User:Royalbroil/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)
No comment, not involved with this portion very much.
Administrator coaching (either formally or informally)
I haven't been involved with this, and I have turned down a contributor.
Nomination, co-nomination and self-nomination (introducing the candidate)
Current system seems to work well.
Advertising and canvassing
Current systems seems to work well. People are generally not inviting their friends to the party.
Debate (Presenting questions to the candidate)
Frequently gets too long and off-topic. When they stay on-topic, they give a way to understand the candidate for those that are unfamiliar. This part of the process usually weeds out a lot of candidates.
Election (including providing reasons for support/oppose)
One damning diff often sinks lots of candidates. Voters need to understand that one diff does not make a contributor. Diffs are appropriate to define a pattern of problems. Some contributors use the election as a way to get back on past problems. Sometimes that appropriate, sometimes it's not. People should have first-hand knowledge/experience with the person before voting. Sometimes first-hand experience is actually an incorrect indicator, as happened with me on User:WJBscribe's RFA.
Withdrawal (the candidate withdrawing from the process)
Usually done properly when the candidate can't possibly succeed.
Declaration (the bureaucrat closing the application. Also includes WP:NOTNOW closes)
I've always seen it done correctly.
Training (use of New Admin School, other post-election training)
A great addition that I highly recommend. I learned a lot, and it prepared me well for what I needed to know.
Recall (the Administrators Open to Recall process)
People spend way too much time worrying about it and too much drama is involved with people's criteria and making that decision. I would hope that contributors give admins some slack and realize that there is a human behind the keyboard. If any admin that has been acting improperly in a big way, I hope that they would realize that they have lost the confidence of the community and would show more restraint. If that fails, they should voluntarily do another RFA or ask for deadmin. If all confidence is lost and the bit is not voluntarily given up, then the community can deadmin.

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?
Someone who can be trusted to delete articles/images, apply protection, etc. without doing something stupid.
What attributes do you feel an administrator should possess?
Someone who can be trusted to not abuse the tools. Ability to not irritate a supermajority of contributors.

Finally, when thinking about Requests for Adminship:

Have you ever voted in a request for Adminship? If so what was your experience?
Many times. Generally the right people are selected with the current thought about the RFA. Most contributors that are currently nominated would probably pass if people didn't make such a big deal out of having the tools.
Have you ever stood as a candidate under the Request for Adminship process? If so what was your experience?
I was unanimously promoted with few questions asked.
Do you have any further thoughts or opinions on the Request for Adminship process?
More long-term contributors who don't edit real much should be given more of a chance at RFA. They have proven that they can be trusted. People make a much bigger deal out of adminship than what it really is. Long-term contributors with a history of civility, reverting vandalism, and decent article writing should be shoe-ins. I don't understand why niche contributors have so much trouble at RFA. There are lots of different parts to Wikipedia, and we can use admins who are not talented at article writing but focus on reverting vandalism (for example).

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.

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

This question page was generated by {{RFAReview}} at 16:31 on 20 June 2008.