User:JayHenry/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.

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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)

   I'll try to say things not being said by everyone else. Nominators need to make sober assessments of the people they're nominating. This is especially so when you are nominating your allies and friends. There's a saying about this: "A person who is nice to you, but rude to the waiter, is not a nice person." This also applies to the ability to collaborate. Someone who can collaborate with you, but not with everyone else, is not a good collaborator. (I don't mean literally everyone: the point is that if your friend has widespread collaboration problems the fact that they collaborate well with you is immaterial.)

2. Administrator coaching (either formally or informally)

   As I'm sure many others have noted: training people how to use the tools is fine. Coaching someone how to pass an RFA is not productive. But look: any possible system in which the community evaluates a candidate will be "coachable" in the latter sense. It's probably pointless to try to crack down on something that is inevitable. It would likely be more productive to institutionalize some sort of mentorship program, so at least the playing field is level.

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

   I would prefer that co-noms provide added value (i.e. people that have worked with the candidate in different areas of the Wiki). If you have nothing unique to explain about the candidate, just support. Some nominators need to remember that an RFA is about the candidate and not about the nominator. I cringe every time a nominator goes on about their record, their reputation at RFA, etc.

4. Advertising and canvassing

   I would venture that the majority of the unhappiness surrounding RFA stems from the fact that editors here do not have realistic expectations of how a system where several hundred people are actively watching the requests page is going to function. This is not a problem with RFA, but a problem of almost any possible system (other than, perhaps, a secret ballot) with this many participants. Canvassing will likely increase the level of participation at the most contentious RFAs. The people who are currently unhappy will be even unhappier. It would tend to make the atmosphere a bit more like students running for prom court.

5. Debate (Presenting questions to the candidate)

   If you only read one of my answers read this: Stock questions with correct and incorrect answers are harmful. Here's why:

RFA \ Clue	Candidate has clue	Candidate is insane/incompetent
Regular participant at RFA	All RFA regulars know how to give the correct answers to these questions.	Even the highly insane and completely incompetent, if they are RFA regulars, will know the answers. In practice, they will be unlikely to apply the tools appropriately, because real situations never conform so neatly to the questions and it is only the question they know how to handle.
Not an RFA regular	Even the smartest of candidates might get the question wrong if they are not regulars at RFA. The candidate might not realize that they are being asked a question which will garner oppose if it does not conform to some obscure line of policy, and so will just give the first thought that occurs to them, rather than look it up. When pointed to the relevant policy, they will never make the mistake.	Will not give a correct answer.

Questions like these (ie that help promote incompetent people who will misuse the tools, and fail competent people who will never misuse the tools) are obviously bad questions and must be strongly discouraged.

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

   I believe that our system of discussion is a generally vastly positive thing. RFA creates a great deal of unhappiness in some editors. For the most part this is directly correlated with people who fuss when they don't get their way. In a community as large as ours one won't always get everything to be the way one personally would prefer. Frankly, a lot of the people who complain the loudest are going to be unhappy with any system (because in any possible system with this many members in the Wikipedia community there will come times when a lot of people disagree). These people are generally not well-suited to participate at Wikipedia. In fact, we very rarely make bad promotions at RFA these days. Most of the problematic administrators are entrenched old timers.

   An important footnote: Archtransit is a complete and total red herring. Archtransit would have passed any possible system of requesting adminship and it is disingenuous to point to his case as a failure of the Requests system.

2. Withdrawal (the candidate withdrawing from the process)

   What's the issue? Candidates should, of course, be allowed to withdraw.

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

   WP:Consensus not numbers is a ridiculous and harmful essay. It's primary effect (though not perhaps its intent) has been to give already powerful editors even more power and ability to manipulate the community along their will. It has distorted things for the worse. Numbers are not perfect, but they are so vastly fairer than any alternative that it barely merits discussion.

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

   I've seen some suggestion of a probationary process, in which people go through training and if they don't do well can have the tools removed. Nonsense. Anyone with half a brain is going to just lay low during this period. As long as we don't promote people who are unable to edit collaboratively, however, this is a non-issue. Good admins learn on the job and do virtually no damage with their errors -- they have the maturity to apologize and learn from their errors.

5. Recall (the Administrators Open to Recall process)

   I've yet to see a proposal that effectively addresses the case of an administrator who misuses the tools, but has strong social support. The administrators who in my estimation misuse the tools most egregiously have done so with a rather fierce cheerleading section. So how to address this without it becoming a bloodbath? I've yet to see a proposal that gets close. Our most effective safeguard is a relatively conservative approach to RFA, and a broader effort to ensure that editors are not treated as second-class citizens, and admins pressured socially not to act as Wikigods. Do not defend inappropriate behavior from your WikiMates--if for no other reason, then because it is a tactical mistake. Admins (well, and editors for that matter) working within the guidelines are more effective.

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 ought to be like that of a professor who's capable of doing some administrative things that the graduate students can't do. They can be tenured, but there is a strong social expectation to behave like a civilized adult. The main problem with the tenure system is that some professors become lazy. That's not a huge problem here. If people lose interest so be it. Of course, they'd be less likely to lose interest if Wiki weren't so brainlessly hostile.

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

   Basically just intelligence (or competence), maturity and an ability to collaborate. I'd say those are three fairly distinct qualities and they are the most important. A fourth important consideration is whether or not the editor is here to build an encyclopedia: we don't need editors who are here primarily for the socializing (which includes the drama and the bureaucracy).

Finally, when thinking about Requests for Adminship:

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

   At least a hundred. It's been generally positive. I sometimes get bored when people pick at word choice (when they clearly understand the intent of a statement) or accuse others of bad faith and grudgeholding, instead of simply addressing their arguments.

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

   No, I have no interest in that until the social expectations have changed. Until it's a community of intelligent, mature collaborators.

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

   I am in the school of thought that believes the RFA process is mostly fine. The vast majority of the supposed problems will be present in any possible system (or a new system will introduce even worse problems). It is the community that needs to change its behaviors and expectations. We need to be intelligent and mature collaborators (and collaboration means more than with your WikiMates). We need to have realistic expectations for a system with this many participants.

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 00:16 on 24 June 2008.