User:OhanaUnited/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)

   The candidate should be a positive force in the project. These individuals should not be the constant subject of incivil or disruptive behaviors.

2. Administrator coaching (either formally or informally)

   I cannot deny that admin coaching doesn't have its pros. However, I encountered some displeasure with the admin coaching system. People opposed my first RfA because my admin coach voted a Neutral instead of a Support in the RfA. At the same time, in other RfAs, people don't give much weight when their admin coach support the RfA.

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

   The nominator should be very familiar with the candidate (though not necessary communicating a lot between them) and have confidence that they will pass the RfA. There shouldn't be a limit towards co-noms. If 10 people trust this candidate, let all 10 co-nom him/her. I also agree with people self-nom themselves. It doesn't limit RfAs to just people that everyone knew and turned RfA into a popularity contest.

4. Advertising and canvassing

   Placing an RfA notice on your user and usertalk page is fine. Telling people to even comment on your RfA is a no, since you will only pick those that you believe will support you. But if someone else do it without your consent, other than urging them to stop, there's nothing you can do to stop them.

5. Debate (Presenting questions to the candidate)

   Asking someone about "what is a difference between block and ban" is dumb. They can just copy the paragraph and reword without understanding the policy. Asking them regarding questionable behavior is a fair question. Asking them to comment on the issue of for/against certain practice or policy (e.g. admin recall or not having a recognizable signature) is not a fair question. It doesn't hinder them to do the job.

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

   Most of the time, supporters are able to get away without making any reasons. If someone opposes without explaining anything, they will receive a lot of scrutiny. I don't understand why supports receive a different treatment than the opposes.

7. Withdrawal (the candidate withdrawing from the process)

   If they want to withdraw, let them. What's the harm done for withdrawing?

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

   In my opinion, the bureaucrat that closes the application should strike off the votes and comments they deemed out-of-line, instead of people indenting it (e.g. A sockpuppet's vote should be strike off instead of indented to show that vote is not considered). This carries a strong message that such actions are not tolerated.

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

   Admin school is great, though they haven't offered a course on how to mass-delete something or mass-revert bot edits so they don't clog up "recent changes".

10. Recall (the Administrators Open to Recall process)

    Let the admins pick if they wish to or not. An admin that is not participating in recall is still an admin. If the admin wishes to drop out of the recall process at any time, let it be. There're other venues to desysop admins who have done questionable actions.

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?

   It's a volunteer who have a bit more tools. With more tools comes more responsibilities. They should break up arguments and impose restrictions to stop both sides from lunging at each other.

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

   Cool-headed, reliable, responsible, friendly, good at communicating with people, and able to solve tough issues.

Finally, when thinking about Requests for Adminship:

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

   Yes, of course. Sometimes there's too much drama occurring between the supporting and opposing camps that have nothing to do with the candidate involved in the process.

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

   Yes, my first RfA failed because the admin coach failed to support me and instead went for a neutral vote because I haven't talked to him for half a year. Then people piled on when it doesn't affect my ability to be an admin. The second one was drama-free. It's an unanimous support.

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

   There's too much drama happening in RfA. We need to cut these down and move other debates to either the talk page or to another page.

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 17:27 on 27 June 2008.