Wikipedia:RfA Review/Recommend/Anonymous Response 1

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. I think people just have to be bold in this regard and take comments from the community as they are. Some people say sorry while opposing while some make comments that can make the editor not want to ever run for RfA again. As an admin you will be forced into some tough decisions, cop abuse at some point, some more so than others so i think people just have to be strong and take all comments on board.

A2. I think in this regard, its pretty simple. Most people who have their RfA snowed or not now are newbies who just want to "test it out" so to speak. They have no idea what is going on and just need guidance. The most important page in this regard is the WP:GRFA which basically explains everything and it is a must for all potential candidates. But whether these users read it or not is an entirely different matter. Maybe making the page more visible? Linking to it from many pages maybe? It can be discouraging for editors but they must accept that become an admin on the english wikipedia is not for everyone and shouldn't be taken for granted. There is after all only 1,600 of them and they know a thing or two about wikipedia. Also looking at (User:Icewedge/RfA/list of user standards) is a good way of looking at various users criteria and i urge all editors to make available any pages they have to add to the page.

A3. In most recent RfA's i have looked over, there doesn't seem to be a whole band of co-noms to suggest this is getting over the top. There was one popular editor who had piles of co-noms and unsurprisingly it became the most supported RfA of all time till this date. That was once in a million so to speak. It can also be tough if there was a limit for an editor to say to another im sorry, but i have chosen my noms so i would just appreciate if you could display your opinions in the support section. This would get over the top. I don't really see a concern in this regard.

The RfA Debate (Questions, Election, Canvassing)

B1. This is very important. Some editors have not been bothered to answer any questions while others have just stated directly from policy. Eg. what is the difference between a block and a ban. See WP:BLOCK and WP:BAN I think there should be a limit, you have seen in the past a lot of nonsense questions, joke questions and ambiguous as well needing deep thought and thinking. An example would be answering Filll's AGF challenge, it comes on some RfA's and not others. Then again adminship is about trust so the community should be able to ask questions but then again even so some have gone onto be desysopped because they broke that trust.

B2. You can look to the above in relation to trick questions, deep thinking questions etc. At the end of the day these are optional but the candidate maybe looked bad if they don't answer of have the "guts" to answer. Then again they do answer and then they get hammered for saying the wrong thing. You can't win. It should really be down to the crats about questions, i have seen in the past they have taken over and removed some silly, ridiculous questions and hopefully they can continue to the do the same and be active in this regard. A couple have been promoted recently so the burden has been lifted on the crats who were tirelessly working.

B3. Someone can vote for such a silly reason or have a constant reasoning like Kurt. At the end of the day, its only one vote and its not going to make or break the candidate. When discussion gets out of order it should be taken to the talk page, or even better before this. The crats will surely use consensus and not % of support when making their decision so people just have to be calm and cool in giving their point of view.

B4. --

B5. Crats should take a more active role and with the addition of more crats recently hopefully there wont be a problem of being burnt out in relation to duties so they can participate actively in RfA's. There should be a closing rationale in relation to close RfA votes while if the editor is just above 50%, i think common sense should prevail and just looking at the opposes will be enough as to the reasoning for crat not promoting.

B6. Adding the RfA template to the user and talk page should be enough. But then again some editors may have hard luck in saying a couple of my supporters didn't even vote in my RfA and they might answer i totally forgot or i didnt even look at that page I can understand this because most people vote for different reasons and it might be thought of as the luck of the draw but 7 days is enough and if a supporter goes on a wikibreak the day your up on RfA, well...

Training and Education

C1. --

C2. --

Adminship (Removal of)

D1. The AN and ANI board i think is sufficient to deal with this sort of stuff. That way the whole community can display their opinions in relation to the abuse and it can go on from there.

D2. I think a mandatory process is good. During RfA its about trust but you dont really know people until they actually make decisions and you just have to look at the sysops that have been desysopped. This would be a good idea so users can say what they have to say and let the ArbCom team come up with what if anything needs to be done.

D3. --

D4. --

Overall Process

E1. A lot has changed since the beginning of wikipedia so statements from back then should be taken with a grain of salt so to speak. Wikipedia is one of the most popular websites in the world now and has obviously changed from the beginning and will continue to change - hopefully for the better. Its tough to trust a user that you only know through edits on a website. People are free to be anonoymous and have been so in gaining adminship. What happens if such a user suddenly abuses his tools and gets desysopped? Everyone scratches their head but wikipedia goes on. Not everyone is how they seem and i guess you can only fully trust a number of people on the wikipedia.

E2. RfA is not a trophy and should not be taken so. Some people want to stay out of adminship for whatever reason and they should not be seen less lightly than someone who has gained the adminship tools.

Hopefully with this process, a good can come out of it leading to a better wikipedia and a better enjoyment for editors all around the world who love contributing to the free encyclopedia.

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.

This question page was generated by {{RFAReview}} at 14:37 on 27 October 2008. Response submitted via E-mail. Posted by: UltraExactZZ ^Claims ~ Evidence 14:41, 27 October 2008 (UTC)