Forum:RfA voting and reasoning

I know it seems ironic that I'm bringing this up given there's an RfA currently up but I feel regardless that it is something which should be discussed.

Looking at RfAs in general, I've noticed that in the reasoning for a vote there's more emphasis on the personal views of the nominee by the one who's voting and not enough emphasis on how they would benefit from and why they would need the administrator tools.

A common reason for a support vote I've noticed is along the lines of "X deserves this", which seems to be more to do with flattering the nominee rather than focusing on the need for the tools. Adminship isn't "deserved", it's just a set of tools which the community has entrusted onto a user to extend their role on-wiki based on how they would benefit from the tools.

I do also recall another two RfAs in the past where one user was supported by another user based on not only their edits but also on personal ties while on another RfA, the same user gave a "weak support" to a user based on editcount when actually that user had roughly the same (or slightly more, I can't really remember) editcount as the nominee in the first RfA, just not as strong with personal ties to the user who voted.

The reason I bring this up is because of the concern that users are supporting each other more on personal ties than actual suitability for the administrator tools. I'd like to discuss this with the aim that RfA (and probably RfB too) votes should be more to do with voting for the user as a candidate rather than a user who "deserves the rights for being a good friend".

What's everyone's stance on this? 18:51, May 3, 2013 (UTC)