User:Ravenswing/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: By removing the community from the equation. As long as people are encouraged to vote Oppose based on their own personal hobbyhorses, to indulge in the bizarre notion that no one who is not already visibly doing a task is fit for it, or to practice the quasi-hazing that goes on, qualified and able candidates will (accurately) recognize that they're going through a buzzsaw.

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: You can't, short of the "coaching for the test" that goes on.  The expectations waver, they're largely subjective, you have to follow a heap of RfAs to figure them out, and they're often contradictory.  The only way - beyond coaching - you can adequately educate candidates otherwise is by setting black-letter standards, something I doubt the community will accept.

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'm neutral on this subject; what exactly is the concern over co-nominations, what constitutes "excessive," and why would X or 2X co-noms be a problem? It may be silly, but how is this actually detrimental to the process?

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: Easy; ban optional questions, which have no purpose except to highlight the personal hobbyhorses of various voters - who tend to bullet vote if they get the "wrong" answer - which often involve traps, and which aren't at all "optional:" failure to answer any generally results in a number of Opposes on that issue alone. Items of genuine concern come up in the discussions.

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: See above. Beyond that, how exactly do you determine "bad faith questions?"  Who knows, some of the Kurt Webers of the world, however much they disrupt and poison the process, might genuinely believe that any editor not toeing their party line isn't fit to be an admin.  You want firestorms that dwarf the circus RfA is now, start deleting optional questions based on "WP:BadFaithQuestion."  The poor candidates will be completely lost in the uproar.

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: Take it out of the community's hands, period.

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: A raw vote is how RfA works now; in the Question phase, I discovered that in the previous year, every single candidate who hit 75% and did not withdraw were promoted (a total of 331), while only three candidates out of several hundred passed with a threshold lower than 75% and none lower than 70%. If it walks like a vote and it quacks like a vote, it's a vote, no question.

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: If it is to be anything save for a vote, yes. Frankly, I'd have a panel of bureaucrats do all the choosing, with perhaps input from the community (people do turn up issues) but with them receiving no formal power of approval.  With the current process, while I'd love to see a 'crat say "I don't care that this only got 55%, this is a worthy, talented, qualified candidate that got steamrolled by a bunch of nitpicking and irrelevancies," it isn't going to happen, and it never has happened.

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: Post to applicable Wikiprojects. As I said in the Question phase, it's ridiculous that a group of people with a far broader knowledge of the candidates than the RfA regulars isn't allowed even to be notified, while (I've seen) canvassing against a candidate is quite permissible.

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: Once again, by taking things out of the community's hands. Once you no longer have to satisfy the factions who require XfD edits, fair image-use patrol, X% of new article creation, etc (and which are often contradictory), you don't have to teach to the test any more.  Why, who knows, you might even get candidates approved who admit ignorance in an area in which they state they will not work, an admission which is the Kiss of Death right now.

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: ...

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: The complaint I hear is that it takes too much work to get rid of a bad admin. Possibly there should be a larger ArbCom, with more members able to handle such matters.

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: I am opposed to any mandatory recall process; see below.

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: By eliminating it.  IMHO, the "recall process" is entirely a political gambit akin to the "Pledge" in New Hampshire, where candidates for office had better vow for the record that they'll never consider an income tax, or else.  In Elonka's RfC, people told her that they voted for her only on the strength of her prior intent to be open to recall, but hell, she shouldn't have had to say that in order to pass muster.  The practical purpose of this process is to give hothead editors a hook by which to go after admins doing anything they don't like.

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: I'm opposed to it.

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: It probably can't be. As matters stand now, you have as broad a consensus on the will of the community as you're going to have.  That the community is chockful of pettifogging nitpickers is another matter, but plainly for many the make-or-break element on whether an editor would be trusted as an admin is their number of XfD edits, whether they have userboxes the voters don't like, or their stances on cool-down blocks.  There's no way to mandate that people be thoughtful or that they evaluate the entirety of the candidate and his background, rather than Opposing if the candidate doesn't agree with the voter in each and every particular.

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: As above, I feel the community's demonstrated it can't be trusted with the process.

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 16:11 on 23 September 2008.