Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2024-09-26/Opinion
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asilvering's RfA debriefing
Optional: write a lede — not necessarily a WP:LEAD. Interesting > encyclopedic.
First, the bullet points:
- It turns out a week is a really, really long time
- Even if your RfA isn't contentious or stressful, it will probably be exhausting
- Good nominators might not be essential, but I can't imagine having done RfA without mine; a steady hand on the tiller really, really helps (thanks especially to Vanamonde93)
- Designated monitors are a blessing (thanks theleekycauldron), especially when you're doing the discussion-first format and you would like some acknowledgement that you didn't somehow transclude your RfA straight into the void
- If I may offer advice to future RfA hopefuls: don't post answers to questions right away. Write the answers in a text file, go take a nap, and then post them.
- If I may offer advice to future RfA participants: if you could not, without being overcome by embarassment, apply your question/vote to both a) a teenager of your acquaintance and b) your grandmother, you should probably rephrase it.
As for how I got here: Vanamonde asked me if I was interested in running some time ago, and I deferred for a number of reasons that became more obviously hollow as time went on. For one, "I'm too busy," doesn't work as a very good excuse if you just go find something else to do, like starting a new kind of GAN backlog drive. My second nominator was an easy choice, but that doesn't mean I wasn't nervous about asking. (Don't laugh, czar!) Reading the nomination statements made my heart grow three sizes and also made me want to disappear into the wallpaper. (I'm not good at praise.)
For a little while, I was of a mind to wait out the end of the discussion period trial, but once I'd got my nominators lined up it started to feel like I just needed to get it over with. Then, right after I'd said "alright, now's good, let's do this," Femke showed up in my inbox asking if I'd ever thought of running. It felt so good to be able to tell someone "you're just in time!" instead of brushing them off with some kind of excuse.
I tried my level best to ignore all the discussion and voting while it was happening, but it turns out that's really hard - not just because it takes willpower, but also because mediawiki kept showing me the discussion section whenever I tried to preview my answers to the questions. And it's very hard to avoid knowing the precise count once voting starts, since that's right at the top of the page. So I gave up, and read everything. If you're thinking of RfA and you're the anxious sort who will be constantly fighting the temptation to check in, line up something to do with friends/family so you don't glue yourself to the refresh button. There's no way around this bit. It sucks, and a week is a long time.
Luckily for me, people had really nice things to say. I really appreciate everyone who participated and everyone who came by to congratulate me afterwards. I'm doing my best to avoid the mushroom effect and to remain indifferent to both praise and blame. Thank you all for ignoring and then quietly removing the joke oppose; I was a bit worried they'd be murdered. As for the discussion period, I do think it helped things remain civil and on-track, but I'm ambivalent on the experiment overall.
Being an admin has been fun so far. Everyone's been really helpful, and if I've been driving anyone crazy with all my questions, they've been kind enough not to tell me. Special thanks to Aoidh, who has already stopped me from doing something stupid, kindly and firmly, like disarming a wayward toddler running with scissors.
Maybe my opinion isn't worth much, since I had such a smooth RfA compared to so many others, but if you think you'd probably succeed at RfA but but you're holding back since it sounds like a bad way to spend a week: I think you should go for it. It's possible that someone will drag up something stupid you said four years ago and try to rub your nose in it, or that some personal flaw of yours will be magnified beyond all reason. It's possible some people will try to use your RFA as a soapbox to complain about policies or norms they dislike. It's very likely that you will spend the whole week waiting for the other shoe to drop, whether any of those things happen or not. Even an uncontentious RFA can be an exhausting and unpleasant experience - mine was all of those things.
But it's also very likely that, over the course of a week, somewhere between one and three hundred people will show up to say something nice about you. Many of those people will be folks whose opinion you really, truly value. Some of them will be people you can't remember ever hearing of before, but who nonetheless have something deeply gratifying to say. You should run.
Plus, now I can tell my colleagues that I "have tenure, on Wikipedia." I'm sure they'll all be very impressed.
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