User:JimMillerJr/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: I don't know that it can. For some unknown reason we continue to refuse to acknowledge the fact that adminship does carry a certain amount of authority, even if not by design. It is a identifier of long-term contributors with policy knowledge. New users are always going to see such a position as one carrying some sort of authority. We should acknowledge that issue, and understand that the situations an admin may face later can be far more daunting than the process itself, thus making the RfA process a bit of preparation for the role.

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: We need to stop quoting WP:NBD, and embrace what adminship has become. The role has evolved into meaning much more than the buttons. The only other option is to fully embrace WP:NBD and tell the crats to ignore any opposes that make adminship a bigger deal. Once those opposes are known to be ignored, people should stop making them. The only way to do this is by ignoring all !votes that are not about trust of the user to perform admin actions. We need to do more to encourage the editors who are subject to NOTNOW and SNOW closures that they are on the right track, but may simply need more experience to earn the trust of the community.

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: I disagree with this under some circumstances. Co-nomiminations are important in bringing forth a full picture of the candidate by incorporating multiple points of view. Co-noms which are simply duplicitive of the original nom may not serve the candidacy well, but that is something that the potential co-nom should determine after reading the nom. If they can add to the nominators rationale, then they should. If the co-nom brings forth nothing new about the candidate, then a Support statement should be sufficent saying "I agree with, and have nothing to add to, the nominators rationale."

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: This, like the points in section A, is a matter of scope and how seriously we wish to embrace NBD. If the community wants to keep quoting a statement made by one person 5.5 years ago to represent the way things are now, then the questions are not necessary. The existance of the additional questions is proof that adminship is a bigger deal than it used to be. The community expects more from admins than it used to.

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: Personal information of any kind should be off limits, along with anything that would result in a candidate needing to reveal more about their real identity than they have already volunteered if they answered. Policy related questions are fine, especially those that require looking up and quoting policy. At the rate things can and do change here, even long-term admins should be referring to the policy pages on a regular basis to determine what may have changed sine the last time they read any particular policy.

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: Lack of civility is a major issue at RfA. All discussion (including replies to other editors support of oppose comments) should be in the discussion section. No discussions should be allowed to take place in the Support, Oppose, or Neutral sections. Simply placing a "See discussion section" should be the only responses allowed in the voting sections of the page.

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: At least in Supporting comments, if the nominator and co-noms have done their jobs, a "per nom" comment is adequate. A well done nomination will give all of the information necessary to support a candidate. Oppose comments should require rationale of some sort, and should be relevant to the actual point of whether or not the nominee meets the stated requirements. Comments that say "doesn't meet my requirements" with a link to some user page definition of what adminship should be are especially useless because they very specifically place arbtrary requirements where the adminship policy specifically states there are none. These votes should be discounted by crats because they are directly contrary to the adminship policy.

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: Crats should have broad authority to disregard any vote that is contrary to the stated adminship policy.

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: Canvassing is over-demonized on the en-wiki, but I see no neutral way to allow the candidate to decide where to ask for editor input. {{Rfa-notice}} should be modified to automatically add the User to a category such as Category:Current Administrator candidates, and it should be required for all candidates for adminship. This would satisfy the broad notice requirements that should be part of the process in getting community involvement in the decision.

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: It cannot. As a matter of how the system works, no editor can do admin functions before they are an admin. The only way to learn to perform the functions is to do them, and that requires the bit.

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 complimentary? Are there common themes or elements that could be shared between the two processes, in order to improve the effectiveness of both?

• Response: This is an excellent idea, and I believe that an admin coach for a new admin's first 30 days would be a net benefit. Having an established admin with whom the new admin can discuss questions and actions would be a better benefit than the pre-process coaching. As a non-admin, I have looked at much of the school, and I used to rollback section when I was granted rollback. It was useful in learning the "how", but not in learning the "why" and "when". That is a matter of personal insight and understanding of policies. Have I made bad rollbacks? Yep. Did I learn from the mistake and re-evaluate when to use the button? Sure did.

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: Recall needs to be formalized as its own process, and the requirements need to be sufficient to show that consesnsus has changed. This should be done in a systematic manner, and applied to individual admins based on both the number of comments in their RfA, as well as the percentage of support the admin received.

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: The voluntary process is problematic because its very existance is one of the things keeping us from establishing an actual policy. The recall policy should be as such: Any administrator is open to the recall process upon the request of 10 independant editors and certification of the recall petition by a Beaurucrat. Petitions to desysop should require the same level of consensus (roughly 70-75% currently} as the percentage used to grant adminship. If that percentage is met, and the administrator receives a greater number of support for recall commments than they recevied support for adminship comments in ther last RfA, the admin shall be desysopped and permitted to re-seek adminship through RfA again at any time subject to standard RfA practices.

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: It must be made a mandatory process, and a suitable policy adopted to ensure that legitimate complaints are heard. The standards of the community or even consesnsus as to a particular admin may have changed. That being said, it should take a greater number of !votes to recall than it took to grant adminship in the first place, in order to ensure that the process is not abused.

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: Admins should serve as long as they are not recalled. There is no need for a term to be established. If a process similar to the one I outlined above were adopted, this would be moot. Additionally, inactive admins should, at some point, be desysopped for the period of their inactivity, and have the status granted by a crat upon their request when they return to active editing.

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: NBD should be deprecated and marked as historic. Legitimate requirements should be developed and incorporated into the Admin policy. It is time to acknowledge just what size deal adminship is.

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: Other than keeping discussion about a candidate in the Discussion section, and out of the other sections, I have no problems with the curent format.

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 14:02 on 14 September 2008.