User:Dweller/RfA Review

Welcome to the Question phase of RfA Review. We hope you'll take the time to respond to your questions in order to give us further understanding of what you think of the RfA process. Remember, there are no right or wrong answers here. Also, feel free to answer as many questions as you like. Don't feel you have to tackle everything if you don't want to.

In a departure from the normal support and oppose responses, this review will focus on your thoughts, opinions and concerns. Where possible, you are encouraged to provide examples, references, diffs and so on in order to support your viewpoint. Please note that at this point we are not asking you to recommend possible remedies or solutions for any problems you describe, as that will come later in the review.

If you prefer, you can submit your responses anonymously by emailing them to gazimoff (at) o2.co.uk. Anonymous responses will be posted as subpages and linked to from the responses section, but will have the contributor's details removed. If you have any questions, please use the talk page.

Once you've provided your responses, please encourage other editors to take part in the review. More responses will improve the quality of research, as well as increasing the likelihood of producing meaningful results.

Once again, thank you for taking part!

Questions

When thinking about the adminship process, what are your thoughts and opinions about the following areas:

Candidate selection (inviting someone to stand as a candidate)
It's difficult. It's not intuitively clear who is and is not already an admin (I know I'm not the only one who frequently mistakes users for already being admins). Potential candidates are often wary of agreeing because RfA can be bloody or because of modesty.
Administrator coaching (either formally or informally)
I have no problem with this whatsoever. I'd like to see more of this.
Nomination, co-nomination and self-nomination (introducing the candidate)
Co-noms can be over-done but I take them as no bad reflection on the candidate and am happy to see them as effusiveness about just how good a candidate they are. I have no prejudice against self noms - a useful sign of ballsiness.
Advertising and canvassing
I think we've got this about right. Newbies are often caught out... but then, newbies shouldn't be nominees anyway.
Debate (Presenting questions to the candidate)
This works quite well. I think that the we gain and lose by having a pretty open field in terms of not prescribing what is/is not valid. I also am content with the optional nature of the additional questions, which helps prevent harrassment. I do think that the admin community could play a role in monitoring misuse of the optional questions, though everyone is careful not to step in, presumably because flagrant breaches of the spirit are so rare.
Election (including providing reasons for support/oppose)
I dislike hectoring of oppose !votes, esp. on the election page itself. I think asking for clarity where it is unclear is fine, as such clarification will assist other contributors, but I favour comments left on editors' talk pages in most other cases (such as disagreement etc). It's a personal opinion, but I think it's worth trying to avoid conflict on process pages and it's easy for opposers to feel hectored, particularly when a candidate is "popular". No-one should feel cajoled into changing their opinion, or not vouching it in the first place.
Withdrawal (the candidate withdrawing from the process)
I usually perceive this as a positive and something to be encouraged, if such withdrawal is for good reason (obviously failing), rather than second thoughts!
Declaration (the bureaucrat closing the application. Also includes WP:NOTNOW closes)
These have improved in quality during my time here. I think they're good and getting better.
Training (use of New Admin School, other post-election training)
No-brainer good idea. Don't overlook informal processes, such as new admins asking established ones to oversee a bunch of mopping actions.
Recall (the Administrators Open to Recall process)
I am in two minds about this, and (I'll stress) my thoughts are still partially formed on the subject. I do not feel anything negative for those who've added themselves to the Cat (indeed in some ways it's admirable) but I think it's so vague and nebulous as to be potentially meaningless. For myself, if I ever did anything egregiously bad, would that make me into a bad admin? Maybe. But if it did, it would be something so awful that Arbcom could easily perceive that too and would take their measures against me. If what I've done is subjectively awful, well, I'm always happy to agree with consensus, in which case I'd be undoing my actions myself and apologising. Which brings us to the other alternative, which is a minority of unhappy editors, and which is where recall can come a-cropper, as an admin could feel honour bound to resign his bit because (say) 5 users unhappy with his interaction in Foo demand his resignation, while 95 other Foo editors are praising him for stepping in. Like I say, I'm just unsure about it, so I've not added myself to the Cat, but wouldn't castigate another for doing so.

When thinking about adminship in general, what are your thoughts and opinions about the following areas:

How do you view the role of an administrator?
Good one! More than "administration". We should set an example with our behaviour, both in terms of interaction but also in terms of welcoming and helping newbies and those in dispute. The bit is not a medal, but a recognition of good qualities (see below) and a responsibility to use the tools correctly.
What attributes do you feel an administrator should possess?
Civility, experience on Wikipedia, maturity (mental, not physical), calmness and a willingness to help others.

Finally, when thinking about Requests for Adminship:

Have you ever voted in a request for Adminship? If so what was your experience?
Yes. Many times! I'm sometimes disappointed by the actions of others at RfA (see my comments above) but on the whole I think it works.
Have you ever stood as a candidate under the Request for Adminship process? If so what was your experience?
Yes. I was overwhelmed by the response to my RfA. I seriously doubted I might pass, so ending with such overwhelming support was... I dunno... strangely humbling.
Do you have any further thoughts or opinions on the Request for Adminship process?
Yes. It ain't broke. It's just not perfect. And it never will be.

Once you're finished...

Thank you again for taking part in this review of the Request for Adminship process. Now that you've completed the questionnaire, don't forget to add the following line of code to the bottom of the Response page by clicking this link and copying the following to the BOTTOM of the list.

* [[User:Dweller/RfA Review]] added by ~~~ at ~~~~~

Again, on behalf of the project, thank you for your participation. This question page was generated by {{RFAReview}} at 20:56, 12 June 2008 (UTC).