User:Majorly/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 user in question should be asked in private, not publically on their talk page. Sometimes it is difficult to say "no" in public, especially if a bunch of people come and beg the person to run as well. Candidates should be people who will make Wikipedia better with additional buttons. Nominators should be extremely familiar with the candidate and be prepared to assist the candidate throughout the whole process, and after once they have the tools.

2. Administrator coaching (either formally or informally)

   It is generally a waste of time. I have nominated over 30 people. Not one of them have had admin coaching. Admin coaching is really for admin wannabes who wouldn't have a chance of passing RFA without any help (yes, it's not about whether they'd make a good admin, it's whether they'd pass RFA). This is not the way to go. We should be nominating people who can go out on their own without someone holding their hand. Of course, as in any new job, questions and help will be answered, but a formal coaching session is generally a bad idea. Durin once put it, in the following context: "Users who become admins had the qualities to become admins before they ever started editing Wikipedia." I agree.

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

   A nomination is good, and self-nominations are fine. Not too long though please! This is why I dislike co-noms. They simply make the page huge, with all the usual doo-dah that simply repeats itself with every co-nom that is added. The thing is, I rarely read the nomination fully. So I think making a big deal of it is not a good use of time. When I write my own nominations, I don't tend to make them very long or very short. Just a short paragraph explaining how the user would make a good admin.

4. Advertising and canvassing

   This is fussed over way too much. OK, if the user was spamming tens of people with "Come and support me" I'd not look at it well. But if a few neutral messages were left to users who were highly familiar with the candidate, it wouldn't bother me at all. Canvassing does not affect the overall vote. Most people do not realise that. The number of supports is irrelevant, it's the % that matters. Let people pile on support. There's nothing wrong with that. What is wrong is opposing someone because they dared to mention their RFA somewhere other than their userpage or their RFA itself. Also, canvassing to get opposes is damaging. Opposes are unpleasant things, especially when people pile on. I consider that a form of bullying. The whole process is nasty enough without people ruining it with opposes that don't actually have anything to do with why the candidate is there being voted on.

5. Debate (Presenting questions to the candidate)

   Questions that are about the candidate and their actions only please (plus the standard ones). I don't demand the questions are answered (though I admit it does look a little rude), but if they aren't I expect a decent nomination.

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

   Reasons are good but not necessary (on both sides). Neutral votes without a reason are just plain weird though. If the opposer does provide a reason it must be about the discussion at hand - i.e. will the candidate abuse or misuse admin tools, not "has just 3543534534 edits in x area, needs more experience". Opposes should really be good enough to show the candidate would absolutely make a bad admin for sure.

7. Withdrawal (the candidate withdrawing from the process)

   The candidate should only withdraw if there is no chance of the RFA passing (i.e. it's under 50% after 3 days). Otherwise, there's still a chance.

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

   The bureaucrat should evaluate the discussion thoroughly, especially the opposes, which are often dubious and baseless. All such opposes should be discounted, if they have nothing to do with adminship. If the case is close, ordinary opposes without any reasoning should be discounted. Supports should not be touched unless there is sockpuppetry. NOTNOW/SNOW closes should be forbidden. Only bureaucrats should be closing RFAs. It's hard enough for them to get the job, let them do it.

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

   I don't have much familiarity with this area, but it's a good idea to let admin practice to ensure they don't mess up on a "real" admin action.

10. Recall (the Administrators Open to Recall process)

    All admins should be open to recall as part of becoming one. In this respect, all admins should be reconfirmed yearly. We also have too many inactive admins.

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?

   Someone who maintains the encyclopedia for the benefit of everyone else.

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

   Fair, firm, approachable, knowledgable, friendly, happy, positive.

Finally, when thinking about Requests for Adminship:

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

   No, never. Yes, hundreds. I normally support. I have opposed quite a bit, but I have recently become a lot more easy going since there are too many good candidates failing RfA for really petty reasons.

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

   Twice on this project, several times on other projects. It was, for the most part, deeply unpleasant. In my first RFA, I was opposed with pretty baseless comments, and the same could be said with my second one, though some of them were fair.

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

   Voters need to be more positive. We need more admins. Enough said.

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 10:43 on 17 June 2008.