User:Wikidemon/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)
...This is fine.
Administrator coaching (either formally or informally)
...
Nomination, co-nomination and self-nomination (introducing the candidate)
...No problem here.
Advertising and canvassing
...Agree with process. However, as courteous and genteel as the process is, candidates should not thank people for their support because this creates the impression (and possibly the reality) of currying favor on both sides, which diminishes impartiality. Also, it would be nice to set up some system whereby one could watch editors and be notified if they are ever up for adminship. The process is too brief for people who do not regularly visit the RfA page to learn about it before it is too late to participate.
Debate (Presenting questions to the candidate)
...Seems to be orderly for the most part.
Election (including providing reasons for support/oppose)
...The threshold is too low given the finality of the decision. 20-30% opposition to a candidacy is quite a bit, particularly if it's based on substantive objections (e.g. bad decisionmaking, as opposed to lack of experience).
Withdrawal (the candidate withdrawing from the process)
...
Declaration (the bureaucrat closing the application. Also includes WP:NOTNOW closes)
...
Training (use of New Admin School, other post-election training)
...New admins should be probationary, with a requirement to re-up, pass some approval, etc. Some people are not cut out to be admins and show it early.
Recall (the Administrators Open to Recall process)
...There really needs to be a process for recalling, renewing, or otherwise making sure adminship is not a lifetime appointment. There are more than a few bad apples among the admins, and no realistic system for removing them. There are very few posts in this world, anywhere, that are for life. It's an oversight that Wikipedia permitted this one to slip by. The recall process is so rare it is meaningless, and Arbcom de-sysops are nearly as rare, not an effective way to deal with inactive, misbehaving, or ineffective admins.

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?
...to mediate, moderate, explain, teach, keep the peace, and maintain stability and even tempers
What attributes do you feel an administrator should possess?
...Fairness, wisdom, good and willing communication skills, impartiality, judgment, courtesy, knowledge of Wikipedia guidelines and policies, and good reasoning skills

Finally, when thinking about Requests for Adminship:

Have you ever voted in a request for Adminship? If so what was your experience?
...Yes. Experience was fine. However, I usually avoid it because I rarely have enough experience with the specific editors, and where a prominent editor is involved - particularly someone I have had disagreements with - I do not want to poison the waters by voting against. Likewise, I don't want to support my wikipedia buddies just because they are allies, because that's not fair either. However, by avoiding the voting process on principle I'm afraid I'm leaving the decisions to those who don't share those qualms. An ability to vote anonymously would be great, but it would run against our notion of consensus (and probably be hard to deal with socks). I know this would be tough technically but it would be nice to be able to vote in a way where one's identity is obscured to other editors and the candidate, but available to those judging the outcome.
Have you ever stood as a candidate under the Request for Adminship process? If so what was your experience?
...
Do you have any further thoughts or opinions on the Request for Adminship process?
...

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:Wikidemon/RfA review]] added by ~~~ at ~~~~~

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

This question page was generated by {{RFAReview}} at 06:46 on 27 June 2008.