User:Ynhockey/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:

Candidate selection (inviting someone to stand as a candidate)
I think that when a candidate is nominated, the nominator needs to assess whether the nominee fits both personal and general criteria for being an admin. In order to accurately do that, the nominator needs to know the nominee reasonably well and needs to have worked with him on numerous articles. However, I believe that this should be non-binding and that there should be no binding requirements for nomination at all - just that it makes for a better impression when the nominator makes an educated decision to invite someone, instead of just randomly spouting noms.
Administrator coaching (either formally or informally)
I generally oppose administrator coaching and believe that it contributes to the over-formalization of the RfA process. As another user said somewhere, administrator coaching encourages users to edit just to pass the RfA, which should be discouraged and avoided. Administrators should be nominated and accepted when they are ready, not as a result of any form of sped-up process. Furthermore, I believe that one of the main ideas behind adminship is that administrators should be admitted when they know and understand Wikipedia policies from close-up personal experience, and not as a result of lessons given by older administrators.
Nomination, co-nomination and self-nomination (introducing the candidate)
I think that, in the spirit of Wikipedia, the nominator needs to let the facts speak for themselves, instead of giving elaborate descriptions of how great the nominee is. Moreover, I believe that administrators should not be chosen based on the quality of the nomination itself, because it is not relevant to the proficiency, quality and suitability of the nominee. This includes self-noms - if a user nominates themselves, others should not frown on it but instead focus on the quality of the admin hopeful. About co-nominations, not sure what they're good for; support votes are essentially the same thing.
Advertising and canvassing
Canvassing and advertizing an RfA is generally bad and in clear violation of Wikipedia policies. Especially wrong is stealth canvassing. However, I think that notifying a large group of people by means of WikiProject about a prominent member's RfA can be fine, as long as the notification is clearly displayed in the RfA itself in the notes/comments section. RfA pass/fails can be rather quick, so it usually isn't fair if most Wikipedians who often interact with the nominee (and therfore, know most about their suitability for adminship) never find out about the RfA. I don't think there's a major POV or COI problem here, because most WikiProjects in disputes areas are watched by both sides (e.g. WikiProjects Israel and Palestine are watched by prominent editors from both sides).
Debate (Presenting questions to the candidate)
I think the 'stock' questions should be officially defined and their amount limited. This is in order to encourage questions which are more relevant to the candidate, without flooding them with dozens of queries. It needs to be understood that when a candidate is asked too many questions, they are in a lose-lose situation: either answer all questions and put little thought into each, resulting in a less serious image, or answer just some and have others frown on why not all questions were answered. Limiting the number of questions that one user can ask could work, although I think a limit of the total amount of questions would work better (unless the nominator specifies that he wouldn't mind answering more questions).
Election (including providing reasons for support/oppose)
Even the format of these review questions themselves, where debate is explained as presenting questions to the candidate, is testimony to how the debate about a nominee should be carried out. I believe that when a voter has serious doubts about the candidate, they should ask them questions, instead of putting a long oppose/neutral reason, with others commenting near it, which spirals into an uncontrollable discussion often including slander and misrepresenting diffs in order to support/oppose the candidate. At the same time, if the candidate tries to put their 2 cents into the debate, they are frowned upon. In order to give the candidate the option to reply to criticism, and at the same time open the door to debate, asking questions first (before voting) should be encouraged, and long vote comments should be made only after a relevant question has been answered.
Withdrawal (the candidate withdrawing from the process)
I believe that generally withdrawing serves no purpose, and many use is it as spin to improve their image for the next RfA. On the other hand, being an admin is the candidate's decision before it is anyone else's, therefore I think that a candidate should be able to withdraw on two occasions: when they are nominated (i.e. rejecting the nomination), and after their nomination has passed (some may change their minds about adminship during the RfA, and each candidate needs to be asked for confirmation before acquiring admin powers). I don't think it serves any purpose letting candidates to withdraw in the middle of the RfA because suddenly they believe that they can't win and want to save their good image.
Declaration (the bureaucrat closing the application. Also includes WP:NOTNOW closes)
I think there should be an aspiration to only close RfAs in 7 days, giving them ample chance - even if a user gets an overwhelming amount of oppose votes. There should be just one reason to ever close early - if the candidate doesn't satisfy some very basic requirements for being an admin - understanding of core policies, time on Wikipedia and amount of edits. If this issue is raised by the majority of the oppose voters (and only then), and there are no or very little support votes, then it would be an insult to allow the RfA to continue. Otherwise, there should be no reason to close early.
Training (use of New Admin School, other post-election training)
There needs to be a method of letting new admins test their tools without disrupting Wikipedia. For non-technical issues like decision making, I think coaching should be optional, but by no means required - the whole premise of supporting an RfA candidate is that the supporters believe that he can already make admin decisions and understand all the relevant processes. Therefore, if a candidate passes an RfA, they shouldn't need additional advice if they don't want to get it (unless they start to disrupt Wikipedia - see next section)
Recall (the Administrators Open to Recall process)
There needs to be a method to easily take away admin power in case an administrator starts actively disrupting or vandalizing Wikipedia - e.g., if they protect many articles for no reason, block users for no reason, etc. However, for other cases where 'disruption' is a matter of opinion, there should be a much longer and more thorough process, and it should be difficult to recall an admin. The reason is so that tag-teams of POV pushers won't be able to de-sysop someone by lobbying about that admin acting against their POV. AOR is a good idea, but should remain completely optional. In short, I think it works fine the way it is now.

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?
Technically, administrators are just regular Wikipedians with extra tools. However, I believe that in practice, they are much more than just Wikipedians with extra tools. Administrators are role models for new users, and are looked up to by those who aren't as familiar with RfA and the way Wikipedia works in general. Admins should exemplify model behavior, and act as a decision-maker, rather than just someone who has the technical ability to protect a page or whatever. An administrator should act responsibly, and most importantly to avoid conflicts of interest and fights with other Wikipedians.
What attributes do you feel an administrator should possess?
As pointed out above, I believe that an admin should possess similar attributes to a military officer, for example, rather than someone who just happens to have extra tools. An admin is a decision maker, first and foremost, be it in closing AfDs, 3RR cases, etc. where not everything is always clear-cut - I have personally encountered many cases of disputed admin decisions and have disputed some myself. At the same time, an admin must be willing to consult with other administrators and in most cases also 'simple' Wikipedians regarding certain non-clear-cut decisions.

Finally, when thinking about Requests for Adminship:

Have you ever voted in a request for Adminship? If so what was your experience?
I have voted a few times in RfAs, mostly for/against users whom I was well familiar with (it's difficult to make informed decisions regarding users whose habits you have no knowledge about). Generally I provided a vote as well as a short summary of why I thought the way I did. Can't really say it was a special experience, rather it was like an AfD vote or similar. On the other hand, once I voted for an unknown Wikipedian (to me), and it was a difficult task reviewing contribs and deciding whether the candidate was worthy. While it was satisfying, I wouldn't like to do it too much again, because proper editor review (which sadly is much more than most RfA voters give) is a time-consuming process, and mostly my time can be better spent on other contributions.
Have you ever stood as a candidate under the Request for Adminship process? If so what was your experience?
Yes, I have been nominated a long time ago, and failed due to what I consider a misunderstanding. I learned from that experience, and fully understand the oppose voters' decisions to not support me. Since then I have improved on all points raised in the RfA and today consider myself worthy, although I do not plan to either self-nom or push another user to nominate me. The only gripe is that when I felt a comment was unfair, I could not reply to it without raising eyebrows (see also my comments on debate above).
Do you have any further thoughts or opinions on the Request for Adminship process?
Actually, yes :) although it's more of a general opinion on voting trends, rather than something I'd like to see changed in the official process. Basically, I believe that the single most important criterion for acceptance of a candidate should be time spent on Wikipedia: assuming that the candidate has a clean block log, enough contributions, and no major disputes like an ArbCom case (in other words, we can trust him with the tools), I don't see any reason to oppose a candidate - as long as he has been long enough on the project (examples below).

For example, it's true that Wikipedia has lately been focusing on quality and featured content, but that is by no means a requirement and I can't see why a long-time WikiGnome can't be an admin (in fact, WikiGnomes generally need the technical tools more). Also, there's no reason to oppose a candidate who hasn't voted in many AfDs, as some do - as long as there's sufficient reason to believe that the candidate understands the deletion process; some admins may never close an AfD and may instead focus on other tasks. On the other hand, I have been some editors who ammassed thousands of edits in their 2-3 months become admins after this perior, and believe that it is wrong to vote them in (not in all cases, though), because most of these users cannot be familiar with the intricacies of Wikipedia policies and guidelines, nor will they know how Wikipedia has worked and evolved over the years, which IMO can severely hurt their decision-making abilities.

Another thing that bothers me is how certain users vote oppose based on the candidate's opinions posted on their user pages. As long as the candidate hasn't violated any Wikipedia policies in his long editing history as a result of these opinions, I don't see that as a reason to oppose, even if the opinions are extremist and aren't compatible with the spirit of Wikipedia.

Once you're finished...

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