User:Kotra/RfA review

Welcome to the Question phase of RfA Review. We hope you'll take the time to respond to your questions in order to give us further understanding of what you think of the RfA process. Remember, there are no right or wrong answers here. Also, feel free to answer as many questions as you like. Don't feel you have to tackle everything if you don't want to.

In a departure from the normal support and oppose responses, this review will focus on your thoughts, opinions and concerns. Where possible, you are encouraged to provide examples, references, diffs and so on in order to support your viewpoint. Please note that at this point we are not asking you to recommend possible remedies or solutions for any problems you describe, as that will come later in the review.

If you prefer, you can submit your responses anonymously by emailing them to gazimoff (at) o2.co.uk. Anonymous responses will be posted as subpages and linked to from the responses section, but will have the contributor's details removed. If you have any questions, please use the talk page.

Once you've provided your responses, please encourage other editors to take part in the review. 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

When thinking about the adminship process, what are your thoughts and opinions about the following areas:

Disclaimer: I don't keep up with the adminship process much; I basically know how it works, but I haven't payed much attention to it. So, my opinions should be taken as general impressions, not based on extensive experience.

1. Candidate selection (inviting someone to stand as a candidate)

   Support. I believe it is better to invite others to be candidates than nominate oneself, and nominating others should be encouraged. My reasoning is that nominating oneself is essentially a conflict of interest, because the self-nominating candidate may have their own self-interest in mind instead of the good of the Wikipedia community. I believe that others would be more likely to have the good of the Wikipedia community in mind, since they won't receive any direct personal benefit (perceived or otherwise) from the candidate's success.

2. Administrator coaching (either formally or informally)

   Support. I don't know much about it, but it seems like a good idea.

3. Nomination, co-nomination and self-nomination (introducing the candidate)

   See answer to #1 above. Co-nomination should be discouraged, because of CoI reasons (basically it's often just a less direct form of self-nomination).

4. Advertising and canvassing

   A template on one's userpage mentioning that the user is currently being considered for adminship (like {{Editor review}}) would be helpful. Other than that, no advertising or canvassing should be necessary, and should be discouraged as per WP:Canvassing.

5. Debate (Presenting questions to the candidate)

   Support. Nothing wrong with this.

6. Election (including providing reasons for support/oppose)

   It would be more tidy to ensure that discussion and "votes" are separate, but probably "voters" would not comment as much (and so be as careful with their position) if they had to comment in a separate place. Current practice is fine.

7. Withdrawal (the candidate withdrawing from the process)

   I see no problem with the current practice as described here.

8. Declaration (the bureaucrat closing the application. Also includes WP:NOTNOW closes)

   Bureaucrats should always sign their closing declaration. Improves transparency, and I see no defensible reason not to.

9. Training (use of New Admin School, other post-election training)

   Can't say I know much about it. In principle, it sounds good.

10. Recall (the Administrators Open to Recall process)

    I am unaware of it.

When thinking about adminship in general, what are your thoughts and opinions about the following areas:

1. How do you view the role of an administrator?

   The role should be basically to take care of things that require a moderately extensive amount of experience in Wikipedia, and good judgement. The role should not technically be to represent Wikipedia or be a good role model within Wikipedia, but since administrators are often assumed to be Wikipedia authorities, they should conduct themselves (especially within Wikipedia) in a respectful, thoughtful way.

2. What attributes do you feel an administrator should possess?

   Sound judgement, adherence to Wikipedia policies (including, in extremely rare cases, WP:IAR), and willingness to put aside one's own ego and admit fault on occasion. Self-promotion (or as I see it, vanity) should not be a required attribute, and it bothers me that so many administrators spend so much of their time (and yes, Wikipedia's server resources) prettying their signatures and user pages. We are here to build an encyclopedia, not to promote ourselves, and administrator candidates that don't promote themselves should be given more support than those that do.

Finally, when thinking about Requests for Adminship:

1. Have you ever voted in a request for Adminship? If so what was your experience?

   I don't think so. If I did, it must have not been memorable.

2. Have you ever stood as a candidate under the Request for Adminship process? If so what was your experience?

   No.

3. Do you have any further thoughts or opinions on the Request for Adminship process?

   No. Thanks for reading.

Once you're finished...

Thank you again for taking part in this review of the Request for Adminship process. Now that you've completed the questionnaire, don't forget to add the following line of code to the bottom of the Response page by clicking this link and copying the following to the BOTTOM of the list.

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Again, on behalf of the project, thank you for your participation.

This question page was generated by {{RFAReview}} at 18:52 on 20 June 2008.