On 6/15/06, Stephen Bain stephen.bain@gmail.com wrote:
I would also suggest more standard questions for candidates, and encourage people who add questions of their own.
I actually dislike the questions, as it reduces RfA to a beauty pageant. Most of the questions are pretty retarded anyway, like "a vandal shows up, but claims to be Jimbo, and starts heavily editing FAs. Three hippos in pink tutus come past and tell you that he's ok, but then a purple geranium points out that this user has been blocked in the past. What do you do?" In most cases, RfA candidates aren't equipped to deal with such questions, and they shouldn't have to: the mechanics of being an admin are learnt on the job, by asking other admins. In other cases, the candidate is probably going to end up giving a "safe" answer, which sounds good, but which no one is ever going to hold them accountable to.
In other words, the questions only test whether the candidate knows what RfA voters want to hear. Unfortunately, that's not a particularly useful quality.
Steve