User:Giggy/On admin coaching
As someone who's currently on admin coaching (I suppose that is still the best name for the page), and as someone who's witnessed with interest the events at Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Wisdom89 3, I feel like I should put down some of my thoughts on admin coaching, and its role in RfA.
Quite frankly, I think the idea of admin coaching, at its most basic, is a bad one. That idea probably (hopefully...) resonates in my RfA voting - my criteria has nothing to do with the number of AIV/UAA reports (which, incidentally, are rarely actually checked for quality...rather, many just look at "omg 300 AIV!!!"), the number of correct calls at XfD (of course, per nom is often a correct call), or the user's ability to regurgitate policy. All of this can be taught, to anyone. What I look for is an understanding of the core goal of the project (WP:ENC) and common sense (WP:IAR)...my criteria page also has some other pointers, but ultimatley, it all resonates around these two things.
Admin coaching can't make someone suddenly care about the encyclopedia, nor can it teach someone common sense. So why have it?
Well, in the conventional sense of it -- admin asks non-admin a series of stock questions, non-admin answers, admin looks for AIV, UAA, XfD in user's edits, non-admin counts them up and reports back to admin, admin gives big tick and writes highly generic nomination -- it's quite useless. In my case, I'm finding it useful to have a mentor, if you will...it's a good idea to have someone giving me constructive feedback and the like. It's like a permanent editor review.
General admin coaching should be more like a permanent editor review, rather than something the cheatsheet could answer. Done that way, it could actually achieve its goals of helping potentially good admins realise their abilities, and present this ability to the community. At the moment, it's used as an oppose reason, yet suggested to less experienced candidates. Yet another contradiction in a very contradictory process.
dihydrogen monoxide (H2O) 05:18, 27 April 2008 (UTC)