that's true. But if the voting is confidential, and radio button clicks, then I'm afraid there would be lots of baseless oppose votes. —usernamekiran (talk)00:27, 9 October 2024 (UTC)
If I recall correctly, that is one of the reasons why some people support this idea - it allows for opposition without retaliation. Primefac (talk) 11:48, 9 October 2024 (UTC)
It may indicate a couple of things. It could mean that the typical potential candidates contacted by the usual group of nominators aren't enticed by the election process, and that an election is less daunting to editors who aren't inclined to look for a nominator. Putting those together, the trial is pulling from a broader pool of candidates. isaacl (talk) 04:13, 9 October 2024 (UTC)
I reckon the fact that all other elections across Wikimedia (ArbCom, steward, U4C, BoT) operate solely with self-noms probably has something to do with it as well. Giraffer (talk) 14:07, 9 October 2024 (UTC)
This is absurd. We're up to 19 candidates now. Does anyone realistically think anyone has the time to review 19 candidates within 10 days to make a realistic determination whether all of these candidates are ready for adminship? I sure as hell don't. I'll be voting oppose on all of them that I don't have a chance to review. At a bare minimum, the number of candidates for an election should be limited to 5 per election, and no more. This is overwhelming. --Hammersoft (talk) 20:38, 13 October 2024 (UTC)
It is a secret ballot, so you are allowed to vote oppose for any reason whatsoever, even one that is absurd and unrelated to the candidate like "I haven't reviewed the candidate". The hope is that sufficiently many voters evaluate sufficiently many candidates to make the outcome meaningful. —Kusma (talk) 20:46, 13 October 2024 (UTC)
Thanks for the sideways comment. My opposes for the candidates I don't have the time to review is both an oppose to an unreviewed candidate and an opposition to this system in the first place. Nobody considered the implications of this system, including having potentially dozens of candidates running at once. Nobody has that kind of time. That means candidates will be getting through who aren't ready, who haven't been vetted. Opposing such candidates is a necessity, not unrelated to the candidate. Thank you. --Hammersoft (talk) 20:51, 13 October 2024 (UTC)
This latest round of RFA reform does what previous reforms did not: it is throwing a lot of things at the wall and seeing what sticks. If your predictions turn out to be true (i.e. too many candidates, not enough time, and unqualified editors getting the mop as a result) then that will be born out in the feedback process at the end of it. If enough people feel as you do, then I suspect the number of successful candidates in this part of the overhaul will be low, and it will not happen again. Primefac (talk) 21:08, 13 October 2024 (UTC)
Back when I became an admin, about two or three new RfAs were posted every day. Not every potential voter evaluated every candidate (there were only eighty-one voters total on mine) but candidates were still vetted (to the lower standards of the day). —Kusma (talk) 21:10, 13 October 2024 (UTC)
Fortunately, you don't have to review all of them, as there is the option to abstain on those you couldn't review. Much fairer to the candidates. I think a limit (of like 12/15) would be good for any future elections, even though I suspect there will be fewer candidates in a second election. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 20:52, 13 October 2024 (UTC)
1) "Neutral" might be a better default vote than "oppose".
2) It's not too late to propose that each candidate have a certain minimum number of supports+opposes to ensure that they receive enough scrutiny. This would prevent a situation where a candidate at the bottom of the list had like 20 supports and 0 opposes and gets elected with a very low quorum. You could propose this on WT:AELECT and we could implement it before the end of the election, if there is a strong enough consensus.
I'll be interested to see how this turns out. And I agree with Primefac, it's better to try something and see if it works than not try anything (the strategy for the past 15 years). If I were in charge, I'd have made a few changes, but this is worth an experiment. FYI, NL, voter guides are explicitly frowned on in the instructions. And I suspect (though I'm not sure) that it is too late to change the default to neutral. Question: is the order of the candidates going to be randomized each time someone votes? Floquenbeam (talk) 22:03, 13 October 2024 (UTC)
And I suspect (though I'm not sure) that it is too late to change the default to neutral. It sounds like the voting choices for each candidate will be support, abstain, and oppose. I have proposed that all choices default to abstain or blank, without objection so far. Further discussion is at Wikipedia talk:Administrator elections#Voting choices and defaults.
SecurePoll doesn't support randomizing the order of the candidates. I proposed that the third option be "Abstain" back in April, to accurately reflect the effect of that choice. SecurePoll setup will occur after the nominations are closed and the list of candidates is finalized. isaacl (talk) 01:29, 14 October 2024 (UTC)
My apologies; I misread another conversation on this topic (I should have thought about it some more, as my memory of previous discussions was that randomized order was supported). isaacl (talk) 05:20, 14 October 2024 (UTC)
I think the order should be random, not alphabetical. There are ballot ordering bias effects, and I'd prefer they be neutralized as much as possible. theleekycauldron (talk • she/her) 18:05, 14 October 2024 (UTC)
I see this as an absolute win. We should want more candidates willing to consider RFA. No single voter needs to personally evaluate every single candidate, just enough voters to collectively evaluate them all. Regardless of how many people get elected this cycle, this process is doing exactly as promised. Soni (talk) 17:44, 14 October 2024 (UTC)
Which is a disaster in the making. You're right. No single voters needs to personally evaluate all candidates. But, with 31 candidates no candidate is going to be properly vetted by enough. This is insane. Absolutely insane. --Hammersoft (talk) 18:00, 14 October 2024 (UTC)
Is it crazy to assume that people will vet as many candidates as possible, then leave the rest of their ballot blank/neutral, therefore not allowing/blocking bad/good candidates? Considering the order will likely be randomized I doubt this will lead to issues like the last candidate getting 1 support and 0 opposes then becoming an admin. I do think there should be a limit on the no. of candidates going forward (perhaps 10?) but I doubt we will get this many again. I think it's silly to oppose and possibly tank someone who could be a good admin for no real reason, but I guess one of the proposed benefits of this system is that you can oppose for whatever reason without badgering lol. Regardless, as Primefac said, everyone recognizes RfA has issues, but nobody wants to Do Anything about them. Why not throw stuff at the wall and see what sticks? ULPS(talk • contribs)18:23, 14 October 2024 (UTC)
(to allow insertion of table) I'm not going to vote to support someone whom I haven't vetted. I'm not going to vote neutral when the system is so obviously broken. Given the insane timeline and lack of controls over this, the default has to be oppose until a candidate can prove themselves. Let's compare this to ArbCom elections:
ArbCom Elections
Admin Elections
Candidates
11[1]
35
Self nom period
10 days
7 days
Discussion period
6 days
3 days
Voting period
14 days
7 days
([1] average over the last three cycles for ArbCom)
As you can see, we have 3 TIMES as many candidates, with HALF the discussion stage, and HALF the voting stage. I.e., the work load is essentially six times the load for ArbCom elections. Worse, voter guides are not allowed, so you can't turn to someone else's analysis to help guide you in your review. So here, you've got half the time, thrice as many candidates, and no assistance allowed. And this, to put people in a position which arguably has more day to day power and impact on the project than a member of ArbCom. This utter steaming pile could have been avoided if somebody had thought...even for a moment...about the impact of this system and where the failure points might be. What an absolute clusterf***. --Hammersoft (talk) 19:20, 14 October 2024 (UTC)
Coming in hot! If your goal is to vent, hopefully you feel better. if the goal is to persuade, then you might want to dial it down some. You're not coming off as persuasive. I believe this is not the first time you've used an "everyone is a moron except me" approach. Floquenbeam (talk) 19:43, 14 October 2024 (UTC)
If your goal is to insult me, it's not working. If your goal is to persuade me to think otherwise about this failed system, it's not working. You're coming off as attacking me. Have a nice day. --Hammersoft (talk) 19:54, 14 October 2024 (UTC)
You could also take a page from Floq here, and ask yourself "Is this comment productive, or am I simply getting a crack in?" Attempts to lower the temperature would be appreciated. Parabolist (talk) 21:40, 14 October 2024 (UTC)
By the way, while trying to wade through the last set of candidates, Xtools suddenly told me I was logged out and that it needed access to my accounts to allow me to view counts; is this ok? I've never seen this message before. Espresso Addict (talk) 19:47, 14 October 2024 (UTC)
If you try to access too many XTools pages over a short period of time, it asks you to sign in to make sure you're not a bot. Charlotte (Queen of Hearts • talk) 19:50, 14 October 2024 (UTC)
I was trying to assess Robert McClenon, so the problem could be over 100k edits? I assume it's not a security risk to allow it to access my accounts???? Espresso Addict (talk) 20:07, 14 October 2024 (UTC)
Nope, no security risk. XTools just wants to see that you're logged in to Wikimedia, so that it only does expensive calculations for humans rather than bots. –Novem Linguae (talk) 20:15, 14 October 2024 (UTC)
I do think it's going to be difficult to have any kind of meaningful discussion about 33 candidates in three days. It would be unfair to change the process half way through, so we're kind of locked into that now, but maybe next time we can limit the number of candidates, stagger the elections more, and/or allow more time for discussion. – Joe (talk) 20:08, 14 October 2024 (UTC)
Yeah, it's crazy we'd get 30+ candidates when we couldn't get even one a month with a traditional RfA. I don't think anyone would have predicted that. Clearly if we want to encourage people to run, this is a way to do that. Valereee (talk) 20:25, 14 October 2024 (UTC)
Postpone to what? There is, as I understand it, no agreement to doing this again and I can see that the crowded field may lead to opposition to doing it again. I suspect we'll just have to see how things work out. Wehwalt (talk) 22:00, 14 October 2024 (UTC)
That's actually a great idea. If we could do one per month for the next four months, maybe? Although maybe skip December because of ArbCom Elections...maybe one each Oct/Nov/Jan/Feb? If the scrutineers/Secure Poll aren't negatively affected. Valereee (talk) 22:01, 14 October 2024 (UTC)
If you are thinking long term, should the election process gain consensus support for ongoing use, sure, the various recent proposals (including the original one propsed in the 2024 reform discussions) are to have regularly scheduled elections. However running them regularly imposes a cost on the WMF support staff, as well as requiring scrutineers. The plans to make SecurePoll run on local wiki servers and be configurable by local admins would help alleviate the first issue, though there would still be a cost (and it's unclear when that might happen). Scrutineer resources could become a bottleneck (whether or not the role is filled by stewards as with the current trial, or by English Wikipedia editors). isaacl (talk) 22:12, 14 October 2024 (UTC)
If we could do one per month for the next four months, maybe? Getting WMF T&S to set up SecurePoll and the stewards to scrutineer it is an expensive process. I don't think we could convince those stakeholders to do this 4 times. –Novem Linguae (talk) 02:47, 15 October 2024 (UTC)
The process can be tweaked further if we want to have a more regular use of the SecurePoll. On zhwiki, they are pretty much mandated by the Foundation to use SecurePoll for voting on RfAsCheckUsers appointments, and after a RfC for the use of SecurePoll for RfAs (including interface admins and bureaucrats), and they do so regularly. But instead of just the stewards scruntinising, the local OSers can assist as well. Additionally, maybe tweak the duration of the discussion and/or voting further as well. If the concern is that there are too many applicants, extend the discussion to two weeks (also like that on zhwiki). – robertsky (talk) 22:40, 15 October 2024 (UTC)
Perhaps a more troubling aspect of this is that some of the voters are just going to vote mass neutral or even mass oppose for everyone they didn't get time to vet, and then some of those candidates are going to think "wait why do these 100 people think I'm not ready to be an admin", and we could be back to square one with shy candidates, because that outcome could well depress the volume of candidacies later. --Joy (talk) 11:38, 15 October 2024 (UTC)
So far as 'mass neutral' goes, neutral/abstain votes have no impact on the result. Mass opposes are certainly possible, but candidates could consider that some may be editors opposing the process, not them personally. — xaosfluxTalk13:09, 16 October 2024 (UTC)
</smdh>There are a few "obvious yes" and a few "obvious no" candidates I'm familiar with. That is, candidates for whom I am very confident I could predict the lopsided results of a traditional RFA. It will be interesting to see how much support an "obvious no" candidate gets (a reasonable stand-in for an overall lack of vetting), and how much opposition an "obvious yes" candidate gets (a reasonable stand-in for an overall default to no). --Floquenbeam (talk) 20:18, 14 October 2024 (UTC)
I'm not as worried about the practicality of evaluating the candidates, as some other editors are. Yes, there are significantly fewer days and significantly more candidates than what we have in ArbCom elections. But it's still 10 days from the end of nominations until the end of the time for voting (and 17 days from when at least some of the candidates came forward). And there are fewer than 33 candidates who need extensive research, given that some of them may be "obvious no"s. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:01, 14 October 2024 (UTC)
Actually, I forgot about the SecurePoll setup period when I wrote that, so 10 days is actually 17 days, and 17 days is actually 24. With 30+ candidates, one could, if one wants, research an average of approximately two candidates per day, which isn't necessarily so daunting. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:11, 15 October 2024 (UTC)
I'm surprised you're very confident on some. My concern has been the ways that moving from open voting to secret voting has typically caused a decrease in support percentages as people who might not vote otherwise in a public process do so in a private one (for any number of reasons). This happened way back when with ArbCom and CUOS and more recently with Stewards who ran for the U4C. So I'm concerned some people who would have passed with 95%+ in an open process will struggle or fail after "paying" a 15-30% private voting decrease. I hope your optimism is right and my pessimism is wrong. Barkeep49 (talk) 00:41, 19 October 2024 (UTC)
@Barkeep49: I think you may have misunderstood. I’m not confident about the results of this election; I’m curious about them. I’m confident that I know one candidate who would definitely have passed a normal RFA by a large margin, and I’m confident that I know a few who would never have. I’m saying it will be interesting to see how different this election’s results are from the few I know something about.
As far as "failure points" go with this process, I don't think anybody could have anticipated that we would have a problem with the number of candidates being this high, especially given that elections were aimed at solving the opposite problem. 36 candidates is an insane number – the last *year* to have 36 candidates run (at RfA) was 2017, let alone all at once. Only 14 people have run at RfA this year, and only 19 the year before. To have this many people running at once is unprecedented, and I can't fault anyone for not preparing for it. Giraffer (talk) 23:05, 14 October 2024 (UTC)
From what I can see, the analyses/tables that would go into an Arbcom-style guide can be split up and placed in the discussion section for individual candidates (please!!). Since there's no quota/priority to be filled, the associated explicit declarations of voting intentions and consolidated structure is less useful. ~Hydronium~Hydroxide~(Talk)~04:39, 15 October 2024 (UTC)
Speaking as a candidate, i'm not particularly offended by some of the "Oh my goodness! How awful" comments, because if i serve or not, i'm still here; speaking as a member of the candidate group, i find it quite offensive that some of my colleagues are seemingly being attacked ~ "There're too many of you, go away" ~ after they've answered an open call to the community; speaking as a member of the community, this is great, we wanted to test if a change in process would lead to a change in result, apparently the answer is Yes. Perhaps a little less horror and a little more in the way of thoughtful responses (as some here definitely are) would be more appropriate. Happy days, ~ LindsayHello05:55, 15 October 2024 (UTC)
Some folks seem determined to bring RFA culture to admin elections. Sorry about that, and thanks to all the candidates for having enough faith in the community to participate in this trial. Levivich (talk) 06:20, 15 October 2024 (UTC)
It really is heartening to see that there's this much interest even if there might be better ways to handle this logistically going forward. Clovermoss🍀(talk)06:33, 15 October 2024 (UTC)
With respect to the whole "oppose everyone I can't vet" thing: remember the law of large numbers still exists. Vet who you can, trust other editors to fill in the gaps. Almost certainly many more editors will vote in these elections than a typical RfA. So long as each voter vets who they can (even if it's only 5 candidates), including during the discussion period, and the voting order is randomised, I think the scrutiny received by each candidate will not be too dissimilar to an RfA.There is real opportunity for meaningful RfA reform in the form of these elections. Clearly the elections process needs changes in future iterations (if we continue it), but I hope we don't waste this iteration - and potentially the entire concept - by doing something like mass-voting oppose. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 12:06, 16 October 2024 (UTC)
We may have a problem with that as it isn't that obvious who is vetting which candidates. With the normal format it is easy to look at a three day old RFA and see how many people have opined on that candidate. That said this isn't the busiest RFA has ever been, we had 68 successful and 33 unsuccessful candidates in December 2005, so provided we find a way to spread RFA voters between candidates 31 should be doable. If we do wind up with a load of candidates rejected because a small number of voters oppose anyone they haven't had time to assess, then I hope those candidates consider a conventional RFA. Conversely if we have nearly 30 new admins and couple turn out to be insufficiently scrutinised, then I hope we find ways to batch this smaller in future. Though given the amount of time many of these candidates have been around, I suspect a repeat in 12 months will get rather fewer candidates. ϢereSpielChequers12:58, 16 October 2024 (UTC)
I am not incredibly familiar with this process, but I thought I understood it until now. Why is it necessary that the user above vets every candidate? As far as I understand, none of us have special status in terms of voting rights or veto power. Best, ForksForks (talk) 13:36, 16 October 2024 (UTC)
That might be the "idea", but the reality has always been that lazy voters like myself rely very largely on a sense that some other editors of competence have done the due diligence, picking that up as WSC says (relatively easy when noms were becoming rare). As I've said in a comment rather officiously moved off this page to somewhere more obscure (see just below), if I don't get that sense, I'm perfectly ready to oppose this batch en masse. Johnbod (talk) 17:43, 16 October 2024 (UTC)
Yes, I'm worried about that too. The only solution I can think of is voter guides, but those are apparently "discouraged". – Joe (talk) 18:16, 16 October 2024 (UTC)
I'm more and more feeling that the sentiments among those discussing the elections are disengaged from those of other editors. I have been trying to move broader types of discussion here, but the attempt below was boldly relocated by a candidate. Espresso Addict (talk) 18:22, 16 October 2024 (UTC)
I'm not sure if this was your intention, but this change has made it so that the section now appears both here and WT:AELECT#Notice not on watchlist, but with the version on RFA missing the large majority of responses, and with no link to the larger discussion. Bug Ghost🦗👻19:57, 16 October 2024 (UTC)
Also, the majority of candidates at RfA in recent years have had one or more nominators, so one can rely on their diligence/judgement, while the great majority of election candidates are self noms. Espresso Addict (talk) 18:18, 16 October 2024 (UTC)
You know, Hammersoft and I are usually on opposite ends of just about any discussion. In this case, I agree with Hammersoft. This is untenable, unreasonable, and is going to have a net negative result. Frankly, I'd suggest that candidates who think they would stand a good chance of passing in a different RFA format should withdraw from this. They're running a serious risk of failing RFA because of systemic issues, but it will still count as a failed RFA on their "record". I can't support proceeding with this election process, given the number of individuals who have signed up as candidates. Risker (talk) 02:25, 19 October 2024 (UTC)
Express yourself only on candidates of whom have an opinion, not on the others. Install a minimum number of votes required to establish concensus of fifty or so and have the election continue until the end of the voting cycle where the minimum is reached, possibly falling back to "concensus not reached" after three or four cycles. 2A01:E0A:CBA:BC60:96F2:D690:8206:39A1 (talk) 12:41, 19 October 2024 (UTC)
I believe the issue for some folks is that a quorum or minimum vote number is not part of the procedures, so it does not matter if you reach 70% with 7 votes or 70. Since the process is already running, I do not think it can be changed for this round. Primefac (talk) 13:02, 19 October 2024 (UTC)
Voting hasn't begun. It can be changed up until the SecurePoll is open. We need to have a minimum number of active votes for each candidate, or we're going to get admins who are poorly vetted, poorly prepared, and we'll probably also lose out on some who would have done just fine in other systems. Risker (talk) 03:28, 20 October 2024 (UTC)
I agree that changing the process anytime after candidacy is opened is a bad idea, and I'm going to take particular issue with Risker's edit summary of suggest 70 votes (either support or oppose). This would pass someone at 49s-21o and fail someone at 69s-0o, which is both absurd on its face and, worse, would make opposition be less bad for a candidate than abstention. If/when we do this again, we should pick a minimum number of supports, not a minimum number of total votes. —Cryptic04:36, 20 October 2024 (UTC)
"You're changing the rules on us half-way through" seems problematic for several reasons. How many candidates have, or would, complained about the addition of a quorum? Realistically, the ones who were hoping to get elected with a tiny number of expressed opinions which don't really represent a concensus anyway.
Adminship isn't a trophy, a prize or a recognition of something: an editor offers to help out and the response "we've got to check, hang on a bit" seems more reasonable than "we've got to check but don't have time so 'no'" 2A01:E0A:CBA:BC60:E54B:972C:8544:80FB (talk) 12:05, 20 October 2024 (UTC)
We've got a process. Let's run it and then discuss what needs to be done for next time, if there is one. If it's a trainwreck that defeats all candidates, I doubt many will hold the candidates' participation against them. I think whatever the outcome there, the wiki will survive. Wehwalt (talk) 14:24, 20 October 2024 (UTC)
The danger isn't that the process will "defeat" candidates, but that the process will let problematic editors—for example, who might even be incurring community opprobrium at noticeboards as we speak. SerialNumber5412914:38, 20 October 2024 (UTC)
That doesn't seem very plausible to me. They will surely get a visible comment or question about that, and if not replied to adequately, these candidates are unlikely to succeed. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 14:42, 20 October 2024 (UTC)
We should be prepared for some bad admins as a result of this election. It's a near certainty. We don't yet know whether the election will be easier or harder to pass than RfA (or more plausibly: which qualities in candidates it will emphasise and de-emphasise relative to RfA). But it was certainly hoped that it would be easier – that's the whole point of trying it. And even if it's no easier or harder than RfA, the statistics speak for themselves – we have thirty five candidates! That's two years' worth of RfAs, and RfA also lets in plenty of bad admins. So I think the discussion we need to anticipate after the election is not whether its a perfect filter, but whether the proportion of bad admins elected is worth the benefits and whether our mechanisms for dealing with them (i.e. XRV, ArbCom, and perhaps soon WP:RECALL) are up to the job. – Joe (talk) 15:27, 20 October 2024 (UTC)
I feel like we're more likely to have nobody elected than to have bad admins elected. Only a handful of candidates have nominators (whose backing would probably be a valuable benchmark at this stage), and we've introduced a secret voting system that lets you oppose for whatever reason without consequence. Realistically, nobody has time to analyze each candidate to the same degree they would at RfA, and there are likely going to be many more people willing to oppose someone they don't know than support them. The purpose of this election was to get more candidates (lord knows it succeeded), but I'm not sure that the status quo is going to be to support them; in all honesty, I'm struggling to think of a reason why support would go up here versus RfA. Giraffer (talk) 22:38, 20 October 2024 (UTC)
Supports might go up because others' reasons for opposing are less visible. The usual pattern for a plausible but non-successful RfA is that you get a flood of early support (both the RfA and election systems let you support for whatever reason without consequence), then 2-3 people will make a case for opposing, and the rest of the week is a waiting game to see if enough people agree with them to tip the scale over that in-built mass of support, with a tendency for opposition to snowball.
With the elections, I don't see any reason not to expect the in-built mass of support from the WP:BIGDEAL crowd (which is fair enough). But people won't see why others opposed unless they write it in the discussion section. And even putting aside the very short time for discussion compared to the number of candidates (hopefully just an issue this time around), you don't have to look at that page to vote, the arguments will be amongst a mass of threaded discussion instead of neatly listed under "Oppose", and you can't see how many people agreed with them.
That's just a theory, though, and I'm not saying it's necessarily a bad thing. I can see your scenario happening too. Time will tell! – Joe (talk) 07:57, 21 October 2024 (UTC)
While I agree with Giraffer on what will happen and said as much, I think think the whole premise of this discussion is faulty. We already have situations where 70% (or less) of the community supports an admin. That doesn't mean they turn into a bad admin. When I did an analysis of the admins who got desysooped in 2016-2021 the median RFA support percentage was 96% and the average was 91% (which includes a 64% outlier in the dataset). And even if it's not a faulty premise, we have a way to remove bad admins - and most likely in the near future a second way as you know well. I think we're already prepared. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 17:24, 21 October 2024 (UTC)
It's a possibility that we'll get some bad (as in clueless, rather than abusive) admins as a result of this, but we've had admins who seemed sane at RfA but have been a disaster with the tools and enthusiastic younger editors whose RfAs have attracted opposition but who have matured into well-respected admins with excellent judgement. There's no real way to tell which way someone will go until they're in that position. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts?20:53, 21 October 2024 (UTC)
I'd think that the concern isn't so much that sub-par candidates are elected (which as you and others have pointed out isn't the end of the world) but that many candidates will not get elected due to the "haven't reviewed so oppose" style votes. 2A01:E0A:CBA:BC60:4433:CD87:A611:8938 (talk) 17:56, 23 October 2024 (UTC)
Current time is 23:44:29, 27 October 2024 (UTC)
Purge page cache if nominations have not updated.
There are no current nominations.
To the contrary, there are more (self) nominations at AELECT than I can ever remember before. Can this be changed? ☆ Bri (talk) 23:47, 27 October 2024 (UTC)
I added a note, though doubt anyone is looking for only that line. But it is correct in that that page is a list of RFAs, and there are not currently any nomination for RFA and Admin Elections are a different thing. Anyone is welcome to open a RFA at anytime, including now if they wish to. — xaosfluxTalk00:21, 28 October 2024 (UTC)
In the voting phase, the candidate subpages will close to public questions and discussion, and everyone who qualifies for a vote will have a week to use the SecurePoll software to vote, which uses a secret ballot. You can see who voted, but not who they voted for. Please note that the vote tallies cannot be made public until after voting has ended and as such, it will not be possible for you to see an individual candidate's tally during the election. The suffrage requirements are different from those at RFA.
Once voting concludes, we will begin the scrutineering phase, which will last for an indeterminate amount of time, perhaps a week or two. Once everything is certified, the results will be posted on the main election page. In order to be granted adminship, a candidate must have received at least 70.0% support, calculated as Support / (Support + Oppose). As this is a vote and not a consensus, there are no bureaucrat discussions ("crat chats").
Any questions or issues can be asked on the election talk page. Thank you for your participation. Happy electing.
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And that decision was made while this election was ongoing leaving precious little time for people to prepare anything. Unsurprisingly, there are no guides connected to these pages, though at least two exist (yours included). --Hammersoft (talk) 02:56, 25 October 2024 (UTC)
Both Novem's and my overview point towards other voting guides (there are 7 in total, in various states of completion). I hope to get more information summarized from the discussions, but that might not happen until Sunday/Monday. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 07:40, 25 October 2024 (UTC)
As Hammersmith points out, this change was made while the election was ongoing. I note that elsewhere the was much hand-wringing when other things were proposed but supposedly couldn't be changed for the same reason. SerialNumber5412910:59, 25 October 2024 (UTC)
My point in griping about this isn't to gripe. The point is this system was not thought through properly. Little or no consideration was paid to potential impacts of using this system, how nominations would really play out, the impact of the lack of voter guides, what would happen if 30, 40, 50 or more people signed up, etc. The whole thing is an unmitigated mess. The only takeaways that can really be taken from this steaming pile is how not to do this. As an evaluative tool on whether or not to do this in the future it's absolutely worthless. If any country were to run elections like this, there would be open revolt. I have spoken many times about proposed RfA processes in that people come up with brilliant solutions all the time that are looking for problems to solve, and that nobody does any problem solving to try to work through what ails RfA. Instead, we get this...another case of throw something super sticky at the wall and see if it sticks. --Hammersoft (talk) 12:39, 25 October 2024 (UTC)
Your underlying point is not unreasonable, but frankly, this kind of thing was never going to be arranged perfectly or to everyone's satisfaction, and it's far far better to actually try something new (and get a bunch of new admins in the process) than spend countless more hours arguing about it. The ball is actually moving down the field - we have a number of highly qualified candidates who we can hope to see get the bit - and we have the potential to make things better next time. Wikipedians are conservative by nature, and making decisions by consensus is hard. I'm thrilled we're at the point where we're actually voting and we have a bunch of people I'd like to see become admins! That's enough to outweigh procedural squabbles, which can be fixed as we move forward. Why not wait for the point at which changes will be discussed and make your proposals there, rather than throwing mud at the process from the sidelines? —Ganesha811 (talk) 12:59, 25 October 2024 (UTC)
Less flippantly, I think that the most salient concerns regarding how this has gone (and we should really reserve some judgment until we see the results) would be almost entirely addressed by just having limiting elections to 10 (or other small-ish N) candidates at a time. I do also wonder about the fact that we currently have (I believe, I may be misremembering or miscalculating) a longer voting period than discussion period, which seems a little backwards as far as our community priorities go. signed, Rosguilltalk13:20, 25 October 2024 (UTC)
In the original 2021 proposal, the discussion period was chosen to be very short on purpose, to improve the candidate experience. That part of admin elections appears to have worked as intended, as the promise of only 3 days of discussion, spread out amongst many candidates, attracted an incredible amount of candidates. –Novem Linguae (talk) 21:26, 25 October 2024 (UTC)
Ganesha, if you think I'm throwing mud from the sidelines, you're completely missing my point. I said above I'm not griping to gripe. As for results, we won't have any idea about how this idea has worked until at least a year after this is over. Admin performance is a thing, and simply electing people doesn't mean this system works. We won't know what to 'fix' until that analysis is done. I'm sure there will be 'fixes' just as this system was hatched out of a woeful misunderstanding of problem solving. But a reasoned approach won't attempt this fiasco again until well down the road when there's actually results to assess. --Hammersoft (talk) 13:45, 25 October 2024 (UTC)
I agree that a full analysis of success or failure will need to take into account the performance of any admins elected this month, and will probably take some time. But that's no reason not to move forward in the meantime. If (as I approximately suspect) we end up with 5-6 new admins who definitely would have passed RfA, and 5-6 new admins who might've passed RfA, and 1-2 new admins who probably wouldn't have passed and make some mistakes, that will be a significant net positive for the encyclopedia. We are not supposed to be a bureaucracy, but the fact is that Wikipedia in practice *is* highly bureaucratic and procedural issues end up wasting a lot of everyone's time. I look at this trial in the spirit of WP:IAR - let's try something new and see how it goes! I don't think you're wrong on the merits, I just think there's no point repeating criticisms you already substantially made when there's a pre-planned place for criticism and improvement coming up soon. —Ganesha811 (talk) 14:38, 25 October 2024 (UTC)
Honestly, I would unironically be still happy even if we end up electing 1-3 candidates "total", like I suspect. (I believe the secret voting without a threshold change will unfortunately tank lots of deserving candidates). But even if that results in barely an admin or two elected, I call it still a positive because the core idea (encouraging more editors to run) still worked fine, maybe even wildly well. And we know what didn't work about the process.
I hope my prediction does not happen, which is why I was more liberal with my supports to counter the mass-opposers. But we're actually a ways off from even "How many new admins did we get" and figuring out the positives from that. Soni (talk) 14:55, 25 October 2024 (UTC)
That's my point of view as well. I feel like the number of candidates, and a couple of problems with the process itself (that we'll iron out), will cause some candidates to fail who might have otherwise had success. The next one, should there be consensus for it, seems like it'll be modified a fair bit and I'm excited for that version to run. Hey man im josh (talk) 16:05, 25 October 2024 (UTC)
Honestly if the election process stayed as it was with all its current flaws with only 10 candidates we'd all be talking about it in a different light. ULPS(talk • contribs)18:45, 25 October 2024 (UTC)
I'm inclined to wait and see. It seems likely to attract more votes than any recent RFA, perhaps any RFA by the time all is said and done. Wehwalt (talk) 18:50, 25 October 2024 (UTC)
From The Department of Idle Speculation, I can see some editors who say that they are opposing a lot of candidates out of concerns about the process, and I can see some editors who say they are supporting a lot of candidates in order to counteract the opposers. I'll be curious to see whether one of those groups outnumbers the other, or whether they just cancel each other out. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:11, 25 October 2024 (UTC)
Admin elections could have been stuck in the consensus phase or the planning phase forever, and almost was. Sometimes you need to just get something started, then iterate to get results. Do it once, fix the biggest issues, do it again, fix the new biggest issues, etc. It's possible that not a single candidate will pass because people blanket oppose. That'd be a terrible outcome, but will tell us crystal clear what needs to be fixed if we do another cycle. And I guarantee the second cycle would be better than the first. etc. etc. until the process is polished and running very smoothly. –Novem Linguae (talk) 21:25, 25 October 2024 (UTC)
Exactly this. The problem with moving forward with all sorts of things here is that people tend to oppose the specific proposal rather than the general principle. We need to be more pro-active in trying stuff, and if there are problems, fix them. Ritchie333(talk)(cont)09:09, 26 October 2024 (UTC)
This process is out of hand, it would have been much better to run it with a smaller number of people, with different experience levels. This would have guaged how people took to the format without causing harm to so many or risking the potential of bad admins getting the tools there are reasons why some of these people have failed at RFA before. Yes the system is broken and a new approach is needed but it needs to managed in meaningful way where the outcomes could be assessed before it was open slather. Rather than 2 or 3 being successful its more likely the opposite with just 2 or 3 being unsecessful and bunch of new admins which cant be monitored to see if the format created a good outcome for the community. With that no meaningful observations that can be used to craft a good balance for the future. Gnangarra15:54, 30 October 2024 (UTC)
While allowing only a picked selection of candidates to run might make it easier to evaluate the usefulness of holding elections, it would require some person or group be responsible for choosing who would get to run, and I suspect many in the community would object to one part or another of such a process. Donald Albury18:06, 30 October 2024 (UTC)
hehe. It doesn't offend me, it was a question out of curiosity. But to be honest, generally speaking (not regarding to Wikipedia particularly), sometimes I feel genders/sexuality should not be disclosed, I mean, it's better than later saying "I'm not being treated equally". —usernamekiran (talk)16:54, 31 October 2024 (UTC)
tally in admin elections
I'm currently on mobile, and couldn't find it. After the election results, are we going to publish the tallies of all candidates? —usernamekiran (talk)15:58, 1 November 2024 (UTC)
I would like to make a plea for acronyms to be either blue-linked or written in full (e.g. WP:RfA or Requests for Adminship) - preferably the latter. I am familiar with many of them, but many newer editors may find them off-putting. Tony Holkham(Talk)13:36, 2 November 2024 (UTC)
This is already best practice, but we get lazy. I'm as guilty as anyone else, and do try to pipe my WP:/MOS: UPPERCASE to appropriate descriptive text at venues frequented by newcomers.If people at this venue are not experienced enough to 1. recognise the acronym, nor 2. know to prepend "WP:" to it in the search bar to navigate to it— they probably lack sufficient tenure and understanding of community expectations, norms, and dynamics to express an informed opinion.Apologies if that stings, but the observation is genuine, and meant to be neutral. Folly Mox (talk) 16:56, 2 November 2024 (UTC)
And we already have the first petition. In one fish's opinion, it is evidence that I was right to oppose this becoming policy, and it's too bad that consensus was against me. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:24, 27 October 2024 (UTC)
Shouldn't there be something about RECALL and RRFA added to the main RFA page? I don't even think there are links to those pages in WP:RFA#Related pages. It seems that there's should be something about them given that the process has already started to be used. -- Marchjuly (talk) 05:11, 12 November 2024 (UTC)
So, looking at it from a critical position: This "Policy" was enacted by a very quiet RFA, which was not well publicized, with a maximum of 37 support votes. That's too few to elect a single admin. The linking is now not very good, in keeping with submarining a policy into the wikipedia core. I'm not suggesting that this was the intention, but this is how it can look. I have a concrete suggestion: Let this "policy" stand for RFA, and be !voted on, plus or minus. If it reaches at least 70%, with at least 100 !votes, it will have a solid standing. AKAF (talk) 07:18, 12 November 2024 (UTC)
Realistically at this point, I think we are stuck with this for a while. We will need to see how the initial implementation of the process works out. And then, rather than relitigating whether or not this should have been enacted, will will likely have an RfC on whether to revoke it. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:24, 12 November 2024 (UTC)
I think this is something that should be discussed and figured out prior to another recall, not during an ongoing one. But that also leads me back to the idea that 25 is too few signatories since so many more people will become aware if it's advertised at those locations. Hey man im josh (talk) 19:26, 13 November 2024 (UTC)
I'm not saying go do this now, but it's probably something that should be discussed at the reworkshop if it hasn't been already. Even in my RfC, there have been recurring comments of "only if it's more well advertised". Clovermoss🍀(talk)19:33, 13 November 2024 (UTC)
Regardless of whether this is "policy" or "process", it's something already in play; so, trying to change it in some significant way while there are active recall petitions playing out seems like a really bad idea, and might also be seen as being unfair. The possibility that there will always be at least one recall position active at any given time or which can be started at any given time should be assumed, which means a moratorium on new ones should be enacted if and when it's determined things need to be changed. You don't need to go back and retroactively apply any said changes to petitions that have already run their course, but you shouldn't by trying to significantly change things mid-stream. -- Marchjuly (talk) 21:11, 13 November 2024 (UTC)
@Clovermoss: FWIW, my post wasn't specifically directed at you as in "I think you need to do this"; it was intended to be taken in a more general sense as in "I think this should be done". When I used "you", I didn't mean you specifically but rather you collectively. -- Marchjuly (talk) 12:46, 14 November 2024 (UTC)
I think the re-confirmation RFAs will be advertised using watchlist notices and T:CENT. I don't think it's a good idea to also advertise the recall petitions. The drama and stress for the candidates at these recall petitions is already way past what I would consider comfortable. Further marketing would only make it worse. –Novem Linguae (talk) 22:01, 13 November 2024 (UTC)
I agree. A recall petition doesn't need more attention from editors who wouldn't have found it on their own in the course of an entire month. That's just asking for participation from people who have zero clue what's actually happening but think pile-ons are fun. Valereee (talk) 12:32, 14 November 2024 (UTC)
Support percentage and colors
Graham87's RRfA support currently stands at 54%, which would, under the RRfA criterion, put it in the middle of the discretionary threshold. However, it is shown in bright orange (and has been since coming below the regular RfA discretionary threshold). Should the colors be adjusted for RRfA, to match the different threshold? Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 15:25, 18 November 2024 (UTC)
I would say yes, that would make sense and I can't see any reason we wouldn't do that. No clue how easy to impliment that would be, however. CoconutOctopustalk15:28, 18 November 2024 (UTC)
Wonderful to see the process that has been implemented recently has resulted in a bunch of editors volunteering or being nominated for adminship and that process resulting in success. Great to see progress on a point that has been of contention for years. Wish I could issue a group Barnstar! Moxy🍁 00:53, 23 November 2024 (UTC)
I sincerely hope that the new ones will be able to take the flak that some of us have been getting for years. Deb (talk) 09:32, 23 November 2024 (UTC)
Yes, so far I agree the "admin elections" trial was a success. Now we just need a next round of elections... —Kusma (talk) 09:47, 23 November 2024 (UTC)
I recommend that some of the candidates who didn't quite make it in the first round of group elections to try again. I congratulate and welcome this new batch. I think that there were just too many candidates for anyone but the most dedicated nerds among us to evaluate thoroughly. A group of ten to 12 seems manageable to me. Thirty plus? Not so much. Cullen328 (talk) 10:00, 23 November 2024 (UTC)
On the note of the next round, the workshop for a slate of RfCs to tweak the rules is slowing down, and while the wording for most is becoming clear, some could use more input. For instance, I've not had feedback on my suggestion to sequence some of the questions to avoid complex interdependencies. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 10:23, 23 November 2024 (UTC)
I, too, see this as a very good thing, one of the few bright spots to come out of RfA 2024. I just hope that it doesn't get negated by administrator recall. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:06, 23 November 2024 (UTC)
Well, maybe we should reserve judgement on that until we hear from the people who were just below the cutoff, let's not presume that this is so wonderful for them :) --Joy (talk) 22:56, 23 November 2024 (UTC)
Hello. I was just wondering if Wikipedia:Successful adminship candidacies and Wikipedia:Unsuccessful adminship candidacies should include admin candidates who went through the election system. The page doesn't specify that it's for RfA only and it would make sense to include all successful and unsuccessful admin candidates here and in the chronological lists as well. However, since the main pages are not edited frequently, I assume that they are populated by a template so we'd have to make sure that it was plugged into the administrative election list. LizRead!Talk!02:51, 24 November 2024 (UTC)
Notification of RfC: Voluntary RfA after resignation
The currently open RfA (Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Sennecaster) has unanimous support votes (201/0/0 as of last check). I can observe that such unanimous supported RfAs are often for indviduals who have an exceptional track in copyright matters, if I remember correctly, since this area tends to be understaffed when it comes to admin capacity, as is the case with the subject of the RfA. Furthermore, for some reason, co nominations tend to be successful and self nominations tend to be unsuccessful (through means of withdrawal, WP:NOTNOW e.g wp:Requests for adminship/ToadetteEdit, or wp:SNOW e.g. wp:Requests for adminship/Numberguy6). These are a few patterns that I could find at RfAs, but I do not see a reason for the latter (co noms better than self noms). ToadetteEdit (talk) 20:34, 22 December 2024 (UTC)
All ill consider RfAs - i.e., someone ignoring all the guidance - are always self nominees. That alone would create a bias towards self nominations being less successful. The other reason is, perhaps, that !voters can't be bothered to review the track record of most candidates so for self noms will either tend to not !vote at all, or if they do !vote oppose, but will happily trust nominators and support. But without surveying !voters, who can say for sure. MarcGarver (talk) 21:47, 22 December 2024 (UTC)
I'd say that when the person is qualified and happens to self-nom, they tend to pass. Some relatively recent examples include me, Spicy, and 0xDeadbeef. Clovermoss🍀(talk)06:20, 23 December 2024 (UTC)
Let me put it differently: If a respected user nominated someone for RfA and that RfA ended as NOTNOW, it means that something went seriously wrong, most likely the nominator did not make proper research. Most nominators do, or at least attempt to do proper research, this is why NOTNOW RfAs tend to be self-nom. Ymblanter (talk) 11:17, 23 December 2024 (UTC)
Nominators also serve as coaches. They often tell the candidates if and when they should run or not run, and provide other very useful advice during the process, helping to avoid common missteps. A respected nominator can also provide a boost in supports, due to folks trusting the nominator. –Novem Linguae (talk) 17:37, 23 December 2024 (UTC)
The first sentence of prose has been messed up since Giraffer added their request. Don't know how to fix it, or even if I would be allowed to. ―Mandruss☎ IMO. 18:19, 22 February 2025 (UTC)
I have "Requests for" to the left of the search box, then the requests table. Below the requests table, the prose continues as normal from "adminship (RfA) is the process...". Windows and Firefox, if it matters. ―Mandruss☎ IMO. 18:39, 22 February 2025 (UTC)
Ah right, yeah I think that depends on things like display size, font size and what kind of Wikipedia styling you are using. It's not that bad for me on Small text, but gets a bit squashed on Standard text. I don't think it's related to this RfA specifically (the time and vote numbers might just be a specific width right now to cause it) as I have noticed that since the recent UI changes, the text has gotten a bit squashed on the left side. I'm not entirely sure how we would fix it, I think the table would look out of place above the first paragraph, and would be too far down below the lead. FozzieHey (talk) 18:46, 22 February 2025 (UTC)
Your issue occurs because a wide thing has been floated on whatever your specific resolution and font sizing are. There is effectively nothing to be done to fix that which doesn't break the behavior for someone else. It probably happens for some other people as well, but the resolution it required my screen to be at was at least half of my monitor's screen width, which is at-best rare these days for a desktop resolution. (There are other issues with the table at even smaller resolutions that are unrelated.)
The only solution would be to remove the float of the table, which would have uniformly negative behavior for most other people. Izno (talk) 20:00, 23 February 2025 (UTC)
Technical Issue About Optional Questions
The instructions for adding optional questions are wrong, because there is a comment that says, "Add your questions above this comment". That would add the question at the top of the list of questions. It should say to add the questions at the bottom. Evidently the questioners figured that out. I tried the preview feature, to see whether the macro would add the question at the bottom, and saw that the instructions are wrong, so I added my question at the bottom. Change the instruction. Robert McClenon (talk) 19:51, 25 February 2025 (UTC)
Or maybe the first person didn’t follow the instruction, and everyone else just posted at the bottom? That’s not really the instruction’s fault. Floquenbeam (talk) 22:10, 25 February 2025 (UTC)
Indeed; people have trouble reading directions; you should see how many hidden comments I had to add to the end of the RFA code so that people would stop putting things in the wrong places. Primefac (talk) 13:09, 26 February 2025 (UTC)
Why do users and me have to be extended confirmed?
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
I remember on last several years, anyone including newer editors are allowed to vote in RfAs no matter if it’s support, oppose, or neutral, but after 2024, all of this changed. Now you need to be extended confirmed, requiring 500 edits and 30 days longer. Somehow, there is nothing wrong with voting in RfA while having different interests and likes. Could you please explain why did Wikipedia decided to create a new policy on voting, meaning that you have to be extended confirmed in order to vote in RfAs? Additionally, IPs were disallowed on voting RfA before registered users come along in 2025. Thanks to editors, who answered my question. - ParticularEvent318home (speak!). 23:16, 19 March 2025 (UTC)
@ObserveOwl @Hey man im josh To be fair, I kind of disagree with this, with this new policy, more editors are still unable to vote support or oppose on the RFA. I believe that this should be lifted in order to let new editors to be allowed to vote in administrative positions and see that if they are going to be promoted sooner. If they lift this, the amount of editors voting in RFA will increase larger than today. - ParticularEvent318home (speak!). 20:36, 24 March 2025 (UTC)
The old system wasn't as simple as "everyone can !vote". There were unwritten rules with some informal threshold and if editors didn't meet that they could find themselves getting criticised for voting as a new account. It's a long time ago now, but I remember coming across RFA as a fairly new account, trying to work out what the suffrage requirement was, not being confident I met it and going away for a few more months. I don't know whether setting a clear suffrage requirement has increased or reduced the number of !voters, but it will have effects in both directions. 30 days is not a big hurdle, 500 edits will be for some, but at least now it is clear and anyone who doesn't meet it yet can easily work out how to qualify. 30 days and 500 edits is long enough for someone to have got an idea as to how this community works and what we want in an admin, several years and some hundreds of thousands of edits later you might or might not have the same idea as to how the community works; But in either case you are a full voting member of this community, and the new !voting criteria is that every full member of the community can !vote. That doesn't mean disrespect to those who don't yet meet that criteria, but any organisation is entitled to set such a suffrage requirement, and this gives us some protection against outside bodies trying to enter and swamp our processes. ϢereSpielChequers09:03, 26 March 2025 (UTC)
@WereSpielChequers @ObserveOwl Why were the rules unwritten until now? Back then in early 2020s, there were users especially the one that made at least 10 edits, do have the ability to vote in RFA polls, and things just worked out really fine. Now they can’t vote in RFA anymore due to an update on policy. Why did so many extended confirmed users decided to choose support on this policy instead of opposing it in a way? And how could auto confirmed users vote in polls, if they were not allowed to vote anymore? I think it’s a great idea for auto confirmed users no matter how new they are, have to potentially vote in RFA in order to increase in quantity and show that they are different users showing support in order for user to be promoted. - ParticularEvent318home (speak!). 20:26, 26 March 2025 (UTC)
@ParticularEvent318, if you read the RfC(scroll to the bottom of the section and click 'show'), the community discussed this at length. 65 people participated, many of whom discussed their reasoning.
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Fixes to discourage non-extended-confirmed editors from attempting to self-nominate
Although this is technically allowed (nominees can create a subpage before they are extended-confirmed and file the nomination afterwards), these unqualified candidates presumably want to file immediately. Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Nominate should not encourage this.
I suggest removing the "Nominate yourself" button on Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Nominate so that non-EC users only see something like "Sorry, nominees must be extended-confirmed", and hiding the other buttons "Stand for reconfirmation" and "Nominate another user" for non-EC users (presumably we don't want non-EC users to nominate anyone).
If the above is implemented, non-EC users could still create an unfiled nomination by following the written instructions, but it isn't as easy as clicking a button.
We could add class="extendedconfirmed-show" to the button, which would hide it from non-extended confirmed users. Thoughts on that? –Novem Linguae (talk) 23:51, 31 March 2025 (UTC)
Sure. Although we should get more buy-in from this talk page's watchers (more than just you and me) before making changes. –Novem Linguae (talk) 08:32, 1 April 2025 (UTC)
Do admins count as extendedconfirmed for that class? Given how often admins are the ones to nominate someone, it makes sense they see the button too. Nobody (talk) 09:24, 1 April 2025 (UTC)
After testing it looks like they do not. However adding sysop-show in addition to extendedconfirmed-show appears to solve the problem. Diff –Novem Linguae (talk) 09:46, 1 April 2025 (UTC)
My only question then is if someone can quickly check all 500/30 editors are also XC. I remember there being a Quarry query that showed many editors, mostly former admins, who do not have XC. Similarly, a page should be editable by admins as well, and no current admins will have XC. Soni (talk) 02:59, 1 April 2025 (UTC)
When I resigned my adminship in 2019, I was automatically given extendedconfirmed after my next edit. So it more or less fixes itself. —Kusma (talk) 08:43, 1 April 2025 (UTC)
You will only autopromote to extended confirmed if you did not previously promote to it, as the mechanism that does that is autopromoteonce. — xaosfluxTalk10:24, 1 April 2025 (UTC)
Sidenote: this bitflipping of extended-confirmed on desysops and resysops is silly and causes problems like MediaWiki talk:Common.css#nonsysop-show. We should just stop declaring extendedconfirmed redundant to admin, and let admins keep their extendedconfirmed right automatically regardless of how many times they've gained or lost adminship. * Pppery *it has begun...13:08, 1 April 2025 (UTC)
Regarding Also, Template:Editnotices/Protection/Wikipedia:Requests for adminship currently implies that non-EC users can request that someone add their self-nomination, which is false. Thanks for pointing that out. I have just made this change to that edit notice to reflect that extended confirmed is now required as of April 2024 (before that, the extended confirmed protection was merely a technical obstacle and not a hard requirement). Mz7 (talk) 18:34, 10 April 2025 (UTC)
Question
So I'm looking at the current RfA - with so many comments being about a under-completed RfA form - and wondering: Would we be seeing the same result if they were in the admin elections instead?
And if so, should we be penalizing someone due a form, that the community seems to be leaving by the wayside in the other process?
As an aside, yes, I'm aware that they haven't edited, and so many of these "voters" should probably wait until the candidate has returned to answer their questions. a day is not long to wait. I can remember when RfAs hardly had any comments in the first day or two.
If we say "this is the form to fill out if you want to be an admin" and they do not fill it out... yes, we should expect the form to be filled out. Elections are an alternate method, not an identical method. Primefac (talk) 00:28, 11 April 2025 (UTC)
Maybe. Though it's been pretty longstanding that candidates are not required to answer questions. But anyway my point was that perhaps we should take a look at the form and the current process to see if perhaps its time has passed by. - jc3702:32, 11 April 2025 (UTC)
I'm not sure I understand your question. The candidate page for the admin elections has the same set of questions as with the open viewpoint RfA process. And I'm unclear why you're questioning whether or not the process should use a set of standard questions only if the same result would have occurred with admin elections. isaacl (talk) 02:38, 11 April 2025 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Administrator elections/October 2024/Discussion phase - I see similarities, but they aren't the same. And I don't see that question zero anywhere - and some did not include the statement in their nom. I'm not saying that we should or shouldn't, I'm merely suggesting that perhaps we should take a look at these.
If the goal is to get the candidate to say and show something positive about their contributions on Wikipedia, maybe we should phrase that better. - jc3720:08, 11 April 2025 (UTC)
Each candidate's nomination page uses a template that was copied from the one used for the open viewpoint request for adminship process, by design. So the same standard set of questions are asked. Question 0 is not one of the standard questions. By consensus agreement at the time when the disclosure requirement was added, the community chose not to add to the standard set of questions. (I'm a bit confused as to why you wrote "Would we be seeing the same result if they were in the admin elections instead? And if so, should we be penalizing someone due a form", but I assume you are actually interested in looking at this even if the community would have treated this situation differently between an election and the open viewpoint RfA process.)
I think the standard set of questions is just a hook to allow candidates to provide some basic information to the community, and give them a platform to tout the benefits they bring to the role. It's up to them to decide how to best take advantage, and up to the community to weigh the responses. isaacl (talk) 23:06, 11 April 2025 (UTC)
AELECT asks the same questions, so I imagine the same kind of sentiment among voters about incomplete answers would probably arise. I suppose the main difference is that in AELECT the candidate would probably get a question and a comment or two about it, instead of having dozens of opposers mention it over and over again. –Novem Linguae (talk) 07:26, 11 April 2025 (UTC)
Novem Linguae is correct. The repetitious (pass/fail) RfA always puts significant stress on a candidate, even a great candidate who wins with no opposition. The classic process helps !voters understand in real time how the candidate prepares for stress, manages stress, and resolves stressful moments. Some candidates truly shine in such circumstances. TLC's second process is one such example; she was ready. I believe the RfA experience proves largely illustrative of the candidate's resilience in similar sysop-related situations. AELECT is perhaps less stressful, IMHO, because voters are also comparing choices and (not to be disrespectful in any way) shopping for the best performers among candidates. This is not a bad thing. The new process is no mere binary choice; candidates are measured against !voter expectations AND against each other. I'm sad for LaundryPizza03, obviously. My first RFA was quite unpleasant (as was TLC's), but I learned an enormous amount as a wikipedian. It's possible LaundryPizza03 might have been less stressed during AELECT; it's possible they'd have even passed. My concern is always which outcome gives us fully trusted sysops, while providing a priori feedback which helps the candidate be a better overall wikipedian in the long run. If LaundryPizza03 had been given permissions at AELECT and then we found out about this behavioral issue later, the effectiveness of AELECT itself may be called into question. BusterD (talk) 10:00, 11 April 2025 (UTC)
Slightly tangential, but I am fascinated by how many people apparently think Q2 is supposed to be easy! Back when I occasionally considered applying for a mop, Q2 was one of the reasons I didn't, because to me it would be impossible to answer. It's partly a cultural thing, partly individual, but there it is. I'm not questioning the validity of Q2, or saying it should be changed or removed, just registering some astonishment that people think it ought to be easy to answer it. --bonadeacontributionstalk10:08, 11 April 2025 (UTC)
Looking back at my failed and passed RfAs, I see #2 was the easiest of the three questions for me to compose. I talked about my promoted reader-facing content, which IMHO is still on the lighter side for sysop candidates. By my own measure, the big change in those two process answers is that in the second, I felt far more trusted by the community to speak my mind freely, as opposed to worrying over carefully crafting a GA-class answer. BusterD (talk) 10:45, 11 April 2025 (UTC)
FTR, in my second RfA, my nominators and I went over my first3 question answers, but they were pretty satisfied with what I had already written. To be completely honest, during my 2nd rfa I had a very small number of supporters (including noms) who gave me personal feedback via email during the process. For that reason I am not shy about giving tips to any candidates during their process. I want a healthy and diverse admin corps as much as anybody, even if I might diverge slightly from others on precisely how we best acquire and retain them. BusterD (talk) 10:56, 11 April 2025 (UTC)
Ha, I was originally going to say something on the lines of "'best contributions' is almost as impossible to answer as 'contributions you are proud of'"! --bonadeacontributionstalk20:42, 11 April 2025 (UTC)
Responses to !votes
I find it hard to understand the level and force with which oppose votes are often jumped upon, and support votes are not. It's something which puts me off voting either way, even though I am interested in the process and the candidates. I mean, it's not as though one oppose !vote is worth 20 support !votes, is it...? Tony Holkham(Talk)19:42, 18 March 2025 (UTC)
The main reason for responses to opposes is that oppose voters are usually expected to give a rationale, and if that rationale is dumb, based on a wrong assumption or misleading, this needs to be pointed out for the benefit of future voters. Also, an oppose vote is worth two support votes, so they are not equal. —Kusma (talk) 19:48, 18 March 2025 (UTC)
An oppose vote is worth two supports due to the weighted voting system. But then the crats have repeatedly given more weight to opposes over and above that, for example, weighting a "Strong oppose" vote as worth more than several supports. Hawkeye7(discuss)20:17, 18 March 2025 (UTC)
I have never known a crat to weigh a "Strong oppose" higher than several supports. I have, however weighed "an oppose with a strong rationale" over "empty supports" WormTT(talk) 09:00, 19 March 2025 (UTC)
I usually give less weight to votes marked "Weak" by the !voter, whether support or oppose. Sometimes that doesn't change the balance, but othertimes one side has a markedly higher proportion of "weak" !votes than the other. I don't consciously give less weight to votes marked "strong", but it is a discussion and I suspect there is a tendency for such !votes to be less well evidenced and therefore have less influence on the subsequent discussion than the average. I try not to make a point of this in cratchats etc because I see marking !votes as strong as a phase that some newish RFA voters go through as part of their RFA learning process. ϢereSpielChequers11:17, 19 March 2025 (UTC)
Personally, I don't really like replies to !votes. I do think an external message of "could you clarify" or "this is why I disagree" is a lot better than a response after a !vote stating why it is silly.
You are incredibly unlikely to change someone's mind, and it isn't likely that - in the action of a cratchat - that the original !opposes rationale is going to weakened by a response. Lee Vilenski(talk • contribs)20:15, 18 March 2025 (UTC)
A response isn't there to change the opposer's mind, it is there to mitigate its bad effects on people who have not yet voted. Anyway, there are plenty of people who say RfA is a discussion, not a vote. Responding to oppose rationales seems like the most natural way to enter a discussion. —Kusma (talk) 21:01, 18 March 2025 (UTC)
To some extent it's also a numbers game: if editors have a roughly 1% chance of being motivated to rebut someone's vote, and the average RfA has 100 yes votes and 5 no votes, on average we'll see 1 rebuttal to a no vote every time (and each no vote has a 20% chance of being directly rebutted), and see a rebuttal to a yes vote once every 20 RfAs (and any given yes vote has a .0005% chance of being rebutted). If we let the WP:SNOW, zero hope of ever passing RfAs run longer, we'd see more discussions where the nos decisively outnumber the yeses and thus more rebutting of yes votes. But because we (correctly) close those off early, the only RfAs that we really engage with as a community are the high-quality candidates that very few people are going to take issue with. Even the RfAs that we think of as disastrous typically have 50-60% support, and it's not unheard of for candidates to throw in the towel when their support level is still in the 70% range. signed, Rosguilltalk21:15, 18 March 2025 (UTC)
A support assertion by itself rarely causes others to rethink their position. On the other hand, even a single good faith oppose assertion sometimes reveals an unknown factor to the community which may impact negatively on all later !voters. This sort of !vote may and often does tend to tip scales disproportionately. In these cases supporters may attempt to disprove or otherwise negate the opposer's point. This sort of dispute may be subjective and/or rancorous. In such cases everybody might be doing the right thing by disagreeing in the AfD. And that's a good faith oppose. Bad faith opposes often draw a greater dispute, and then get moved to talk. BusterD (talk) 21:47, 18 March 2025 (UTC)
[edit conflict] And then we have good faith POINTY opposes, like some of those in Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Hog Farm 2. In this process we see oppose !votes not because User:Hog Farm was a bad candidate, but because wikipedians felt the reconfirmation process was a resource-inefficient way of resolving the permissions issue (and wanted to make that point). Most neutral and oppose assertions went out of their way to compliment the candidate on the merits, but (although the outcome was always a clear acceptance) felt the RfA choice itself tarnished the candidate's otherwise good judgment, in the good faith opinion of those protest !votes. BusterD (talk) 22:21, 18 March 2025 (UTC)
There's always some opposes from people who oppose the process, and often one or two from people who believe we have enough admins. Hawkeye7(discuss)17:58, 19 March 2025 (UTC)
My perspective is that it's important to understand why people are voting oppose so that voters can make a more informed vote. If there's something disqualifying, or that should seriously be considered before placing a vote, it's important to have all the facts to make a vote. That's why opposers are often asked for more information, so that voters can be more informed before giving someone the tools. Additionally, some people may point out a flaw in the rationale of someone's oppose for, not to necessarily try to convince the person who opposed, but for context for people who are considering voting themselves. Hey man im josh (talk) 14:53, 19 March 2025 (UTC)
May I round this off by saying "thank you" for the discussion, which has helped me to understand the system for deciding candidates' success or failure at RfA. It does not, though, encourage me to participate in future, and I hope a less combative system will eventually emerge (the elections were an interesting alternative). Neither does it surprise me that so few editors (fewer than 250 in most cases) actually respond to RfAs (it may be the same few; I don't know!). Best wishes, Tony Holkham(Talk)12:48, 19 March 2025 (UTC)
RFA has changed (non arbitrary break)
Even though (by some measures) we have fewer active editors than we did 18 years ago, 80 was considered a good turnout on my RfA then. Maybe it really wasn't seen as a "big deal" then. FWIW. Donald Albury14:56, 19 March 2025 (UTC)
Instead of 20 RfAs with 200 editors each, we used to have 800+ RfAs per year with around 50-100 people voting in each (not always the same people). 100 supporters were considered a lot, that is why WP:RFX100 was created. My own RfA passed 81/0/0, which was only good enough for a slight mention at the stats page User:NoSeptember/RfA voting records that has all of the early RfA records. —Kusma (talk) 17:45, 19 March 2025 (UTC)
That’s what I discovered earlier, in 2005-2007, there were about almost 1,000 candidates and large amounts of voters. Now as of 2021, there are only about 11-45 candidates nominated, which is lesser than before, since there is a huge decrease in RFAs nominated since the 2010s. I don’t really understand the shift and change in RFA processing. - ParticularEvent318home (speak!). 01:10, 30 March 2025 (UTC)
Rollback was unbundled in early 2008, and that changed RFA significantly. Before Rollback was unbundled some of the candidates who passed were simply presented as "good vandalfighters", after early 2008 that ceased to be enough to pass RFA and you needed to have written referenced content. Also around then the minimum expectation grew from a few months activity to a year or more and several thousand edits. The drop in early 2008 is clear in Wikipedia:RFA by month and is a large part of the change, but there was also a long decline from 2008 to 2014. Since 2014 it has sort of bumped along the bottom with a slight net decline. The worst years for new admins were 2021 which was probably COVID related and 2018. I should probably add a note to that chart re COVID, overall it gave us an increase in editing, but some of the regulars were less available and RFA is not something for newish editors. So I suspect 2021 had a lot of newish editors or editors who had become much more active, and they weren't likely to run that year. We also had an apparent decline in editing from the 2007 peak to the late 2014 nadir, It has since rallied a bit but apart from one bot driven spike it remains clearly below 2007 levels. Of course much of the apparent decline in editing was from the automation of much vandalfighting with the edit filters, the move of the intrawiki links to Wikidata and the rise of the thanks button. But we are clearly no longer in the exponential growth era we were in before fact changes or additions on articles had to be cited and you couldn't thank people without an edit. However the decline in editing is trivial compared to the decline in new admins. Even if we combine admins with filemovers, template editors and rollbackers there has been a broader trend of decline that goes beyond the unbundling.
I also have a couple of theories about the broader trend. With the rise of the Smartphone as the most common internet access device over the last fifteen years or so, we have failed to recruit anywhere near as many teenage editors as we used to. Yes I know some people do edit on smartphones, but in the main we are a community who use our PCs to write an encyclopaedia for an increasingly smartphone based audience. We have partly offset that with the greying of the pedia. The first time I attended a London meetup I was obviously the second oldest person present. I'm over 16 years older now, but I'm unlikely these days be one of the two oldest present at a London meetup. I think the greying of the pedia has changed RFA, people of my age are less willing to sit an exam or go through a rite of passage than the young are. Perhaps we will find that the addition of elections will have a continuing effect on RFA as opposed to the one off spike we have so far. But we can also just get used to the idea that there are a lot of editors these days who just want to edit and are not keen on becoming admins, and this is quite a common attitude among the silver surfers in our community. ϢereSpielChequers11:24, 30 March 2025 (UTC)
Yeah, as someone whose hair has been grey for far longer than there has been a Wikipedia, I am growing uncomfortable with how much of my time in Wikipedia is spent trying to keep up with admin-related matters, which cramps my plain old editing time. Not, mind you, that I do that much admining, but I do try to stay current. Even when I became an admin more than 18 years ago, I never saw it as more important than creating and editing content. Donald Albury16:44, 30 March 2025 (UTC)
@WereSpielChequers For this part, I agree with you on 2021. It wasn’t really a good year for RFA due to the fact that this nominations were the lowest with only 11. Thankfully, 2024 has 58 candidates due to being a special event. - ParticularEvent318home (speak!). 06:28, 31 March 2025 (UTC)
De-transcluding an RfA page
I think Floquenbeam did a good thing removing the RfA from WP:RfA. Whatever may have been going on, the candidate was seemingly away for some time, and the RfA seemed incomplete to many commenters, and so removing it gives the candidate time to address that should they wish to. And by pausing things in this way, reduces potential waste of volunteer time, and reduces the effects that a confused electorate can potentially have upon said RfA.
I wish this was standard practice from the bureaucrats to do, but I guess it's a case-by-case basis kind of thing.
In the future, should someone just need to ask at WP:BN? As a general rule, waiting after 12 (or 24?) hours of no response from a candidate for a process which asks the candidate to be present and available for discussion, seems a fair time for bureaucrats to wait, then they should (kindly) step in and pause things.
I was fine with Floquenbeam handling this as a case of WP:IAR, but if the community wants this to be encoded in policy, it does seem like there needs to be an option in addition to WP:NOTNOW and WP:SNOW in cases where the candidate isn't actively engaging or the RFA is incomplete, but it's not hopeless or completely inappropriate. We often don't know what's going on behind the scenes (only the visible effects) and reengaging in situations like this can be quite daunting. I also wouldn't want to require a bureaucrat to be the one who always pulls the trigger on such an option before the discussion spirals. The more I think about it, encoding this in policy might be the way to go. I'm guessing there was some additional and unnecessary delay because IAR isn't something administrators would typically take lightly. Daniel Quinlan (talk) 20:48, 11 April 2025 (UTC)
This "pausing" seems like bad precedent to me. At RfA, the candidate has the power to stop the process themselves and then simply start the process again from fresh at any time. If truly some emergency or unexpected thing happened in real life that prevents them from being responsive at RfA, then if the candidate is able to edit, they should communicate that to us and withdraw their RfA until there is a time that works better. If the candidate is completely unable to respond due to the emergency, then perhaps we could discuss suspending RfAs as a courtesy on a case-by-case basis (in this case, though, the candidate was actively editing during their RfA). Otherwise, if it becomes clear that an RfA is not going to be successful, then we should just go to WP:BN and ask a bureaucrat to close the RfA early per WP:SNOW. Mz7 (talk) 21:00, 11 April 2025 (UTC)
I'd support a rule that an RfA monitor (which any uninvolved admin or 'crat can self-appoint as) may pause and untransclude an RfA if it is below 60% support, the candidate has not made an edit related to the RfA in over 24 hours, and it seems plausible that further participation by the candidate could change the outcome of the RfA. The candidate could revert the pause and retransclude at any time in the next 48 hours if they wish, for any reason or no reason, after which point the RfA cannot be paused again; if they do not, the RfA closes as unsuccessful. -- Tamzin[cetacean needed] (they|xe|🤷) 21:13, 11 April 2025 (UTC)
I'm fine with a 60% threshold, but I'd prefer to leave the has not made an edit related to the RfA in over 24 hours part more loosely defined to allow administrator and bureaucrat discretion. 24 hours is definitely too high for today's RFA landscape. Daniel Quinlan (talk) 21:18, 11 April 2025 (UTC)
Personally, I don't like the idea that candidates are expected to be active throughout the request period, continually monitoring the support level to see if they're able to have a respite. If the community only wants candidates with a certain floor level of support, I think this is better implemented by requiring a set number of support statements before a request is made. isaacl (talk) 23:23, 11 April 2025 (UTC)
My own thought is that it probably doesn't need codifying, because it's an extremely rare edge case. Hard cases make bad law. Floquenbeam (talk) 21:41, 11 April 2025 (UTC)
I'm not comfortable with the idea that the community can decide to pause requests in an ad hoc manner. I think this introduces a degree of gatekeeping to adminship requests. If the community wants this, it should be more direct and enact something more formal: specific criteria, a nominating committee, a certain threshold number of support statements, or something else. isaacl (talk) 23:23, 11 April 2025 (UTC)
RFA has a long history of snow closes done by non-bureaucrats. In fact, the header of WP:RFA has instructions for it. When Floq paused the RfA, it was a 48.5% and falling. Just to get back into crat chat territory, it would have needed 47 more support votes without another oppose. Show me any RfA that recovered from such a hole, and I might even try to eat my keyboard. We don't need to expand the ever expanding bureaucracy to deal with this case. The case is blatantly obvious. --Hammersoft (talk) 23:56, 11 April 2025 (UTC)
Yes, there is a history of closing requests early, and thus precedence around the circumstances when the community deems it to be appropriate. There isn't precedence for pausing a request, and I'd rather not have a lot of bureaucracy around when pausing is appropriate. isaacl (talk) 00:08, 12 April 2025 (UTC)
I think it was a good use of WP:IAR to temporarily pause the RFA, especially given the regrettable {{Administrator without tools}} template left on their talk page which seemed to come with plenty of support but little in the way of advice or help. WP:IAR exists for unusual cases and even WP:SNOW is ultimately an application of IAR most of the time. In contrast to what happened here, bureaucracy powers through process without concerning itself about potential harm to individuals or the community. Anyhow, I don't think we need to overthink this. While I would support an official "third option", this kind of situation is rare enough that we don't really need to update the policy. IAR exists as a policy to help us handle rare cases. Daniel Quinlan (talk) 00:25, 12 April 2025 (UTC)
The pause was appropriately bold act where bold action was needed. There is not much point in continuing this RfA as it stands. I frankly would have thought LaundryPizza03 was a slam dunk for confirmation, and I can imagine how disheartening it must be for them to be treated this way. However, I am also fine with Barkeep49's reversion of the pause, as an administrative exercise of WP:BRD. BD2412T00:24, 12 April 2025 (UTC)
This appears to be a tragedy of misunderstood expectations. I can't fault anyone here for trying to mitigate things and marching off the map in doing so. Jclemens (talk) 01:20, 13 April 2025 (UTC)
