User:WereSpielChequers/RfA is broken

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: ...

1. Update the advice to applicants in line with current RFA voting
2. change admin coaching to an "Am I ready" advice service.
3. Set an algorithm running on experienced editors to identify potential good candidates based on editing behaviour and either auto promote them or at least bring them to the attention of longserving admins who are looking for candidates.
   1. If this is a little ambitious at present how about creating and reviewing lists such as "non-admins who have been active rollbackers for two months and not been blocked for at least 6 months"
4. Making the whole process more of a civil debate and less of a hazing ritual where the hazing level is on a rising curve would help.

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: ...

1. Currently the guidelines giving advice to potential candidates are woefully out of date, Wikipedia talk:Guide to requests for adminship contains old proposals for raising the bar, and having looked at the last couple of months successful RFA's I would strongly suggest reviewing the guidance to warn off applicants with fewer than 2,000 edits. That isn't to say that many of the candidates being snowed are actually unprepared or unqualified - but they may meet the standards of three years ago without meeting the unwritten standards of today.
2. Adding more of the semistandard questions to the boilerplate might also prepare more candidates or delay some who are not yet ready. e.g.
   1. How long have you been a rollbacker?
   2. What policies would you like to have changed and if you were an admin what would you do about this re those policies that you disagreed with.

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: ... I actually don't see this as an important problem, however we expect RFBs to be self Noms. As the ability to WP:BeBold is just as important for an admin we could simply require all RFAs to be self noms. I appreciate however that this may be a minority view, and contradicts other proposals I've made elsewhere.

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: ...Some questions are fatuous, but I don't think there should be an arbitrary limit on their number, nor do I think there are too many being asked. There are currently three boilerplate questions that come up automatically and any sensible candidate answers these before the process starts. I think it would be sensible to augment these with several common and relevant questions, that way more participants see the same info, and it is less important for the applicant to keep coming back in the first few days. A discussion about which questions to add to the boilerplate might lead to some worthwhile harmonisation of criteria among the !voters.

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: ...

1. If a candidate has changed their user name to anonymise themselves then I think it is wrong to bring that up - no-one did so in my case but they did to another recent candidate.
2. Also and this is a frequent one, we are all volunteers, asking someone what in Wikipedia they would do less of if made an admin is completely inappropriate and could be used to hold someone back because they are useful in something they've done well but are ready to move on from.
3. We expect admins to have to patiently and politely deal with people being silly, fatuous questions are a way of testing this that tend to do more damage to the questioner than they do to a good candidate.
4. Despite having recently failed an RFA partly because I didn't spot some of the trip wires in one of the questions, I heartily endorse the idea of having difficult questions in this process.

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: ...If this is a !vote not a vote then every reason given for opposing or being neutral deserves a response - and every vote should have a logical reason. Personal attacks by the candidate have their own consequences, personal attacks on the candidate should be struck and dealt with as per wp:civil, this does lead to the awkward area of "Sorry I don't trust you" !votes. I think that they can be civilly phrased as "Sorry but I always oppose candidates with fewer than x edits/years of service please come back when you've done enough for me to make a fair evaluation of you. Alternatively, I'm opposing per these three diffs ................. or Question, could you put these three edits ............... of yours into context, as I find them concerning. But an oppose without rationale or clear criteria for what the opposer is looking for is troubling. Some people treat RFA as an area where wp:civil and wp:agf don't apply, and that surely is wrong.

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'm concerned about votes that lack a rationale. If this is to be a !vote and voters have spent an hour or so evaluating the candidate then they should be able to write a sentence that justifies their vote. If this degenerates into a popularity contest it risks damaging much else in wikipedia with potential applicants subtly canvassing and carefully avoiding upsetting active RFA voters in their other Wikipedia activities. Having said that if an editor comes up with a good well argued cases to vote one way or the other and other editors vote per that then it keeps the debate coherent; If everyone voting no because of a flaw that diff x had exposed had to find a different way of saying the same thing we'd be wasting a lot of editor time.

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: ...

1. I think that if a candidate or other commentator has made a reasonable rebuttal to an oppose rationale and the opposer has not responded in good time then the crat should strike that vote out as rebutted, especially if the voter was a "fly by" who asked questions and voted at the same time without responding to further debate. A polite warning by the crat on the voters talk page might be in order - Your vote rationale at this RFA was replied to over 24 hours ago and the RFA closes in the next 24 hours, are you going to review or allow your vote to lapse?
2. Detailed closing rationale's are probably a waste of everyone's time except when a crat uses their discretion to reject someone with over 70% support or promote someone with under 80% support. If there is something non-obvious that the crat wants to say then a note to the candidate or the person whose vote has been ignored would be more appropriate. "eg the result of the such and such RFA was x, I notice you voted oppose due to the user having a userbox indicating that they play a particular sport. I'm sure you'll understand from the subsequent debate why your !vote has on this occasion been disregarded".

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 broadly happy with the current arrangements, I'm tempted to suggest that applicants go into Purdah for a fortnight starting a week before their application goes in and not join in new threads on noticeboards etc in that time. But that would be complicated and I suspect that current RFA candidates who suddenly start posting on busy boards will be sussed.

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: ... A checklist of things to do before you apply for RFA would be useful - things like:

1. Have you got x months experience as an editor
2. have you got Y months experience as a Rollbacker
3. Have you reviewed your early edits and fixed any mistakes that others have not yet fixed for you?
4. Admins are expected to enable Email (best to use a yahoo or gmail account)
5. Have you set force Edit summary as a default preference and not set minor edits as default.

• Otherwise I'd replace Admin coaching with a combination of an "Am I ready" advice and a probationary new admin process.

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: ...I haven't been through new admin school as I'm not yet an admin, but I have read a lot both of that and the admin coaching programs. Many of the not now objections at RFA could be resolved if we combined certain bits of admin coaching with new admin school into a combined probationary status/refresher course process. We could then make certain elements of admin work conditional on having gone through the appropriate training module, and require successful RFA candidates to do a probation and complete some training modules before getting the mop.
• I've been through mentorship programs in another aspect of my life and I'm a big fan, I think that would be very helpful to new admins or existing admins planning on making an unfamiliar use of the mop.

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: ...Desysopping should in my view be a rare and sad event - much as one MP in 600 resigns in scandal every three years or so. That it is actually much more common indicates to me that the Admin process is much more flawed than we think.

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 agree that we should have a standard process or processes but am not yet sure what it should be. Other than that it must be proportionate, fair, subject to appeal and include safeguards to protect our admins from trolls, POV warriors and vandals.

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: ...See D2

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: ...In the real world there are plenty of organisations that treat noninvolvement for a given period of time as a resignation. I would think it reasonable that if an editor has zero edits for 12 months they should automatically have Rollback and Sysop rights suspended - obviously with appropriate reminder Emails and notices in the preceding month.

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: ...

1. You can't fully fit an amorphous discordant mass. Currently there are widely variant and in some cases contradictory views as to what an admin should be, I think the community needs to discuss and try to harmonise its expectations of admin candidates - then communicate that expectation to potential candidates.
2. If Adminship really is no big deal then why not automate it and autopromote any editor who has 10,000 consecutive edits with no blocks? A decent AI program should be able to come up with the profile of a successful non-desysopped admin and auto-promote as one way of achieving probationary admin status (I appreciate that this might be a tad controversial and I'm not sure I agree with it myself - but I could be a great way to identify overlooked candidates).
3. Subdividing the tools would resolve some of the problems that relate to RFA voters having different criteria for different parts of the toolset that they then have to apply to any applicant.

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: ...

1. Clearly some people want a trophy, so why not create one? I'm sure the Open University or some other academic institution would happily join in with Academic qualifications that could be achieved by editing Wikipedia. Reverting vandalism and many other tasks might not qualify for anything more advanced than GCSE but real verified article building is often work at undergraduate level or above.
2. The tools need to be subdivided, this is partly a consequence of our growth and maturing as an organisation. Weighing consensus at FAC is very different to blocking vandals or deleting articles, splitting rollback from the rest of the toolset has been a great success and we should do more of this, and the more this becomes a modular thing where editors clearly know what they need to do to get particular tools that they can use the less it will be a community dividing unhealthily into admins and non-admins. It is also a pain to have people being opposed because they are qualified to use the tools in the area that they say they want to use them; but the tools come as one package and they might use them in areas where they have not yet earned trust.

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 12:19 on 10 October 2008.