User:Mangojuice/RfA review Recommend Phase

Welcome to the Recommendation phase of RfA Review. In this phase, you will be asked to offer suggestions and proposals to address specific concerns and problems with the current Requests for Adminship process.

The questions below are taken directly from the 209 responses from the Question phase, each of which offered editors' thoughts and concerns about RfA. Based on those concerns, we identified the most frequently mentioned problems and included them here. These are the elements of RfA that are currently under review.

Please take your time and read through the concerns below. For each item, you are invited to offer a proposal that addresses the concern. Where possible, you are encouraged to provide examples, references, diffs and so on in order to support your viewpoint. There isn't a limit on the scope of your proposals; the sky is the limit, here. The intent of this phase is to get ideas, not necessarily to write policy - recommendations that gain traction and community support will be refined during later phases.

Most importantly, Answer as few or as many questions as you wish. All responses are evaluated, so any information you provide is helpful.

If you prefer, you can submit your responses anonymously by emailing them to User:Ultraexactzz. Anonymous responses will be posted as subpages with the contributor's details removed. If you have any questions, please use the project talk page at Wikipedia talk:RfA Review.

Once you've provided your responses, please encourage other editors to take part in the review. We stress that editors who didn't participate in the question phase are encouraged to participate now - 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

Selection and Nomination

A1. Editors note that the RfA process can be daunting to prospective administrators, and that the process itself may discourage otherwise qualified candidates from seeking adminship. How can this "Selection Bias" be countered?

• Reponse: The only real way to do this would be to allow bureaucrats to make people administrators at their discretion. As long as people become administrators based on the general opinion of the community, the process will be tough regardless of the specifics, because adminship is a big deal to some, and sysoping a bad admin is a mistake that is very very difficult to undo.

A2. Editors expressed concern over unprepared or unqualified candidates at RfA, noting that their candidacies result in NOTNOW and SNOW closures that can be discouraging. In lieu of minimum requirements for adminship, how can prospective candidates be educated about RfA and the community's expectations of its administrators?

• Response: WP:RFA already describes itself and the community's expectations adequately, especially by example through the current discussions and the archives.

A3. 44 editors expressed concern over excessive co-nominations. Some of these editors advocated a limit on co-nominations, perhaps capping them at one or two per candidate; others recommended asking prospective co-nominators to post a Strong Support in lieu of an actual nomination statement. How can the concern over Co-nominations be addressed?

• Response: The people being concerned over them need to get used to it. Co-nominations are different from support, as it quite often takes multiple encouraging editors to get a candidate to come forwards. If the concern is over the nomination statement, I would suggest that co-nominated candidates should get only one nomination statement, that can be signed by multiple people. If multiple people want to say different things in the nomination statement, they should work together to produce a unified one. Mangojuice^talk 20:49, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

The RfA Debate (Questions, Election, Canvassing)

B1. 60 editors expressed concern over the number of questions asked of candidates, and indicated that questions should be limited in number. How can this be accomplished? What limits could be fairly imposed? Are there alternative means for the candidate to provide information about themselves without the prompting of questions?

• Response: Questions should all be asked in the first n hours (say, 24 hours). That way, the candidate is not being asked to engage in real-time dialog for the whole RFA period. Question-askers should refrain from asking hyper-specific questions.

B2. Editors expressed concern over the content of questions, with 43 editors disapproving of "Trick questions", 8 disapproving of questions that require only a quotation from policy to answer, and 54 favoring questions that relate directly to the candidate and their experiences, contributions, conflicts, etc. How should the scope of possible questions be determined? Conversely, how would the decision to remove bad-faith or problematic questions be made, and by whom? What subjects should be specifically off-limits, and why?

• Response: Questions in an RFA are like comments on a talk page. They should never be removed, but they can be refactored when someone thinks it is appropriate to do so. Bad-faith questions can be called out in the comments people make. I am not really concerned by this -- the system is capable of correcting itself without additional instruction creep.

B3. Editors note that RfA is seen as a negative process, with issues such as badgering of opposes, personal attacks, and a general lack of civility being prominent concerns. How can the RfA process be changed to address these concerns?

• Response: There is nothing we can do to address this concern by altering the process. What we need is to alter our editors, which is plainly impossible. :)

B4. The very nature of the RfA process was disputed. Some editors desire rationales with every vote, and favor a more discussion and consensus-based process similar to other processes on the English wikipedia. Other editors desire a more vote-based election, where the raw numbers of supports and opposes are the critical factor. Is there one of these methods that would provide a clearer consensus on the community's view of a candidate? Or, alternatively, is a hybrid of the two preferable, and how should that be structured?

• Response: A candidate should be promoted to adminship when there is a clear consensus of the community to do so. Consensus does not equal any particular threshold in a poll, nor can consensus be achieved by artificially requiring everyone to articulate useful, meaningful reasons for every opinion. In the end, reasons help form the debate, but it is the opinions of the users that should determine the eventual outcome.

B5. The amount of discretion held by Bureaucrats to remove or discount problem votes was also discussed, with some editors favoring increased discretion for Bureaucrats. 25 editors also favored a detailed closing rationale from Bureaucrats, detailing the specific factors that resulted in the candidate being successful (or not successful). What changes to the RfA process or format could clarify community consensus on this issue? Should Bureaucrats take a more active role in managing (or clerking) ongoing RfAs?

• Response: Bureaucrats are excellent about maintaining clarity of decision-making. I for one do not have any problem with them not stating reasons for ordinary closures in the closure as an admin does in closing AfDs. There are not points of policy to be argued, so most decisions would simply be "there is a clear consensus here" or "there is not a clear consensus here".

B6. 68 editors noted that a limited form of Canvassing or advertising would be acceptable, if such canvassing was done on-site and in a neutral fashion. How could a candidate advertise the fact that he or she is a candidate for adminship, while being completely neutral in the audience to which he or she advertises?

• Response: I think canvassing on a user's own User page or User talk page is the most appropriate way to do it. Users interested in RFAs could perhaps set up a bot or feed where they can be notified about all new RFAs automatically.

Training and Education

C1. Though 73 editors responded favorably to the Admin Coaching programme, 39 were critical of the process for "Teaching for the test", or for being an RfA preparation programme rather than an Adminship preparation programme. In what ways could Admin Coaching be improved to focus more on adminship itself?

• Response: I'm not familiar with WP:ADCO enough to say.

C2. In evaluating New Admin School, some editors noted that a Mentorship element would be of great benefit to newly minted administrators - something that Admin Coaching provides in a direct one-on-one coach-coachee team. Similarly, 15 editors characterized Admin Coaching, a primarily pre-adminship process, as being invaluable after the RfA, which is traditionally when New Admin School is used for training. Are there areas where the two processes overlap, and can be made more complementary? Are there common themes or elements that could be shared between the two processes, in order to improve the effectiveness of both?

• Response: Again, I don't have sufficient familiarity.

Adminship (Removal of)

D1. Editors noted that the current voluntary Admins open to Recall process is redundant to Dispute Resolution process such as Requests for Comment and Arbitration. In the absence of Recall (i.e. if it were removed altogether), how could existing processes be adapted to more effectively deal with issues of administrator abuse?

• Response: ArbCom does well. In the end, admin recall always amounts to the same thing: if an admin becomes convinced it would be best for them to give up the mop, they will do so. I have never been "open to recall" but I have always believed that if someone could convince me I shouldn't be one anymore, I woult take it seriously.

D2. Editors cited the voluntary nature of the Admins open to Recall process as problematic, and 40 went as far as to recommend a mandatory process for all administrators, either as a mandatory form of Admins open to Recall, or a more formal version of the process administered by Bureaucrats. As a separate process from WP:DR, how could the current recall process be standardized for use as a mandatory process? Who would be responsible for such a process?

• Response: No, hell no. Admins open to Recall is not a process, it's a promise to be reasonable. This would be stupid process creep.

D3. 44 editors criticized the recall process for being too open to abuse, both through spurious or bad-faith calls for an admin to be recalled, or through administrators who fail to follow through on a commitment to stand for recall. How can the recall process be amended to address these concerns?

• Response: Remove it. Or have de-adminning be automatic (e.g. term limits). Any system with a hard outcome will be open to gaming.

D4. Some editors recommended that administrators be required to stand for some form of reconfirmation after a given period of time. How would such reconfirmation be structured? How long would an admin have before such reconfirmation would be required? Could such reconfirmation be triggered by an effort to recall an admin, and how would that be handled? What form would such reconfirmation take (RfA, Straw Poll, etc)?

• Response: I think a plain old RFA, perhaps automatically started when the term runs out, would be the best way. Yes, admins can make enemies, and even the best admins are unlikely to pass the second round without dissent. But there's no reason to have a particularly different process.

Overall Process

E1. The earliest version of the RfA policy states that adminship is granted to "anyone who has been an active Wikipedia contributor for a while and is generally a known and trusted member of the community." Current policy leaves the definition of a "trusted editor" to the community. Editors offered a wide range of basic characteristics desirable of administrators, including Trustworthiness, competence, and communication skills. How could the RfA process be amended to either A) more fully ensure that editors selected as admins do indeed have the full trust of the community, or B) more fully fit the community's expectations for administrators?

• Response: It doesn't need to be amended. People who feel like their views of trustworthiness aren't being represented at RFA need to participate.

E2. Editors expressed concern over the format of the Requests for Adminship process. Some suggested that RfA has become a form of high-impact editor review, while others expressed concern over the view of Adminship itself as a goal or "trophy" that all editors should attain after a certain period of time. In taking the RfA process as a whole, what elements work well? What elements should be removed or amended?

• Response: I have not been a constant contributor at RFA but I visit RFA fairly regularly, especially when a name I recognize is on the list. I can say that in all my time at RFA I have never seen a single RFA that promoted someone wrongly. I have seen only one RFA (an "experiment in format" that ran more like an RFC) that disrupted the project; I've seen disruption in other RFAs, but in those cases it was individual users behaving badly, not the process. I have probably seen a few examples of RFAs that did not promote someone when they perhaps could have been promoted, but never a blatantly wrong decision. In short, RFA works well. The only unfortunate thing about RFA is that while some people feel that adminship is no big deal, others feel like it is a big deal, and the latter wins the argument because RFA is fundamentally based on the level of active participation. If all adminships were, say, given out by a single user or a small elected committee, then representation along this particular line might be more even.

Mangojuice^talk 20:49, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

Once you're finished...

Thank you again for taking part in this review of the Request for Adminship process.

Your responses will be added to Category:Wikipedian Recommendations to RfA Review, which will be used to review the responses after this phase is concluded.

Footnote

This question page was generated by {{RFAReview}} at 17:39 on 29 September 2008.