User:Hey man im josh/RfA thoughts
Note that this page is a work in progress... I've long meant to write a debrief, but I think I've been waiting too long instead of casually chipping away at it. So, to start out, I'm just throwing some thoughts down as a starting point that I'll begin to expand on and reformat appropriately.
- Adminship IS no big deal
- No one knows every policy and MOS guideline by heart, it's ok to be wrong at times
- Know your history, consider what type of questions may come your way
- After 1 year of adminship, I had made 17,416 admin actions, sixth amongst non-bot admins in that time [1]
- During my first year of adminship, in terms of admin actions among non-bots, I ranked... [2]
- Total actions – 6th (17,416)
- Deletions – 4th (15,715)
- Revision deletions – 46th (139)
- Log deletions – N/A (0 actions)
- Restores – 9th (399)
- (Re)blocks – (785)
- Unblocks – N/A (0 actions)
- (Re)protects – 58th (76)
- Unprotects – N/A (0 actions)
- Rights (permission changes) – 1st (214)
- Merges – 6th (87)
- Imports – N/A (0 actions)
- AbuseFilter – N/A (0 actions)
- Content model – 20th (1 action, template editors were included in this stat)
- I expected to do more work blocking individuals than I have because I used to make a LOT of reports.
- It's easier to request someone else be blocked when you know there's someone checking your work. When you're the last one checking it becomes more difficult to say, with certainty, that an individual should be indeffed, except for the most obvious cases.
- I have immense response for the admins working at ANI based on the above, I just don't have it in me.
What I want in a candidate:
- Humble
- Good temperament
- Willingness to admit when they're wrong
- Can be firm when necessary, if necessary, without being a prick about it (firmness does not necessarily = being a dick, there's a fine line)
- Know their own limits
- This one is particularly key
- I know what areas not to mess around in and I know where I'm comfortable
Musing from my RfA
- I held off for several months on running because I wanted to promote an article to good article status
- I couldn't force myself into it, nothing peaked my interest enough to want to write or expand one, it's just not me
- It's just o
- Good articles are not required to pass at RfA, as demonstrated by myself and 3 of the 5 people at WP:RFX300 not having had GAs at the time of their successful run (Tamzin, Floquenbeam, and myself)
- Content work is necessary to pass, but not in the traditional sense of
- Even if your RfA is successful, it can still be stressful
- Set aside time to disconnect during the RfA, do not be watching it like a hawk because you WILL stress yourself out
- There's no need to rush to answer questions
- Questions are optional, but some people may infer incorrect opinions based on a lack of answer
- Do not lie
- If you were wrong in the past and someone calls you out on it, as they did on mine, explain exactly where and how you were wrong, how you've improved upon that
- Don't overexplain when you can be direct (see Q4 for me)
- Some questions can be answered quickly, some need to be drafted and revisited an hour or so later and further tweaked. I would draft answers in the evening, sleep on it, and adjust my answer as necessary in the morning, sometimes entirely rewriting my answer.
- For the love of all that is good, do not ask unnecessary questions if you have absolutely no concerns about a candidate, unless you're trying to give them a chance to highlight an aspect of their contributions. Every additional question sucks.
Section regarding "content work" and what that may entail?
- GA / FA work
- FLs are recognized as sufficient content work to some, but seemingly not in the same way that GAs are
- NPP work – A revelation from my RfA was that NPP was appreciated and recognized as sufficient enough to compensate for my lack of GAs
- AfC work
- Creating articles