User:Cdogsimmons/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:


 * 1) Candidate selection (inviting someone to stand as a candidate)
 * It's a popularity contest, this propagates getting more of the same: candidates that have done some substantial work in one specific part of wikipedia and have a large number of edits overall.
 * 1) Administrator coaching (either formally or informally)
 * Should be encouraged, but should not be required.
 * 1) Nomination, co-nomination and self-nomination (introducing the candidate)
 * Looks pompous but self-nomination is obviously a more fair way of finding candidates than candidate selection.
 * 1) Advertising and canvassing
 * Advertising, yes. Canvassing is pretty ugly, but hey, it’s a popularity contest. People’s edits should speak for themselves.
 * 1) Debate (Presenting questions to the candidate)
 * It’s nice to give people information. That’s why I edit wikipedia. If an admin doesn’t want to give people information he/she is pretty suspect.
 * 1) Election (including providing reasons for support/oppose)
 * Democracy is the worst system in existence, except for all the others.
 * 1) Withdrawal (the candidate withdrawing from the process)
 * How could you stop him/her?
 * 1) Declaration (the bureaucrat closing the application. Also includes WP:NOTNOW closes)
 * It should only happen to approve a new Admin if there’s a supermajority (2/3) and there should be a set time limit to give people a proper amount of time to consider the nomination (say one or two months). Elections are fairer than a user’s admin friend approving him/her. A supermajority assures high quality.
 * 1) Training (use of New Admin School, other post-election training)
 * Should be optional but encouraged. Election should be sufficient to ensure generally capable admins.
 * 1) Recall (the Administrators Open to Recall process)
 * All administrators should be open to recall, censure, whatever (including Jimbo, not that I would recall him). There should be a set standard for impeachment, like gross bad faith edits, as well as a transparent process that is visible to all members of the wikipedia community. Maybe there could also be a vote in favor of the best admins too.

When thinking about adminship in general, what are your thoughts and opinions about the following areas:


 * 1) How do you view the role of an administrator?
 * An Admin should be someone generally capable (knowledgeable, helpful) enough to guide the newbies through the steps of editing, and someone trustworthy enough not to screw people over.
 * 1) What attributes do you feel an administrator should possess?
 * Good faith. Good grammar would be nice too.

Finally, when thinking about Requests for Adminship:


 * 1) Have you ever voted in a request for Adminship? If so what was your experience?
 * I think so. It was a while ago. I probably wasn’t that experienced. I just read some of that user’s edits and gave my opinion.
 * 1) Have you ever stood as a candidate under the Request for Adminship process? If so what was your experience?
 * No.
 * 1) Do you have any further thoughts or opinions on the Request for Adminship process?
 * No.

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 22:30 on 23 June 2008.