User:DangerousPanda/Admin Reform

The two biggest voiced concerns are a) the poisonous environment that is RFA, and b) the difficulty in removing "bad" admins...once you become an admin, you're an "admin for life". Therefore, any solution for the revamp of RFA has to address the entire process from start of becoming an admin to the end of being one. One could even argue that it starts before an RFA is even filed.

The job expectations

Although admins are not required to perform any action, they're expected to perform some actions, and perform them correctly. A list of "job expectations" that they are agreeing to when they apply should be put together - this allows them to be judged against those criteria during reviews.

RFA Reform

As per User:Bwilkins/RFA2 in short:

Phase 1 - "Vetting" the candidate: similar to a combination of Editor Review and today's RFA questioning.

Decision point: the candidate decides whether or not to move forward with a vote

If yes, a vote (yes, VOTE similar to how we vote for ArbComm) with the choices of: Strong Oppose, Oppose, Neutral, Weak Support, Support

Admin parole

Led by an admin parole board, this function has two entry points:

brand new admins
admins who have been referred here by Administrator Review Board

For new admins, it's more of a mentoring and bringing up to speed over a period of a month or so. Failing would lead to more training. Eventually however, there may need to be a "rejection while on parole".

For admins referred by Review Board, it's much stronger mentoring with the goal of "keeping" the existing admin, and reviewing competency accordingly. It may involve assisting the admin in learning "new changes to policy". The referred-by-review admin would really be time-limited to show improvement, or else be referred for desysop.

Note: admin parole could possibly also be used by admins who were desysopped due to inactivity?

Administrator Review Board

Admin Review Boards take place in camera, although the final declaration is public.

The standard review board essentially performs annual "performance reviews" against the agreed-to criteria. They would review "quantity of actions", "judgement", "policy-knowledge", "communication", and "response to being challenged" based on the admin's actions (or a sampling thereof) from the review period (annual? bi-annual?).
At the request of (X # of editors? 50% majority at AN or ANI?) an "Emergency Administrator Review Board" can be convened to deal with urgent requirements for a specific admin.

At the end of the review, the board would declare:

generally acceptable performance (but could provide some areas to work on)
immediate training required in X (and Y, and Z)
send to Admin parole
recommend desysop

Serious breach

A serious breach of admin responsibility may lead directly to a recommendation for desysop.

Recommendation for desysop

This would lead to (not sure here) - an ArbCom request, or a community filing ... or both...or a new committee? A referred-by-review or failed probation admin would have to have really f'ed up and refused to improve before showing up here. The process for desysop should therefore be more of a series of checks: did the admin do it? were they given the chance to fix it? was parole successful? was it serious enough to desysop no matter what? have there been enough significant incidents to warrant?

Ending of adminship

There are therefore 6 methods of ending adminship:

death of the editor
voluntary relinquishing of the tools
rejection on probation of new admin
rejection on probation of referred admin
emergency desysop
community/arbcomm/other committee? decision