User:Piotrus/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:

1. Candidate selection (inviting someone to stand as a candidate)

   n/a

2. Administrator coaching (either formally or informally)

   n/a

3. Nomination, co-nomination and self-nomination (introducing the candidate)

   n/a

4. Advertising and canvassing

   It's pretty obvious it happens often. This is not the problem - campaigning is part of life, and more eyes are helfpul. It should however be endorsed and formalized users should post that "I've notified noticeboards x and y of this candidature, as well as Users A and B who have interacted with this person before". This will help avoid the current problems with semi-secret and off wiki canvassing and advertising.

5. Debate (Presenting questions to the candidate)

   n/a

6. Election (including providing reasons for support/oppose)

   It should be a requirement to state how does a person voting know of the candidate: has they interacted with them in the past, or did they review their contributions now. They should make it clear how did they found out about the vote. And of course, how is their interactions/research relevant to the vote. If this limits the number of votes, good. This should not be a contest for the highest number of votes, most of whom have poor or no rationale.

7. Withdrawal (the candidate withdrawing from the process)

   n/a

8. Declaration (the bureaucrat closing the application. Also includes WP:NOTNOW closes)

   n/a

9. Training (use of New Admin School, other post-election training)

   n/a

10. Recall (the Administrators Open to Recall process)

    Should be obligatory.

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

1. How do you view the role of an administrator?

   Mop and a bucket, of course, but also - a paragon of virtues. Somebody to look up to.

2. What attributes do you feel an administrator should possess?

   Activity, ethical code of conduct.

Finally, when thinking about Requests for Adminship:

1. Have you ever voted in a request for Adminship? If so what was your experience?

   Several times. I have seen cases where the debate turns into "I like him/I like him not" with cliques of editors voting due to various wikipolitics issue. This would be lessened if the voters would be required to state information I noted above.

2. Have you ever stood as a candidate under the Request for Adminship process? If so what was your experience?

   I was lucky: my vote in early 2005 happened before I became well known. Today I would get many more votes - and probably too many from editors who dislike me for not supporting their POVs and so on.

3. Do you have any further thoughts or opinions on the Request for Adminship process?

   The system has failed. Unless you are a nobody, you will face objects due to not being perfect. If you have done anything controversial, it will be used to dirty your name. And a lot of people seem to vote object because they don't have time to verify for themselves if the objects have merit. Organized group can torpedo a vote by getting some objects early on.

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:Piotrus/RfA review]] added by ~~~ at ~~~~~

Again, on behalf of the project, thank you for your participation.

This question page was generated by {{RFAReview}} at 23:34 on 23 June 2008.