User:Malinaccier/RfA review

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)
I will first start out by saying that I do not go out intentionally looking for candidates. Normally, the candidate will just show up on some talk page or at an AFD that I've been watching and I'll look at their contribs, history, etc. I begin usually by exploring my potential nominee's userpage and talk page. I look for signs of immaturaty, stress, politeness, and general knowledge of Wikipedia. If everything checks out good, I'll use Wannabekate to look at their contributions. The ideal Wannabekate results show a balanced editor who has been around the 'pedia for maybe five months. My next investigation is manually looking through their last 500 edits and checking for participation and knowledge in the deletion area (which includes WP:AFD, WP:CSD taggings, and WP:PROD). This takes an hour or so, and by then I'm fairly familiar with what they've done and their chances at passing an RFA and becoming a successful administrator.

If I have already been coaching the potential candidate, I will usually nominate them after they complete coaching through my coaching system. I also make sure that they are ready as an editor for RFA and the stresses of adminship (ie., I will not simply nominate a person just because they complete my pre-planned coaching system).
Administrator coaching (either formally or informally)
I'll address both types:
Formally: I am a strong supporter of formal admin coaching (having coached a few users myself). Despite the complaints about gaming the system and preparing for RFA, I feel that this is the best preparation to becoming an admin (besides simply editing). Situations brought up in Admin Coaching are often taken from real interactions that the coach has had--which means that the coachee will already know how to handle such situations with confidence. Not only this, but the coachee has someone who they can go to with questions about using the extra buttons after RFA. The very few negatives are far outweighed by the positives.

Informally: Informal admin coaching (such as Pedro's mentoring system are not as beneficial as formal admin coaching. Less time is spent on each person, and there are little or no exercises prepared for coachees. Overall, informal coaching is not as good as the formal type, but it is better than no coaching.
Nomination, co-nomination and self-nomination (introducing the candidate)
I will start off by saying that I have no qualms about supporting a candidate who has self-nominated or has 5 co-nominators. Neither shows power hunger or over-eagerness. I do prefer a user to have a nominator rather than going into RFA as a self-nomination, but as I said before I wouldn't oppose based on this. Overall, I believe the nomination system is good--but opposes because of self-noms or too many nominators are not.
Advertising and canvassing
Canvassing for RFA is not very bad in my opinion. I'm not opposed to simple notices on the talk page or in the signatures of candidates, but there is a line between "Hey I have an RFA" and "Vote for me at RFA". Candidates should use their common sense and know when to stop. Users who spam others for supports are almost cheating to get ahead which is unacceptable. The current RFA taboo on canvassing is a little too strict right now.
Debate (Presenting questions to the candidate)
I have no problem with a few extra questions going out to the candidate especially when the questions have to do with past actions. More than 6 extra questions is going a little too far.
Election (including providing reasons for support/oppose)
The system we have now is good, but the way people use the system is flawed. The problem is that people look for reasons to oppose rather than reasons to support RFAs, or that they have ridiculous standards that have nothing to do with adminship, which means I strongly support challenging Oppose/Support comments that have a very weak reason. Soapboxing at RFA by way of !votes is probably my largest pet peeve as it is destructive to the candidate as well as the people that the !vote targets.
Withdrawal (the candidate withdrawing from the process)
There is not much of a problem with withdrawl at the moment. The only thing I would like to see is candidates possibly being required to leave an RFA up that has at least one support for 24 hours. There have been multiple occasions where candidates withdraw before the full range of RFA contributors can even catch a glimpse of it. In other words, they pull out before they can get supported.
Declaration (the bureaucrat closing the application. Also includes WP:NOTNOW closes)
I have no problem with WP:NOTNOW closes (I especially like that we use NOTNOW instead of WP:SNOW). Crat closures could use some fixing. My thoughts are that any RFA that is in the "discretionary zone" should be reviewed in a "Crat Chat". This would assure the candidate a fair closing and will get a wider range of opinions on the close.
Training (use of New Admin School, other post-election training)
What we have now is really close to being perfect, but is a little wanting. A "wiki-buddy" system where an experienced admin is paired up with a new admin would be very beneficial. It would allow new admins to ask questions easily and without embarassment.
Recall (the Administrators Open to Recall process)
I think that all admins should be open to recall, but I believe that desysopping an admin is a rather severe punishment that will probably not be beneficial. Every person makes mistakes...that's why we have trout smacking! :)

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?
To serve the community with their tools and to be as helpful as possible. Simple as that
What attributes do you feel an administrator should possess?
They should be moderately intelligent, resourceful, civil, willing to help new users, be able to learn from mistakes and take criticism, have a neutral point of view, not be affected by vandalism and threats directed toward them, be able to stay calm when the editing gets hot, take pride in their editing and do a good job, and generally care about Wikipedia (which includes the articles, editors, and readers)

Finally, when thinking about Requests for Adminship:

Have you ever participated in a request for Adminship? If so what was your experience?
I try to participate in every RFA that comes up. My experiences have generally been positive. I most usually comment in support of a candidate, but I will oppose a candidate who I feel is not ready. The only bad experiences I have had have come when people try to make a POINT through their comments or have attacked other's comments.
Have you ever stood as an administrator under the Request for Adminship process? If so what was your experience?
Yes, and my experience was positive (I passed). I wish I could have gotten more advice from the comments, however.
Do you have any further thoughts or opinions on the Request for Adminship process?
Flippant opposes can turn editors off from Wikipedia.