User:Vivio Testarossa/Sandboxes/Rfa/Review/Question

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)
Concerning candidate selection, right now I have no problems with the selection of candidates, and think that more people should apply for adminship as it's WP:NBD.
Administrator coaching (either formally or informally)
Admin coaching is a very good program that helps users understand what being an admin "entitles". I believe that it is wrong to oppose based on having been through the "coaching".
Nomination, co-nomination and self-nomination (introducing the candidate)
should not matter who nominates a candidate, whether self or others do the nomming. It doesn't seem right to oppose based on the fact that it is a self-nom.
Advertising and canvassing
I do not see any problem with using either of these methods, if the candidate feels they are appropriate... as long as it isn't done too excessive.
Debate (Presenting questions to the candidate)
From what I have seen the questions presented to the candidate are usually helpful in forming a "vote", however sometimes some of the "optional" questions seem to be irreverent.
Election (including providing reasons for support/oppose)
For the most part, I don't see any problems with the support "votes", however there does seem to be a major problem in the opposes, for a few reasons. One thing is that they tend to get wrapped up on trivial matters (this causes many rfa's to fail). The others are a lot of them are filled with assumptions of bad faith and personal attacks.
Withdrawal (the candidate withdrawing from the process)
The candidate should be allowed to withdraw from the "election" at any time (before it "expires"), for any reason. A withdraw (regardless of the reason for it) should not be held against the candidate in future "elections".
Declaration (the bureaucrat closing the application. Also includes WP:NOTNOW closes)
Most of the time I think that the declaration of the outcome, as determined by the bureaucrat is what the consensus is. However some in instances, if I was the bureaucrat making the decision, I would have promoted.
Training (use of New Admin School, other post-election training)
I suppose that is would be helpful to some users, depending on what is being asked... but otherwise I don't care...
Recall (the Administrators Open to Recall process)
I guess this process is works in an acceptable manner, but not being a admin, however I can't say for sure. As to whether I would go on it if I was "elected" to be an admin... I currently do not have an opinion either way regarding this matter.

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?
My view on the role of an administrator is that they are mostly needed to combat vandalism (WoW, Grawp, etc). While nonadmins may revert the vandals edits they cannot prevent editing of a page or stop an editor.
What attributes do you feel an administrator should possess?
In my opinion, the most important trait an administrator must possess is vandal fighting ability. If a candidate does not have knowledge of how to do this, then I do not feel they are ready for adminship. In other words, what I believe is that the ability to fight vandals is top priority.

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 a few "elections". However I usually only "vote" if I support the candidate. If I don't know them/don't think they would make a "good" admin or whatever, then I say nothing.
Have you ever stood as a candidate under the Request for Adminship process? If so what was your experience?
Yes, I have stood under these processes (1, 2, 3) and have had mixed feelings on each one of them. For the first one, I had no chance to pass it and the people seemed quite friendly, no problems here. The second one, I had some support but most of the opposition was based on length of time since my previous one, which was basically understandable. The third one however is a different matter, from what I saw most of the opposes were either uncivil remarks, personal attacks, assumptions of bad faith, or being wrapped up in trivial matters. If I were the bureaucrat making the decision I would have ignored all of the people in the oppose section, and declare the RFA passed anyway.
Do you have any further thoughts or opinions on the Request for Adminship process?
I think that like Jimbo Wales said:

I just wanted to say that becoming a sysop is *not a big deal*.
I think perhaps I'll go through semi-willy-nilly and make a bunch of people who have been around for awhile sysops. I want to dispel the aura of "authority" around the position. It's merely a technical matter that the powers given to sysops are not given out to everyone.
I don't like that there's the apparent feeling here that being granted sysop status is a really special thing.
— Jimbo Wales, wikimedia.org archive entry, gmane archive entry

we really shouldn't be making such a big deal out of people applying for and becoming an admin. And the the pass rate should be higher, than around ~46%.

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:Vivio Testarossa/Sandboxes/Rfa/Review/Question]] added by ~~~ at ~~~~~

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

This question page was generated by {{RFAReview}} at 01:42 on 25 June 2008.