User:Caulde/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:

Candidate selection (inviting someone to stand as a candidate)
Nominators should look for what is wanted and needed by the community and interpret their criteria subsequently. Nominees should not be those who have insufficient inexperience (both in terms of breadth of knowledge and time) or have experiences with the wiki which are disadvantageous to their quest for adminship.
Administrator coaching (either formally or informally)
No comment, for now.
Nomination, co-nomination and self-nomination (introducing the candidate)
I'd prefer seeing all nominees being nominated. In a nomination, I would like to see a strong correlation between community criteria for administrators and past contributions to the encyclopedia. Nominations signify that at least one person has expressed some significant endorsement for them to become an administrator, and this often means that some oppose sections can be reduced. Co-nominations are fine, I have done many of them. Self-nominations are likely to be those candidates who feel they have not been heard by those who participate in the process, and so would like both to discover RfA for themselves (as more often that not, most self-nominations are those coming to RfA for the first time) and see where they can resolve and particular issues they may have.
Advertising and canvassing
A definite no-no.
Debate (Presenting questions to the candidate)
Questions are very much relevant to the process. Often nominations can not accurately represent candidates and their breadth of knowledge or interpretation of policy can be weak, in some cases, substandard. However, if you are to ask a question I'd prefer if the questioner does actually return to the RfA and subsequently participates and I do disagree with the mass question applications which, unfortunately, some RfAs get.
Election (including providing reasons for support/oppose)
If the support section is filled with signatures, we can presume they endorse a nominating statement or the answers to the questions. Supports should be extended for those who are in the midst of a heated RfA (although, I do admit I have not done this sometimes myself) and the same for opposes (even though they should be relatively lengthy anyway). Neutrals should distinguish between the merits and negative aspects of a nominee.
Withdrawal (the candidate withdrawing from the process)
RfAs should only be withdrawn in times of exceptional circumstance. They should be after lengthy discussion and I prefer to see withdrawals after a time when the candidate has been assessed to an appropriate degree (i.e. 3-4 days). Again, I must admit this was not the case in my earlier RfB.
Declaration (the bureaucrat closing the application. Also includes WP:NOTNOW closes)
I've never closed an RfA per 'NOTNOW' and disagree with that terminology, seeing as there is no acknowledgement of when a suitable time is. I prefer the use of 'SNOW', although often this can be a cause for concern when closed inappropriately. I have closed many such applications for adminship under this title, approx. 10-15. Bureaucrats mainly have a reasonable time in the closing of some RfAs, however, others require much more thought and process. Some see this as additional bureaucracy, but extra ideas and thoughts etc. can be much helpful.
Training (use of New Admin School, other post-election training)
NAS is useful, wouldn't advise any post-election 'training' unless necessary.
Recall (the Administrators Open to Recall process)
No comment, for now.

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?
Administrators are very much an integrated and accepted part of the community. We have de-sysoppings, temporary removals of +sysop etc. and I feel that the fuction is to maintain the integrity of the encyclopedia in times when the 'tools' are needed. Administrators are not part of a hierarchy and shouldn't view their status as an advantage over others, by not circumventing accepted policies or guidelines. The people who have discussed the merits of the relevant editor at the original RfA have probably in their best tried to represent consensus, but we never can have true consensus, seeing as most of the registered accounts on wiki do not involve themselves in the process; either through lack of knowledge or unwillingness.
What attributes do you feel an administrator should possess?
To protect the encyclopedia from various attacks (from BLP violations to vandalism), trustworthiness, dedication to causes they are involved in, excellent judgement inline with community consensus and probably more preferably, common sense. They should have a role which exemplifies their responsibility, by a coherent knowledge of policy and interpretations which befit the addition of the bit.

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 numerous requests for adminship, probably in the hundreds. Its not something to brag about, you're simply becoming involved in the community. RfA is generally a good area to evaluate candidates for adminship and realistically its the only venue we have that suitably promotes nominees to adminship. Some RfAs are bigger magnets than others, for many reasons: mostly because either the candidate is well known across the wiki, pile-on (supports or opposes) and even sometimes because of a particular answer to question.
Have you ever stood as a candidate under the Request for Adminship process? If so what was your experience?
I've stood twice for adminship; as I've said before, I'm somewhat glad that I did not achieve the 'bit' in October, due to the inexperience, which in retrospect, I see. Now, however, I do believe that I perform well in my capacity with, I think, near none of my admin actions being overturned.
Do you have any further thoughts or opinions on the Request for Adminship process?
Not at this time.

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.

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

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

This question page was generated by {{RFAReview}} at 15:43 on 13 June 2008.