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<small>''This page has been viewed '''6,824''' times as of 31 August 2017''</small>
{{essay|interprets=the [[Wikipedia:Administrators]] policy, the [[Wikipedia:Guide to requests for adminship]] guideline, and [[Wikipedia:Requests for adminship]]|shortcut=WP:KUDPUNG|cat=Category:User criteria for adminship}}
{{nutshell|This is a personal collection of one editor's thoughts on the RfA process.|It's very comprehensive, please use the TOC to go to the sections that interest you most.|Your comments, whether you agree with it or not, are most welcome '''on its talk page'''.}}
{{See also|WP:Advice for RfA candidates}}
==Words==
'''Words of wisdom:'''
{{quote|text=RfA is a horrible and broken process|sign=[[User:Jimbo Wales|Jimbo Wales]]|source=[http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk%3AMy76Strat&action=historysubmit&diff=419433563&oldid=419433552 User talk:My76Strat] 18 March 2011|}}
{{quote|text=...if anything, fixing one problem would break the tradition that nothing changes at RFA and make it easier to fix other problems.|sign=[[User:WereSpielChequers|WereSpielChequers]]|source=[[Wikipedia talk:Requests for adminship#Minimum requirement?|RfA discussions]] 29 January 2011|}}
{{quote|text=This may sound like a cliché, but maybe they're discouraged because RfA has become a bloodbath.|sign=[[User:The Utahraptor|The Utahraptor]]|source=[[Wikipedia talk:Requests for adminship|RfA discussions]] 25 January 2011|}}
{{quote|text=And that is the exact problem with having the wide open venue for questions – they promote drive-by voting rather than actual examination of the candidate. A simple restriction that all questions must be about something in their editing history would go a long way towards improving the tone of RfAs.|sign=[[User:JimMillerJr|JimMillerJr]]|source=[[Wikipedia talk:Requests for adminship|RfA discussions]] 25 January 2011|}}
{{quote|text=...it's the people that pick one error in an otherwise qualified candidate and oppose over it that discourage potential candidates. More often than not, those ridiculous oppose !votes create a pile-on that ultimately fails the RfA. .|sign=[[User:The Utahraptor|The Utahraptor]]|source=[[Wikipedia talk:Requests for adminship|RfA discussions]] 25 January 2011|}}
{{quote|text=The thing that makes fixing RFA so challenging is, yes, the community... The thing stopping us from fixing RFA is us ourselves. |sign=[[User:Tofutwitch11|Tofutwitch11]]|source=[[User talk:WereSpielChequers#Trying to improve RfA|Trying to improve RfA]] 1 February 2011|13:55, (UTC)}}
{{quote|text=People at RfA love to load up on one particular flaw. It's one of the reasons hardly anyone goes for the mop anymore: they just load up on one thing, and hold it to be worth as much as everything else. |sign=[[User:Resident Mario|Resident Mario]] |source= 28 February 2011|(UTC)}}
<!-- Notice -->
{{notice|Contrary to the Wikipedia mantra 'Adminship is not a big deal', it '' is'' – because some people just want it to show off with in the schoolyard}}
'''I can't speak for other admins''', but I can't say that I really enjoy being an admin. It keeps me involved with Wikipedia at a time where I have run out of ideas for content creation and where I get quickly bored with routine tasks such as copyediting, finishing articles for lazy editors, or translating articles from other languages. However, I suppose I do like the forensics that come with the admin tools and a good knowledge of policies, things like sniffing out socks and paid editors. As an admin however, unless you gnome away at deletion cats and avoid contentious areas such as ANI and RfC/U, someone has to do the dirty work, so if you think being an admin is a cool job, think again.
Whether candidates are likely to pass RfA or not is very much up to them. Those who are in a hurry to get the bit probably shouldn't be getting it, and usually they don't. Those who joined Wikipedia with the intention of being an admin somday joined for the wrong reason. Generally, for better or for worse, the vast majority of RfA conclude with an appropriate closure, so no serious candidate should be really afraid at all to run the gauntlet for 168 hours.
==What I think==
'''I take an active interest in RfA''' because as a relatively new user, and fast learner and religiously sticking to the rules, I was taken to task by a couple of really mean, team tagging teenage admins so I wanted to find out who and what sysops are and how on earth such miscreants (now long since departed and/or desysoped) could become admins, so I discovered [[WT:RfA|the RfA talk page]] and made my first edit to it in early 2010. See the [https://tools.wmflabs.org/xtools-articleinfo/?article=Wikipedia+talk%3ARequests+for+adminship&project=en.wikipedia.org Activity on that talk page] which was once the busiest forum on Wikipedia has diminished in parallel proportions to the general interest in RfA since the watershed year of 2007.
I then started this page long before I ever dreamed of being an admin myself. I never wanted to be one, but I was asked so many times that I thought I would finally put it to the test. As it turned out, my own RfA was quite contentious, but it passed with what was a high turnout for pre 2015 reforms and it passed with flying colours. I'm not convinced that the current system is in the best interest of the project as it is today. The best and most essentially encyclopaedic articles of social, scientific, geographical, and biographical content have probably been submitted and the encyclopaedia now needs more persistent and accurate quality control to keep it free of spam, copyvio, sockpuppetry, vandalism, tabloid news, and people, bands, and companies of doubtful notability.<ref>(February 16, 2011), [http://hblog.org/writing/the-missing-wikipedians/ The Missing Wikipedians] Retrieved December 31, 2017.</ref> Equally important, it also needs people who can have access to some parts of the software for carrying out non contentious office work. This all needs some editors who can be trusted with some special tools, and to use them intelligently, with reasonable accuracy, and in the best interest of the encyclopedia and not to their own ends. It is assumed also that such people would be a role model, and lead by example. Unfortunately, too many admins aren't, and they stir up as much ill feeling as others attempt to combat.
'''The results of RfA''' are sometimes a lottery: apart from a handful of regulars who generally (but not always) know what they are doing, the !voting is in the hands of a flux of one-time commentators, fans, detractors, and newcomers. In some cases a lot of canvassing clearly goes on behind the scenes, some base their comments ostensibly on how others have commented, and some voters clearly do not fully understand the process. Other participants will go to extraordinary lengths to support their votes, often retrieving old and no longer relevant [[WP:diff|diffs]] from the archives. I carefully follow every RfA and generally vote on all of them. {{pb}}
When I comment or vote, I do so after fully researching the candidate's history and I make my mind up before even reading any votes that have already been cast. If after doing so, my findings do happen to be similar to one already made, I will add an 'as per', for economy of words. Sometimes I find that I have nothing to say that will add weight to the discussion, in which case I might occasionally abstain completely, without even leaving a comment in the 'neutral' section. I never vote to cancel out a majority that I may not agree with. I have only ever asked user questions at RfA three times, and I generally ignore those 'optional' questions and the answers the candidates are forced to make when making my decision.
'''If I voted for you''', be happy and do a good job if you passed and if you failed on a close call, I'm sure you will pass next time. If I voted for you and you passed, but you fail to meet the expectations you convinced me of for supporting you, I'm more disappointed in myself than I am in you, because I clearly made an error of judgement.<br>
'''If I opposed your RfA''', don't take it personally, chances are I was really opposing the system for allowing you to be subjected to something you weren't ready for. If you're still serious about genuinely needing the tools, and will work towards it, my talk page is [[User talk:Kudpung|just here]], I'm also on email, and I'm a very good listener.
'''If ''you'' !voted''' only once or twice at RfA and if you are an experienced editor, consider why, and why you don't do it more often. If you are one of those people who waste our time by posing silly or unrelated questions, or questions you personally don't even know the answers to, or create drama by being uncivil, consider that your participation may be counter-productive. We need admins, and your efforts, however innocent and in [[WP:AGF|good faith]], are misplaced and may ultimately lead to the destruction of the chances of promotion of someone who would have rendered good service to the project. If you are new at Wikipedia, try to gain more experience in different areas, do some [[WP:NPP|New Page Patrolling]] (carefully), edit some articles, and come back to !vote on RfA when you you understand more about what the role of admins is, and why so many good editors don't want to go through the RfA process.
'''I almost never adhere to my criteria below''', because there are always exceptions to my rules. For example, an editor who has made 150,000 AIV reports via Huggle with only 2% false positives, and who only wants to work in that field, can clearly be trusted with the tools, but hasn't demonstrated any judgmental skills for closing AfD, adding content, or or understanding user behaviour patterns. Candidates who boast of having made hundreds of new pages, that turn out to be one-line stubs or [[WP:DAB]], or candidates whose dozens of GA and FA are nothing more than 20 – 30 minor edits to pages that serious authors have spent hours contributing to, are lacking in basic honesty. Candidates who have rarely contributed to policy development, help pages, [[WP:RfC]], [[WP:AfD]], and other meta discussions and debates might not be well prepared for adminship – even if they have a lot of [[WP:GA|green blobs]] and [[WP:FA|bronze stars]] to their credit. Likewise, a candidate whose own creations are still peppered with maintenance tags can hardly be deemed responsible to police other editors' pages – we don't patrol the motorways with traffic cops whose licences are still endorsed for dangerous driving.
An occasional minor error needing a technical tweak is not a cause for disqualifying a candidate, neither is a 2% error rate in tagging new pages. Failing to correctly answer a trick question that has been deliberately formulated to faze the candidate is not a cause for disqualification either, nor are any other attempts to derail an RfA of a candidate who should obviously be passing. Biting new contributors is not a fair sport, but the use of occasional formal or blunt but socially acceptable language, or a rare and mild snide aside when called for and addressed at experienced editors, are not breaches of civility rules, are certainly not personal attacks, and are also not causes for disqualification – some editors, even admins, use much worse language on RfA discussions!
There is no justification for editors, whether admins or not, to subject candidates to a process that contains features that they themselves would not be, could not be, or were not subjected to. It's not infrequent for extreme cases of personal attacks to be made with impunity at RfA, of the kind that would not escape admonishment in other discussion spaces. Some admins who participate in today’s RfAs would not pass today's criteria. I don't believe that the [[Interpellation (law enforcement)|interpellation style]] of RfA is conducive to a pleasant environment for the candidate.
==How I vote==
*See also: My Wikipedia essay: [[WP:Advice for RfA candidates|''Advice for RfA candidates'']]
My !votes are always commented and are proceeded by a clear ''Support'', ''Oppose'', or ''Neutral''. I very rarely use additional quantifiers at the semantic level such as ''strong'', ''weak'', etc., as they are subjective, and I don't really see how the closing 'crat can accurately parse them. I always take at least one hour or more to research before voting.
As of 16 October 2016, my !votes matched the result in '''90.06%''' of the times. I have commented on 315 RFA's. (Supported: 161, Neutral: 44, Opposed: 95, and commented without voting on 15)
'''See ''how'' I voted''' at RfA by clicking [http://toolserver.org/~tparis/rfap/index.php?name=Kudpung&rfa=on here]
I will no longer support a 4th (or more) attempt at adminship, nor will I support a disclosed [[WP:RTV]] that was the result of Arbcom sanctions or a community ban of any kind. I made a grave error of judgement by supporting [[Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Ironholds 5|this RfA]], desyoped August 13, 2013 For cause.
===My criteria===
This is my 'laundry list' as some users call it who would never pass RfA anyway (or wouldn't if they ran under any post 2007 criteria). The list is long but taken as a whole it's nothing more than the bare minimum just spelled out. Note that I also take a dim view of frivolous requests at [[Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Optional RfA candidate poll]]. Ideally a candidate should have or be:
#The maturity level of a responsible adult (18+) - evaluation of maturity is highly critical, but subjective, and I believe that minors who are admins should demonstrate an exceptional level of maturity that is beyond average for their real age. This also means that the candidate should have at least a basic user page but not one that looks like a 14-year-old's bedroom wall.
#The ability to communicate in proper standard English (non-native and/or creole users take note), understanding that WP is not built by teenagers for teenagers or for mobile phone SMS.
#12 months autoconfirmed user ''or'' at least 6,000 non-automated edits in the preceding 6 months.
#Preferably >30% edits to Talk and Wikipedia space.
#Preferably at least 4 created articles of at least 500 words (about 3,500 bytes) not including sources, perfectly sourced and formatted - no outstanding maintenance tags on any creations where the candidate is still the major contributor. FA, GA, or DYK are not prerequisites, '''but''' a very minimum of article creation and/or an equivalent amount of new content should demonstrate that we are here first and foremost to build an encyclopedia and not a [[WP:MMORPG]]. See also [[User:Ritchie333/Why admins should create content|Why admins should create content]].
#No mass creation of very short stubs.
#Preferably >100 [[WP:NPP|New Page Patrols]].
#No warnings or comment about wrong NPP tagging in the preceding 6 months.
#<5% declined CSD at New Page Patrolling.
#>10 advice edits to a help desk that demonstrate knowledge of the policies/guidelines.
#>50 edits to AfD with adequate rationale that demonstrate knowledge of the policies (hit rate over 75% on Scottywong's tool)
#>5 edits to RfA (although this number might be difficult to achieve for newer users) with adequate rationale that demonstrate knowledge of the process.
#95% [[WP:edit summary|edit summaries]] in the main space.
#No warnings for [[WP:VANDAL|vandalism]].
#No warnings for [[WP:spam|spam]].
#No [[WP:SOCK|sockpuppetry]] (unauthorised use of multiple accounts).
#No L3, L4, or single issue warnings.
#A clean block log of at least 12 months, but this could be longer depending on the severity of the issue and the length of the block(s).
#No confirmed [[WP:NPA|personal attacks]] reported to a notice board.
#Users have very different opinions as to what constitutes incivility - I judge this for myself and I'm not very tolerant. Note however that there is a big difference between being blatantly rude and just not [http://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/mince+words mincing one's words].
#Only 1 3rr warning, and older than 6 months.
#No warnings of any kind 3 months preceding RfA.
#No CSD, PROD, or AfD notices for own creations 6 months preceding RfA.
#No reverted non-admin closures of any debate types.
#No unnecessary 'clerking' of admin areas - such as, for example, [[WP:PERM]].
#2nd or subsequent RfA not sooner than 3 months.
#2nd or subsequent RfA not less than 1,500 new manual, major edits.
#No possible signs that the candidate has joined Wikipedia with the express intention of working towards adminship (includes hat-collecting and over-enthusiastic participation on admin boards).
#No canvassing on- or off-Wiki (off-Wiki discussion with your nominator is OK).
#'''Finally, and most importantly''', people don't join the army just because they want to shoot guns, and they don't join the police force just because they want to drive a fast car with a blue light and a siren and hand out speeding fines. Which means, for those who don't get the metaphors, that users who join Wikipedia with the sole intention of working their way towards adminship don't get my support, which also means that '' 'I wanna be an admin someday' '' userbox.
'''Note''': I often make exceptions to these criteria by taking an aggregate of the candidate's performance.
Sysop candidates need (and should practice and be able to explain to others):
*Excellent understanding of the [[WP:five pillars|Five Pillars of Wikipedia]].
*Good understanding of [[WP:MoS|page layout and writing]].
*Good Understanding of [[WP:TPG|talk page use]] and format.
*Good understanding of [[WP:RfC|debate page]] format, and other notice board formats.
*Good understanding of [[WP:DELETE|deletion processes]] and consequences.
*Understanding of [[WP:subst|subst]] and [[WP:transclusion|transclusion]].
*Understanding of [[WP:dab|disambiguation]], [[WP:hatnote|hatnote]], and [[WP:redirects|redirects]].
*Understanding of [[WP:move|renaming (moving)]] pages and [[WP:merge|merging]] pages.
*Understanding of [[WP:WARN|user warnings and their consequences]].
*Basic understanding of [[WP:SOCK|sockpuppetry]] and its implications.
*Basic understanding of the [[WP:IMAGE|use of images and licencing]].
*Basic understanding of the [[WP:COI|Conflict of Interest]] guideline and [[WP:UP|username policy]].
*Main [[WP:CSD|speedy deletion criteria]] consigned to memory.
*The need to communicate politely, avoiding slang, 'teen talk' or 'cool talk' - Wikipedia has an image to maintain as a serious project.
;'''THE BOTTOM LINE'''
In my opinion the bar is ''not'' too high, it's about right. If you check all the boxes above chances are that you'll pass with flying colours. However, the actual bar is set anew by the participants at each RfA depending on who turns up to !vote. My current issue is that the quality of the !voting and the turn-out of responsible voters are too low.
===See how ''you'' voted===
(Enter your name and copy the URL to your browser address bar)
*<nowiki>http://toolserver.org/~tparis/rfap/index.php?name=YOUR NAME HERE&rfa=on</nowiki>
*<nowiki>http://toolserver.org/~snottywong/cgi-bin/rfastats.cgi?name=YOUR NAME HERE&max=&startdate=&altname=</nowiki>
==Participants at [[Wikipedia talk:Requests for adminship]]==
2450+ people are watching the main RfA page. It gets roughly 230 hits per day.
2450+ people are watching the RfA talk page. It gets roughly 347 hits per day.
==Perennial issues==
<small>''(Taken from [[Wikipedia:Perennial proposals#Adminship|Perennial proposals]])''</small>
All the issues that are being constantly recycled are listed at [[Wikipedia:Perennial proposals#Adminship]]
*While RFA is our most debated process and nearly everybody seems to think there's something wrong with it, literally years of discussion have yielded no consensus on what exactly is wrong with it, nor on what should be done about that.
===Too many questions at RfA===
:# Additional questions to be asked, or ban canned questions.
:# Reason for previous rejection: RfA is a discussion and people may need to be able to ask questions they find pertinent towards making a decision. People should be able to ask the questions they want/need to ask to make an assessment based upon their individual criteria.
:# Note: While there has been no consensus to ban canned questions, they have routinely been criticized as not being effective or adding much value to the process.
===Unbundling of tasks===
Can't be done: It's confusing; if we can't trust people to use their tools sensibly, they don't become admins. Period. A "partial admin" process would at least double the already considerable frictional effort expended at WP:RFA, as users debate who gets full sysop powers versus who gets only partial abilities.
===Prerequisites for adminship===
Reasons for previous rejection: While candidates with few edits and/or a lack of project-space contributions often fail per WP:SNOW or WP:NOTNOW, there are always exceptions. The encyclopedia should not lose out on a good candidate just because he or she has not achieved an arbitrary number of edits or does not frequent a particular area of the encyclopedia. In addition, edit counts are not a reliable indicator of an editor's experience or competence. It is better to evaluate candidates on the quality of their contributions, not the quantity of their edits. Finally, no one agrees on what the prerequisites should be.
==Summary of recent discussion participants==
{{collapsetop|This needs bringing up to datre}}
''('First edit' means first edit to [[WT:RfA]]. Note that by '''September 2014''' these figures may be well out of date)''
;RfA talk as of 3 January 2011
*Nearly 2,500 people have commented
*1,371 commented 5 times or less
*Of the 111 people who commented over 100 times, 60 were still active in 2010/2011
*13 users who are still active have contributed over 40 times
*237 users commented for the first time in 2010
*93 commented 1 time only
*163 commented 5 times or less
23 commented over 20 times:
*158 [[User:Kudpung|Kudpung]] First April 2010
*151 [[User:Aiken drum|Aiken drum]] First March 2010
*114 [[User:Arcayne|Arcayne]] First January 2010
*72 [[User:Tryptofish|Tryptofish]] First August 2010
*67 [[User:Boing! said Zebedee|Boing! said Zebedee]] First January 2010
*59 [[User:Access Denied|Access Denied]] First July 2010
*51 [[User:The Utahraptor|The Utahraptor]] First August 2010
*43 [[User:Polargeo|Polargeo]] First February 2010
*40 [[User:WFCforLife|WFCforLife]] First July 2010
*40 [[User:Mkativerata|Mkativerata]] First February 2010
*39 [[User:Throwaway 85|Throwaway 85]] First January 2010
*39 [[User:Fly by Night|Fly by Night]] First November 2010
*38 [[User:Begoon|Begoon]] First July 2010
*33 [[User:Hi878|Hi878]] First May 2010
*32 [[User:Wifione|Wifione]] First September 2010
*32 [[User:True Pagan Warrior|True Pagan Warrior]] First January 2010
*28 [[User:User:Sonia|Sonia]] First April 2010
*27 [[User:White Shadows|White Shadows]] First January 2010
*27 [[User:Netalarm|Netalarm]] First August 2010
*27 [[User:Bobrayner|Bobrayner]] First August 2010
*25 [[User:User:Codf1977|Codf1977]] First July 2010
*23 [[User:Tyrol5|Tyrol5]] First August 2010
*22 [[User:Tofutwitch11|Tofutwitch11]] First October 2010
;The top ten contributors are:
*1230 [[User:Malleus Fatuorum|Malleus Fatuorum]] First December 2007
*995 [[User:Balloonman|Balloonman]] First December 2007
*810 [[User:Pedro|Pedro]] First June 2007
*725 [[User:EVula|EVula]] First November 2006
*719 [[User:Kim Bruning|Kim Bruning]] First May 2005
*697 [[User:Dank|Dank]] First June 2008
*532 [[User:Useight|Useight]] First September 2007
*518 [[User:WereSpielChequers|WereSpielChequers]] First October 2008
*461 [[User:User:Wisdom89|Wisdom89]]
*447 [[User:Chillum|Chillum]] (not contributed since January 2010)
;Micellaneous: edits to Talk RfA
*[[User:Tofutwitch11|Tofutwitch11]] 22 First October 2010. Total Wikipedia edits: 3,792
*[[User:Kudpung|Kudpung]] 87 First April 2010. Total Wikipedia edits: 25,000 (66,116 as of 24 September 2014)
*[[User:The Utahraptor|The Utahraptor]] 51 First October 2010. Total Wikipedia edits: 14,166
*[[User:WereSpielChequers|WereSpielChequers]] 478 First October 2008. Total Wikipedia edits: 84,277
*[[User:Fetchcomms|Fetchcomms]] 19 First August 2010. Total Wikipedia edits: 36,989
{{collapsebottom}}
==The suggestions they make==
*#Each editor is permitted only one question on the candidate page.
*#Questions are limited in length, which precludes the "one question" from being a multi-part monster.
*#Questions must be candidate-specific, not repeats of questions asked of every candidate.
*#Questions may not be redundant to those already asked by others.
*#Questions that do not meet these criteria may be entertained on the talk page if the candidate wishes.
*#Questions are not vetted in advance, but they are subject to amendment or removal if they do not follow the rules.
I think these may actually be more useful ideas for RFA than any of the proposals above. User:RL0919, 3 January 2011 (UTC)
#Why do you want to be an admin?
==The questions they ask at RfA==
'''Update''': Since publishing this list for the [[WP:RFA2011]] research project, user questions have been generally fewer, more intelligent, and more appropriate. However, perhaps the silliest question of all was [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Requests_for_adminship/Liz&diff=673704606&oldid=673704159 this one made in August 2015]. The editor was condemned as a troll by an admin.<br>The most recent, but harmless, questions by an established user, that are totally unrelated to evaluation of a candidate, were:
*26. How do you feel about WP:Wikipe-tan?
*27. As an admin, would you use {{Administrator topicon}} with the tan icon option?
Such questions do not add anything objective to the RfA. All they do, as in this case, is add to an already inappropriately large number of questions.
This list is ''subjective'', compiled by Kudpung at the close of 2010.
Some questions have ''(Task force note)'' been added. These were originally comments by Kudpung.
The most unhelpful tactics include: deliberately asking questions on areas of admin work that the candidate has already clearly expressed that they neither have experience nor particular interest in, and do not intend to get especially involved in; using questions that have been devised by previous questioners; asking opinions on whether Wiki policies are good or bad – any question that begins with “Do you believe...?”; and using RfA to get answers for things they don't know themselves.
On one RfA that failed marginally, because of a trick question, a further question was posed based on that question, participants refused to acknowledge that one major long oppose diatribe was posed by a confirmed, blocked sock puppet, based on that question. No less than 18 Opposes were subsequently wholly or partly based on that question as exposed by the blocked sock puppet’s mammoth diatribe.
On one RfA a participant asked: 'Are these questions really necessary, or are they simply questions for the sake of having questions?' The answer was: "They help reinforce the candidate's qualifications when correctly answered, and surely anyone willing to undergo a request for s/abuse/adminship would be willing to answer a few questions." I think that answer was made simply to appease the questioner. Another participant also asked on another RfA: "Do you think that our current RfA process presents candidates with too many questions?"
The sample 156 questions below are taken from a total of roughly 772 questions on all passes, and all full-term fails in 2010. They are not exhaustive and for many questions only one example might be provided. Some of them, particularly multiple questions bundled under the guise of one, may not be strictly in the appropriate section, because they fall into several categories. They are listed below under:
*Plain silly (22)
*Trick (7)
*Deliberately misleading (5)
*Time wasting / fishing for advice (19)
*Too broad (9)
*Irrelevant, or prying into private personal opinion (68)
*Deliberately negative (3)
*Multiple questions under the pretext of one (1)
*Questioner doesn’t know (1)
*Questioner doesn’t give a cue to the number of keep votes. (3)
*Questioner not understanding clear answers (1)
*Questioner fishing for feedback on his own work (3)
*Deliberately prolonging the agony (1)
*Participants not doing their the required homework (7)
*Miscellaneous (5)
*Close Paraphrased repeats of set questions (1)
===The questions===
{{collapsetop|The questions}}
====Plain silly====
#(2015) A Wikipedian sneaks into a portaloo at Wikimania and removes the contents left by Jimbo Wales. A home canning outfit is then used, and the results are sold on EBay as "Jimbo Wales's canned shit." This attracts mainstream media attention. Can an article be created about the product? Which of our policies and guidelines apply here?
#Your user page indicates that you are a fan of alcoholic beverages. Do you plan on consuming alcohol while editing Wikipedia?
#What's your favorite Studio Ghibli film?
# Have you ever experienced the white-knuckled exhilaration of eating three bags of prunes?
#Do you believe you will ever travel outside the Earth's atmosphere during your lifetime? If you turn out to be the first Wikipedia user in space, how might you use this to Wikipedia's advantage?
# Will we get to twenty questions?
#You have attracted opposition below for the perceived reactionary nature of much of your work here. What constructive contributions of yours can you point to outside the realm of mitigating damaging or potentially harmful content and contributions from others?
# Please compose and present one Shakespearean form sonnet illuminating something about Floquenbeam in the role of Wikipedia administrator.
#Are chimpanzees allowed to have Wikipedia accounts? Do you believe that they should?
#If intelligent and seemingly benevolent space aliens land on Earth tomorrow, when (if ever) do you believe they should be permitted to create Wikipedia accounts? Why?
#If asked by Jimmy Wales, would you assist in carrying his sedan chair?
#You have been selected to star in a television commercial for Wikipedia. The commercial will feature you finishing edits to an article, and then turning around and triumphantly jumping for joy, which will be shown in slow motion. What background music would you recommend for this commercial? Why?
#If you were a station or station complex in the New York City Subway, which one (and only one!) would you be and how does this reflect how you would use the admin bit?
#If someone visited Halden and only for about one hour, can they honestly claim to have visited Norway?
#Do you believe Wikipedia:Intelligent Administrator should be a redirect to Wikipedia:Administrators against kitten abuse? If not, can you think of a better redirection of that page?
#Apocalyptica is short one member. Are you good enough, and would you be interested?
#How much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?
#Would you ever block a user just for the hell of it?
#Have you ever been in a conflict with me? If not then why not?
#How has your opinion of Wikipedia changed since you started editing?
#(unanswered by the candidate) Thank you for submitting. Please critique the following statement, "I am but a humble servant of the Wiki, implementing consensus where I find it and abiding by Wikipedia policies and guidelines as I go about my tasks."
#(Unanswered by the candidate) You discover a sock puppet account of Jimmy Wales. What action do you take? He's probably reading this. —Preceding unsigned comment added by
#Have you ever been editing while intoxicated?
====Trick====
#A BLP is up for debate at AfD. The person has seen very significant coverage for one event and enough to meet WP:N for another, independent, event years earlier (say 3 articles each 400 words solely about the topic in reliable, but minor sources). Only after the latest flurry of coverage has an article been created. In the AfD 6 !voters argue for deletion by BLP1E as the first event was minor (and the article was only created due to the second event anyways). 4 argue that that there is more than one event and WP:N is easily met by the two events together (plus was probably met by the first event). How would you close such an AfD and why? ''('''Task force note:''' A better question would have been: How would you close an AfD if the consensus is in favour of keep when the AfD is clearly a candidate for deletion. or vice versa?)''
#Grateful for your assistance, a Wikipedia user offers to donate $1000 to a charity of your choice. How do you handle this?
#If you were to participate in WP:AIV, how many warnings must a vandal be issued before a block is suitable? Why?
#What's critically common between the following users? User:Lee_Daniel_Crocker, User:Stevertigo, User:Conversion script, User:Red Bowen, User:TOertel and User:Neutrality
#Assume that your RfA passed on 4 November 2010. I supported it. On your first day as an admin I have come to your talk page with this message, congratulating you on your RfA and asking for your help with the tools on a matter in which I am involved. I am asking you to consider protecting this page on a Malaysian political party (assume it is on the mainspace). I've been trying to stop the insertion of material by a new editor, User:KMalaysia (see the article's history). I think the material is unreliable and POV. Please (a) respond to my message on your talk page; and (b) describe here what action you would take, if any, in respect of the page and the editors concerned.
#You write a BLP article on "Michael Watkins". Six days later, when the article is on DYK, an IP user adds the sentence "In late 2009, Watkins was charged in connection to the 2008 murder of actress Theresa Hutchins, but the charges were later dropped", citing only a gossip mag. This is a pretty well-known fact, and you would have added it to the article when writing it had you been able to fine a reliable source to back it up. You revert the IP's addition under the BLP policy, but xe adds it back again. You revert again, and it is re-added again. You revert again, and the IP re-adds it again. A random admin notices and blocks both of you for edit warring. Who is correct? What do you do?
#The Licensing policy of the Wikimedia Foundation requires that all content hosted on Wikipedia be free content. If this is the case, then why is non-free content even allowed on the project? (Let alone hosted on the Wikimedia foundation's servers) Isn't this a violation of the Wikimedia foundation's policies? Explain.
====Deliberately misleading====
#A user creates an article about an elementary school. What CSD criterion, if any, works with an article like this?
#You have been editing an article Article-1, adding information, sorting out layout, etc. Another editor (editor-123) reverts some of your edits, with the edit summary "removing of unsourced information". How do you deal with this, which admin tools (page protection, page deletion, blocking, etc) or other methods you would use to deal with it, and which policies/guidelines/essays you would use in justification?
#Someone creates an article about a software product you have never heard of. What speedy deletion criteria would you tag the article with?
#Agree or disagree: There are active vandals on Wikipedia with over 1000 edits. If you agree, explain in general terms what constructive steps you can take to mitigate the problem. If you disagree, please explain how you arrived at your conclusion.
====Time wasting / fishing for advice====
#How would you close the following debates: (i) Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Yosef Babad (HTC); (ii) Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Sting FM; (iii) Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Chrismahanukwanzakah (3rd nomination); (iv) Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Henry d'Agier; (v) Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Participatory Media?
#What is your personal take on [[WP:BLP1E]]?
#Please provide a specific example (aside from WP:SNOW cases in AfDs and RfAs) when you would decidedly employ [[WP:IAR]].
#When patrolling new pages, what things do you look to do and what do you consider before you hit the "Page patrolled" link, or nominate for CSD, or whatever? (I ask partly for my own education, because I've only recently started doing NPP, and a few tips from an admin candidate would be welcome).
#Did you have any reason in particular for choosing such a "toxic" username as xxxxxxx? – I have no objections to the name, I was just curious.
#What is the copyright status of publications and images from the government of California? Can we use their material on Wikipedia?
#If you block someone, do you pledge under the threat of recall to politely and fairly explain each block by writing a one paragraph explanation in all cases except the most obvious serial vandal? If not, why so lazy and uncommunicative?
#''('''Task force note:''' The question was about an edit made four years previously)'' You indicated in Opinion "cult" is no more loaded than "liberal" here. Do you still think that "Cult" is not a loaded term?
#I recently speedily deleted this page that was tagged A7. (and have temporarily moved to my user space for this question.) Was my deletion correct? Why? Why not?
#Being given Admin rights is a big privilege, I would like to know how you would respond to say a banned user request to be reinstated? And how you plan on using the right to ban that you will receive? A: Just to be clear, are you asking about WP:BANs or WP:BLOCKs?
#The Wikimedia Foundation determines that change is needed, and as an administrator, your first task will be to come up with a new name for Wikipedia. It must be totally new; no "wiki" anything or anything-"pedia". What name do you suggest? Why?
#An editor asks for your help. Falkland Islands sovereignty dispute infobox has a USA flag but it is not the 1831 version, but the 1960 version. Do you reply "fuck off", give an answer, don't give an answer?
#Could you please explain the use of rollback in edits such as this? Some people choose to use rollback for edits that are self-explanatory. It might be my ignorance and lack of knowledge regarding the subject, but these edits (there are a dozen or so in the last 500 contribs) don't seem like one of those occasions to me.
#''('''Task force note''': This is the equivalent of 11 extra questions. Would have taken approx; 2 hours to answer.)''Here are 11 articles that were recently proposed for deletion (PROD). I picked them at random: [[Article Four]], [[Blasé Splee (EP)]], [[Cortex Chaoz]], [[Free YouTube Downloader]], [[Intellectual Decathlon]], [[Mark Shandii Bacolod]],[[ Pink Bullet]]. Please work your way through this list giving us your comments on each. Some questions to consider: Could any of these articles have been speedily deleted? If so, on what grounds? Were any of these articles ineligible for PROD? If so, why? In this case what should have been done instead? As an administrator, are there any of these articles you would not delete after the PROD waiting period expires? If these articles were under discussion at AfD, what would your !vote (i.e., recommendation) be? Is there anything else worth pointing out about these articles?
#While it has been my experience that the corps of administrators includes some wise, patient individuals, it also includes an unfortunate minority who seem to think being given the mop means they are no longer bound by our civility policies and conventions. Personally, I think it is even more important for administrators to always do their best to be civil, because we should be counting on them to set an example for less experienced contributors, and because when they are interacting with non-administrators it is not a fair fight if they get down in the gutter. If you are entrusted with administrator authority will you do your best to always be civil, and to call in another administrator, when you feel tempted to respond in kind to incivility? How would you react if you came across a fellow administrator who seemed to be lapsing from the level of civility, collegiality and AGF you think we should all observe?
#This is (was?) a category administrators could list themselves in, if they were willing to be open to a review of their performance. Do you support this idea, and would you consider listing yourself there?
#Personally I think it is important to approach each question posed to me with an open mind as to whether I made a mistake. I think it is important to be willing to openly acknowledge when I have made a mistake. I think it is important to be willing to try to fix my mistakes. I see these as corolaries of WP:AGF – as efforts to prove we deserve WP:AGF. As above, although our corps of administrators includes some wise and patient individuals, it has been my experience that it also includes an unfortunate minority who follow the meme "never explain, never apologize", who are unwilling or unable to consider the possibility they made a mistake. If you were entrusted with administrator authority would you do your best to approach each question with an open mind? Would you do your best to own up to making mistakes, and be prepared to reverse yourself, and take other measures to clean up after your mistakes?
#''('''Task force note:''' – To which one of the RfA replied: ''What on earth does this have to do with being an administrator? This is a question for the OTRS or any other Wikimedia. I could write a three paragraph reply, but this has nothing to do with the bit'')'' "Theobold Johnson III" is notable for having been involved in a football cheating scandal and also writes books about orchids, illustrated with beautiful pictures. Johnson has written several self-published books about orchids, and in their autobiographies and interviews he describes himself as "the greatest living orchid man" and "widely recognized by the academic world as the greatest orchid scholar in the world". Johnson refers to himself as "Dr. Johnson" or "Professor Johnson" frequently in print. Johnson also asserts in print that he is a professor in the Botany Department at the famous "Winthrop College" and has given his mailing address as "c/o Winthrop College" for many years. Johnson often writes that all other people studying orchids are morons and even all other botanists are stupid and vile disgusting fools who should be publicly flogged or worse.
#''('''Task force note:''' 562 words!)'' In the course of writing a Wikipedia biography about Johnson, you start to uncover disturbing information. First, you are able to find a mention of a "Theobold Johnson III" on archived versions of the Winthrop College website from 1994–1997, but there is no mention of Johnson on earlier versions of the website, or later versions. A "T. Johnson, III" is listed as a visitor in the Computer Science Department of Winthrop College in the 1994, 1995, 1996 and 1997 versions of the website, and a phone number is given. You contact the President's office at Winthrop College and the Dean of Science office at Winthrop College and ask if Johnson is or was a faculty member there. Receiving no reply, you ask a friend who knows the Dean personally to ask the Dean privately. The word comes back from your friend that he has talked to the Dean privately, and that Johnson is an embarrassment and never had a faculty appointment at Winthrop College and just has his mail forwarded from Winthrop College due to some arrangement he made with someone in the Winthrop College mailroom 25 years previously. Johnson never was on the payroll of Winthrop College and never had an official position at Winthrop College and has not been on campus for 10 years or more. Johnson was listed for a few years on the telephone list and was a short term visitor, but this was just a courtesy and he was one of 3500 visitors a year who get this courtesy. The Dean's office then, thanks to the probing of your friend, issues a very carefully worded "official statement" about Johnson, stating he was never a faculty member at Winthrop College and inviting further inquiries to their Press Office, and sends you a copy. You do some more checking, and find no evidence that Johnson has a PhD or any degree in botany or science whatsoever, at least from Liberty Washington University, as he claims. You do find a record at Liberty Washington Community College that Johnson obtained a bachelor's degree in history 30 years previously. You also find a report in the local newspaper that Johnson was expelled from Liberty Washington Community College for theft while he was an undergraduate, and then was readmitted and eventually graduated. You look at various lists and directories of prominent orchid scholars and find no mention of a Theobold Johnson in any edition of these directories. You also dig up 5 reviews of Johnson's books on orchids in various scholarly journals from different botanists and orchid scholars from Harvard and University of Pennsylvania and Yale. These reviews are uniformly poor, and state that Johnson is a charlatan and a fraud and his books are replete with errors and the worst possible nonsense. You then find another interview of Johnson published in Sports Illustrated where it is stated that Johnson has no PhD or other Doctorate, but it is a title that people use for him out of respect for his tremendous knowledge and learning. How would you write a biography of this person on Wikipedia? What would be reasonable and accurate and ethical? What would be fair? What should Wikipedia do if this person contacts Wikipedia and demands that it write his biography the way he dictates? What if this person threatens legal action if Wikipedia does not do what he asks?
====Too broad====
#What is your opinion on the current BLP policy, and what work have you done (if any) with BLPs?
#Do you feel that pages can be moved without a discussion first to form consensus, and do you feel that WP:BOLD overrides that?
#What is your interpretation of IAR, and do you think that common sense should automatically overweigh policies in any area on Wikipedia?
#Say this RFA were to pass, and about a month from now, a user comes to your talk page and asks you, as an uninvolved administrator, to close some long discussion about the non-free image policy. How would you respond to this request?
#Could you give us some examples of what you think are your best contributions to XfD discussions?
#Could you clarify what kind of contributions you plan to make related to CSD?
#When patrolling new pages, what things do you look to do and what do you consider before you hit the "Page patrolled" link, or nominate for CSD, or whatever? (I ask partly for my own education, because I've only recently started doing NPP, and a few tips from an admin candidate would be welcome).
#Which of Wikipedia's many policies and guidelines do you feel is the most important?
#Since you intend to use the tools to block vandals, how many warnings do you think are necessary before a block is implemented?
====Irrelevant, or prying into private personal opinion====
#Agree or disagree: Wikipedia is a better reference than either Citizendium or Encyclopedia Britannica. Why?
#''('''Task force note:'''About the appeals for donations. Not answered by candidate)'' Q:Which of the "personal appeals" speaks to you the most? Why?'' Candidate's A:'' I am sorry, could you clarify the question a little? Do you mean what personal appeals in general or do you mean a specific set? ''Poser's reply:'' The personal appeals that are currently displayed at the top of pages such as this one; they are worth reading if you haven't already?.
#What is your general philosophy about AfD closings? Are they too often ruled "keep" when the arguments for keeping are too weak? Too often closed as "delete" when the arguments for deletion are not compelling? Too often closed as "no consensus" when the admin doing the closing should actually make a decision? Are your criteria significantly different for MFD closings?
#What are your interests in real life, and the answer can not be Wikipedia. Would you start editing articles with your interest if you pass or fail this RFA?
#How did you originally get involved with wikipedia?
#Do you view the glass of water that is Wikipedia as half-full or half-empty?
#In your view is it possible for a Wikipedia article to be the best English language reference on a subject or does WP:Original research make that an impossibility?
#You have a userbox that encourages others to say no to political correctness. What parts of Wikipedia's content or culture do you believe are overly politically correct? Why?
#I would like to inquire whether there are any specific weak points in your work that you feel may lead others to oppose this RfA.
#Do you know any languages other than English?
#What is your take on the essay "Say no to Commons"?
#Do you think the current warning/blocking system is too harsh?
#What is your opinion on the double standard between admins and other editors? If an admin was edit-warring with a non-admin, how would you administer the blocks?
#Are you an inclusionist? Or a deletionist? Or at what point in between? ''('''Task force note:''': Some people openly admit through their infoboxes which way they lean. Some people are open about their bi- or homosexuality or their outlook on religion; others prefer not to discuss their private situation. ''('''Task force note:'''A good answer answer to such a question would be: From my editing habits it would appear that I’m a deletionist. It’s what I get accused of by stroppy editors. What they, and you, don’t know is that for every article I’ve proposed for some form of deletion, I’ve passed as patrolled, categorized, templated, assessed, repaired some basic MoS, and added some refs to several hundred.'')
#What is your view on the ongoing evolution of WP's policies and guidelines: should they be descriptive or prescriptive? Please provide your reasoning.
#Do you believe that articles on wikipedia have inherent rights? If so, what are those rights?
#In your opinion, which is the least useful or effective policy or guideline, and why? If given the opportunity, how would you change it?
#The RFA process is frequently acknowledged to be a harsh affair, with high levels of criticism of editors, a strong focus on conforming (in actions and answers) to policy strictly to the letter of the law, and a focus on statistics. Do you have any thoughts on how to make the process more open to both specialists (i.e. copyright) and editors who focus on contentious / difficult topics?
#Just out of curiosity, what's your username mean?
#What is the area of Wikipedia you like the most?
#Would you sacrifice your own life to save Wikipedia? Why or why not?
#Do you believe that "fallen" users can be rehabilitated, and if so, how?
#Do you believe that Wikipedians have rights? If so, what will you do to uphold them?
#can you explain you articles for creation barnstar?
#What does being an administrator mean to you? Why do you want to be an administrator?
#Not withstanding current policy, what is your personal opinion on this matter? In your ideal encyclopaedia, should someone who meets one of the SNGs but not GNG have an article on Wikipedia?
#Have you ever taken a wikibreak? If so, how often do you take the breaks, for how long on average do they last, and what do you do during one of them?
#My support is pretty assured, but someone has to ask this. What is your view on our current notability criteria, particularly with regards to living people?
#I see from your contributions that you had 2 wikibreaks (I do note there was some activity during both periods) both approximately 6 months in length. Would you mind letting us know what caused those periods of inactivity and if the circumstances which caused those periods are likely to occur again?
#Can you explain a bit as to why you had a slow start here. You seem to have made no edits for about 30 months. (This question will not change my !vote, I'm just curious)
#Your 1st edit was in December of 2005 but you only became active on Wikipedia in July of 2009. I am curious in regards to your slow start on the project when compared to the 15,000 edits that you have amassed since July of 2009. What caused your slow start and years long absence?
#Your first edits were 2 edits, both to talk pages, and both with full sigs. You didn't edit again for 8 months, and even then, largely to talk pages. How long did you edit as an IP, and why the long string of edits right before Christmas in 2006?
#Why did you hardly make any edits for over two years after you registered with this account?
#Why haven't you created any new articles on subjects you are passionate about?
#What is Wikipedia's greatest flaw?
#What is Wikipedia's greatest strength?
#If you had to pick one userbox to add to your user page, which would it be?
#There are many types of admin, and they all have different styles and go about there admin duties in different ways. Who are some specific admins that you see as role models and you would like to emulate if you could?
#I see this question at RFA sometimes and I like the question so: Which current Admin would you most like to emulate if you were to receive adminship?
#What are your feelings on the way that biographies of living people are treated, and what changes should be made to the way that Wikipedia handles them (if any)?
#To what extent do you feel that age (and/or experience) plays a role in the success (or failure) of an RfA?
#Would you mind briefly summarizing your language skills in "Babel"-format (e.g. "en-N, es-2, de-1")?
#Should "long-unsourced BLP" become a speedy deletion criterion?
#What are your views on the Petition against IAR abuse?
#What measures do you think Wikipedia should take to protect personally identifiable information about editors that are under the age of majority, and how will you deal with such cases as an admin?
#What do you think shows the best totality of your behaviour as an editor? borrowed from Tznkai [1]
#You plan to do work with images. What is your view of non-free files being used on Wikipedia, the free encyclopaedia, and why do you hold that view?
#What is your opinion of the current Criteria for Speedy Deletion and how, if at all, would you improve them if the decision was left entirely to you?
#Would you see it as part of the admin role to issue orders, for example, banning a user from a page or topic? If so, what process would you employ?
#Do you feel that administrators, in general, are too swift or too reluctant to block?
#If you came across a statement of intent to commit violence – either self-directed or against or other(s) would you contact law enforcement? Why or why not and if yes, under what circumstances?
#Which of Wikipedia's many policies and guidelines do you feel is the most important?
#Do you believe WP:Before is good practice in WP and should WP:Before be strengthened and/or adopted as a guideline in its own right?
#Do you see yourself ever standing for positions "higher" than that of administrator?
#Do you believe that the notability guidelines are to be strongly followed, and that they are based on verifiability? Do you believe verifiability is an essential element of keeping an article around?
#A user asks you a strange and frankly pointless question at an RfA. Do you answer it?
#Could you comment on your opinion of [[WP:PROF]]?
#Has any event, policy or dispute on Wikipedia caused you to consider leaving?
#Wikipedia claims that its goal is to collate all human knowledge into one encyclopaedia. However, through guidelines such as WP:GNG and WP:ATHLETE, its editors have decided that the majority of human knowledge is not "notable" enough for inclusion. What is your view on this apparent hypocrisy?
#What question did were you not asked that you would like to answer?
#Given the chance, which policy or guideline on Wikipedia would you modify, how would you do so, and why?
#You removed certain userboxes from your userpage earlier this year...can you explain why you did this?
#Has RfA been too picky in the past? Not necessarily in your first one, but generally?
#Write a convincing oppose rationale against yourself for this RfA, and then write a convincing rebuttal on how you have addressed the concerns in your oppose.
#''('''Task force note:''' Candidate did not answer this question, but passed with flying colours)'' Assume that you have been given carte-blanche to make one change only to Wikipedia policy. Obviously, the question is [a] What would you change? and [b] What is about that one change that makes it, to you, more important than any other?
#Since you are a military man: if you were determined to vandalize Wikipedia what would you consider the most effective way to do so? Is Wikipedia capable of robust response to such a threat?
#What term do you want as admin? When do you intend to resign or submit yourself for reconfirmation? If "never," why are you suited to adminship-for-life?
#Why did you became a member of Wikipedia and served it for years?And please elaborate your answers and tell it truthfully. This is a matter of your own self-respect.
====Deliberately negative====
#What contributions are you least proud of, and in what way may they (in your opinion) have affected your judgment?
#Seeing that you'll most probably qualify in this RfA, let's throw you some trivia, a wrong answer to which will ensure that all the supporters will surely shift to the oppose category.
#You have attracted opposition below for the perceived reactionary nature of much of your work here. What constructive contributions of yours can you point to outside the realm of mitigating damaging or potentially harmful content and contributions from others?
====Multiple questions under the pretext of one====
#What are the conditions under which you would block an editor for civility issues or failing to adhere to consensus?
====Questioner doesn’t know====
#(A story based on real events) You're closing an AFD on some mathematical theory. The content looks ample, neat and well referenced to old peer-reviewed journals, all behind the paywall, and even abstracts are barely accessible. The article title doesn't show up much on Google (and in titles of the provided refs). There are 3 votes delete because of lacking notability, but the voters admit they don't understand the subject, vote because of Google hits, and can't tell whether the problem is in the wrong title or wrong content (the author is not a native speaker and might have mistranslated the terms). A message was posted at the corresponding WP project, but no help arrived. How would you close that?
====Questioner doesn’t give a cue to the number of keep votes====
#What are your thoughts on Wikipedia Review? What influence do you think it has on some of the more controversial Wikipedia policies? Do you participate there?
#You are interested in new pages patrol and WP:CSD (speedy deletion). Imagine that you come across a new article on a living person which would be controversial as a speedy (say one full several page article reference on the subject and a few short news articles). Let's say you read it and notice it is written in a very negative manner and the person is a minor bureaucrat covered only by local newspapers in a small city mainly for a scandal. How do you react? Let's say you tag it and notice a couple weeks later it is unchanged. What do you do? Also, you are interested in CSD but not in XfD. Do you think your lack of knowledge of the deletion "case law" might hinder you efforts? Do you ever come across articles which can't be speedied but that you don't think should really be in the encyclopaedia? Sorry for the multiple questions but I'm trying to get an understanding for the new pages review process, which I think is important. When you click a new page and hit it with some tags, the yellow highlighting goes away; additionally, some people may take the tagging as a certification that the article doesn't need major attention and that urgent issues have been addressed.
#Do you have a strong password? If your request is successful will you pledge to change that password periodically? Have you considered adding a committed identity to your user page to protect your account in the even that it should be compromised?
====Questioner not understanding clear answers====
#In your above answer you mention that an admin should only close through counting numbers, except in a few select cases. In which situations would you consider the strength of arguments rather than the number of people voting either way? ''Candidate's A:'' I didn't say that. I said that the outcome should reflect the community's consensus in the context of that discussion. How to interpret consensus in those individual cases is something that is subject to a broader level of consensus—obviously most people feel that it's reasonable to consider the strength of arguments to an extent, and I respect that.
====Questioner fishing for feedback on his own work====
#What do you think of the essay xxxxxxxxxxxx?
#Do you think that you would find any of the scripts in xxxxxxx/monobook.js helpful? If so, please feel free to add them to your own monobook/vector.js, and suggest some for me.
#Since it seems to be topical at the moment, what is your view of Wikipedia's civility policies? Do you think they work? Could they be improved? How would you enforce them? (NB, for myself at least, I'm not looking for a 'right' answer, rather for your take on it).
====Deliberately prolonging the agony====
#Sincerely, thank you. I regret the sweat you have had over this. Do you think that WP's policies and guidelines should crystallize around and arise out of the community's current practices and its current views on consensus, or do you think that policy formation should take place in the various community fora (RfC etc.) and then be imposed on the wider community. 2–3 lines will suffice. I regret my inefficient communication in my first question, I'm often taken aback myself about the parlance used around here; anyway I now know that you could be (have been?) a speech writer for any politician, any party, not offending anyone. :-)
====Participants not doing their the required homework====
#''('''Task force note:''' asked on several RfA)'' How many articles have you created from scratch? How many pages for articles, templates, redirects, etc. that you've significantly worked on have been nominated for deletion? Could you link to a couple?
#Aside from XXXXXXXX, which articles have you created? Could you list a few of your recent substantive edits?
#Please expand on #2, specifically with respect to encyclopaedia content: What articles have you created or improved? Have you contributed to any evaluated content, such as a DYK, GA, or featured content?
#You mentioned concerns that people would oppose based on lack of article editing experience. Personally I don't think this is a big deal (though I know it is to some others), as long as you've shown understanding in how articles should be, and an idea of how to get to them. Are you able to demonstrate this?
#Have any articles that you started become Good, A-Class, or Featured? Which ones?
#Have you added significant content to any articles and if so what are your best contributions?
#Could you point to three articles whose content you feel you are the primary author of? These could be articles you've created, or articles in which most of the content was written by you.
====Miscellaneous====
#If Admin roles were compartmentalized, in other words a bureaucrat assigned Admins to various Mop and bucket tasks in WP based on the Admin’s experience and desires and you could only work in those areas, which one of the following compartments would you chose to work in and why? (chose only one): a. The Deletion department, where your job was to close CSDs, PRODs, and AfDs. b. The Vandalism department, where your job was to patrol for vandalism, revert it and block vandals. c. The Article Improvement department, where your job was to find ways to help new and old editors improve WP articles and bring them in-line with WP policies and guidelines and prevent their deletion. d. The Dispute Resolution department, where your job was to help resolve disputes between editors on WP. ''('''Task force suggested answer:''' I wouldn’t choose any because it would no longer be worth me asking for the tools. There wouldn’t be enough work in just one area to justify a need for them. I have no interest in working in every conceivable corner of the Wikipedia, but neither am I about to be committed to being allocated a single task. It’s like the difference between cricket and football. At school they always put me in goal, in rugby they always put me in the scrum as hooker. I hated both. In cricket, you have an opportunity to be more versatile. Cricketers need to be reasonably good fielders, batsmen, and bowlers. I excelled at cricket.
#Do you intend to work on Categories for Deletion? If not, why not? If not, is it acceptable to not be an expert in category deletion policy? Should there be more documentation on what is allowed in categories, as is the case for articles? Where should a confused user go for category questions? Are you willing to answer all these questions?
#''('''Task force note:''' Questioner obviously confuses Wikipedia with an Internet forum)'' 7. If you were a mod, how would you deal with this type of comment (block, warn, stand by passively, etc.) from a mod? Would your opinion change if this comment were made by a "commoner"?
#What is the role of the administrator? By that I mean, what part do they perform in developing the encyclopaedia?
#''('''Task force note''': The question is good but discusses an unrealistic goal. Inappropriate however for RfA)''. For the last 5 years, the number of active contributors has been dropping. The Wikimedia foundation, and the larger Wikimedia movement, would like to increase participation and have a proposed goal of 150,000 active contributors by 2015. This is a four-fold increase over the current 35,000 active contributors. What do you feel has been Wikipedia's difficulty in attracting and retaining contributors. What do you think Wikipedia should change in order to reach the 150,000 goal?
====Close paraphrased repeats of set questions====
#What are your best content contributions? What have you done that has demonstrated your personal involvement in developing the content involved in building an encyclopaedia?
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==References==
{{Reflist}}
[[Category:User essays about adminship]]
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