User:Fmmarianicolon/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!

Questions

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: Talk more about the history of RFA and the changes in what expectations the communicty has had for administrators. Example: how the amount of edits (in article and wiki space) has increased, how many more areas are available for administrators to participate in, which areas are in more need of admin assistance

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: Personally I do not have a problem with multiple co-nominators. However, they should get together and craft a joint statement, or have one main nomination statement and short co-nom statements. Also, Strong Support is not equivalent to co-nomination. Strong Support is like holding up on the !voter's shoulders, but co-nomination shows even stronger support by bringing the nominee to the judging area in the first place.

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: My eyes do gloss over when an RFA has lots of questions. However, an administrator needs the community's trust so the community should ask the questions it needs to arrive at its answer. I don't know what additional methods a nominee could provide because the nominee already provides a contribution history and a statement (usually).

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: The community should focus on asking questions about the nominee's experience and/or philosophy on the areas the nominee wants to assist. Policy-to-answer questions are OK if related to those areas. Questions that request personal information, such as age, should be off-limits. The nominee should not answer those questions. I do not think they should be removed however. If an administrator removes them, it may cause conflict regarding whether those questions were problematic. If a bureaucrat removes the question, the bureaucrat may have to abstain from closing the RfA at all.

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 seems like a negative process because the focus is on the negative. A nomination will pass unless opposers make a strong case against the candidate. Supporters then make strong cases against the opposers' cases. Feelings and emotions get involved, and the cycle spins downward. The only solutions I can think of are quick fixes: someone stepping in to recommend a timeout between two people having a heated debate, or allow opposers to oppose without making a strong case.

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: RfA should follow the discussion model more closely. It allows the nominee to learn what areas the community thinks are his/her strengths and weaknesses. If the community finds the administrator is very weak in one area, supporters can recommend coaching or other remedies to help the nominee improve. This would be particularly helpful for newer users who are nominated. In the election system, a high number of opposes because of one weakness can disqualify a nominee who is qualified for other areas.

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: Bureaucrafts should leave more detailed closing rationales unless the nomination is an obvious pass (almost no opposes). Bureaucrats should be allowed to recommend additional coaching or training if needed. As far as clerking, I'm not sure what additional clerking would need to be done aside from closing the RfA and making sure it is formatted properly.

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: RfA is already the most neutral place to advertise a nomination. The only other location that would be neutral would be the Community Portal, near where the new WikiProjects are located. The SignPost would be neutral if the candidates were mentioned in the same section as successful candidates, but it would not be fair to candidates during weeks when the SignPost is not uploaded on time.

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: I'm not sure how to convert it to an admin-prep program. However, the chart is good for explaining to new folks what people generally look for (unofficially).

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: This is the first time I've heard of New Admin School. Looks interesting! However, it might be hard to have a mentorship because when conflicts arise the mentor may not be available.

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: ...

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 disagree with the current recall process because there's too many variations. Admins should be brought to RfC or a very similar process (Request for Administrative Action Review?) It should be in a neutral setting instead of an admin's webpage.

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: Have the recall on neutral ground. Require a discussion between the admin, the calling (?) party, and third parties for mediation and/or analyzation.

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: Admins should not be required to stand for reconfirmation simply because time has passed. This creates unneeded backlog. Atta-boys can be sent to the admin's talk page; comments or suggestions for improvement can be taken to the admin's talk page or RFC. If the parties in the RfC feels reconfirmation is needed to gauge wider community input, an RfA would be the best way to approach 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: ...

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: Elements that work well are the nomination statements, a question asking what area(s) the nominee wants to assist, and the comments area above the support area. The vote count should be removed -- a bureaucrat should read the discussions related to supporting and opposing views rather than simply counting each side. As far as "trophy" status, it would be hard to erase the perception that RfA is a goal. People who enjoy the project want to improve, and they believe the admin / bureaucrat / arbritrator roles and abilities will help them do so. Thus adminship (, etc...) becomes a goal.

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 21:08 on 23 September 2008.