User:Addshore/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:

Candidate selection (inviting someone to stand as a candidate)
I think this is great. Especially for users that have worked their butts off but never knew how to become and admin or something strange like that. Or for a user that didn't know if they were ready or not.
Administrator coaching (either formally or informally)
Personally I think that admin coaching is a great idea. It shows the user all of the little points of wikipedia that the user might have missed otherwise and therefor failed an RFA.
Nomination, co-nomination and self-nomination (introducing the candidate)
I think the nomination process is good. Self nomination is for those users that no one takes any notice of and should defiantly stay. Nomination and co noms do have an effect on the success of an RFA and sometimes people will support a user just because of who nominated them which I think should be disallowed.
Advertising and canvassing
I think that RFA's do not get enough light. After an RFA has finished there are often users that would have voted in the RFA but did not know that there was an RFA for the given user. I think Canvassing to a limit should be allowed.
Debate (Presenting questions to the candidate)
I think the questions themselves are good but one point I would strongly state is that they are said to be optional questions but I have seen many people including me gather opposes for not answering them all in the first day.
Election (including providing reasons for support/oppose)
I think the voting methods are good. Some of the opposes should defiantly be discounted for example if a user says "I see no reason for the user to have tools" when he has clearly already stated what he would use them for e.t.c Reasons should be valid and use common sense.
Withdrawal (the candidate withdrawing from the process)
I think this is a perfectly fine method for the candidate to be allowed to carry out.
Declaration (the bureaucrat closing the application. Also includes WP:NOTNOW closes)
I think this is good as well and I have also seen the crats sometimes discussing on their noticeboard about the closure of some RFA's which just makes that system perfect in my opinion.
Training (use of New Admin School, other post-election training)
I think that New Admin School is a good thing to use. A new admin may never have used some of the admin features before and may need to test.
Recall (the Administrators Open to Recall process)
I think the idea is good but maybe the process should be changed.

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

How do you view the role of an administrator?
I view the role of an administrator as nothing special. It is just like getting rollback really. With rollback you can rollback by other means such as twinkle and with admin for example you can block by other means (AIV) and protect by other means (RFPP).
What attributes do you feel an administrator should possess?
I don't think there are really any set attributes other than can keep a cool head and has common sense.

Finally, when thinking about Requests for Adminship:

Have you ever voted in a request for Adminship? If so what was your experience?
Yes I have, The experience isn't really anything special in my opinion. It is kind of like voting in an AFD. You look at what is up, do some research into the user and decide how to vote.
Have you ever stood as a candidate under the Request for Adminship process? If so what was your experience?
Yes I have, I found that the RFA was allot more time consuming than I expected taking about half of each day throughout the course of the voting trying to get the answers to questions perfect and trying not to make mistakes. Also If you fail an RFA it really does put you down.
Do you have any further thoughts or opinions on the Request for Adminship process?
Voters should be more positive, not picking out and saying oh no they didn't use and edit summary there OPPOSE or he reverted something that wasn't vandalism OPPOSE as everyone makes mistakes. If someone went through every admins contribution I would find it hard to believe that there would not be something that could get opposed if they were to re stand their RFA latly since one person has picked up on a slight bad point everyone else will suddenly come in and oppose.

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.

* [[User:Addshore/RfA review]] added by ~~~ at ~~~~~

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

This question page was generated by {{RFAReview}} at 23:15 on 21 June 2008.