User:Gwynand/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)
Not sure how to comment on this one. The reason is I'm not sure how I feel about the nomination of borderline candidates. If they are borderline, in general, I think they should wait until they are not so borderline before running. Sometimes, this can't be the case, i.e. when there may be some civility issues with a candidate that admittedly won't change.
Administrator coaching (either formally or informally)
I'm not a fan of formal administrator coaching, although more natural ways of learning how to do things I think are great. There are simply too many coachees right now that need to be told that they won't realistically become an admin with 12 months. I could probably list here at least 10 coaching pages where there is some summer target date, and looking at any of them reasonably, the candidate won't pass then. Because of some misapplied stigma towards AGF and civility, some established editors believe any candidate can be ready in a few months, and a candidate should never be told they should wait much longer. The problem therein lies... much of formal coaching moves away from reality and creating mature, knowledgable candidates. Much of it is undue praise for mediocre answers to questions, or actions in AfDs or on the noticeboards. The very setup of most of the pages makes many of the candidates think/assume that this is the best way to become an admin, and going through it correctly will virtually guaranteed adminship. This is not the case, and this needs to be worked on by the community.
Nomination, co-nomination and self-nomination (introducing the candidate)
The main thing I'll say about self-noms is that if no one has ever offered to nom you or suggested that you run, then the candidate should take that into consideration. It seems that some self-noms assume they didn't get offers because of the areas they work in, but I really feel that offers to nominate will come from virtually anywhere.

As for Co-noms, lets move back to reality here folks. Once the RfA has started, you can't further nominate the candidate... it's already happened. So no more co-noms after transclusion, please. Also, maybe just one or two co-noms at most, any more than that it becomes an unfair momentum problem.
Advertising and canvassing
Advertising and canvassing, when they clearly are such, are bad. However, this is another stigma that is being incorrectly applied by many. If I want to discuss aspects of an RfA on other user's talk pages, then this is healthy. Keeper and I have disagreed on a few RfAs and dicussed them on our talk pages during the RfA, questioning the other's reasoning and thought process. This should be encouraged. Copying similar messages to several talk pages, though, shouldn't, as it is canvassing. We need to be more mature about this and tell the difference.
Debate (Presenting questions to the candidate)
Stock questions aren't helping. Tan has made good points recently on this. Optional questions that have a distinct relevance to the candidate should really be answered, everything else should be truly considered optional. I would like to see some sort of community imposed restriction on the number of questions one editor asks at once. Adding 10 open ended questions at once isn't helping the candidate or the process.
Election (including providing reasons for support/oppose)
All good-faith supports should be "included". All good-faith opposes should be "included". Anything bad-faith should be thrown out, and that's it. Further discussion on how to determine consensus is too big to put in sort of any reasonable answer here.
Withdrawal (the candidate withdrawing from the process)
Not a big issue on this one. When possible, candidates should be given the option to withdraw before being closed early to to SNOW, NOTNOW, or other, giving them a chance to give a brief withdrawal statement in the RfA. If they don't want to withdraw and don't think it should be closed, that should be considered, but after a fair amount of time (6-12 hours) and votes (10) then it should be closed if its SNOW. RfA is not editor review or tell-you-how-to-pass-next-time, its simply a test to see if there is consensus to pass. If the test has clearly failed, close it.
Declaration (the bureaucrat closing the application. Also includes WP:NOTNOW closes)
Already answered in Withdrawal.
Training (use of New Admin School, other post-election training)
Unfamiliar with this. Doesn't seem controversial... recent passers should read up on the tools and proper application of them.
Recall (the Administrators Open to Recall process)
Has this ever been used to recall an admin? (if so I'd like to know about it). Way too complicated, virtually useless to anyone outside of the RfA/arbcom core of editors. There needs to be an easier way to take tools away, AOR seems silly.

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?
Admins are neccesary and help the project. The endless claim that there is no real change in status doesn't change the fact that the great majority of humans believe there is a status change when someone is called an administrator, this having nothing specifically to do with Wikipedia.
What attributes do you feel an administrator should possess?
Good judgment, consistent civility, and maturity. Judgment can be more specific, meaning the prior understanding of policy and enforcing of it, or the ability to understand new policy.

Finally, when thinking about Requests for Adminship:

Have you ever voted in a request for Adminship? If so what was your experience?
Many times. This question is way too wide open, but I'll say that in general, I think the current RfA structure is quite weak in terms of helping to show consensus.
Have you ever stood as a candidate under the Request for Adminship process? If so what was your experience?
No.
Do you have any further thoughts or opinions on the Request for Adminship process?
I have many, but I'll just go with this one: the single greatest current problem in the current RfA system is voting without properly researching the candidate. This especially happens when a candidate gets off to a 20-0 start... just pile on support at that point, no one really reviewing, people afraid to be the first oppose, or being in the minority. This is not consensus building, rather it just proves that most tend to choose the path of least resistance, not the path that will properly analyze a candidate and make an informed decision.

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:Gwynand/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).