User:Ddstretch/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)
This is unregulated at the moment, and could probably be shown to suffer from Selection Bias if only we could sort out exactly what the criteria were supposed to be that are used in assessing a candidate's suitability for being an administrator. So far, seeing as we can't or won't clarify the criteria, and thus won't be able to enforce their deployment in choosing administrators, we've never been able to know. As for how it might be changed, if change is required, I would rather move towards a system where every autoconfirmed editor has the tools unless they show evidence that they will misuse them, which would render "candidate selection" slightly moot and focus the discussion on what evidence would be required to take away the tools rather than grant them.
Administrator coaching (either formally or informally)
Is it coaching to pass an RfA or coaching to improve the skills required to be a better administrator? Given that this happens prior to any administrator's tools being made available to those being coached, it could certainly serve the first purpose, but be rather mistimed for the latter, since the tools aren't able to be used. Thus, I see there are pressures to turn any good intentions along the lines of the latter into practice for the former (i.e., how to pass an RfA.) Much much better if they were done after RfA for successful candidates to turn novice administrators into adept ones with respect to the tools gained.
Nomination, co-nomination and self-nomination (introducing the candidate)
The accuracy of these rest on qualities of the nominators concerned. So their value is limited by the nominators' accuracy, reliability, and validity. Consequently, some means of being assured of these qualities in the nominators may be required. If we restrict them to being administrators (on the grounds that they are supposed to have the trust of community, etc etc) then this is not much better than nothing at the moment. This is because of the whole rickety state of the RfA process itself, with its consequent unreliability and lack of assured validity in selection. It's an almost self-referential bootstrapping problem brought about by a fundamental failure to grasp what is required to be done to select the right editors to become administrators. Learn from Occupational Psychology and related areas on how to do it properly!
Advertising and canvassing
As is the case with the British Establishment (and probably other countries' establishments as well), the checks in place to prevent this, together with the vague guidelines about what is and isn't acceptable seem designed to punish the act of being found out rather than to prevent it, with some flexibility (because of the lack of clarity) to allow possibly unfair targetting of accusations. Once again, if the process was attended to properly, advertising and canvassing would have minimal influence as a more appropriate process of appointing administators would preclude it being a popularity contest, or a backstabbing competition.
Debate (Presenting questions to the candidate)
I wouldn't use "debate" to label the current practice, which is that of presenting questions to the candidate and then expecting answers when the questions are labelled "optional" but which seem to be mandatory unless one is prepared to receive opposition votes (and yes, they really are votes to all intents and purposes, given what happens). Some challenging of oppose votes is carried out, but it seems candidates are discouraged from responding too much themselves, and no one much challenges the "drive-by" supports. In other words, what passes for debate is not, and what it is actually has a bias. Of the questions themselves, too many of them are equivalent to "open book" regurgitation questions: cut and paste of relevant policies or guidelines or of previous successful candidates' answers. In other words, they test mainly the literacy of the candidate and their practical intelligence or knowledge of how to pass the RfA. The practical intelligence required for this is of such a basic level of functioning that if they didn't exceed that level, they wouldn't be able to be editors of wikipedia. This means that at present a mere edit count and rudimentary check on what those edits were would effectively suffice in place of the "regurgitation" questions. The skills of the question posers needs to be increased substantially here. There are professions who have great skills in this kind of area already. Why isn't wikipedia making use of them?
Election (including providing reasons for support/oppose)
As stated in the previous answer, it is biased in such a way that oppose views are scrutinized and challenged much more than support views. Additionally, given that the requirements for being an administrator are still insufficiently clear or specific, all manner of reasons can be used (if not provided publically) for support and oppose opinions, with a bias towards challenging opposing opinions more than support opinions. Backstabbing, petty disagreements, being lovers, having friendships, a candidate's popularity, etc all can operate to yield a particular viewpoint or opinion. Unless full and honest reasons for particular opinions are given with challenges to them welcomed and expected, then this part is, like the others, of unknown validity and reliability.
Withdrawal (the candidate withdrawing from the process)
It should always be a candidate's right to withdraw from a process if they want to.
Declaration (the bureaucrat closing the application. Also includes WP:NOTNOW closes)
Unless full reasons are given, then it is difficult to see that a person is required to close an RfA, as it seems to be mostly a vote, which could be done automatically. Given that active bureaucrats are sometimes said to be few in number, removing the fiction of the present process as being anything other than a vote would free up time to deal with backlogs elsewhere where a real person is definitely required. Of course, if the RfA process were changed to be more appropriate, then a real person may then be required, but they must make their reasoning for any closing decision in full, openly, and in a way that can be challenged if necessary. Often it is claimed that a real person is currently required, but no clear evidence is provided when asked for it about whether a real person is required to make a difficult interpretation that yields a decision, as opposed to whether the requirement for a real person is some kind of publicity requirement needed to justify the mystique of the RfA.
Training (use of New Admin School, other post-election training)
Probably a good idea, if it could be done well. May be worse than nothing if done badly. This needs separate discussion to that of discussing the RfA appointment process, though the presence of a good new admin school will inform the kind of appointment process chosen in the ideal world. A "new administrator" welcome template pointing out resources to call upon would be a good move.
Recall (the Administrators Open to Recall process)
It should be mandatory. If the community feels that people with too great a lust for power should not be made administrators, then there should be no objection to making the process of removing administrators more easy. At the moment, though, given the way things are done, getting such a move agreed and actioned (given that administrators and/or bureaucrats would almost cetainly have to action the decision) would seem to be like asking turkeys to vote for thanksgiving. The process can be too complicated, and, as each administrator controls their own recall process, it is flawed. There should be a simple, centralised mechanism rather than the arcane and convoluted one using Arbcom etc.

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?
It should ideally be viewed an unwanted burden placed upon editors whose main motivation is to contribute to the writing of an encyclopaedia, but who reluctantly agree to be nominated as a candidate. Then, the abilities to act as servant, mediator, cleaner, secretary, mentor, content editor, assessor, enforcer.
What attributes do you feel an administrator should possess?
Humility, open-mindedness, ability and desire to admit mistakes openly and learn from them. Patience, and good manners. Good critical thinking and reasoning skills that are deployed freely and with no regard to one's public image. Clarity of Expression in communication. Support and commitment to the idea that access to knowledge should be freely available to all. Appreciation of the importance of collaborative and group working. The ability to not flinch from deciding upon a difficult course of action and then actually carrying out that action, tempered with the idea that "you may be right, and I may be wrong, and by an effort, we may get closer to improving matters together". Being responsive to and initiating making clear and as detailed an explanation as required by others which explains one's actions. The commitment to a continual self-audit of one's actions to determine whether one both did things right and did the right things, and welcoming others who will do that for one as well. The ability to know when to resign, or be open to others suggesting this to one. Finally, administrators should possess a sense of humour and be quite prepared to show it openly when appropriate, especially when they could poke fun at their own blunders as a means of smoothing things over, since we are all fallible.

Finally, when thinking about Requests for Adminship:

Have you ever voted in a request for Adminship? If so what was your experience?
I have voted in quite a few, and have found the experience neither here nor there. I have been involved in some challenges to my own and other's opinions. Whilst I view the act of challenging an expressed opinion as a necessary right that editors have, I was saddened to see that many challenges demonstrate a lack of critical thinking and reasoning abilities that must have some consequences on the quality (reliability and validity) of the outcomes of the RfAs. As a final comment, I think it needs to be clearly pointed out that whilst ad hominem arguments are generally frowned upon on wikipedia, if one is asked to make an opinion about a candidate's suitability for the position of adminstrator, and declared requirements include such personal attributes of candidates as trustworthiness and so on, then ad hominem arguments relevant to whether those attributes are held or not by the candidate are entirely appropriate if not completely unavoidable. However, this is not a completely free license to indulge in inappropriate ad hominem arguments, petty backstabbing arguments, acts of revenge, and so on. The skill is in having a process which allows relevant arguments and helps prevent irrelevant and inappropriate ones.

Have you ever stood as a candidate under the Request for Adminship process? If so what was your experience?
Yes, and I was successful. It happened on 6 June 2008 (see my RfA nomination and process here.) The amount of work required to answer the questions was tiring, though real life issues contributed to this in my particular case.
Do you have any further thoughts or opinions on the Request for Adminship process?
Plenty, but I think I may have already said quite enough for now. I will however just mention that if the tools were unbundled and given out more freely; and that any residual administrator's position was not effectively for life, then matters would be much improved.

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:Ddstretch/RFA Review]] added by ~~~ at ~~~~~

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

This question page was generated by {{RFAReview}} at 00:21 on 22 June 2008.