User:User9669/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)

   I feel that all candidates must be invited/nominated. I do not care for self-nominations. If nobody else thinks a person should be an admin, why should anyone waste time voting on the person?

2. Administrator coaching (either formally or informally)

   Coaching for what? Trying to spawn more admins? It is fine to coach someone in what to do to become an admin. If they perform respectably because of coaching, they are still performing respectably. It doesn't matter if it comes naturally or through coaching.

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

   Self-nominations are pathetic and should be eliminated. All nominations should come from the users. Of course, that opens up the door for sock-puppet self-nominations. It shouldn't be hard to check IPs and note obvious sock-puppet self-nominations.

4. Advertising and canvassing

   There should be no need to advertise. By the time a person is nominated for adminship, the person should be known. The fact that we have so many unknown users self-nominating and getting adminship shows that the system is broken.

5. Debate (Presenting questions to the candidate)

   Debate is fine, but not necessary. Nobody should be nominated for adminship until he or she has demonstrated the ability to provide a benefit to Wikipedia as an admin.

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

   Election is necessary, but should not be a democratic vote. A consensus should be reached. There are three possibilities: consensus for adminship, consensus against adminship, and no consensus. In the case of no consensus, adminship should not be granted.

7. Withdrawal (the candidate withdrawing from the process)

   Fine. If you want to withdraw, just withdraw.

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

   I feel there are reasons that an application should be closed - but those reasons should not be made public. Therefore, a bureaucrat should be able to close an application without forcing the applicant to withdraw by airing dirty laundry to the rest of the users.

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

   This is a wiki. Don't we have plenty of "howto" pages on the wiki?

10. Recall (the Administrators Open to Recall process)

    Admins should be recalled if they are not benefiting Wikipedia. They are admins for the users, not for themselves.

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?

   An administrator has the job of protecting the users of Wikipedia from those who wish to tarnish the Wikipedia experience. Administrators are not here for managing the users. They can form their own consensus and handle conflict. Vandals, on the other hand, can only be handled by administrators.

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

   An administrator should be active, mature, and amiable. There is no need for an administrator who never logs into Wikipedia, goes off on immature tantrums, or offends everyone involved in an administrator-handled process.

Finally, when thinking about Requests for Adminship:

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

   Yes. No biggie.

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

   No. I have never been nominated (and certainly never will be).

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

   If I haven't said it enough... No more self-nominations. They are pathetic and do not provide any benefit to Wikipedia.

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.

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

This question page was generated by {{RFAReview}} at 04:01 on 24 June 2008.