User:Andreclos/RfA Review Recommend Phase

Welcome to the Recommendation phase of RfA Review. In this phase, you will be asked to offer suggestions and proposals to address specific concerns and problems with the current Requests for Adminship process.

The questions below are taken directly from the 209 responses from the Question phase, each of which offered editors' thoughts and concerns about RfA. Based on those concerns, we identified the most frequently mentioned problems and included them here. These are the elements of RfA that are currently under review.

Please take your time and read through the concerns below. For each item, you are invited to offer a proposal that addresses the concern. Where possible, you are encouraged to provide examples, references, diffs and so on in order to support your viewpoint. There isn't a limit on the scope of your proposals; the sky is the limit, here. The intent of this phase is to get ideas, not necessarily to write policy - recommendations that gain traction and community support will be refined during later phases.

Most importantly, Answer as few or as many questions as you wish. All responses are evaluated, so any information you provide is helpful.

If you prefer, you can submit your responses anonymously by emailing them to User:Ultraexactzz. Anonymous responses will be posted as subpages with the contributor's details removed. If you have any questions, please use the project talk page at Wikipedia talk:RfA Review.

Once you've provided your responses, please encourage other editors to take part in the review. We stress that editors who didn't participate in the question phase are encouraged to participate now - 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

Selection and Nomination

A1. Editors note that the RfA process can be daunting to prospective administrators, and that the process itself may discourage otherwise qualified candidates from seeking adminship. How can this "Selection Bias" be countered?

• Response: It is not necessarily a bad thing. There needs to be some level of difficulty in passing selection, or the quality of selectees will fall.

A2. Editors expressed concern over unprepared or unqualified candidates at RfA, noting that their candidacies result in NOTNOW and SNOW closures that can be discouraging. In lieu of minimum requirements for adminship, how can prospective candidates be educated about RfA and the community's expectations of its administrators?

• Response: What's wrong with providing minimum requirements? Specification of selection criteria is normal procedure for most non-trivial jobs, and is provided so that insufficiently qualified applicants can be easily identified and eliminated. There is no difference with RfA's.

A3. 44 editors expressed concern over excessive co-nominations. Some of these editors advocated a limit on co-nominations, perhaps capping them at one or two per candidate; others recommended asking prospective co-nominators to post a Strong Support in lieu of an actual nomination statement. How can the concern over Co-nominations be addressed?

• Response:

The RfA Debate (Questions, Election, Canvassing)

B1. 60 editors expressed concern over the number of questions asked of candidates, and indicated that questions should be limited in number. How can this be accomplished? What limits could be fairly imposed? Are there alternative means for the candidate to provide information about themselves without the prompting of questions?

• Response: Firstly, a clear statement of selection criteria helps the applicant to confine their statements to the criteria. In other words, produce a clear set of selection criteria. Secondly, the information you want is in their contributions to talk pages, so consider reviewing conversations they have taken part in and ask them why they did whatever they did.

B2. Editors expressed concern over the content of questions, with 43 editors disapproving of "Trick questions", 8 disapproving of questions that require only a quotation from policy to answer, and 54 favoring questions that relate directly to the candidate and their experiences, contributions, conflicts, etc. How should the scope of possible questions be determined? Conversely, how would the decision to remove bad-faith or problematic questions be made, and by whom? What subjects should be specifically off-limits, and why?

• Response: I disagree with trick questions. I think the best questions are those that allow the applicant scope to talk themselves into or out of the job. A great deal of an admin's job is dealing with conflicts, and applicants with sufficient experience will have participation in conflicts embedded in their contributions, so again, review their contributions, find some conflicts they took part in, and ask them why they did what they did. If you can't find participation in any conflicts, they don't have enough experience for the job. In fact it should be made part of the selection criteria, and they should be asked to identify several recent conflicts. It will of course still be necessary to review their contributions, because they will probably only tell you about the ones that showed them in a good light.

B3. Editors note that RfA is seen as a negative process, with issues such as badgering of opposes, personal attacks, and a general lack of civility being prominent concerns. How can the RfA process be changed to address these concerns?

• Response: If an applicant shows a lack of civility during the RfA process, that is a prima facie reason for dismissing the application. It should be made plain to them up front that they are demonstrating their negotiating skills during the RfA process.

B4. The very nature of the RfA process was disputed. Some editors desire rationales with every vote, and favor a more discussion and consensus-based process similar to other processes on the English wikipedia. Other editors desire a more vote-based election, where the raw numbers of supports and opposes are the critical factor. Is there one of these methods that would provide a clearer consensus on the community's view of a candidate? Or, alternatively, is a hybrid of the two preferable, and how should that be structured?

• Response: I don't think you are ever going to get an ideal answer for this. In a perfect world, it would be possible to attach a weighting to each voter's bias, but in practice this is impossible. The panel as a whole (i.e. the full set of admins voting on any given RfA) just have to work out what weight to attach to any strong opinions expressed. Sometimes RfA's from perfectly good candidates will be rejected unjustly and unfairly due to irrational dislike from members of the panel. Tough, can't be helped.

B5. The amount of discretion held by Bureaucrats to remove or discount problem votes was also discussed, with some editors favoring increased discretion for Bureaucrats. 25 editors also favored a detailed closing rationale from Bureaucrats, detailing the specific factors that resulted in the candidate being successful (or not successful). What changes to the RfA process or format could clarify community consensus on this issue? Should Bureaucrats take a more active role in managing (or clerking) ongoing RfAs?

• Response: Involving Bureacrats more is just passing the buck. In the end it has to be done by consensus, with resort to higher authority as a last resort. Giving more involvement to Bureaucrats just makes it easier for members of the panel to refuse to negotiate. It also just tends to push the problem to a higher level, so that Bureacrats will have to negotiate, and sometimes they will be irrational and refuse to negotiate in good faith. What's the next level above Bureaucrat? No, don't escalate it, try and make it work at the current level.

B6. 68 editors noted that a limited form of Canvassing or advertising would be acceptable, if such canvassing was done on-site and in a neutral fashion. How could a candidate advertise the fact that he or she is a candidate for adminship, while being completely neutral in the audience to which he or she advertises?

• Response: Provide a standard noticeboard where aspirants can place a notice, and also allow them to place a notice on their own user pages. This provides limited advertising avenues. Beyond that, I think canvassing should be strongly discouraged. It is possible to apply considerable pressure by canvassing, and votes or expressions of support obtained this way may be given to avoid arguments. The real evidence in support of RfA's is in the applicant's own contribution history, not in what anyone else says about them.

Training and Education

C1. Though 73 editors responded favorably to the Admin Coaching programme, 39 were critical of the process for "Teaching for the test", or for being an RfA preparation programme rather than an Adminship preparation programme. In what ways could Admin Coaching be improved to focus more on adminship itself?

• Response: Provide reference material and examples. Looking at WP:ADCO, it looks to me like this is being done quite adequately already. I think if people need to get a coach appointed to teach them one-on-one, in addition to all this material, then they aren't really ready for adminship anyway.

C2. In evaluating New Admin School, some editors noted that a Mentorship element would be of great benefit to newly minted administrators - something that Admin Coaching provides in a direct one-on-one coach-coachee team. Similarly, 15 editors characterized Admin Coaching, a primarily pre-adminship process, as being invaluable after the RfA, which is traditionally when New Admin School is used for training. Are there areas where the two processes overlap, and can be made more complementary? Are there common themes or elements that could be shared between the two processes, in order to improve the effectiveness of both?

• Response: I think admin coaching would be more useful as a support to new admins, and should not be provided to aspiring applicants - see also previous answer.

Adminship (Removal of)

D1. Editors noted that the current voluntary Admins open to Recall process is redundant to Dispute Resolution process such as Requests for Comment and Arbitration. In the absence of Recall (i.e. if it were removed altogether), how could existing processes be adapted to more effectively deal with issues of administrator abuse?

• Response: I'm not really qualified to comment on this, although I will say that I understand the existing arbitration processes include the power to desysop admins, so this is effectively a Recall process.

D2. Editors cited the voluntary nature of the Admins open to Recall process as problematic, and 40 went as far as to recommend a mandatory process for all administrators, either as a mandatory form of Admins open to Recall, or a more formal version of the process administered by Bureaucrats. As a separate process from WP:DR, how could the current recall process be standardized for use as a mandatory process? Who would be responsible for such a process?

• Response: It is common at executive levels of many organisations to require executives to periodically justify their continued employment in some way, usually by giving them fixed term contracts rather than tenure. Wikipedia effectively offers admins tenure, so that once an admin has been appointed and gained sufficient experience at gaming the system, it is in practice almost impossible to remove them even when many may be aware of undesirable attitudes and behaviour that they exhibit. Maybe rather than relying on Recall's or the threat of desysopping as a penalty from an arbitration process following complaints, all admins should be periodically required to reapply for adminship. If they get argumentative or high-handed in replying to comments during this process, then they could be given a break of a few months. I suggest a suitable period for reapplication would be 12 months. In other words, appoint admins on a 12-month contract, and get them to reapply for further contracts if they want to continue.

D3. 44 editors criticized the recall process for being too open to abuse, both through spurious or bad-faith calls for an admin to be recalled, or through administrators who fail to follow through on a commitment to stand for recall. How can the recall process be amended to address these concerns?

• Response: I think the current recall process is far too fuzzy to be effective. It also looks like it would be open to considerable manipulation.

D4. Some editors recommended that administrators be required to stand for some form of reconfirmation after a given period of time. How would such reconfirmation be structured? How long would an admin have before such reconfirmation would be required? Could such reconfirmation be triggered by an effort to recall an admin, and how would that be handled? What form would such reconfirmation take (RfA, Straw Poll, etc)?

• Response: See my answer to D2. I think it should be a fixed period and apply to all officeholders of admin level and above.

Overall Process

E1. The earliest version of the RfA policy states that adminship is granted to "anyone who has been an active Wikipedia contributor for a while and is generally a known and trusted member of the community." Current policy leaves the definition of a "trusted editor" to the community. Editors offered a wide range of basic characteristics desirable of administrators, including Trustworthiness, competence, and communication skills. How could the RfA process be amended to either A) more fully ensure that editors selected as admins do indeed have the full trust of the community, or B) more fully fit the community's expectations for administrators?

• Response: Sounds like a policy needs to be developed, voted on, refined etc. Perhaps start with the concept of clear selection criteria.

E2. Editors expressed concern over the format of the Requests for Adminship process. Some suggested that RfA has become a form of high-impact editor review, while others expressed concern over the view of Adminship itself as a goal or "trophy" that all editors should attain after a certain period of time. In taking the RfA process as a whole, what elements work well? What elements should be removed or amended?

• Response: It certainly is regarded as a goal or trophy. Not everyone is suited to admin work, and this must be made clear in the selection criteria. Beyond that, I'm not really qualified to comment.

Once you're finished...

Thank you again for taking part in this review of the Request for Adminship process.

Your responses will be added to Category:Wikipedian Recommendations to RfA Review, which will be used to review the responses after this phase is concluded.

Footnote

This question page was generated by {{RFAReview}} at 13:06 on 28 September 2008.