User:Scarian/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[edit]

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)
... No problems here.
Administrator coaching (either formally or informally)
... I think it's fine for people to be "coached". But, of course, coaching cannot replace the knowledge gained through experience.
Nomination, co-nomination and self-nomination (introducing the candidate)
... All forms of nomination are fine. Especially self-nominations, absolutely nothing wrong with that at all. No "prima facie" crap like that at all.
Advertising and canvassing
... I believe it's fine to give a very neutrally worded note to other Wikipedian editors that a user is standing for adminship.
Debate (Presenting questions to the candidate)
... Can be informative and useful up to a point. But a limit should be imposed on how many questions can be asked as it can be tiresome for the candidates and many users do not bother to read the answers.
Election (including providing reasons for support/oppose)
... Ridiculous opposes such as "prima facie" by Kurt are completely ridiculous, 'crats ignore them anyway but it'd be nice for him to stop. I think any opposes based on anything but their ability/contributions to Wikipedia are also ridiculous. We're not judging the person, just their contributions. Lastly, supports/opposes "per x" is just vote stacking and shouldn't be taken into consideration.
Withdrawal (the candidate withdrawing from the process)
... I have no objections to candidates removing themselves from the process. It's fair.
Declaration (the bureaucrat closing the application. Also includes WP:NOTNOW closes)
... Fine.
Training (use of New Admin School, other post-election training)
... Helpful.
Recall (the Administrators Open to Recall process)
... No problem with it.

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?
... Just helps out. Can be hard, tiring and stressful. It really is no big deal, no power involved whatsoever. Anyone who thinks the opposite has obviously never been an admin.
What attributes do you feel an administrator should possess?
... Calmness, fairness, absolutely no bias whatsoever. Friday has a bias against young people. An admin should be the complete opposite of him/her.

Finally, when thinking about Requests for Adminship:

Have you ever voted in a request for Adminship? If so what was your experience?
... It can get hectic. It's not an enjoyable experience. As soon as you dip your toe in to test the water, the rest of your body falls in straight away.
Have you ever stood as a candidate under the Request for Adminship process? If so what was your experience?
... Pretty good, personally. Others were far unluckier than I was though.
Do you have any further thoughts or opinions on the Request for Adminship process?
... There needs to be a better way. There must be a better way. At the moment, by using discussion, it just causes arguments and peoples' feelings get hurt. You also get a bunch of dicks who make stupid opposes based purely on their desire for drama (Oh, and stop thank spam. It's ever so slightly annoying... those damn big chunky templates).

Once you're finished...[edit]

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.

* [[User:Scarian/RfA review]] added by ~~~ at ~~~~~

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

This question page was generated by {{RFAReview}} at 20:56 on 20 June 2008.