RFA was done on the mailing list as a literal request, like Danny's here. RFA was created as a Wikipedia page on June 2003. Here, in this early oldid [1], you can see that subscriptions from the mailing list were still redirected here, and that Angela was apparently the first to request adminship here.
RFA was formerly done in an AFD-ish style without sections, but soon, as more people participated, sections and the tally were introduced around March 2004 [2]. Around May 2004, the sections were bolded, and a comments section was added. Still, there was little uniformity in the form of RFA's. Now around July, the form of RFA's started to standardize with the questions. The first successful RFA with questions was User:Cutler's, posted by Cecropia, but he did not answer them. It is in User:Ssd's RFA that we see the questions are in their own section, bolded. There were 6 questions:[3]
- Have you read the section on administrators?
- Are you interested in, and do you think you'll have some time to perform, the chores that only sysops have access to do, to help keep Wikipedia up to date?
- If you become a sysop, which sysop chore or chores (WP:VFD, recent changes, watching for vandals and vandalism, responding to editor requests for assistance, any other) do you especially think you would be able to help with?
- In your opinion, what article have you contributed the most succesfully and helpfully to?
- In your opinion, what has your best contribution to the running and maintenance of Wikipedia been? (i.e., have you reverted a bad stretch of vandalism, done extensive work categorizing articles, helped mediate a dispute?)
- Of your Wikipedia edits and experiences thus far, what is your biggest regret? What do you wish you'd done differently?
The use of questions was pioneered by Cecropia and Snowspinner. Unfortunately, after they stopped, the use of questions disappeared around August 2004. They returned around September. September 2004 also marked the first subpages. [4] The first two were Andrevan's and Mike Halterman's (after being created retroactively), but the first RFA to pass in a subpage was Chmod007's. Later, archive subpages would be created for the earlier RFAs, which are linked to in Wikipedia:Successful adminship candidacies and Wikipedia:Unsuccessful adminship candidacies. When RFA became conducted on independent subpages, RFA as we know it was born, albeit without a template. At the end of September 2004, in Mackensen's RFA, the 6 questions were consolidated in our present questions, with slightly different wording. They were:
- What sysop chores, if any, would you anticipate helping with? (Please read the page about administrators and the administrators' reading list.)
- Of your articles or contributions to Wikipedia, are there any about which you are particularly pleased, and why?
- Have you been in any conflicts over editing in the past or do you feel other users have caused you stress? How have you dealt with it and will deal with it in the future?
Still, because there was no template for RFA, there was not complete uniformity: some lacked questions, while at least one used commas in the tally instead of slashes. There was also no closing template (although oddly enough Andrevan's RFA had a closing template added later).
The RFA template was not created until September 2005, with around the same form as we see it today (although the questions are at the bottom). Because the template is substituted, it is hard to ascertain which RFA was the first to use it. However, by finding RFA's with brackets around their closing dates (such as Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Jaxl), a trait that has not been used ever since Redwolf removed it, we may ascertain that by late September the RFA template was being used. Closing templates were also used on RFA's around this time, although successful noms were closed with yellow and unsuccessful ones blue. Later, however, noms might be closed with green, red, blue, or later, with no border and color, just copying and pasting the text. The green color for passed RFA's and red for failed RFA's was established on Template:rfap and Template:rfaf by BorgHunter as late as May 2006. [5] [6]
Near August, the questions were moved from the bottom to the top. By this time, edit counts and edit summary counts were taken, but they were not kept in the talk page until around September. In September 2006, a burst of activity occurred on the RFA template, changing the tally around, trying new templates, and the like. Not much was changed in the end, except for the addition of a discussion section. A similar burst of activity and warring occurred on May 2007, with attempts to add more questions and remove the sections. Likewise, little changed, as the majority of users did not want changes in this regard. Before this, around April, discussion brewed around over the removal of the tally. This discussion eventually culminated in Moralis' RFA, where the tally and sections were removed and discussion was done in an AFD format. The results were much less than expected: discussion was messy and disorganized, and talk of adopting such a fashion after the trial RFA is basically nonexistent. Matt Britt's RFA was another result, in which it took the form of an RFC. It was also found to be messy, but as of late September 2008 discussion has arisen again regarding an RFC format for RFA.
RFB edit
When the crat position was created in 2004, RFBs sprung up almost instantly, and that year 16 users were promoted out of 23. A look at these early RFBs will indicate that they were very lenient, as RFAs and Bs were at the time; Ilyanep was promoted with a 6 month admin tenure, for example. All that was needed was essentially a demonstration of trust and of good judgment. The number of voters ranged from 7 to about 40 in these RFBs.
In 2005, it started to get tighter, but a look at the failed nominations will suggest that trust and judgment were still the major issues debated in a candidacy. There were only 3 promotions out of 13. Of interest is Linuxbeak's first RFB, where users voiced concerns that 6 months as an admin was not enough, whereas a year before Ilyanep's had been successful with only 6 months on the board. The year threshold also came up in 2005. From my research, the first sentiment of "having enough bureaucrats" was made by User:ALoan in Wikipedia:Requests for bureaucratship/Blankfaze. At the time it was only a neutral point, but it eventually showed up in opposes as early as December 2005. I believe that late 2005 signalled the end of opposition based solely on "coolheadedness" and judgment for opposition over experience and set criteria, an attitude that has only worsened to the present day. 2006 is what I consider the last of the lenients. By 2007, RFB was basically considered impossible. Candidates had a tendency to nominate all within the same time for "security in numbers," usually only one or two candidates would pass in a given groups of RFBs. By 2008, though, I think that a realization that RFB was becoming way too strict for its own good helped to cool the atmosphere a little. In fact 2008 is the year with the most promotions since 2004, with 5 so far. Still, the process is quite strenuous to say the least, considering that the role has expanded to include username changes and bot flagging in addition to the original admin/crat promotion.