User:WDGraham/RfA review

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)
...I feel that anyone should be able to nominate anyone as a candidate if they feel that they are suitable. There should also be a team of scouts, perhaps a WikiProject, which seeks out possible candidates that nobody has thought to nominate.
Administrator coaching (either formally or informally)
...Informal coaching is a good idea. Existing administrators who are open to coach others should advertise their services, and those requiring those services could then contact them directly. I don't think the compulsory formal coaching is a good idea, but there should be basic instruction for new administrators.
Nomination, co-nomination and self-nomination (introducing the candidate)
...I have no objections to the various methods of nomination.
Advertising and canvassing
...Candidates should not be allowed to disrupt the running of Wikipedia in order to canvass votes. Neither should they spam other users with requests to vote, or recruit all of their friends to vote "support". Equally, care must be taken to ensure that opponents don't canvass for "oppose" votes in the same manner. Candidates should only be allowed to post promotional material in their own userspace, and possibly on a new page specifically for that purpose. Perhaps a new page could be created, Wikipedia:Billboard, where adverts could be posted for candidates. This could also be used to advertise WikiProjects.
Debate (Presenting questions to the candidate)
a period before voting commences in which questions are put to the candidate, and answers are given. Voting should not begin until there have been no new questions in three days, and the candidate has responded to, or stated their lack of intention to answer, each question.
Election (including providing reasons for support/oppose)
...Voting should not begin until after the questions have been answered in order to ensure that all voters have the full picture before voting. All votes should have valid reasoning provided to avoid the election turning into a popularity contest. If a user supports or opposes a candidate, for the same reasons as one who has already voted, they should restate this in their own words, rather than just say "per XX".
Withdrawal (the candidate withdrawing from the process)
...Candidates may retain the right to withdraw, ending the RfA as eitherRfA result, or rejected, depending on whether there was a strong consensus that the candidate was unsuitable or not.
Declaration (the bureaucrat closing the application. Also includes WP:NOTNOW closes)
...The bureaucrat must provide detailed reasoning as to why they have reached their decision. They should explain which votes are being ignored, if any, and why. WP:NOTNOW should only be used within fixed and preset criteria, such as fifty more oppose votes than support votes, for example, for all candidates. It should not arbitary.
Training (use of New Admin School, other post-election training)
...Administrators should be given a page of basic instructions to follow, to teach them how to use their new tools. Experienced administrators should be on hand to explain things which they do not understand. Admin schools and other training aids should be available as optional further sources of education.
Recall (the Administrators Open to Recall process)
...Recall should be compulsory, a requests for de-adminship system be opened, in which the community can request the revocation of adminship, given reasoning and a strong consensus. This would make dealing with rogue administrators easier than going through the arbitration committee, which is too bureaucratic, and has too much power.

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 responsible for keeping things running smoothly. A suitable analogy would be to a combination of a police force and cleaning service, locking up criminals (blocking vandals), resolving disputes, clearing away nonsense articles, etc.
What attributes do you feel an administrator should possess?
...They should be patient, willing to listen to all of the arguments being made, and reach a reasoned conclusion. They should be able to set aside their own biases and opinions in order to follow the consensus of the community.

Finally, when thinking about Requests for Adminship:

Have you ever voted in a request for Adminship? What was your experience?
...No
Have you ever stood as a candidate under the Request for Adminship if so what was your experience?
...No, but I might like to one day, perhaps in a year or so.
Do you have any further thoughts or opinions on the Request for Adminship process
...Less emphasis should be placed on the number of edits made, as sometimes quality is better than quantity. All candidates who have been blocked for more than a day, for a valid reason, in the two years prior to their RfA should be automatically disqualified, as should any who are blocked for any length of time during the process.

Finally I would like to apologise if any parts of this do not make sense, as a problem with my web browser scrambled some parts of this page when I tried to load the preview. --GW_Simulations_{User Page | Talk} 22:36, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

This question page was generated by {{RFAReview}} at 22:36 on 30 June 2008.