has become unreasonably difficult to remove stewards who are doing a bad job; in the last confirmations round, a steward who had performed 1 steward action for the entire year was nearly reconfirmed, and would still be a steward today, had the steward inactivity policy not kicked in. But more worrying than keeping inactive stewards is keeping active stewards who are not trusted by a significant portion of the community, but still break the 50% barrier for support and are thus kept for "no consensus to remove", access to private information and all. --Rschen7754 01:09, 11 April 2015 (UTC)
•  Support - In the most recent confirmations, atleast 2 other stewards should have lost their rights but did not because the decision was 'vetoed' by the stewards..If we want transparency, then this is the right step to take..the worst part is inactive stewards keeping their rights claiming that they promise to be active the next 12 months but are not. Stewardship is a privilege and the highest ranking privilege on wikimedia (that is decided by its community) so lets make this as transparent as possible..--Stemoc 02:34, 11 April 2015 (UTC)
•  Support - So long as any election is couched not in terms of "Do you like this person?" but rather in terms of "Do you trust this individual?" AuFCL (talk) 03:27, 11 April 2015 (UTC)
• Very weak  Support - This can make stewards more reliable, but currently the gap between stewards and other groups is too wide. I hope more users can be involved to some tasks for stewards e.g. global blocking. There may be new user groups fot it.--GZWDer (talk) 05:02, 11 April 2015 (UTC)

  Can't we just made Global Sysops able to do it? Of course we will also need a RfC for allowing GS to do it.--AldNonymous^Bicara? 05:05, 11 April 2015 (UTC)

  Such an RfC obviously already took place in the past, and was clearly rejected by major parts of the global community. Vogone (talk) 07:47, 11 April 2015 (UTC)

  Such case in the past may become irrelevant in the future, hence needed a change to such policy, maybe it's time to change some Global Policy with newer RfC.--AldNonymous^Bicara? 09:30, 11 April 2015 (UTC)

•  Support - but I don't like that users are only allowed to comment on the stewards, it should be a vote. This is not for the the stewards to decide, this must be decided by the community. — Jeblad 05:11, 11 April 2015 (UTC)

  Reconfirmation are not votes, it's a consensus building pages.--AldNonymous^Bicara? 09:32, 11 April 2015 (UTC)

  What is unclear about "it should be"? To me it seems Jeblad is well aware of the status quo. Vogone (talk) 09:33, 11 April 2015 (UTC)

•  Oppose per Natuur12, Marco and Ajraddatz. Jianhui67 ^{talk★contribs} 05:20, 11 April 2015 (UTC)
•  Support if comment is correctly reasoned. Mathis B (talk) 07:21, 11 April 2015 (UTC)
•  Oppose looks like re-election for each steward every year. There is no reason to leave the current praxis.  @xqt 08:43, 11 April 2015 (UTC)

  If at all, there is a proposed change in evaluation practice, not in the process itself. Vogone (talk) 08:57, 11 April 2015 (UTC)

  @xqt:In this proposal is not anything about term length. Where did You see "re-election for each steward every year"? --Kusurija (talk) 16:36, 11 April 2015 (UTC)

  Pssst ossst @Kusurija: Stewards/Confirm/2015. Confirmation (you can say re-election) held in paralel with election of new stewards every year.--AldNonymous^Bicara? 23:48, 11 April 2015 (UTC)

  I think you got something wrong here, you cannot call it a re-election. It's just a call for comments, there are not even election criteria. The separation from SE (here you have the name election in it) was made on purpose. Vogone (talk) 00:03, 12 April 2015 (UTC)

• Neutral I am for 4 to 6 years --Boshomi (talk) 08:55, 11 April 2015 (UTC)

  But this will leave many unneeded, useless inactive user with Steward status.--AldNonymous^Bicara? 09:36, 11 April 2015 (UTC)

  I think the inactivity rule is not affected by the proposed change. --mfb (talk) 12:19, 11 April 2015 (UTC)

  I'm at lost here, I was commenting to Boshomi comments not the proposal. Did you get my comment indentation wrong?--AldNonymous^Bicara? 14:17, 11 April 2015 (UTC)

  Whatever Boshomi intended to say, also that would leave the inactivity rule likely unaffected. Vogone (talk) 14:47, 11 April 2015 (UTC)

•  Oppose I oppose to change this to. As Mardetanha: current practice had no issue till now and I see no reason to change it. And per Natuur12, MarcoAurelio and Ajraddatz. --►Cekli829 10:18, 11 April 2015 (UTC)
•  Support - seems logical. --Purodha Blissenbach (talk) 10:38, 11 April 2015 (UTC)
• Neutral I agree that "consensus against" is too strong, but "consensus for" is very vague and could be interpreted as 80%+ (staying steward should not have stronger requirements than becoming it). I suggest something like 50-67% support. --mfb (talk) 12:19, 11 April 2015 (UTC)

  Please note the current process merely weighs arguments. Nobody counts the plain number of support and oppose comments, that was never done before. Vogone (talk) 12:36, 11 April 2015 (UTC)

  I'm not sure if some unclear statement like "if there is significant support" would be better than some fixed minimal fraction of support votes. --mfb (talk) 16:52, 13 April 2015 (UTC)

• Comment I honestly cannot see what should this be a solution for and how. I know I'm rude but it sounds like a way to increase the weight of some, currently minority, opinions tearing apart stewards' team. Making parties out of the natural point of views is an unforgivable mistake which will eventually destroy one of the most efficient team in volunteering. --Vituzzu (talk) 14:26, 11 April 2015 (UTC)

  So in effect, you are saying that this "minority" opinion of some of our "most trusted users" must be suppressed ignored because it is an "unforgivable mistake" to consider those viewpoints? This sure sounds like a great way not to "destroy one of the most efficient team[s] in volunteering"... --Rschen7754 15:51, 11 April 2015 (UTC)

  @Rschen7754: I was clearly totally unable to express my point. I wrote the proposal seems to be a way to increase the weight of...: can you please point me out where did I expressed some which can, even in the weirdest way, mean "suppress" those different views? --Vituzzu (talk) 16:41, 11 April 2015 (UTC)

  The entire last sentence of your original comment. --Rschen7754 17:01, 11 April 2015 (UTC)

  My comment hasn't been edited and I still cannot understand. I said this proposal seems to be aimed towards giving an extra weight to some opinions which are turning into a party. Again, were is the suppression? Is the aimed overweight fair? --Vituzzu (talk) 17:06, 11 April 2015 (UTC)

  Perhaps "suppressed" was too strong of a word, and I am reading some of my former colleagues' actions into your comments. My apologies. But my point remains: if 30-40% of the community no longer trusts a steward, should we just ignore the concerns raised and pretend like nothing ever happened? --Rschen7754 17:24, 11 April 2015 (UTC)

  "Suppressed" was not too strong but totally unfair. I'm pretty disappointed since you completely of being accused in a such way. I'm dealing with a different issue, this proposal itself is the mean of what is, to me, getting a dispute between different point of views. I look at this proposal and what I see it's "the system is broken because my POV didn't win".--Vituzzu (talk) 17:30, 11 April 2015 (UTC)

  I think now you are being a little bit unfair. The system is obviously broken, since each of the SCs since I joined Wikimedia resulted in disputes and people doubting ElectCom's ability to judge consensus resp. to implement their own results. Otherwise stewards would hardly have announced to discuss changes to the confirmation process internally. Vogone (talk) 17:39, 11 April 2015 (UTC)

  Broken, perhaps. I don't believe it is. But you don't fix stuff with hasty and badly written proposals. Natuur12 (talk) 18:12, 11 April 2015 (UTC)

  I do not think it is broken either, just functioning in the wrong direction. About your quality assessment: If you really want to know, I already resolved to make this proposal during the evaluation of SC2015, and I created a first draft on my computer on 19 March, according to the file history. If that is hasty, I can't help it. But you are very welcome to correct the badly-writtenness of the proposal of course. --MF-W 15:16, 12 April 2015 (UTC)

  I really shouldn't have to explain too you that hastiness has nothing to do wit the creation date. The first sloppiness was already pointed out by Yann that "consensus" isn't defined. I read this as 70/80% support. You talk about how your proposal the removal process more logical but that's your POV, not a fact. You confuse (dis)trust with not enough support. You forget that in the current process the number of participants isn't significant enough to determine if there is enough trust. You made a couple of critical thinking errors when you wrote your motivation. Sorry. Plus you wrote down some hard statements but you don’t cite your sources. Natuur12 (talk) 19:10, 12 April 2015 (UTC)

  I wonder which meaning of the word you mean then. — The word "consensus" is also already used in the current policy. My change is minimally invasive so it keeps the word. It's hard to understand how you oppose the usage of the word, but nevertheless argue that the current state is perfect. Regarding the rest of your comment, obviously I always write my opinion except when I state that I describe someone else's. About the level of participation, it's funny that you think the current process has no legitimacy to remove someone, because there are too little participants. Let us try to raise the number of participants then. However the legitimacy of the process surely cannot rely on the argument that too little people opined in the SC. Then you also need to oppose the current state of SC; not only my small change in the evaluation method. It would be too nice for everyone here if you could reveal the supposed "critical thinking errors" and say where sources are needed. --MF-W 22:36, 12 April 2015 (UTC)

  That's not what I said.... Natuur12 (talk) 23:07, 16 April 2015 (UTC)

  Of course not. --MF-W 00:15, 19 April 2015 (UTC)

  Let me replace the word hasty with badly prepared. I say hasty because the current proposal looks like somehting that has been written in a hour or so. I never argued that the current state is perfect, I argue that your proposal is even worse. I never argued that the current system has legitimacy to remove steward rights. I argue that the number of people participating is not enough to determining the level of trust someone has. Of course it's legit. We have some people who know what they are doing evaluating stewards instead of some kind of mass vote. What else could we possibly want? I'm sorry but the way you analyse my comments make me wonder if you are the right woman for the job. And I don't need to oppose anything. Natuur12 (talk) 20:03, 19 April 2015 (UTC)

  I guess you mean me since I made this proposal. I assure you it has nothing to do with my opinion winning somewhere in the last Confirmation or not. I on purpose did not comment in order to be able to determine the outcome more neutrally as an ElectCom member. I also did not make up my mind what my opinion would be if I commented (as it is ridiculous to appear neutral just because you didn't comment, even though you have an opinion in reality). I merely noticed in my ElectCom work that on some stewards (as mentioned above in the answer to Pi zero) I found no consensus to keep them, but that this was actually not what the policy cared about, so that they were kept. I think this approach is wrong and probably not what the community wants – regardless of which stewards are affected – so I proposed this change. --MF-W 15:16, 12 April 2015 (UTC)

•  Oppose any wording that contains the words "no consensus". The notion of consensus is very poorly defined in Wikimedia world, and there is no objective measure of that. According to Consensus (or en:Consensus, or any other definition), a consensus cannot happen if one editor in good standing has one serious argument against, gives it a high priority and tries to convince the others to support it. As far as I understand, "consensus exists for a steward's rights be removed" means that oppose arguments overweigh support arguments, which does not happen often but is still realistic. On the other hand, "no consensus exists for a steward's rights to be kept" can be interpreted that there is at least one strong oppose argument, but it does not necessarily overweigh support arguments. Which brings us three problems:
  • Where do these strong oppose arguments come from? One conflict with an experienced user capable of making good statements is usually enough, and it is likely to happen to an active steward
  • How to evaluate whether oppose arguments are strong or not? It's completely subjective
  • How to avoid such situations? An obvious answer was suggested by Ajraddatz: just do only popular things.

  To sum up, I think that between "consensus for Remove", "no consensus" and "consensus for Keep", the second one is the most vague. Borderline cases between "consensus for Remove" and "no consensus" are rare (we hardly ever have both strong support arguments and large opposition), but borderline cases between "no consensus" and "consensus for Keep" are frequent (strong oppose arguments and high level of support), thus "no consensus" definition is not a suitable one — NickK (talk) 00:12, 12 April 2015 (UTC)

• Very weak  Support The system of re-election is a nice idea, but I fear that 70-80 % are too high. Stewards have to be removable, but still independant in their work. So I prefer maybe 60-70 % (not really sure about all this...) --DerMaxdorfer (talk) 10:43, 13 April 2015 (UTC)
•  Oppose Similar to reasons raised above. Stewards perform many tasks which leave various people or groups unhappy. If stewards would fear that proper, but unpopular, actions would lead near automatic non-renewal of steward status, then either we would have a too-high steward turnover or we would have necessary actions remaining undone. Stewards can be (and have been) removed when they have not lived up to the requirements, but once the members of the various Wikimedia projects have trusted someone as a steward, that person should be able to focus on supporting the projects as he or she has volunteered to do, and not have to worry about grudge oppositions. With the current default as continuation of the steward status, this is less of an issue; if the default would change to "loss unless reconfirmed," this becomes a more significant problem. -- Avi (talk) 16:50, 13 April 2015 (UTC)

  How sure are you that stewards wanting this voluntary job so badly that they avoid unpopular decisions are at the right place? –Be..anyone (talk) 18:30, 13 April 2015 (UTC)

  What do you mean by "right place"? -- Avi (talk) 19:27, 13 April 2015 (UTC)

  The purpose of being a steward is more than being reelected the next year; it is about acting with integrity to protect the Wikimedia projects. The type of people who are motivated to act politically in order to seek reelection should never be stewards, because they have forgotten that Wikimedia is all about spreading knowledge to the entire world, not a power-hungry game where you have to collect all the hats. Incidentally, they have chosen to forsake their integrity in order to retain their "power" over other users. But regardless, nonsensical / revenge votes are regularly discounted; I came to that conclusion after reading the confirmation discussions (on stewardwiki) for the years 2012 to 2015, and can think of several cases where revenge votes were discounted. (in reality, the discussions should be held in public, but anyway...)
  We cannot forget about the flip side of the coin, though: stewards who have no fear of the confirmations process and act accordingly, because as long as you don't violate someone's privacy, don't act on your homewiki, and are at least semi-active, you will be kept, which actually happens to be the status quo. --Rschen7754 01:45, 14 April 2015 (UTC)

• Neutral --Umberto NURS (msg) 22:43, 13 April 2015 (UTC)
•  Oppose Wikimedia movement already has a long history and we have many really good candidates, who have already proven their trustworthiness for years. When we promote such well-known users to stewards, the emergency situation when removing stewards rights is really needed should be rare and the need should be demonstrated by a clear consensus.--Tchoř (talk) 22:57, 13 April 2015 (UTC)
•  Oppose --birdy geimfyglið _(:> )=| 01:11, 14 April 2015 (UTC)
• Neutral The definition of "consensus" does not appear to be consensual to me. Elfix 07:58, 14 April 2015 (UTC)
•  Support. Under the current process, it is far too difficult to remove stewards. I do not recall any stewards receiving a significant number of remove votes in the confirmations for performing controversial but necessary actions, as some people fear. Should such votes be made, however, they can simply be disregarded, as is stated in the proposal. Rschen7754 also makes a good argument. -Mh7kJ (talk) 19:18, 14 April 2015 (UTC)
• Question: MF-W (with apologies if this has been covered somewhere above), I'm trying to understand why you proposed this the way you did, and two things are unclear to me. Why did you propose requiring a consensus to keep each year, rather than, say, requiring a balance of opinion to keep each year? Also, since you did propose requiring a consensus each year, why did you frame this in terms of a steward keeping their privs, instead of simply saying that stewards are elected for a term of one year, since there seems no operational difference when a consensus is required each year either way? --Pi zero (talk) 20:26, 14 April 2015 (UTC)
  • User:Pi zero: Do you mean by "a balance of opinion to keep" a system in which it's necessary to have no more oppose than support "votes" (i.e. a balance of negative and positive comments)?   About the second question, I'm unsure where I expressed in in the way you describe. The policy also currently already says "Steward status is granted until the next yearly elections [...]", and I want to keep this formulation. --MF-W 00:15, 19 April 2015 (UTC)
    • MF-W: Likely a balance of opinion to keep would be something similar to that. I admit to struggling with how one ought to frame such a thing; it's got the serious drawback that, unlike "consensus", it isn't afaik a standard concept already well-understood. The reason I'm considering it at all is that I'm wondering, hence my question, whether requiring a consensus to keep would result in Stewards who plan to retain that position beyond the current year spending their tenure perpetually "campaigning" for the next year.

      The second question, I think I've figured out for myself; I'd wondered, if one were going to require a consensus every year anyhow, why one wouldn't just say "Steward status is granted until the next yearly elections, at which time the Steward is automatically put up for reelection." But once I compare that explicitly to the proposed wording, I can see merit in retaining the words about inviting comment. --Pi zero (talk) 04:09, 19 April 2015 (UTC)

•  Support a three year trial. During the time between the 3rd and 4th years we need to revisit this proposal and see if there is consensus to continue reaffirming as opposed to reverting back to impeaching stewards. Unless I miss my guess, there will be very few reaffirmed stewards and being a steward will become a much bigger thing. Not only do I expect the turnover rate to be astronomical, I expect it might lead to people being a little more willing to elect a slightly less know candidate in cases where candidates are in short supply. Will be interesting to see what happens if this proposal goes through. - {{U|Technical 13}} (e • t • c) 22:30, 14 April 2015 (UTC)
•  Oppose. Existing rule is good enough. I always consider that being a stewards, checkusers, bureaucrats, or administrators means responsibility, not honorary titles. Requiring consensus to keep should be better applied to Requests for comment/Removal of bureaucrats in small wikis and Requests for comment/Removal of permanent access of admins in small wikis. If we allow so many bureaucrats in small wikis, why keep electing so many more new stewards?--Jusjih (talk) 04:12, 15 April 2015 (UTC)

  Really not sure about your crusade against any local user rights on Wikimedia. We still have stewards because assigning user rights is a small fraction of the actions that we take. Ajraddatz (talk) 04:22, 15 April 2015 (UTC)

  Isn't this just a Bias? If Steward can't go with this proposal, why do local rights user have to be scrutinized in a same way?--AldNonymous^Bicara? 06:39, 15 April 2015 (UTC)

•  Support The most optimal solution would, however, be to make reasoning for your oppose vote mandatory. And then it's upto the community to weigh in on that vote or not. --QEDK (talk) 11:57, 15 April 2015 (UTC)
•  Oppose - Proposal misses the important information what consensus actually is. Also, while there is (imnsho) a problem with the confirmation process, that proposal does not solve that problem, I even think it might make the problem worse. -Barras talk 13:40, 15 April 2015 (UTC)

  Then please be proactive and propose an alternative solution. Just opposing both, the current and the proposed version, does not help anyone. Vogone (talk) 14:03, 15 April 2015 (UTC)

  If I had a possible solution I'd already brought it up. Sadly, I have no idea how to improve the system, which is the reason I actually wanted to abstain from commenting here. However, seeing people supporting the new system (which is imo worse than the current system) made me raising my concerns here. -Barras talk 15:48, 15 April 2015 (UTC)

•  Oppose The proposed amendment will result in more 'democratic' stewards' behavior. They will less tend to be independent and tend to be more populist. Wikipedia is not a democracy. The elected functionaries should have more power to deal with issues. The limitation of their power (and this is the core of the proposed amendment) will result in more chaotic situation, where volatile public opinion will overwhelm the ideas of reason and higher goals of Wikimedia. Populism is not the solution. I do not know the real causes of this proposal, but I can assume that the reason is some conflicts with stewards. I do not know what those conflicts are. However, I think that the correct way to deal with conflicts (and presumably 'bad' stewards) is the right of the stewards themselves to expel their colleagues by unanimous (or close) vote/discussion. If there are some 'problematic' stewards (i don't know the issue, but assume, that there is some issue, as the amendments like this are rarely proposed on pure theoretic grounds), the stewards' corpus should have the right to maintain its stability by some sort of 'Court of Honor'.--Abiyoyo (talk) 13:10, 16 April 2015 (UTC)
  • So we should elect some dictators, but not be able to remove them? --MF-W 00:15, 19 April 2015 (UTC)
    • There is an ability to remove. The policy says, that if there is consensus for removal, the steward status is removed. Yes, it is more difficult to gather consensus for removal, than just point to no consensus for someone's stewardship. But that difficulty is good. If stewards will be subject to regular confirmations, they will be afraid to take action in disputed cases. Stewards are not representatives (as e.g. members of parliament), they are executives. They do not have to represent the public opinion. They have to act. If e.g. 50% of editors are for something and 50% are against something, any action by the steward in such circumstances will give him or her 50% friends and 50% of enemies. Whatever he or she does he or she will get 50% enemies and therefore there will be no consensus for his stewrdship after whatever he or she does. I order to give stewards some space for action it is important to give them some kind of immunity. If a steward allways or often does something very bad, he or she will lose the support of majority and loose his status anyway. But in some circumstances stewards as executives should have some ability to act in the interests of wikimedia as whole, not just to count voices in order not to loose his status.--Abiyoyo (talk) 11:07, 21 April 2015 (UTC)
•  Support --Allan D. Mercant (talk) 15:23, 16 April 2015 (UTC)
•  Oppose No evidence of a problem has been presented. This solution would mean that we would end up with populist politicians as stewards, rather than dependable users willing to undertake behind-the-scenes work. Johnuniq (talk) 01:16, 18 April 2015 (UTC)
  • Surely not. Why should stewards who do "behind-the-scenes work" suddenly receive many opposes in the confirmations? Behind-the-scenes work is usually not seen by the public and therefore the community also doesn't comment on it. --MF-W 00:15, 19 April 2015 (UTC)

There are problems. Having seen a problem case, I started a study of steward actions, including global locks, preparing for a possible RfC. It was a set of pages, some of which were neutrally compiled from public logs. Some contained some opinion. It was under discussion by several users, including a global sysop and a steward, it all seemed okay. After weeks of work, it was abruptly deleted and suppressed and I was warned not to request undeletion. The community does not know the problems, and attempts to document actual practice are unwelcome. I remains unclear to me what, exactly, in that study justified suppression. See Wikimedia Forum/Archives/2014-06#Preparing for RfC on_Antispam_practices. In the absence of any expressed community support, I did not go to the Ombudsman commission. The steward who had deleted was ... on the Ombudsman commission at the time. Previously, when Lar, a truly excellent steward, went on the Commission, he resigned as a steward, because there could be an obvious conflict of interest. Those precautions have been lost.

One part of the study showed that the lock tool was seeing high use, roughly 5000 actions in the last three months of 2013. Most of these actions were outside of the intention of how the lock tool would be used. However, most actions -- by far -- were probably proper, and the change that would need to be made would be to the policy, not steward behavior.

However, there were a few exceptions. Without reviewing that data, off the top of my head, it was five global locks. That is 0.1% of the total. I found that when global locks that were, to me, well outside of what the community would approve were brought up for steward review, the process was often knee-jerk "the steward is always right." Occasionally a steward might comment that something was strange, but nothing was done. Community comment on the Steward requests/Global page can be very unwelcome. Thus there is little supervision of the stewards by the community, and a few users are being defacto globally banned without following global ban policy, at all, based only on the opinion and action of a single steward.

The problem is not really the stewards, not even the most problematic steward, the problem is us. We don't care, except to respond to a proposal like this with fingers in our ears and a belief that everything must be fine, no problems. --Abd (talk) 18:16, 19 April 2015 (UTC)

Errm, Abd, I think you are mistaking Stewards for WMF Office account who do office action, global bans are not handed out lightly and it's rare to see Stewards to do such action, stewards hold no responsibility toward those action as it's not them who do the action of locking/global banning.--AldNonymous^Bicara? 09:50, 20 April 2015 (UTC)

Excuse me, but stewards indeed do perform global (b)locks: [1], [2]. Vogone (talk) 10:18, 20 April 2015 (UTC)

Vogone, I mean Office action that is not covered by locking and Gblocking policy (Global locks).--AldNonymous^Bicara? 13:55, 20 April 2015 (UTC)

Both, this proposal and Abd's comment seem to be related to stewards, at least I don't see WMF office actions even mentioned here. Vogone (talk) 14:24, 20 April 2015 (UTC)

That's why I'm saying Abd probably mistaking Office account for Stewards account. (God... Do I really need to explain it again?)--AldNonymous^Bicara? 14:37, 20 April 2015 (UTC)

In case Abd gets the supposed reference to Office actions, then fine. I personally don't get it and thus ask. Stewards have been locking users for years, it's a rather usual type of steward action. Vogone (talk) 14:47, 20 April 2015 (UTC)

AldNonymous, at the end of 2013, there were about 5000 account locks in three months. A tiny number were WMF Office actions, maybe three. These are not supposed to be global bans. A lock is of the account, not the person. (This has changed, there are now many more Office locks, enforcing global bans.)

Almost all accounts locked are identified as spammers, often with no edits. However, some account locks are for "lta," (long term abuse) and in some cases, these are accounts being locked because they are identified as "lock evasion." These are "defacto global bans." These are not WMF bans, and they are not community bans. In some cases, the users might qualify for a global ban, being banned on more than one wiki, but that process has not been used. There is a user, a professor of history, whom a steward has decided is a long-term abuser, dedicated to promoting his work, who is globally locked on sight by that steward, this was documented on one of the suppressed pages. This is a one-steward declared global ban.

I saw a global lock applied with no abuse at all by the user, certainly not global abuse, but only because the user had edited an article about her father and uploaded some photos, he's a celebrity and art photographer, and many of his photos are hosted on Commons. She was warned about editing her father's article, so she stopped and made about 50 other edits. The lock was applied after she had not edited for over two years. This is far from normal, I don't want to imply that problematic steward actions are common. Here is my unlock request. The daughter is Giulia D'Eboli. I erred in that request. She had no cross wiki edits. The lock reason, "spam-only account" was blatantly incorrect. This was part of the Augusto De Luca affair. --Abd (talk) 04:43, 21 April 2015 (UTC)

Oh, @Abd: that Augusto De Luca case...? I'm sorry, I'm not familiar with that case, I am not active editing meta on mid 2013.--AldNonymous^Bicara? 05:55, 21 April 2015 (UTC)

•  Oppose. and I think it is more suitable for achieving consensus. There is no need for a magical number. We should note that the overall quality of an argument is more relevant than whether it represents a minority/majority view. Ruy Pugliesi^◥ 17:01, 21 April 2015 (UTC)

  @Ruy Pugliesi: Which magical number do you mean? The wording in that regard is unchanged. I agree the quality of an argument should be weighed in, it also is, but even the best argument would not count against a clear majority on the other side, regardless if we apply the old wording or the proposed one. I don't see how this is an argument in favour of the old wording. Vogone (talk) 17:28, 21 April 2015 (UTC)

  Vogone, I know this discussion is regarding if the decision should be made based on consensus for removal, or based on consensus to keep the permissions. However, some users have been claiming on a needed support ratio of 70%; that's why I mentioned that. Anyway, the proposed changes would easily pave the way for turning the stewards confirmation process in other stewards elections, which is quite unnecessary. Ruy Pugliesi^◥ 21:07, 3 May 2015 (UTC)

•  Support The highest ranking user right shouldn't be this easy to keep. Bosstopher (talk) 15:31, 24 April 2015 (UTC)
•  Support Definite support. Requiring consensus to remove is a very bad idea. A community I'm active in has/had the policy of keeping moderators as long as possible. This and limited checks/ability to check on their behaviour led to them considering the rank their right and not a privilege and they acted accordingly. I.e. for more than a year they kept being inactive in their duties, abusing powers and bullying (serious bullying) people but weren't deranked because of that policy. And requiring consensus to remove is just like that. If someone does these things but manages to keep a low enough profile (like these mods), then you simply won't get the majority needed to remove them in time, only when it's too late and serious harm has already been caused. I'm against bullying, so I'm in favour of the "consensus to keep" policy. People in position of power need to be kept in check. --Zombie45764 (talk) 00:17, 25 April 2015 (UTC)
•  Oppose For sure stewards' actions have to remain under community control, first of their colleagues. Not because they are "the highest ranked users" or similar social/RPG interpretations of Wikipedia, but simply for their effects on ns-0. If you guess that community lacks participation and involvement in this control process, I do not think a solution is to give more power and tools to possible lobbies and organized minorities, which consider Wikipedia as a means and not as a purpose. If there are problems with some steward's action, they have to be exposed and analyzed. Mechanisms and decisions must be transparent, whereas an annual confirmation seems an opaque mechanism, as negative opinions could just be expressed in general terms. --Shivanarayana (talk) 14:56, 25 April 2015 (UTC)
•  Support Basically per nom. It must be relatively easy to remove rights from anyone in any position of power. In general, people in power develop behaviors after they get into power that differ from their behavior before. There is not enough information available at the point of appoinment to make it responsible to grant a position that, in the absence of future consensus, is locked into continuation rather than discontinuation. For confirmation, approximately 2/3 in support should suffice, IMHO. --Dan Polansky (talk) 19:07, 27 April 2015 (UTC)
•  Support Even considering that the current method should take into account the concerns raised during the discussion, I support this approach giving explicitly more weight to community consensus. --Bramfab (talk) 07:58, 29 April 2015 (UTC)
•  Support The proposed changes sound reasonable. OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 21:31, 2 May 2015 (UTC)
•  Support -FASTILY 08:57, 4 May 2015 (UTC)
•  Support - The second formulation is better, since it asks to comment on every steward. The second sentence "Should the stewards determine that (no) consensus exists..." means that the stewards will still be the ones that are deciding, not the community, which will still be an advisory board (body that provides non-binding advice to the management), not the reelection body. So, the problems that might be present are: conflict of interest, retaliation problem and the criteria for discounting the votes. Therefore, the original problem stretches to the first elections, that suffer from the problems of organized and unorganized groups: yesmanship, sabotage and, since the users often vote for the candidates they rarely or never met/dealt with, the majority of voters form their opinion by current yes/no ratio and blindly vote, following the majority, making the results more unreal. The failure on first elections is hardly to be corrected by the reelection system as it is. Kubura (talk) 04:33, 6 May 2015 (UTC)
•  Oppose A lot of silent Wikimedians prefer to spend their time working on the projects, rather than having to jump to polls at every occasions. Ary29 (talk) 06:32, 11 May 2015 (UTC)

  How is this even related to the proposal? Vogone (talk) 11:04, 11 May 2015 (UTC)

•  Support - Sounds great to me. Anyone who does not have obvious community trust should not be steward.Nguyentrongphu (talk) 06:24, 12 May 2015 (UTC)
  • So how exactly can you determine the level of trust a steward has if this proposal is implemented? Natuur12 (talk) 13:05, 12 May 2015 (UTC)
    • Through confirmation of steward process. This is common sense. We know if the stewards still have community trust if only they retain support from most editors. This can be done by simply counting support vs against votes.Nguyentrongphu (talk) 00:44, 22 May 2015 (UTC)
•  Oppose--Triquetra (talk) 21:55, 17 May 2015 (UTC)
• Support, per Bosstopher, Be..anyone, SPQRobin and others. EChastain (talk) 13:55, 30 May 2015 (UTC)
•  Oppose--Defender (talk) 18:02, 24 May 2015 (UTC)
•  Oppose --Vadgt (talk) 00:03, 10 July 2015 (UTC)
• I prefer 75-80%. Alan ^(talk) 17:49, 27 December 2015 (UTC)
  • Ok, but which "direction" do you prefer? Consensus to confirm or consensus to remove? The percentage isn't part of the proposal (as it's also not part of the policy at the moment - this could be an idea for another RFC, since many people mentioned it). --MF-W 17:59, 27 December 2015 (UTC)
    • I know that is not part of the proposal, is only a comment with my opinion. 75/80% support votes for keep. Alan ^(talk) 23:59, 1 January 2016 (UTC)

*  Support Regarding the importance and the power of the steward role, the proposed confirmation approach seems more reasonable. Ireas (talk) 23:54, 6 January 2016 (UTC) commented after closure of the RfC. --Stryn (talk) 18:24, 10 January 2016 (UTC)