Wikipedia:Administrator elections

The scrutineering phase is now over. Election results can be found on the results page. You are invited to leave feedback at the debrief page, and to help draft RFCs at the workshop page.

Shortcuts

Administrator elections are a proposed process for selecting administrators – users with access to additional technical features that aid in maintenance. It is an alternative to requests for adminship (RfA), which has been the only way to become administrator on the English Wikipedia since 2003.^[1] The first trial election was held in October 2024. The community will discuss whether and how to proceed with administrator elections.

The elections do not replace requests for adminship. Prospective administrators may freely choose which process to use.

Schedule

October 8–14 – Call for candidates
October 15–21 – SecurePoll setup phase
October 22–24 – Discussion phase
October 25–31 – SecurePoll voting phase
Scrutineering phase
Debrief and workshop phase - to collect feedback and draft mini RFCs (we are here)
Mini-RFC phase - many little RFCs to improve the process for a hypothetical next election
Renewal RFC phase - one RFC to get permission to do additional election(s)

Eligible candidates

The only formal prerequisite for adminship is having an extended confirmed account on Wikipedia (500 edits and 30 days of experience).^[2] To gain insight on community expectations, please review past successful and unsuccessful RfAs. You can also review past RfA candidate polls, or initiate one if you are interested.

Who can vote

Administrator elections use the Arbitration Committee Election suffrage requirements. To vote, an editor must meet the following criteria:

created their account over 2 months before the election
have 150 mainspace edits by 1 month before the election
have 10 live edits in the year running up to 1 month before the election
not be sitewide blocked during the election
not be vanished
not be a bot
not have already voted with this or another account

You can automatically check your eligibility to vote.

Procedure

The overall process lasts 10 days: an initial 3-day period for discussion and questions, and a 7-day period for a secret ballot vote. Election cycles are advertised in advance, including watchlist notices. The process is supervised by the bureaucrats.

Period 1: Candidates sign up

Candidates sign up by a specified date prior to the discussion and questions period. Just like RFA, candidates can be nominated by other editors; please only do so with the candidate's consent. Only candidates who accept their nomination will proceed to the next period. During this phase and the SecurePoll setup phase, candidates and nominators may adjust their candidate subpage as they see fit.

Period 2: Discussion and questions

During this 3-day period, the community can ask questions and raise issues, as well as provide positive feedback. Candidates are encouraged to participate in the discussion period, answering questions and responding to feedback.

During this discussion-only time, participants are discouraged from posting messages of support/opposition that lack points for discussion. This phase is for sharing thoughts on the candidate or any other topic that may relate to the candidate's applicability – not for indicating personal voting intentions.

The monitors for this phase will be Theleekycauldron and Pickersgill-Cunliffe. Administrators that are not nominating candidates or planning to heavily participate in the discussion phase may feel free to add themselves to this list.

Period 3: Voting

Once the discussion period is complete, a secret ballot is held for 7 days, using SecurePoll. During this period, discussion is closed, and the page will be marked with a template indicating that discussion is closed. Candidates may be asked direct questions on their user talk pages, but they are not expected to watch their discussion page, nor the election page for the full period, to allow them a respite from community vetting. The ballot may contain multiple candidates; however this is not a competitive election. Voters are asked to evaluate each candidate individually, and all candidates who meet the pass threshold are selected to become administrators. Thus all, some, or even no candidates may be selected.

Tallying

After voting has ended, the election will be scrutinised by three stewards whose home wiki is not the English Wikipedia. They will check for any duplicate, ineligible, or sockpuppeteer votes, and strike them as necessary. Once scrutineering is complete, votes are tallied, results are announced, and new admins are granted administrative privileges. The pass threshold is 70% or greater. The vote tally is calculated by Support / (Support + Oppose) for each candidate. The scrutineers for the October 2024 election are Johannnes89, EPIC, and Yahya. Scrutineering takes a few days or weeks. In the October 2024 administrator elections, scrutineering took 4 days.

The results of the October 2024 Administrator Elections are as follows:

659 votes were cast, of which 43 were determined to be duplicates, leading to a total of 616 valid votes.^{[note 1]}

Candidate	Support	Abstain^{[note 2]}	Oppose	Net^{[note 3]}	Percentage^{[note 4]}	Result
Queen of Hearts (talk · contribs)	389	122	105	284	78.74%	Elected
SilverLocust (talk · contribs)	347	195	74	273	82.42%	Elected
ThadeusOfNazereth (talk · contribs)	321	207	88	233	78.48%	Elected
Rsjaffe (talk · contribs)	319	208	89	230	78.19%	Elected
Dr vulpes (talk · contribs)	322	195	99	223	76.48%	Elected
Ahecht (talk · contribs)	303	219	94	209	76.32%	Elected
SD0001 (talk · contribs)	306	209	101	205	75.18%	Elected
DoubleGrazing (talk · contribs)	306	206	104	202	74.63%	Elected
Sohom Datta (talk · contribs)	298	210	108	190	73.40%	Elected
Peaceray (talk · contribs)	270	239	107	163	71.62%	Elected
FOARP (talk · contribs)	268	242	106	162	71.66%	Elected
MarcGarver (talk · contribs)	266	230	120	146	68.91%	Not elected
Pbritti (talk · contribs)	254	239	123	131	67.37%	Not elected
The Squirrel Conspiracy (talk · contribs)	264	207	145	119	64.55%	Not elected
Valenciano (talk · contribs)	221	293	102	119	68.42%	Not elected
LindsayH (talk · contribs)	240	255	121	119	66.48%	Not elected
AntiDionysius (talk · contribs)	248	233	135	113	64.75%	Not elected
Mdewman6 (talk · contribs)	195	290	131	64	59.82%	Not elected
Robert McClenon (talk · contribs)	259	151	206	53	55.70%	Not elected
Starship.paint (talk · contribs)	219	213	184	35	54.34%	Not elected
Sable232 (talk · contribs)	175	298	143	32	55.03%	Not elected
Bastun (talk · contribs)	186	253	177	9	51.24%	Not elected
Velella (talk · contribs)	157	297	162	-5	49.22%	Not elected
SWinxy (talk · contribs)	168	271	177	-9	48.70%	Not elected
Hawkeye7 (talk · contribs)	199	165	252	-53	44.12%	Not elected
Spy-cicle (talk · contribs)	131	283	202	-71	39.34%	Not elected
Pharaoh of the Wizards (talk · contribs)	154	236	226	-72	40.53%	Not elected
EggRoll97 (talk · contribs)	146	250	220	-74	39.89%	Not elected
Frost (talk · contribs)	102	246	268	-166	27.57%	Not elected
Leonidlednev (talk · contribs)	89	262	265	-176	25.14%	Not elected
Knightoftheswords281 (talk · contribs)	59	249	308	-249	16.08%	Not elected
Zippybonzo (talk · contribs)	75	194	347	-272	17.77%	Not elected

^ Link to vote records page, with the count included: [1]
^ All voters were required to register a preference of either "Support", "Abstain", or "Oppose" for each candidate. The "Abstain" column is simply the total votes for which voters did not select the Support or Oppose option.
^ Net = Support − Oppose
^ Percentage = (Support / (Support + Oppose)) * 100 (rounded to 2 decimal places)

Scrutineer ratification

EPIC (talk) 19:23, 4 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
—Yahya (talk • contribs.) 19:25, 4 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
--Johannnes89 (talk) 22:50, 4 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Withdrawing

If a candidate wants to withdraw during the call for candidates phase or the SecurePoll setup phase, they may simply remove themselves from the candidate list and nominate their candidate subpage for speedy deletion. They will not be listed as a candidate during the SecurePoll vote.

If a candidate wishes to withdraw during the discussion phase or voting phase, they should edit the list of candidates and move themselves to the withdrawn section. For transparency, the candidate subpage shall not be deleted, and their candidate subpage will remain transcluded on the discussion phase page. An attempt will be made to remove the candidate from the SecurePoll ballot, but this is not guaranteed. If the candidate ends up on the SecurePoll ballot, whatever result they achieve will be considered invalid, and election organizers will attempt to keep the result unpublished.

Rationale

The number of requests for adminship (RFA) has declined from a peak of 920 in 2007 to just 36 in 2016, and has since averaged around 23 per year. This suggests problems with the RFA process, which might be mitigated with a different process, such as administrator elections. Ways that administrator elections might help include:

Reducing contention via secret voting - Reduces the opportunity for contentious discussion amongst participants. For example, voters do not have to disclose their vote, nor give an explanation for it. This avoids unnecessary direct confrontation of opposers, or of the candidate.
Shorter discussion period - The discussion period is limited to three days, instead of seven.
No possibility of a bureaucrat chat
Many candidates - So less pressure on individual candidates.

Are additional RFCs required before the trial?

No. The result of the corresponding request for comment discussion is The community supports trying this proposal for 1 election, after which it will be reviewed in Phase II. While there are concerns regarding the implementation details of this proposal, given this is a trial run, there is sufficient support to run the election as written.

Accordingly, one election will be held, with implementation details (such as scrutineering) worked out based on discussions on this page's talk page. After the trial, request for comment discussions will be held to discuss how to proceed, thus allowing the community to alter the process if desired, or choose not to continue.

Comparison with requests for adminship

Comparison between processes
	Requests for adminship	Administrator elections
Discussion period	7 days (overlapping)	3 days
Voting period	7 days (overlapping)	7 days
Ballot	Open	Secret (using SecurePoll)
Success criterion	Consensus	Supermajority
Success threshold	65–75%^[3]	70%
Suffrage	Extended confirmed account	See § Who can vote
When it can happen	Any time	October 2024

If you'd like to receive a user talk message when important administrator election milestones are reached, such as when a date is chosen and when the Call for Candidates phase opens, please add yourself to the mailing list.

References

^ Before June 2003 it was possible to request adminship on a mailing list and some admins were appointed directly by Jimmy Wales.
^ Consensus agreement on this requirement was reached at Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/2024 review/Phase I § Proposal 25: Require nominees to be extended confirmed.
^ As RfA is a consensus-based process, there is no exact threshold for success, but in practice a candidate with below 65% support is almost always unsuccessful, and above 75% almost always successful. Candidates with between 65 and 75% support are typically subject to a bureaucrat discussion about the consensus for their request, and outcomes vary on a case-to-case basis.

[voteCountLink-3] Link to vote records page, with the count included: [1]

[nbNoVote-4] All voters were required to register a preference of either "Support", "Abstain", or "Oppose" for each candidate. The "Abstain" column is simply the total votes for which voters did not select the Support or Oppose option.

[nbNet-5] Net = Support − Oppose

[nbPercentage-6] Percentage = (Support / (Support + Oppose)) * 100 (rounded to 2 decimal places)

[1] Before June 2003 it was possible to request adminship on a mailing list and some admins were appointed directly by Jimmy Wales.

[2] Consensus agreement on this requirement was reached at Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/2024 review/Phase I § Proposal 25: Require nominees to be extended confirmed.

[11] As RfA is a consensus-based process, there is no exact threshold for success, but in practice a candidate with below 65% support is almost always unsuccessful, and above 75% almost always successful. Candidates with between 65 and 75% support are typically subject to a bureaucrat discussion about the consensus for their request, and outcomes vary on a case-to-case basis.

[1]