User:Fritzpoll/RFAReview

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 should be done by someone who has considered the editor's contributions carefully and has come to a definitive assessment that the editor would provide a net positive to the community with administrative tools. This should necessarily be objective - based only on a feel for the candidate based on contributions within the project. Objectivity does not preclude subjectivity in an assessment, but would probably exclude people requesting their wikifriends.
Administrator coaching (either formally or informally)
In two minds about this, because it depends on people's definition of coaching. If it is a controlled introduction to administrative areas, such as trying to judge consensus in an AfD debate (without necessarily contributing) or pointing out how other admin-type areas work, then this is of educational benefit and is relatively informal. Anything more than this probably too heavily on the side of "preparing for an RfA" which doesn't benefit the community, whereas the latter approach does.
Nomination, co-nomination and self-nomination (introducing the candidate)
Nomination is needed to explain why the nominator is actually recommending the person to the community. Co-nominations can strengthen this, and there's no problem, provided they are made before transclusion. A nomination, when it comes from someone else, is essentially a means of kicking off the process, with a statement saying why anyone should consider the candidate at all.

Self-nomination is basically the same, but from a different perspective - it is an editor volunteering to help the community, or asking for the tools to perform specific tasks. I don't agree with the idea that self-nominations are inherently bad, but on the other hand, the motives of such an editor are fair game for an enhanced scrutiny of their contributions since there is noone objective who should have done this for the community before the RfA began.
Advertising and canvassing
Advertising and canvassing are clearly not on - the RfA will never attract the entire community to assess consensus, so there is a systematic reliance on a random cross-section of editors stumbling into an RfA discussion and making a comment. Any canvassing skews the sample, rendering it invalid. That shouldn't prohibit the candidate or other editor's discussing it on-wiki somewhere other than the RfA page - the candidate or associates just shouldn't start conversations about it with other users with the clear intent of attracting that particular person to comment. That goes equally for detractors.
Debate (Presenting questions to the candidate)
A good idea, but in general there are some questions that are currently asked, which clearly have their routes in seeing RfA as an interview. Take the regular question about "When should you use a cool down block?" - when I was a less experienced editor, clearly unsuited to adminship, I knew the answer to this for two reasons: 1) it was a stock policy question at loads of RfAs, and it was easy to spot the right answer 2) you can just click and read the policy. This type of question attempts to make an RfA into an exam or interview, where there would be a clear time limit to answering the question before it was obvious you didn't know. On the internet, you have all the time you need to read, paraphrase and type. Questions need to be either user specific or ones with multiple possible answers.

The only problem with open-ended question is that, while they are actually excellent ways of evaluating a candidate's mindset, the current RfA structure means that a candidate will never want to answer them since commentators will vote based on their own opinion of the answer and treat it as something which is either right or wrong.
Election (including providing reasons for support/oppose)
If we assume good faith on the part of both the nominator and candidate, we should assume that a candidate should be sysopped unless proven unsuitable. Thus supports can have explanations or not, bu opposes invariably need a reason why an oppose is taking place. Opposes giving a reason of "per User:OpposingUser" shouldn't be valid - whilst it may not be true, it implies a laziness on the part of the commentator that they may not have independently assessed a candidate. Also, I believe RfA shouldn't be a vote, so comments like this should be unnecessary Fritzpoll (talk) 20:16, 13 June 2008 (UTC)
Withdrawal (the candidate withdrawing from the process)
If the candidate wants to withdraw, it is because they either no longer want to be an admin, or because they don't want to continue the process. Can't see a problem with withdrawal.
Declaration (the bureaucrat closing the application. Also includes WP:NOTNOW closes)
Not sure this is what you want here, but the whole assessment of consensus that a Bureaucrat is meant to do seems rarely to take place, with discussions comin down on the side of a boolean determination of "if support >= 80% then pass". That said, the poor closing 'crat faces the wrath of opposers if not following this !rule. The only answer is to stop it being a vote.
Training (use of New Admin School, other post-election training)
New Admin School is very helpful - but nothing should be compulsory. The point of a passed RfA is that we trust a candidate to use the tools - not point restricting them further afterwards in some form of required training. Otherwise, it's like passing your driving test and being told you still can't drive without supervision.
Recall (the Administrators Open to Recall process)
The system in place is not good. It's voluntary, and the assignment of criteria by the admin themselves renders the process somewhat arbitrary. That said, there needs to be an easier way to demote an admin than going to Arbcom... perhaps an RfC-style discussion, closed by a 'crat who looks for consensus to de-sysop? Something involving a wide-ranging discussion, with the defualt position being to not remove the tools

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?
An editor with some extra buttons to make tasks easier.
What attributes do you feel an administrator should possess?
Civil, able to accept other's opinions and particularly to accept a consensus that opposes their own opinion. Good judgement is a must, plus sufficient experience in editing - though I have no metrics for this, as I don't believe suitable ones exist. Also, the use of metrics in assessing candidates is a drift towards a reward for performing certain tasks (getting a certain level of edits etc.) which could be automated without a community discussion, and obscures the detail of the candidate's particular qualities.

Finally, when thinking about Requests for Adminship:

Have you ever voted in a request for Adminship? If so what was your experience?
A few - I've never had problems, but I do notice a tendency for people to simply copy other people's opinions without adding value to the discussion, which I've commented on above.
Have you ever stood as a candidate under the Request for Adminship process? If so what was your experience?
Yep, recently. I found it unfortunate that people in the discussion weren't reading what others had written, and were just copying opinions. The proof for this is the fact that, even though the edit count was mistakenly stated as being too low by an early opposer, and then corrected, the later commentators used the original figure.
Do you have any further thoughts or opinions on the Request for Adminship process?
Sort of mentioned this as a common thread in these questions - the problem is that it is a vote, not a discussion, or at least looks like one, meaning that everyone treats it as such. The only way to improve as far as I can see is to remove the polling, and return to a discussion, since people will then be forced to consider the contributions of the editor, unless they wish to make empty, meaningless statements. Then we can get 'crats doing what we elect them to do - evaluate consensus, and not just count percentages.

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:Fritzpoll/RFAReview]] added by ~~~ at ~~~~~

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

This question page was generated by {{RFAReview}} at 19:44 on 13 June 2008.