Anecdotally, I see a lot of people decline the opportunity because the
RFA gauntlet is so obnoxious.
Looking around, reform of RfA seems to have been thought of seriously in
2006, but perhaps not since. [[Wikipedia:Admin coaching]] has offered
one solution: is this not being productive? One thing that occurs to me
is that a self-test page could be useful.
Charles
There's a self test that was developed in 2008, I found it useful but
I think it is rarely used and might be out of date.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Filll/AGF_Challenge_2_Multiple_Choice
Admin coaching is pretty much dead after coachees started being
opposed for going through admin coaching.
There have been no end of attempts to reform RFA mooted at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Requests_for_adminship
Even if the crats started to ignore incivil !votes, opposes that are
not supported by difs and opposes for supporting particular policiess,
we still have a problem that expectations in terms of tenure and
editcountitis have put adminship out of reach for most editors.
Personally I favour the on the job training option - increase the
amount of training modules and expect admins to complete relevant
modules before using an unfamiliar subset of the tools.
Another option is to agree a minimum number of active admins needed,
and hold a monthly election to restore numbers to that level. This
isn't ideal but it would have the advantage of negating the arbitrary
inflation of RFA standards.
But the page has long become deadlocked and it seems to be difficult
to get a consensus that we have a phenomena, let alone that RFA is
broken and needs change.
I agree that a "lot of people decline the opportunity because the RFA
gauntlet is so obnoxious". I think part of the recent downturn is the
chill effect of some recent very unpleasant RFAs. But the escalation
of standards and arbitrary nature of the process are also deterring or
delaying candidates. I have two potential candidates who I have been
speaking to, one has said he may run after he has done 10,000 edits
and the other is concerned that his huggling might be counted against
him (his >10,000 non huggle edits on their own would very probably get
him through).
I think that the projects would be a good hunting ground for potential
admins, as would be looking at currently active editors who have both
Rollback and Autoreviewer. Lots of editors started editing in the last
30 months, it would be nice to get a few more of them as admins, and
even with current RFA standards I'm sure we can find more than 2
candidates a month who can pass RFA. But if we want adminship to be
the norm for all longterm clueful, civil contributors we will need a
new method to appoint admins.
--
WereSpielChequers