User:Parsecboy/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.

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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)

   It should always be discussed with the proposed nominee first, I believe Gatoclass had a bad experience when someone nommed him without even mentioning it to him beforehand.

2. Administrator coaching (either formally or informally)

   I see no problem with informal coaching, but really, if an editor is ready for the mop and bucket, they shouldn't need any kind of coaching. They should already be active enough to be familiar with policy. No, I don't expect anyone to know every single policy, guideline, and convention by heart, but they should be familiar enough with Wikipedia space to be able to find the answers.

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

   I see no real difference between having someone nominate a candidate and self-noms. If the candidate can use the tools, and can be trusted, it shouldn't matter whether s/he nominated him/herself. I'm a big supporter of WP:NOBIGDEAL

4. Advertising and canvassing

   I'm strongly opposed to advertising and canvassing. RFA isn't a popularity contest, which is why in a sense the current practice of concluding RFAs (80% and higher is generally a pass, 70% and lower a fail, and in between is the gray area left to the 'crat's discretion) is flawed. If there actually are serious concerns about a user's trustworthiness, civility, etc., he/she shouldn't be sysopped, no matter how much support they have. OTOH, oppose !voters should be taken with a grain of salt, if their justifications don't demonstrate these types of serious questions about a candidates suitability (i.e., if they're just opposing because they've had disagreements with the candidate, conflicting POV, etc.). Towards this end, I think RfAs should become more of a general discussion than what amounts to an up or down vote. Again, it's no big deal; admins can always be stripped of the mop.

5. Debate (Presenting questions to the candidate)

   Generally, questions can be a good way to gauge a candidate's understanding of core policies, but I think by now, everyone knows the answer to "When is a cool-down block justified?". I think it would be better to encourage additional questions to be tailored to the specific candidate, dealing with issues they've maybe had in the past, and definitely related to areas in which they've indicated they'll participate once granted the mop. Also, they're optional questions, candidates shouldn't be crucified because they didn't answer them.

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

   I've covered this to an extent in #4, but I'll also add that it seems to me to be general practice that supports don't really need to provide any explantion, as their !votes are essentially an endorsement of the nomination, and in the spirit of WP:NOBIGDEAL. Opposes, on the other hand, need to provide evidence indicating poor judgement, hostility to other editors, etc., preferably with diffs to support their arguments.

7. Withdrawal (the candidate withdrawing from the process)

   The candidate should have the right to withdraw their nomination if they no longer want to pursue it.

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

   Seems fine to me.

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

   It was very helpful to me when I first got the mop to go through the examples in the NAS and practice deleting a page, protecting a page, etc. Unless you're returning from a stint of de-sysop, you're not likely to know what exactly to expect with the new buttons (or at least I didn't), and having an admin sandbox in which to experiment is a great tool. It shouldn't necessarily be mandatory, but definitely encouraged.

10. Recall (the Administrators Open to Recall process)

    I'm more or less ambivalent to this. Generally speaking, if an admin is acting in a way that recall would be necessary, I'm sure there already would've been numerous AN/I reports (and probably an ARBCOM initiated) a long time before editors fulfilled the often byzantine requirements stipulated for recall.

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?

   Basically, a regular editor with a few extra buttons and responsibilities. They should also be friendly and willing to help any editor with problems or questions (which doesn't mean regular editors shouldn't behave the same ;)

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

   AGF is a must, especially if you frequent AIV/AN/etc., neutrality in disputes, transparency, willing to discuss issues, understanding of policy, and a lot of common sense.

Finally, when thinking about Requests for Adminship:

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

   A few times, although I generally only !vote in requests where I am somewhat familiar with the candidate. I don't normally have the time to wade through contribs and the like for editors with whom I've had no prior interaction.

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

   Yes, in February of this year. It actually wasn't as bad as it's made out to be (probably because I'm not that well-known of an editor, and while I have participated in disputes, I'm not that controversial). I only had one oppose, and with all due respect to the editor who made it, it was kind of a junk oppose.

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

   I think I've said all I have to say.

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 02:27 on 24 June 2008.