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Requests for comment/Preclude Cekli829 from running in some future steward elections

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The following request for comments is closed. Consensus after nearly 6 months is against the proposal. --MF-W 14:18, 21 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]


Statement of the issue

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Cekli829 (talk · contribs) has now run in eight steward elections (including this year's) and nothing has changed. Every single time, he seemingly can't answer questions. The very fact that each word of the previous sentence is a separate link should give an idea of how long this has occurred.

I am usually not a fan of specifically disqualifying a particular user from anything for things other than rules that apply to everyone. But this year, multiple "no" voters (see the vote section) have expressed a desire for Cekli829 to stop these candidacies, not at least until he shows significant improvement. Such votes have included "It is ridiculous. This user should be prevented from running again in the coming years. It's penetrance time robbing.", "Please do not run next year.", "No. These requests has been a waste of time for many people. I hope that the rules of the next election will prevent him from running.", and others, just to name three. His candidacies are becoming an annual waste of time for the community.

I am not sure what exact proposal I should make, but at the minimum, I think Cekli829 should be preemptively disqualified from at least the next election. A possible exception could be made by ElectCom upon seeing copious amounts of evidence of change that would significantly sway the voting trend in his favor. Another possibility (thanks goes to User:MF-Warburg for the suggestion) is to require that anyone who accumulates five or more unsuccessful candidacies in a row must take the following year off, after which the counter would reset. Again, if consensus is for that, ElectCom could be allowed to make an exemption.

But no matter what, seeing him post basically the same candidacy statement and the same types of answers each year has to stop, in my opinion. To be clear, Cekli829 himself is welcome to comment on this discussion.--Jasper Deng (talk) 01:26, 2 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Comments

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  • I think a better proposal would be along the lines of banning someone from running for a certain amount of time if they have X unsuccessful elections and come in below X percent. --Rschen7754 01:45, 2 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    We could, but generally I disagree with preventing people from running. In this case, I think a ban would be acceptable. – Ajraddatz (talk) 01:47, 2 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • I personally have no problem with voting against Cekli in every SE until he becomes a supportable candidate. But I can understand why some people want a restriction. If however a policy is created, I would prefer to have a general rule, not an exclusion of specific users. Saying e.g. that candidates who ran 5 times consecutively must pause a year of course currently only hits one user; but if ever another one comes into the same situation I imagine the issues won't be too different. --MF-W 01:50, 2 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Although it is the first time I vote in the steward elections, I have seen the last candidacies of Cekli829 and I believe that they sincerely only waste valuable time to the community. His answers to the questions put to him show that he does not understand the seriousness of a permit of such magnitude and global scope or the legal consequences that he might face in some cases (such as misuse of CU/OS tools).
I agree that the user is forbidden to re-apply for stewarding at least until he or she demonstrates a thorough understanding of the policies involving steward's right. —Alvaro Molina ( - ) 02:06, 2 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • In my opinion, this is an utterly useless RFC. You want to stop community votes on Cekli by initiating a community vote on Cekli? Voting no at SEs takes 2 seconds at most and simply ignoring the candidacy costs even 2 seconds less, the "waste of community time" argument is not at all convincing. --Vogone (talk) 03:21, 2 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    • @Vogone:
      1. An RfC is not a vote.
      2. If he is disqualified from more than just the next election, then that saves 2 "votes" at the cost of "one".
      3. This is the first year where I've seen a significant amount of voters want this.
      4. Spending 2 seconds to vote on each candidate is not very thoughtful.--Jasper Deng (talk) 03:28, 2 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]
        1. Even worse! It makes people waste even more time.
        2. Congratulations, though I wonder what's the gain.
        3. This may be true, but it doesn't automatically mean it's useful.
        4. Following the line of argumentation here ("repetitive requests with the same issues") it should be extremely easy to figure out that you are not supportive, provided you were not supportive in the year before, either. Especially, if you belong to those who want to see Cekli829 be banned from running.
      • --Vogone (talk) 03:37, 2 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]
honestly this is a waste. Just read his statement and responses. If its bad, just vote no. Honestly, I can tell on which side I will vote based on half the statement. MechQuester (talk) 05:14, 2 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Sorry, I do not see the point to reform candidate eligibility for just one case. Banning a candidate just because people get annoyed by his candidancy would be more annoying to me. As Vogone stated, it costs nothing to ignore and 2 seconds to vote No. It's a vote, and a single vote doesent cost anything and is equal to a lenghty review and comment, and noone is forcing anyone to review and comment. No need to fix a system that works. Out of 7 valid candidates, 4 were elected. It's not as if the election was spammed by dozens of bad candidates (in that case there would have been a problem, and we should indeed seek for a solution).—Ah3kal (talk) 05:46, 2 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose Oppose If someone prevents him from future SEs, that sounds like we can also prevent Chinese users from elections only because of a random Japanese/Korean people, or prevent Russian users because of the de facto situation in Ukraine, how do we not damanged our political neutral?! --Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 14:11, 3 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose Oppose. It is just him now and it is not a problem, voting even with adding some arguments to a vote is not that difficult. If we have tens of users like him then I would see it as a problem. Creating some certain user specific policy is stupid and I think we have more than enough of those (I refer to the founder flag), I think it even could be considered bullying under some perspective. The general rule idea is a better one, we must be careful not to set it so that users are disallowed to try themselves yearly and actually improve, that would be unfortunate, but some borderline could exist and I think 5 consecutive unsuccessful nominations is a good one for a year or two time lapse for a user to do something more useful for him and the community. It must never be an infinite banishment though. --Base (talk) 20:42, 3 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose Oppose It's not like anyone is going to forget those old candidacies if/when there is another attempt. I'm not in favor of carving out exceptions to the eligibility requirements to deny anyone that meets them the ability to run. If the real world can tolerate so-called en:perennial candidates, so can we, especially without a slippery-slope idea such as a small RFC overriding the electorate's right to vote in whomever (among eligible candidates) they please. You want to change the eligibility rules, so be it, but change them in general, but not to exclude single users. Courcelles 22:12, 7 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose Oppose people should be able to put themselves forward for election, and the community is well able to decide their opinion on a candidate's suitability without being told by a small group of people what is suitable.  — billinghurst sDrewth 14:04, 21 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]