User:Verdatum/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: ...

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: I am not inclined to allow administrators who can not themselves take the time to seek out and read the necessary information, including the available archives to see how past nominations have progressed. Beyond linking to those archives, and having a page similar to the essay related to the general outcome of AfD arguments, I can't imagine the snowball denials are the difficult to exact on candidates, and if they are dissuaded by a NOTNOW, I'm not terribly sympathetic.

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: How's about properly defining co-nominations, and discussing the implications.

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: If anything I feel there should be more questions. If you want to be an admin, but you don't want to have to answer questions, that sets off alarms for me.

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: Trick questions are silly. Not liking questions that merely require quoting policy is unavoidable.  If we take the time to find questions that aren't answered explicitly in policy, you've probably found content that deserves to be added somewhere.  One possible solution to this is to put together a large test-pool, where we ask the admin which policy, or section of policy applies.  The US Bar exam works in this manner.

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: RfA should never been seen as exempt from policies such as WP:NPA, WP:CIVIL, or any other aspects of WP:TALK. Anyone violating this should be delt with in the same manner as though it were ta talkpage.

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: I do not beleive adminship should be a popularity vote. That lends itself to the negative views of "Cabal" that I so curiously see.  Opposition should be justified, and there should be an allowance for rebuttal, and an encouragement to change one's mind/vote whenever appropriate.

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: Closing should be justified whenever it is not evident, particularly with unsuccessful candidates. I believe a bureaucrat is only marginally more distinguished than an admin, and the title exists merely to allow the admin permissions to be managed in a decentralized manner.

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: I'm not a fan of canvassing in this process. It is one-sided and biased.  I can concieve of a number of mechanisms to make this more fair (e.g. a bot alerts all users who have edited the candidate's talkpage or have talkpages that have been edited by the candidate of the candidacy), but I can't think of any mechanisms that do not have the potential to be "gamed".

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: ...

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: A firm policy on what infractions result in what actions.

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: ...

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: ...

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 in favor of reconfirmation, in the form of a relaxed RfA. It should have a focus towards newer standards and policies both in WP in general, and in the behavior and responsibilities of admins.  I think reconfirmation should rarely fail.  I think reconfirmation would be appropriate yearly, or possibly when there is reasonable doubt that an admin would pass a reconfirmation, as a result of evidence put forth in a recall effort or other dispute resolution.

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: I expect an admin to either be familiar with policy, or competent in tracking down the appropriate policy or guideline for any given dispute. They must be able to justify their positions without falling pray to wikilawyering.

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 is not a trophy, it is a job. I do not believe any such trophy should exist (I do not want a Good editor or Featured editor standing).  It creates an overly powerful capability for the fallacy of Appeal to authority.  Explicitly stating that adminship is not a trophy, and that it is a job and a responsibility in the RfA is good.  Working to dissuade editors percieving an argument as having stronger weight becuase it was voiced by an admin acting as a regular editor. (as opposed to an admin who is closing a XfD for example).

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 19:30 on 29 September 2008.