User:Seraphim/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[edit]

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)
...
Administrator coaching (either formally or informally)
...I don't believe formal admin coaching is the way to go. If you feel you want to help the project out by being an admin, you should be learning from as many of them as you encounter. Understanding the community norms that aren't necessarily on paper, can't be taught.
Nomination, co-nomination and self-nomination (introducing the candidate)
...Nominations should recognise the best qualities in the candidate and their suitability for adminship. I see no problem with self-noms.
Advertising and canvassing
...Any kind of advertising or canvassing will only attract the audience of the place you are posting. If you were to post to a specific WikiProject, you'd get the subset that edit there and the same can be said of posting in any location. With that said, WP:RfA is predominantly watched by the subset of regulars; I can't take that to be a bad thing altogether though. If you're involved in WT:RfA, you're familiar with what's expected of admins and thus can judge by previous standard.
Debate (Presenting questions to the candidate)
...Questions should be asked to clarify past issues, explore the candidates familiarity with wikipedia policies and guidelines and for any purpose that serves to understand the candidate better.
Election (including providing reasons for support/oppose)
...Support is the default good faith position, however, I don't think oppose is the default bad faith position.
Withdrawal (the candidate withdrawing from the process)
...If a person gets a lot of opposes and is in a position where it would be extremely unlikely that they would pass, withdrawal is wise. If the candidate understands that they're not going to pass but would like more constructive comments to show what they should work on, I think that's also fine, but they should be aware that RfA is not the greatest place for constructive comments. I feel like a lot of people use RfA to vent and/or express dislike of the candidate. That's not what the process is for.
Declaration (the bureaucrat closing the application. Also includes WP:NOTNOW closes)
...
Training (use of New Admin School, other post-election training)
...NAS was great when I used it. Unless you've been an admin on another wiki, how would you know how to use the new interfaces you're presented with? You should know what you're doing before you use the tools for real.
Recall (the Administrators Open to Recall process)
...

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?
...A janitor. But not this kind :).
What attributes do you feel an administrator should possess?
...Patience, good will, friendliness with newcomers, clue. Introspection and subsequently, the ability to recognise where a mistake has been made and apologise are also the most important qualities. Humility can go a long way.

Finally, when thinking about Requests for Adminship:

Have you ever voted in a request for Adminship? If so what was your experience?
...Yes, but not often. If someone would like to understand why you voted in such a way, you should be prepared to qualify your support or opposition.
Have you ever stood as a candidate under the Request for Adminship process? If so what was your experience?
...Yes, once. I think I was extremely lucky in that I had nearly unanimous support and the support comments I received were so lovely. I did feel extremely stressed throughout that week, but I imagine that's more to do with my coping abilities than wikipedia :).
Do you have any further thoughts or opinions on the Request for Adminship process?
...If everyone went into it with a little more kindness...

Once you're finished...[edit]

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:Seraphim/RfA review]] added by ~~~ at ~~~~~

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

This question page was generated by {{RFAReview}} at 21:05 on 30 June 2008.