User:Perceval/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!

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: That depends on what we believe the qualifications for being an admin are. One of the primary jobs of an admin is in managing the inevitable conflicts that arise within the community.  That being a primary concern, it would hardly do to have admin candidates that feel that a highly complex, contentious adminship process is something that they cannot or do not want to deal with.  As such, I think that the RfA process is actually achieving a positive selection bias, selecting for people who can work their way through a difficult and contentious community process without losing their cool or their patience.

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: The same way that everything else is done on Wikipedia, by making sure that the process is open and documented. People who are easily discouraged by contention are probably not going to be good at dealing with trolls or mediation.

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: This is almost a semantic splitting hairs argument--there's no practical difference between expressing co-nomination or strong support. However, both co-nomination and voting "strong support" are problematic for a different reason: they're both a voting response rather than an assessment of candidate strengths and weaknesses in search of consensus.  Piling on a "me too" vote does little to enlighten anyone as to why a particular candidate would make a good admin.  Everybody, nominators, supporters, and detractors ought to be examining the candidate's history within the community as the empirical basis for their judgment, not voting.  My final point would be to simply argue that voting and "me too" comments ought to be disallowed entirely, and only comments that substantially advance debate over the candidate's prospects should be allowed.

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: A standard set of questions should be arrived at simply to avoid tendentious or biased questioning. Why certain candidates have to field some questions while others don't has the potential to be arbitrary and abusive--a platform for passive aggressiveness to come out between users.  Any further questions ought to be raised only upon examination of the empirical record of the user's edit history.

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: Beyond a standard set of question on "experiences, contributions, [and] conflicts," any further questions should be based on citing a diff from the user's edit history. This will encourage actual examination of a user's edit history, and will focus debate on the record rather than on trick questions, passive aggressive tendentious questions, or otherwise bad faith questioning.

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: In many cases that negativity is a sign that the editor either 1) is not an editor that will effectively deal with trolls and edit disputes, or 2) has in the past upset trolls and edit warriors who are now out for revenge. Insofar as these things arise during an adminship process, they are necessary in determining whether the editor will make a good admin--there is no way around it.  Ad hominem attacks and incivility ought to be deleted or censured.  Requiring that everyone cite diffs when making accusations ought to go some way in keeping things rooted in fact rather than baseless hyperbole.

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: Perhaps a two-stage process: 1st round being consensus building only, not voting. Only citation of diffs, discussion of answers to questions, weighing the issues that are brought up, and no vote preferences recorded.  2nd round being pure voting based on the prior discussion.  Doing so might eliminate some of the other problems of canvassing, piling on, people who vote without discussing the issues, etc.

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: I have no problem with bureaucrat removal of nullo, pile-on, canvassed, or otherwise shady voting. I do think a 1-3 sentence closing rationale would help calm people down, and reduce any appearances of arbitrariness or playing favorites.

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: No personal appeal for a vote one way or the other. I think character references during the consensus-forming stage are necessary, on both the positive and negative sides.  People who are canvassed and simply record a vote without participating in the consensus-building, however, ought to have their vote discounted or at least weighed less.

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: This issue strikes at the heart of people's motivation for becoming an admin. On the one hand, it's a good idea to try and democratize the whole process, such that people's feeling about a WIKICABAL are mollified.  On the other hand, adminship shouldn't be set up for people who simply want it for the aspects of "power," or "eliteness," or whatever other e-penis measuring pleasure they might derive from it.  Adminship is about neutrality and responsibility for the messiest parts of open-source encyclopedia creation: maintenance, vandal-fighting, and conflict mediation.  If there is an "admin coaching" page at all, beyond merely descriptive information about what we have admins for and what the nomination proces is like, it should 100% emphasize the shit aspects of the job (vandal correction, going through the ever-depressing New Pages, categorizing uncategorized articles, endless article cleanup, attempting to mediate content conflicts between complete assholes, and so on).

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 complementary? Are there common themes or elements that could be shared between the two processes, in order to improve the effectiveness of both?
 * Response: Doesn't make a difference to me. But in keeping with the open source ethic: just try to get as many eyes on the person as possible, that way problems can be caught and fixed earlier.

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: No comment.

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: Less bureaucracy please, this isn't the Soviet Union.

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: Abuse of power is a serious problem, but as the front-line against trolls, vandals, and bad-faith edit warriors, admins will be subject to far more bad-faith recall motions than our system should tolerate. Clear cut abuse of power situations can be brought to the attention of other admins or bureaucrats through traditional channels.

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: Less bureaucracy please. This isn't the Soviet Union.

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: This will always be a subjective judgment call. The only way to make sure that the subjective judgments are not baseless is through a requirement than diffs from the candidate's edit history are the basis for all complaints or votes of support.

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: Adminship's negative aspects should be placed front and center. It is not a rank, it is a job.  Article maintenance (cleanup, wikification, categorization, deletion review), mediation, anti-vandalism, and troll pacification is really like taking on a second career.  Rewrite everything on admins to emphasize the being an admin is applying for a job, not being granted a rank or privilege.  Most editors should not be admins because most editors do not have the time or the patience or the demeanor to do incredibly frustrating, incredibly repetitive, incredibly tedious work like this every damn day.  Most Wikipedians should be content-writers or gnomes.  Make the "adminship process" a Job Application for a 24-hr job with no pay and endless grief--seriously.

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 21:06 on 25 September 2008.