User:Shock Brigade Harvester Boris/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: Daunting is good. When I was an admin I quickly found that a thick skin is an essential requirement. Anyone of too delicate sensibilities to handle RfA will not do well as an admin.

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 should have minimum thresholds so that newbies don't get bitten. Then we can simply point to the threshold instead of making things personal.

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: A non-issue. Reading too many co-nom statements can be tedious, but other than that I don't see a problem.

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: I almost never look at the questions, since the vast majority are either (a) easily gamed or (b) dumb. The only questions I find useful are the "why did you do X?" ones, where we get a view of someone in action.

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: As noted above I seldom find the questions helpful. I'd have no problem with eliminating all questions and instead relying on commentary provided along with votes to bring up any important issues.

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: There's no simple answer; for example, badgering of opposes definitely happens, but the line between badgering and legitimate requests for clarification isn't always obvious. Bureaucrats (or some other appointed officers) should have the discretion to tell people to back off when things get out of hand.

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: Usually RfA is a simple up-or-down vote with bureaucrat discretion required in relatively few cases. Overall I think that's a reasonable way of doing things. I'd like to see the approval threshold raised to 80-85% from the current 70-75%; someone who lacks the confidence of nearly a third of the community shouldn't be an admin.

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: Most of the time the result is clear cut and detailed explanations aren't necessary. Only in the middle ground cases (70-75% range, if memory serves) is a detailed rationale called for. Giving a long commentary with every close would only open the door to arguments over the rationale. Best to make a decision and move on.

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 a fact of life; humans are wired for communication. We can try to prevent on-wiki canvassing but people still are going to email one another and discuss the matter on external sites. And one person's canvassing is another's helpful notification. Prohibition of canvassing could even be seen as actively harmful, since it can give disproportionate influence to editors who habitually watch RfAs. On the other hand we don't want anything like the American political process (or political processes in most other countries, for that matter). Perhaps we should consider a standard notification template for a carefully defined set of venues such as user talk pages.

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: Admin coaching should come after RfA, in the form of a probationary period. Preparatory coaching is too often "How To Pass RfA."

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: I don't care for pre-RfA coaching, as explained above. A mentorship after passing RfA would be better for Wikipedia.

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: Administrator abuse -- you mean someone abusing an administrator? That's definitely a problem.

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: If you want to discourage admins from taking tough decisions and create more drama all around, encouraging admin recall is a great way to do it. The current arbcom-oriented process isn't great but it's less damaging than the alternative.

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: The voluntary recall process should be eliminated since it causes more problems than it solves. I am thinking in particular of recent case where an admin declined to follow recall as stated in her RfA, engendering a great deal of cynicism and divisiveness. In other cases admins have tried to be so careful to lay out everything explicitly, covering every requirement and contingency, that one would need a long session with a $500/hour lawyer to make heads or tails of it. Others have imposed so many hurdles that their commitment to recall is effectively meaningless. Voluntary recall only serves as punishment for admins who lay out simple and clear criteria and then keep their word.

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 would be in favor not of reconfirmation but of term limits for admins, say 1 to 2 years. Recall is inevitably divisive and reconfirmation would not be much better, bringing grudge-carriers and disruptive editors out of the woodwork to vote against the admin. Term limits would ease out problematic admins simply by attrition, which is more neutral and less acrimonious.

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: ...

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: ...

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 02:23 on 26 September 2008.