Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/2021 review/Proposals/Admin elections

Phase in an alternative route to adminship of elections every six months. Candidates would sign up by a certain date, then would have a shorter period of 3 days for discussion and questions. There should be discussion only in this period, no bolded !votes. At the end of the period, candidates can progress to the next period, secret ballot (through SecurePoll) for a full week. Voter suffrage would initially match Arbcom elections. Candidates who achieve 70% Support would pass and become administrators.

Breakdown

Alternative route

This would be an alternative route to adminship, which could run in parallel with RfA. It should start every 6 months and designed to not clash with other elections so as to avoid election fatigue.

Format

The proposed format would be on a 10 day cycle. Election dates would be published ahead of time, and once the cycle begins, it would be publicised through watchlist notices. The cycle would have two periods. The process would be managed by the bureaucrats, initially in concert with the WMF to set up SecurePoll. In the future, a new role could be created to manage these elections, but there is no urgency in doing this.

Period 1 would be a discussion period and would last three days. During this time, questions can be asked and issues can be raised, as can positive feedback. Candidates are encouraged to participate in the discussion period, answering questions and responding to feedback. During this time, no bolded !votes should be cast, it should be a clear discussion.

Period 2 would be an secret ballot, using SecurePoll, which should last the full 7 days. During this period, discussion should be closed, and while candidates may be asked direct questions on their user talk pages, the intent is that they should not be required to watch their discussion page, nor the election for the full period, to reduce the "stressful" nature of the election.

Voter suffrage should initially match the Arbcom elections i.e. registered over 1 month before election, 150 edits by election, 10 edits in the year running up to election, not sitewide blocked during the election, not vanished, and not a bot - though the suffrage decisions could be changed in future.
Vote tally should be calculated by Support / (Support + Oppose) for each candidate.

At the end of Period 2, votes can be scrutinised then tallied, results can be announced and new admins can be appointed. As this is a clear vote, the pass rate would be 70%, which is the middle of the discretionary range.

Possible numerical changes

There are 4 numerical values, which should be static at the time of this proposal but can be updated in the future, depending on how well the system works.

2 elections per year - depending on the uptake, we could increase or decrease the number of elections per year.
3 days discussion - 3 days was chosen as the vast majority of discussion at an RfA happens in that period. During the initial Phase of this admin review we discovered Many editors believe it would be unpleasant to have so much attention focused on them, and reducing the time that the candidate is focussed on the process is a key part of this proposal.
7 days voting - This allows editors who edit sporadically to be involved in the actual voting process.
70% pass rate - This was chosen as the middle of the discretionary range. However, historically, we have found that secret ballot does give lower support percentages than named voting, so it may be that this number should be changed in the future.