User:Protonk/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?

• Response: It can't, from a policy standpoint. A good way to ameliorate the bias is to cultivate a stable of smart, outgoing and intelligent admins with eclectic interests who will push candidates into the process. We need admins that like to gopher in strange areas of the project (redirects, Dab, dyk, etc.). The way to get them is to look.

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: Not a problem. "real" NOTNOW closures don't harm good candidates. If someone doesn't really know what is up and they self nom after a month of activites, it isn't going to hurt them for an RFA to run. The real harm comes from bright and ambitions editors at the 4-5 month mark who "know" they are ready but the community isn't so sure. Flameouts there cause drama. Sub 1,000 edit and 3 month edit time nominations are harmless.

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: Never seen it. What's excessive? 2? 5? There is a reputational price to be paid for just racking up co-noms. Someone is going to oppose because of the absurdity and people will tag along. An easy solution is to not allow nominators to vote. Nominate and get a chance to make a big production out of how much you like this candidate. Co-nom and do the same, but you can't vote. That would fix the problem without some arbitrary limit.

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: Don't impose limits, add to the information presented. Right now we have links on the talk page to Wannabe Kate and links to talk pages and what not on the editor's RFA template. But we know that most voters don't even navigate away from the RfA page before voting. Most don't look at contributions (which, devoid of context, is a pretty boring exercise). Add a little transcluded window to the edit count on the talk page (just a quickie like the SQL tool readout). Add space for the candidate to link to AN threads and what-not (the regex searcher is useless). We need to get it across to nominators and candidates that the primary place for information about the candidate will be the RfA thread.

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: Kurt has been restricted from Projectspace, so this is likely less of an issue. Don't remove questions unless they are obviously bad faith (that way lies drama). Trick questions are the nature of the beast. Kurt's question was obnoxious, but the basic idea is replicated in interviews the world over.

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: Activist 'crats. Honestly it is crystal clear that 'crats basically promote >75% and fail <75% with a high correlation between pass rate and percentage supporting. Close passes (~70%) are a role for them, but usually those don't come up. Under the current system I don't see a function for crats that can't be done by a bot. IF we are worried that people are behaving negatively in RfA's, there is a quick solution: indent their votes. Right now the community honestly doesn't want activist crats (we really, really, don't), so this isn't going to happen, but it is the solution.

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: It's a vote already.

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: I favor increased discretion for crats. I also favor closing rationales.

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: This is a tough on. Right now, "admin coaching" and "RfA lurking" is basically a form of canvassing. I don't know where to draw the line, but I honestly don't see asking for support for an RfA as a big deal. This isn't an AfD where community consensus on an issue is supposed to be judged from a very small sample and a non-random sample will really mess up the outcome. Most RfA's see >100 participants. By the end of the RfA, most of the candidate's friends have chimed in, as well as some people who just cruise by RfA every so often. The timing is the critical part. Plenty of RfA's have been tubed by early strong opposes with diffs (where the actual problems were minimal). Had those opposes come in after 20-30 supports, the blow would have been deflected. I don't know if that is a good or a bad thing.

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: Not germane to this discussion. If we change AC to relate to adminning and not RfA, something else will spring up to coach to RfA.

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 complimentary? Are there common themes or elements that could be shared between the two processes, in order to improve the effectiveness of both?

• Response: ...

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: ...

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: It shouldn't be. Adminship should be closer to tenure. DR is the appropriate venue for de-sysoping. Recall is an inherently flawed process.

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: Eliminate it.

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: 3 years, +/- 6 months (for fitting multiple requests into a proper time). At that point, admins should be "up for reconfirmation" where a straw pole style process can be made to select who from the pool of reconfirmation admins should be subject to a reconfirmation RfA. Once selected, the admin runs again, with a lower threshold for retention (~60%, or based on crat discretion). After that, they are an admin for three more years. This will allows some admins to eb subject to review who might not pass, but only once and at a specific time (so that the ehat of the moment doesn't dictate the time of review. It also avoids having hundreds of RfA's for admins who are obviously going to be reconfirmed (that is why the two stage bit). The 60% bit will probably result in most of the admins being kept (even those with some serious negative feedback), but that is how it should be. The "reconfirmation" RfA's should be run alongside the "new admin" RfA's to ensure community visibility. Admins de-sysoped through this process should be able to run for a new RfA after some nominal period of time with the same consensus limits as new admins.

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: ...

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: Part of this isn't RfA. Adminship has morphed into some "big fucking deal", pardon the phrase. RfA standards are considerably higher than they were even 1 year ago because the community is bigger and more self-aware. We can't go back to the time when all it took was someone saying "op me" and they got to protect pages and block vandals. Admins are prominently involved in dispute resolution and are heavily involved in how the community eecutes policy at all levels (esp: Block, delete, and protect).

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 05:06 on 15 September 2008.