Wikipedia:Administrator elections/May 2026/Debrief

Ca

It's a relief the election went very smoothly (including the scrutineering period, which lasted just 2 hours!). I would like to thank my nominators Vanamonde93 and asilvering for their thoughtful nom statements and help through the process; they really took off the pressure to second-guess myself. Ca ^{talk to me!} 03:37, 20 May 2026 (UTC)

Bonadea

As Ca says, this was a very smooth process, and I am pleasantly surprised that the results were posted so early! All in all, the election was much less stressful than I had feared it might be. I'm indebted to my nominators DoubleGrazing and Vanamonde93, it was really good to have them as a sounding board throughout.

The only thing I found a bit more stressful than I'd realised was the fact that in my time zone, the discussion period ended at 2am, so if there had been questions in the last three hours or so (there weren't, but if there had been), I would not have been around to answer them. But I think very few people would have held that against me, so it is not something that calls for a new procedure or anything, it's just something I didn't anticipate. --bonadea contributions talk 11:03, 20 May 2026 (UTC)

And thank you, of course, to the people who ran the election. There were no hitches that I could see. --bonadea contributions talk 11:04, 20 May 2026 (UTC)

Regarding the timezone, you (or future candidates) could place {{User time zone editnotice}} or a similar template if you think it would be helpful. Obviously this only works for those who are willing to disclose their timezone but I can't think of any way to avoid that. Thryduulf (talk) 11:17, 20 May 2026 (UTC)

I think the best fix would be, as you say, for the candidate to put a time zone template up if they are concerned about it – I didn't think of that myself, but perhaps some future candidate will read this and find it to be helpful for them. --bonadea contributions talk 19:26, 20 May 2026 (UTC)

Asukite

I also want to thank my noms User:Toadspike and User:Moneytrees for their invaluable support and the time they took helping me through the process. I hope that one day I'll get the chance to repay the favor by helping somebody else through an AELECT or RfA, once I've gotten a good amount of experience in, that is! The timezone difference was something I did not anticipate. One bit of advice I might add is to check with your noms for their timezones to ensure compatible availability. Thankfully nobody posted any questions for me during the last couple days, but for me 12 AM UTC is just 8 PM, haha. There were definitely a lot more discussion questions than I anticipated, but I enjoyed answering all of them and am grateful for the thorough examination - the community seems to be getting a good handle on the new process. Overall, I think AELECT worked well for me and I would recommend it to anybody hesitant about an RfA. ASUKITE 12:33, 20 May 2026 (UTC)

Taking Out The Trash

Still seems a bit messed up to me that one template on my user page could have such a big part in essentially sinking a candidacy. That and the fact that it seems like I was getting asked a lot of contradictory/confusing questions where it would be literally impossible to provide a "complete" answer without getting into personal details, then a bunch of people say "oh no it's not like that. We're sympathetic and aren't asking you to divulge personal details" while simultaneously asking follow-ups or clarifications that would indeed require disclosures to answer fully. Especially regarding my periods of inactivity/retirement, I don't know how I can/could/should've "adequately explained" this beyond "it was for personal reasons unrelated to Wikipedia". Like I'm not going to provide more detail than that, and that ought to be sufficient. Similarly concerns about possible impaired judgement, while understandable on the surface, also ought to be resolved with nothing more than "I commit to stepping away during times in which my judgement may be impaired". How am I supposed to give specific examples of this without getting personal? Oh, and I guess there are at least a few who have a problem with my username and don't see the humor in it... which, alright, fine, you're entitled to your opinion but I don't see how that's related to adminship, since the vast majority of routine admin actions involve cleaning up vandalism/spam/etc, stuff that is, quite literally, trash.

Sorry if I'm sounding bitter or anything, just seems like the whole process wasn't really fair. Taking Out The Trash (talk) 14:37, 24 May 2026 (UTC)

I sympathize with the grief you went through over the template, but reviewing your candidacy discussion page, I don't think that said template was the biggest issue raised in discussion: the AFD match rate and the response to CU testimony seem like much more pressing concerns. Ultimately, you withdrew your own candidacy, so there's no telling which, if any, of these concerns would have been decisive, although you're certainly entitled to feel bitter about the uncomfortable invasion of privacy. _signed, Rosguill ^talk 14:57, 24 May 2026 (UTC)

Regarding the CU issue (which, again, was in 2021 and quite honestly should be old news by now) I'm curious as to what I'm supposed to do/say in response to a completely false accusation of serious misconduct based on "evidence" that I was refused the opportunity to review, and simultaneously one of the community's highest-ranking members blatantly making a nasty personal attack (by publicly/explicitly calling me a liar) while also failing to provide any evidence even to myself privately (if it couldn't be shared publicly)... that's a pretty clear textbook violation of WP:NPA and the bits about "serious accusations require serious evidence" and "if you can't share the evidence publicly, do not make the accusation publicly". Those principles are, or at least should, be absolute with zero exceptions whatsoever. Taking Out The Trash (talk) 15:08, 24 May 2026 (UTC)

My view on that portion of the discussion is that you would have had a much better response had you simply noted your respectful disagreement with the CU's conclusions, rather than a 500+ word block of text that opened with Sigh. In lieu of the above discussion regarding my mental health disclosure (that appears to have fractured into multiple different places), I'm quite disappointed... _signed, Rosguill ^talk 15:12, 24 May 2026 (UTC)

Agreed. I had been accused of many things online before, and I have found that making angry large walls of text disputing those accusations do more harm than good, as nobody likes reading long rants if they don't have to. They only make people like you less because in their eyes you're wasting their time when they have they already have their mind made up, so they likely won't even read it. fanfanboy (block_talk) 00:30, 25 May 2026 (UTC)

Sammi Brie

Of all the things to find out in a hotel room in El Paso! Thank you to my nominators—Vanamonde93, HouseBlaster, and theleekycauldron—and to those that supported me. I'm glad that someone finally convinced me to make the leap. Sammi Brie (she/her · t · c) 16:42, 26 May 2026 (UTC)

Drm310

I thought the process was run well and fairly. Some of the questions were challenging - and rightly so. It made me fully appreciate the responsibility of being an admin. Thank you to my nominators Femke and Kj cheetham - and many others - for their encouragement and support. It was much appreciated. --Drm310 🍁 (talk) 21:17, 27 May 2026 (UTC)

Chaotic Enby (clerk)

Congratulations to all new admins, and thanks to everyone who participated and helped this election go as smoothly as it did! I was positively impressed by how fast the scrutineers worked this time, despite some technical issues with a few of the votes.

A lot of what I want to say regarding how the election is organized for candidates is already being discussed in other sections, so I'll bring up some organization-related points. I'm wondering if the housekeeping phase could be shortened from 48 hours to 24 hours? The actual clerk housekeeping was wrapped in a few minutes, so most of the time was reserved for candidates to look for an additional nominator. I believe that may be a negative incentive, as it encourages candidates to jump in without a nominator and then find one a posteriori, which may leave them with a much less comfortable experience than a well-prepared nomination.

Regarding the SecurePoll instructions, I'm working on a patch to GuidedTour that would allow the tour to directly fetch data from the main instruction page through section embeds, meaning that we wouldn't have to face the limitation of only interface administrators familiar with the tour being able to update them in sync. Hopefully that should allow us to have interactive onboarding for new clerks without incurring additional upkeep costs. Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 21:40, 20 May 2026 (UTC)

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EaglesFan37

I'd like to start this message off by congratulating the seven new admins!

As a first time voter this AELECT, the process overall seems to be very well run overall. There were two qualms I have about the process, however:

1. The beginning of the process was very unclear, with a bunch of users with around the same number of edits as myself (at the moment around 3500, back then closer to 3k). It was difficult to tell, as a first-timer if that was normal, or whether I should throw my hat into the ring if all these editors were (the answer is obviously no, until 2027-2028 at earliest).

2. Only two candidates were supported by 70% of the entire electorate: Sammi Brie (with 75.8% of the votes) and Bonadea (with 70.3% of the vote, and one vote over the 383 minimum for 70%). While it is unreasonable to expect everyone to be familiar with all of the candidates (to be frank, I think I only recognized 1-2 candidates when the process started), I don't think a abstained vote should just not count towards the candidate (there aren't conflict of interests that would necessitate an abstentions, and there are 11 days to discuss/mull over the candidates before voting). Maybe something like ((#Supports)/((#Supports) + (#Abstained/2) + (#Opposes)) to determine who reaches the 70% threshold.

Using Drm310 (who had the most abstentions) as an example: 337/((337+(137/2)+72)) = 70.57%. In this scenario, Drm310 (along with all those granted admin this election), would still be elected to admin, but the results would more accurately reflect how the electorate viewed the candidacy and the proportion of voters that were either unfamiliar and/or on the fence about his candidacy. EaglesFan37 (talk) 04:02, 20 May 2026 (UTC)

@EaglesFan37 Thanks for your thoughts. I don't think I agree with the plan to factor in abstentions to the threshold because that may discourage voting, since there would otherwise be no way to vote on one candidate but not another. Best, Staraction (talk · contribs) 04:26, 20 May 2026 (UTC)

I agree with Staraction. Abstaining is more similar to simply not participating in any given RFA (or voting neutral) imo. I personally voted abstain on candidates because I didn't wish to have to do in-depth research to make an informed vote on some candidates. 45dogs (they/them) (talk page) (contributions) 04:40, 20 May 2026 (UTC)

@45dogs I just wish there was a way to differentiate the "not informed enough about candidate" from the "on the fence about the candidate." EaglesFan37 (talk) 04:51, 20 May 2026 (UTC)

@EaglesFan37, but should "on the fence" really even count against a candidate? Neutral in an RFA is roughly the equivalent of "on the fence", and it doesn't count against the candidate. 45dogs (they/them) (talk page) (contributions) 04:54, 20 May 2026 (UTC)

It does, sometimes, when the candidate is in the discretion zone; neutral comments are often cited in cratchats. I expect bureaucrats would look twice at an RFA with 137 explicit neutrals, no matter how much support or little opposition they got. —Cryptic 13:17, 20 May 2026 (UTC)

Apologies, I was referring to the percentages in RFAs when stating that, which is the most direct comparison to AELECT. I should have made that clearer. 45dogs (they/them) (talk page) (contributions) 15:22, 20 May 2026 (UTC)

People on the fence often already oppose. You can see how high oppose counts are compared to RfA. Aaron Liu (talk) 14:59, 20 May 2026 (UTC)

I concur. AE makes it significantly easier to oppose a candidate, since in an RfA, oppose voters are often expected to explain their reasoning. While "I don't like them" isn't a good reason to oppose an RfA, there's nothing stopping someone from opposing for that (or any other) reason in an AE. That is one of the critical differences between AE and RfA, which have good reasons for being different processes. Making AE more like RfA could discourage editors from it just like how RfA often discourages editors because of its difficulty. StartOkayStop (talk) 03:07, 21 May 2026 (UTC)

Chess enjoyer

I second EaglesFan37's observation above: there were a lot of self-nominations from inexperienced editors early in the call for candidates. This isn't specific to elections, but I wonder if we should raise the formal requirements to be an administrator: the community expectations for administrators are a lot higher than just having 500 edits and an account age of 30 days, and having the technical requirement be so low can mislead newer editors into thinking they have a good chance of becoming an administrator when they don't. Chess enjoyer (talk) 04:39, 20 May 2026 (UTC)

Tazerdadog

First of all, a thank you to everyone who stepped up and ran a smooth election. It's heartening to see these become regular. In particular, I'm glad we have now more or less demonstrated we have multiple people who can do it all for redundancy.

I think the biggest event worth discussion was the standing of people who were not yet close to ready to go, followed by the well-intentioned convincing of people to withdraw their doomed candidacies. I think a bright-line "you must be his tall to run for adminship" would be helpful. My initial spitball is "to submit a candidacy, either you or one of your nominators must have at least 10,000 edits on English Wikipedia", which should advise a large portion of folks who don't yet have the experience to know what they're signing up for, while retaining any unicorn candidates through a nominator.

It's worth noting that the talk of previous elections that the threshold was set maybe 5% ish too high seems to be a non-issue in this one. My guess is we had high and uniform candidate quality. Tazerdadog (talk) 04:44, 20 May 2026 (UTC)

There is a really good (current) admin who was able to succeed at ~7k edits, so 5k might be a better threshold. It could even be 10k un-nominated & any limit with a nominator.

There is an instruction/information page for editors to read before applying for adminship, unfortunately not many people fully understand it (or just skip it entirely). Blue-Sonnet 07:34, 21 May 2026 (UTC)

I like the idea of a nominator requirement much more than raising the requirements for candidates. I would propose focusing the requirement entirely on nominators like Nominators are required to have made at least 5,000 edits on English Wikipedia, including self-nominators. so it doesn't get conflated into being a candidate requirement. It might also be a good idea to require a minimum account age. One year might be fine. Daniel Quinlan (talk) 18:21, 26 May 2026 (UTC)

I could support that. Valereee (talk) 19:43, 26 May 2026 (UTC)

I must say I like this less than our current model. What is the problem we are trying to solve here? An editor with CLUE will read the advice and not put themselves forward. An editor without clue is unsuitable regardless of when they run. Why is it better for us to incentivize speedrunning 5000 edits before submitting an unsuitable candidacy? And what then of the suitable candidates who may have 5-10k edits, and who may then experience standard inflation? I think we're losing some perspective here. If an unsuitable or NOTYET candidate puts themselves forward, one or two people ought to have a polite chat with them, but beyond that there isn't a problem to solve. Vanamonde93 (talk) 20:08, 26 May 2026 (UTC)

The goal is simply to make sure that nominators are qualified. The problem is avoiding the absolute "pile on" that unsuitable candidates endure along with the drain on community time and energy, for both AELECT and RFA. It would also make it easier for clearly non-viable nominations to be quickly identified and closed. Nothing about this idea prevents someone from nominating a suitable candidate who falls short of the requirements and therefore cannot self-nominate. That being said, I can't recall any successful recent candidate, self-nominated or otherwise, who would have been excluded under this proposal.

I also don't think gaming will be a major issue any more than it already is given the practical reality that the community generally expects candidates to have at least 5,000 edits and have an account that is several years old. Daniel Quinlan (talk) 21:21, 26 May 2026 (UTC)

The problem is avoiding the absolute "pile on" that unsuitable candidates endure how about dealing with those who pile on?

long with the drain on community time and energy, for both AELECT and RFA. What drain are these candidates actually causing?

It would also make it easier for clearly non-viable nominations to be quickly identified and closed. What advantage does this bring over just leaving them alone? Thryduulf (talk) 22:00, 26 May 2026 (UTC)

In my opinion, we do not have a problem with unqualified nominators (not referring to self-noms there). The quality of nominators and nominator statements has been quite high, and I agree with comments elsewhere on this debrief page that it would be good to have more admins getting involved in recruiting and nominating. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:20, 26 May 2026 (UTC)

Nobody has said we have a problem with unqualified nominators (aside from self-nominations). Every successful nominator in recent history would easily exceed these proposed thresholds. The idea of adding restrictions that only apply to self-nominations is also pretty distasteful. Daniel Quinlan (talk) 23:36, 26 May 2026 (UTC)

Regarding how about dealing with those who pile on?, it's not really practical. The majority of people "piling on" are not doing the same on every RFA or AE, and the issue is generally one of volume and squandered time and attention rather than tone or personal attacks. Unfortunately, volume is required sometimes to get the point across, and it would be better for the project to avoid most of these situations entirely. Regarding What drain, Wikipedia:Administrator elections/May 2026/Candidates/NYC Guru had 145 edits plus another 50+ on their user page when it should have been a handful of edits by a monitor to remove it. And it easily could have continued if they didn't withdraw. That's just one example. There have been many others, both at RFA and AELECT. And regarding What advantage, I don't think the current way we're handling nonviable candidates is beneficial to the project or the candidate.

I think there are other possible solutions. We could, for example, allow a consensus of election monitors to WP:NOTNOW self-nominations. I'm open to other ideas. Daniel Quinlan (talk) 23:30, 26 May 2026 (UTC)

If monitors just few unnecessary comments it's likely going to discourage people from making more. Removing those comments before they turn into discussions which inflate the edit count would also make it easier for monitors to keep everything in order. fanfanboy (block_talk) 03:59, 27 May 2026 (UTC)

I agree allowing a pile on of disrespectful and/or time-wasting comments is notadded 15:28, 27 May 2026 (UTC) beneficial, but I think way to resolve that is not to penalise the good faith candidates or treat them as second-class editors, rather the way to handle the disruption is to penalise the ones who are being disruptive. If monitors remove the first unnecessary comment then that will discourage someone from making a second. Ditto removing the second. Especially if they start page-blocking the people adding questions that are the same as ones that have been removed.

Whether a candidate is "non-viable" is up to the electorate, not a self-selecting bunch of editors who wish to enforce minimum requirements in excess of those that have community consensus. If you want to impose a 1-year, 1000-edit floor for candidates then get consensus for that to be the requirement to stand. Thryduulf (talk) 09:23, 27 May 2026 (UTC)

Did you mean to put a "not" in between "is" and "beneficial" in that first sentence? fanfanboy (block_talk) 15:23, 27 May 2026 (UTC)

I did, thanks. Thryduulf (talk) 15:28, 27 May 2026 (UTC)

I agree with my colleagues above that we don't have a problem with nominators, except for self-nominations by inexperienced users. Which is an unpleasant experience for them to be sure but only a little bit their fault; if we're being hostile in response (and I would only characterize most of the responses this AELECT as excessive, not hostile) we should handle that directly.

I'm not concerned with formal exclusion of qualified candidates - GoldenRing is the only successful candidate from my time here who would have been prevented from running. But standard inflation is a real concern, IMO.

With respect to gaming, I see a qualitative difference between stat-padding from editors aware of social expectations, and editors barreling toward a 5000 edit threshold the same way some currently treat XC. Best, Vanamonde93 (talk) 22:33, 26 May 2026 (UTC)

George Ho

No comment on admin elections for now, but I really wish others less likely to succeed in and those who previously failed elections just by five percent or less were brave enough use RfA. Are candidates and/or voters afraid of transparent RfAs anymore? George Ho (talk) 04:52, 20 May 2026 (UTC); expanded, 05:04, 20 May 2026 (UTC)

Another feedback: Coming to think of it, if mass questions are some "issue" that almost everyone has concerns about, at least look at the Questions subpage of the 2026 U4C elections at Meta-wiki, especially the section of "Questions for all candidates". Well organized, don't ya think? George Ho (talk) 17:50, 23 May 2026 (UTC)

Yes, several people in this discussion suggested separating mass questions into a separate section as a way to solve this. Chaotic Enby (in solidarity · talk · contribs) 19:32, 23 May 2026 (UTC)

Oh, wow, a separate section. I like that. That would provide candidates cover for not answering questions that aren't tailored to them but still allow them to answer questions they feel like answering or that seem really relevant to their candidacy. Valereee (talk) 21:47, 24 May 2026 (UTC)

Or otherwise a separate page altogether to collate the generic questions and answers. CNC^{in solidarity} (talk) 22:19, 24 May 2026 (UTC)

Bugghost

First of all, a big thank you to all the editors involved in getting these elections running smoothly. I know there's a lot of gears whirring in the background, and it's impressive that these elections are becoming a regular occurrence.

My main concern this election was the number of editors who signed up in good faith, but were asked to drop out due to not meeting the unwritten requirements of AELECT/RFA. The stated AELECT min requirements (500 edits/3 months tenure) are lower than the stated requirements for template editor (1,000 edits/150 template edits/1 year tenure/no blocks for 6 months), page mover (3,000 edits/6 month tenure/no blocks for 6 months), or even AFC reviewer (500 non-deleted edits/3 months). While we now have some soft advice stating that 5,000 edits is probably about what you need, I really think something concrete and glaringly obvious (closer to WP:PMCRITERIA) is needed.

My second thought is that there were a huge number of questions this time round. I have already written a comment about this here, but the TL;DR is that I would encourage the monitors to be bolder/stricter about striking questions, especially excessive follow-ups or copy-paste questions. BugGhost 🦗👻 06:27, 20 May 2026 (UTC)

This might be a hot take, but I'd straight up ban copy paste questions. I could see maybe a system where if you have x people who want to see the question, you can ask it to x candidates, but I think the time you're asking for with the expectation of getting circa a dozen individual thought out responses to a question does not match the time needed to write one question, and then copy paste a bunch. The time asymmetry is just too high, and the candidates themselves have a strong incentive not to rock the boat by calling it out. Tazerdadog (talk) 06:33, 20 May 2026 (UTC)

I'm with you on this oneUser:Tazerdadog; I'd love to ban the copypaste questions. It's been an issue with all the elections so far, but I won't !vote on somebody unless I can make an informed decision. I can't make an informed decision until I at least read the discussion page. If there's five hundred filler questions, then I (and other !voters) can't do that. We've got 3 default questions. Let's leave it at that, please? GreenLipstickLesbian💌🧸 07:24, 20 May 2026 (UTC)

I also find the 'copy paste questions' annoying (no offence to anyone), but I can understand how for other voters the position/opinion of candidates can sway their vote on such generic questions, especially if one has very strong feelings on certain topics, and/or the direction of such inductees. Personally I'm more interested in substance than opinions, unless those opinions are really bad; but if they are, the commentary is likely to surface in the discussion section, so there is still no burning desire to read those answers. Thus if there isn't going to be consensus to restrict these generic questions asked to multiple candidates (I assume not), my alternative suggestion would be to sub-section questions by 'generic' and 'unique'. Then it'd be easier to focus on Qs that are specific to the user (or at least intended to be) and ignore the others. As no offence to anyone, but I really don't need to hear anymore opinions from would-be admins on LLM than I already have from the rest of the community, simply because they carry no additional weight. Same goes for WMF and similar meta topics. Don't get me wrong it's brilliant that candidates have opinions, for some it might be a borderline requirement, I just don't need to hear them all, nor have the time to do so. I just want to try and assess if a candidate will make a good admin, not how they might vote in future RfCs on certain topics or otherwise, it's totally irrelevant. If someone is heavily involved in a certain area (Enby and LLM for example), then it shouldn't be a generic question anyway. In those scenarios, the questions can be make uniquely for the candidate, and thus generic question not needed. Granted the more I think about it, the more I do think these questions should just be banned, but failing that, categorisation would do. CNC (talk) 16:12, 20 May 2026 (UTC)

A few people have raised this as a concern and it's one that I share. Mass-posted questions don't always address that editors areas of focus or expertise, plus if you have ten potential admins this just bulks up the questions.

Ten people being asked ten questions means there's a hundred questions that everyone has to dig through, read and judge the answers for (so now we're at two hundred posts to read!).

IMO there should be a hard limit on the number of questions and they should all be individually tailored for that specific admin.

I'm not sure how we'd decide on the questions, perhaps a dedicated questions page then everyone comments on the most useful ones to ask - only the top five(?) get asked. Blue-Sonnet 07:41, 21 May 2026 (UTC)

Rather than "top x questions get asked", it would probably be easier/more standard to have a consensus model. So copy-paste questions would be disallowed in general, but if someone suggests one and gets explicit positive consensus on WT:AELECT prior to discussion phase then it's allowed. BugGhost 🦗👻 08:30, 21 May 2026 (UTC)

Regarding the candidate edit count requirement, that was discussed on last year's AELECT RFCs and it was decided to keep the status quo. I !voted for that but since then I have changed my mind, seeing what has happened in practice since. I would support a higher threshold if it's brought up for discussion again. Sophocrat (talk) 07:18, 20 May 2026 (UTC)

Toadspike

I am overjoyed at how smoothly the whole process ran. Thank you to the many election officials and volunteers who made that possible. We need to do something about the ridiculous volume of irrelevant questions, though. They are a huge waste of candidates' and voters' time and drown useful information in a sea of noise. Clarifying the guidance for inexperienced editors is also worthwhile – some efforts were made during the election, but a more thorough review of election pages and announcements is worthwhile, and we can consider raising the explicit requirements. Toadspike [Talk] 07:40, 20 May 2026 (UTC)

CNC

I mainly want to thank the nominators. Honestly, you make the whole process straightforward based on a simple flow chart: 1. Do they they have a nominator? If yes, are there any red flags? If no, vote yes. Vote no for the rest (see below). In previous elections I spent a lot more time independently vetting editors, like I would (and probably still will) for RfA. But honestly, like no doubt many editors here, I don't have the time to be looking into a handful or a dozen editors concurrently, I barely have enough time/motivation to read the candidates answers. Anyone is welcome to criticise this approach as much as they'd like, but with results divided between >80% and <40%, I honestly don't feel the need to be putting more effort in as feels like a waste of time. I'm otherwise not particularly concerned about the 'failures of self-nom' and 'low requirements'. If editors don't get a nom that's fine, just be aware that voters like me and others will just vote no out of principle and/or lack of time. The harsh critique is that I genuinely feel that if candidates are not making the effort to get a nominator (who will also review their request) then I will not be making the effort to independently review their request for them anymore (as someone arguably less qualified, also per VOL). However, candidates should be more than welcome to try and swim against the tide, even if only to improve their swimming skills and nothing else. CNC (talk) 09:35, 20 May 2026 (UTC)

You have every right to support or oppose a candidate by whichever metric you choose, and I neither expect nor intend to dissuade you from doing so with my response; however, I'm curious as to why you would oppose a candidate on the basis that they nominated themselves, rather than merely filling in the abstain option. In this particular case, the two candidates who were self-noms did not succeed for reasons other than not having somebody else nominating them, but highly qualified candidates have nominated themselves in previous years and were elected. I'm unconvinced that self-noms are automatically disqualified by very many voters, though I'm open to being proven otherwise. Kurtis ^(talk) 02:27, 22 May 2026 (UTC)

I don't think voter laziness should be reason to oppose when we have the ever so conveniently placed Abstain option for voters who felt they didn't have enough time to review a candidate. It is attitudes like this which caused people like myself to think there needed to be a lower pass threshold, and telling us this actually provides evidence that the "AELECT naturally gets more opposes compared to RFA" argument is not unfounded. fanfanboy (block_talk) 05:12, 22 May 2026 (UTC)

@Kurtis, For better or for worse, I'd already largely made my decision based on the talkpage discussions before the discussion phase began, so I wasn't planning on digging deeper beyond that. The 'spirit' of the community certainly made themselves heard regarding self-noms prior to the election generally speaking, that was enough to recognise they weren't going to work out this time. Hence I recommend statistical anomalies head to RfA instead of self-nomming elections, as to me, that is partly what that process is for in order to have a fuller discussion. It's possible I'd support/abstain from a qualified self-nom at elections again, dependant on the discussion feedback that would encourage me to looks deeper, however this election there was no need for that, and I doubt there will be much need in the future either. To also clarify my second sentence above refers to this election specifically (per May 2026/Debrief), not any other election past or future.

@Fanfanboy, I take on board your criticism, maybe It'll change how I feel about the next election. However it's not that I didn't have time to review candidates, it's that I refined the scope of my review (ie, not looking at contribs so much unless curious). Voter laziness is otherwise more of a risk to approving unqualified editors to yield mops, not prevent them imo. Maybe this is more my voting style; I'm not voting based exclusively on my opinions, but the weight of the community more broadly. Ie if the community appears to want an editor to become an admin, I'll likely support that unless there are strong concerns. CNC^{in solidarity} (talk) 10:30, 22 May 2026 (UTC)

Is the risk really to approve unqualified editors? In recent years, we've had many more cases of solid candidacies failing to reach the high threshold, while I can't recall a single unqualified editor getting elected because of voter laziness. The position that candidates have to try and swim against the tide to begin with is part of why the culture at RfA, and especially AELECT, is so harsh against prospective admins. Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 13:01, 22 May 2026 (UTC)

I agree that in the past this has been the case, there are abstentions of selfnoms that in hindsight I regret. But to contextualise this, this proces has evolved considerably since it's inception, and no longer does the 'I'll toss my hat in the ring and see what happens' have the same chance of success as it did before during what I'd describe as the experimental phase of this process.

I'd love to be proven wrong in the next election, but this election did not achieve that. Along with this development is the reality that elections are not 'easier' by any means, only intended to be 'less intense' for candidates, and even that intensity has notably increased in this election based on quantity of questions alone. So overall, I understand why elections were created, in order to try and create a process similar to RfA but 'less harsh', but this is not the result based on it's current development. It's natural processes become more difficult overtime, just like RfA in the early years was considered more straightforward.

For better or for worse, it was somewhat inevitable that AELECT would follow the same direction if left unchanged. If the evidence I provided (re: fanfanboy's point) helps to make the process easier for candidates, I am all for that, and happy if my candor can assist in that. Unfortunately though, I think it's clear from the percentages this time around, compared to previous results, that lowering the threshold for success is no longer necessary at this time. Whether that be due to less hats being thrown into rings or otherwise.

As for the risks, yes I consider the risk of electing an unqualified candidate to be considerably higher than a qualified candidate being unsuccessful. What the probabilities of such risks are is not what I am basing that risk on. Granted that is only my opinion, from another perspective of someone who handles backlogs, I imagine it could be considerably different. Thus this is only my own perception afterall, if I held the belief that WP was in a state of crisis due to lack of admins, I'd happily change my view on that in a heartbeat and be more willing to roll the dice and hope for the best. CNC^{in solidarity} (talk) 14:39, 23 May 2026 (UTC)

If the evidence I provided (re: fanfanboy's point) helps to make the process easier for candidates, I am all for that, and happy if my candor can assist in that. I genuinely struggle to see how opposing candidates by default helps with this. Chaotic Enby (in solidarity · talk · contribs) 19:31, 23 May 2026 (UTC)

Encourages the reduction of thresholds. CNC^{in solidarity} (talk) 22:34, 23 May 2026 (UTC)

How will to do that? If it does do that, what will the advantage be? Thryduulf (talk) 22:43, 23 May 2026 (UTC)

Make AELECT easier for candidates. CNC^{in solidarity} (talk) 22:44, 23 May 2026 (UTC)

What I don't understand is how voting oppose by default makes things easier for candidates? Surely it makes it harder because they have to actively convince you to not oppose rather than actively convince you to do something other than abstain? Rather than hoping that by voting oppose by default, this will somehow lead thresholds to reduced, why not just not artificially lower support percentages by only voting oppose when you have an explicit reason to? Thryduulf (talk) 23:18, 23 May 2026 (UTC)

I do have a reason to, see above. CNC^{in solidarity} (talk) 23:21, 23 May 2026 (UTC)

I've re-read what you've written but I still don't understand how your actions will lead to your desired outcome. Thryduulf (talk) 00:09, 24 May 2026 (UTC)

As a reminder, this is a feedback section for voters. I have left my feedback, if it's not been understood then nevermind. CNC^{in solidarity} (talk) 00:22, 24 May 2026 (UTC)

If you mean neutral=oppose/2 will cause a lower threshold, that may be true nominally but won't cause any additional candidates to pass. You're effectively creating inflation onto the value of the denomiantor of the support ratio, and printing money to raise prices does not increase how much stuff a consumer can purchase. In solidarity, Aaron Liu (talk) 21:49, 24 May 2026 (UTC)

I did not, no. Thus I'm not creating inflation either. I don't print money and don't mine it anymore either (good 'ol days are gone), or believe in the scam of fiat either. I don't need convincing about how inflation and money supply functions, but I appreciate the thought. CNC^{in solidarity} (talk) 22:28, 24 May 2026 (UTC)

I consider the risk of electing an unqualified candidate to be considerably higher than a qualified candidate being unsuccessful. If that really is true, Wikipedia:Administrator recall is always there to counterbalance. fanfanboy (block_talk) 01:21, 24 May 2026 (UTC)

You're right, I will take this as good advise. CNC^{in solidarity} (talk) 01:35, 24 May 2026 (UTC)

The community would still have to deal with said admin for a year or haul them to ArbCom, because admins are immune from recall for the first year after being elected. Left guide (talk) 01:52, 24 May 2026 (UTC)

The reason to have a year is to see whether or not the admin is truly unqualified. If the admin turns out to be fine after a year, then no harm done. If the admin makes too many mistakes, recall them. Plus, we had a lot of admins before recall which were raked over the coals at recall after years of disruption. I'm sure the community can handle one bad admin for a year. An "unqualified" admin (or any admin) should be taken to ARBCOM only when the disruption was particularly egregious. fanfanboy (block_talk) 03:28, 24 May 2026 (UTC)

I'm sure the community can handle one bad admin for a year. I'd prefer not to do that as that would be the worst possible outcome. The amount of hours wasted on bad apples is immeasurable. If it were a quick check-in at ANI and off to recall, sure, but that's not how it is, nor hows it's been. I don't want to have to see admins waste their time on unreliable collages as it's a total time sink. The theory behind electing new admins is to reduce the workload, not increase it. CNC^{in solidarity} (talk) 08:52, 24 May 2026 (UTC)

Moved to Wikipedia talk:Administrator recall § Admin immunity

 – CNC^{in solidarity} (talk) 16:42, 25 May 2026 (UTC)

Bzweebl

Congrats to all who make these run smoothly, these are so great and way more effective at granting adminship than RFA. My only other feedback is you shouldn’t be able to ask the same additional question to every candidate without regard for their background. There was way too much to read and much of it wasn’t so relevant to the candidate in question. Bzweebl (talk • contribs) 13:29, 20 May 2026 (UTC)

Hiobazard

Timezones: This must be quite burdensome during a stressful election. I would support either (1): rolling deadline changes offset by 12 hours with each new election: Pros: no more than ~5 month delay if a candidate wants to be awake at 'closing time.' Cons: Doing the math for 12:00 UTC may be more complicated or confusing; and, if it will be either 02:00 (asleep for most) or 14:00 (frequently, working time) for a candidate, there may be no benefit to either schedule. Or (2): a 6- to 12 hour period, limited to candidate responses only, at the end of the discussion phase.

NOTYET: Although it can increase signal:noise ratio, I don't support WP:SNOW or any other sharp-edged ways to prevent unqualified candidates from running, only the more thoughtful ways that folks like Valereee and voorts have attempted. If an editor reads the appropriate advice pages (or fails to make the effort to) and proceeds with an ill-advised campaign, that's an excellent data point in choosing which way your vote should fall...and perhaps how long it may be before that editor has developed the judgement to be a good admin.

Neutral v abstain and vote percentage: The ultimate outcome of the "nonvote" is identical, regardless of terminology; almost all voters should know this. A rose by any other name...

The formula for counting voting percentage should remain unchanged, as it fits most voters' expectations and is similar to computations in many other elections elsewhere.

Q-spam: Agreed, too many questions, often non-specific to a particular candidate. My proposal would be: limiting questions per editor to, say, #ofCandidates/2, rounded up, in total; with an additional allowance for submitting an all-candidate question, limited to one per editor per election, to the clerks for approval (Robert McClenon's excellent LLM question, e.g.). If a particularly good solo question could apply to another candidate, another editor could easily "spend" their question allowance repeating it for that candidate.

Hiobazard (talk/contribs) 14:46, 20 May 2026 (UTC)

I really like that proposal to limit all-candidate questions, although monitors would be a more natural choice than clerks, as they are in charge of coordinating the discussion phase while clerks have a more technical role. Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 17:16, 20 May 2026 (UTC)

Actually, I agree about monitors...it was a misunderstanding of differing responsibilities on my part. Hiobazard (talk/contribs) 18:56, 20 May 2026 (UTC)

No worries! Not necessarily too obvious when you haven't done one or the other yourself, I used to be similarly confused (ended up monitoring for E3 and clerking for E4 since)! Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 19:09, 20 May 2026 (UTC)

The "total questions" idea is a great starting point, though I think there should be something preventing someone with a vendetta turning someone's questions section into their personal back-and-forth.
Though that might still be better than the current situation, since someone with a vendetta would reflect far more badly on that someone than the candidate. Aaron Liu (talk) 19:51, 20 May 2026 (UTC)

UC

Another point of view on "same question to all". Tthinking about real-world job interviews, there's a certain equity to everyone being asked the same question: it makes sure that the comparison between candidates is done using the same evidence for all of them. For example, I might oppose someone's candidacy because of their attitude to AI, as revealed by their response to the AI question, but if another candidate hasn't been asked that question, they might have precisely the same attitude but receive my "support" vote because that hasn't been revealed. With that said, I do like the idea of proposing such "all-hands" questions beforehand, perhaps on a Talk page or to the Clerks monitors: if we're going to ask for a comparatively large amount of candidate-hours in answering them, it would seem reasonable to check beforehand that there's a reasonable number of potential voters who think the question is worth asking. UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 16:57, 20 May 2026 (UTC)

"Thinking about real-world job interviews, there's a certain equity to everyone being asked the same question: it makes sure that the comparison between candidates is done using the same evidence for all of them." -- +1, I feel it would do more harm than good to outright ban "copy-and-paste" questions. If something like what a potential admin thinks about AI is part of a voter's litmus test, that voter should be able to ask all the candidates. We wouldn't want voters to only be able to make an informed decision about some candidates while leaving the rest of them a mystery. I was going to suggest that maybe voters could ask 1 "for everyone" question and 1 "specific to this candidate" question, but honestly I prefer we just leave it as is. If a voter wants to use their 2 questions to ask 2 questions related to the experience or conduct of a specific candidate, that's their choice, and if a voter wants to ask the same 2 questions of every potential admin, that's their choice too. I doubt it would be viewed as a problem if an editor has a certain question they like to ask at every RfA, since RfAs are more infrequent. The copy-paste questions are only more noticeable here because there's a greater number of admin nominations happening concurrently.  Vanilla  Wizard 💙 19:37, 20 May 2026 (UTC)

I doubt it would be viewed as a problem if an editor has a certain question they like to ask at every RfA, since RfAs are more infrequent. Not especially convinced by that, as this isn't a phenomenon we've really seen at RfA, or at least not to the same extent – and, furthermore, monitors are usually more proactive about it. Two of the questions in my own RfA were also asked in a simultaneous RfA, and were moved to the talk page for that very reason, as they didn't pertain to either of us specifically. Here, around half of all questions (as a rough ballpark estimate) were simultaneously asked to all candidates, which greatly inflated the total question count. Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 19:55, 20 May 2026 (UTC)

In that case, ideally all these generic questions would have been moved and consolidated into a page like Wikipedia:Administrator elections/May 2026/Candidates/Discussion, formatted as individual questions with (the possibility of) multiple candidate answers. Then it can be that extra bit of information that voters who are interested in can seek out, or from another perspective; the least significant questions that candidates are welcome to ignore along with voters. At least then it'd be easier to compare the individual answers to such generic questions, if such answers were collated. CNC (talk) 20:10, 20 May 2026 (UTC)

Yep, that could work great, and especially help reduce the pressure on candidates with respect to multi-part questions. Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 21:32, 20 May 2026 (UTC)

Tryptofish

Like many people above, I feel like it went smoothly and was successful. Some things that I noticed:

• Voting pattern: The results look to me like there were fewer across-the-board oppose votes than in previous AELECTs, with support/oppose percentages getting more like traditional RfAs. I see this as a good sign, with the community getting more comfortable with the process, and with less of a problem with too many candidates to evaluate. This seems to me to make it less necessary to consider lowering the threshold for success.
• The importance of getting nominators, and not self-nomming: As noted by many above, this seems very important, and it had a 100% rate of predicting success. There's a chicken-and-egg aspect to this: does having good nominators assure that candidates are well qualified, or do the kinds of candidates who are well qualified have a predisposition to seek out nominators? I suspect it's both of these simultaneously, but it's very clear that self-noms are something that candidates should do only if they understand the risks very well and have solid reasons to think the self-nom won't hurt their chances.
• Not-now candidates: I think part of the problem was the initial wording of the watchlist notices, that made it sound to the inexperienced like we were inviting lots of people to self-nom. The wording was revised mid-process in response to this, and I expect that better wording will be used in the future. Better wording might make it less necessary to impose formal requirements that we don't impose for traditional RfA, and I would be reluctant to impose such a double-standard.
• Information that was useful to voters, and that was not useful: For my own experience, one thing that I paid close attention to were the nominating statements. Just as having good nominators is important, I found that once I had read the well-written nominations from users I know and trust, I could feel comfortable supporting a candidate, and conversely, I felt like I kept running into things that gave me questions when I read self-noms, including those that subsequently withdrew. So I read the nominations and the candidate's answers to the three standard questions pretty attentively, and they played a big role in how I voted. Once I got to the optional questions from other editors, frankly, I quickly got bored and skipped over them as a waste of time, so I'd advise those writing those questions to consider carefully why they felt the need to do so, and all the more for those copy-paste questions. As someone who writes a voter guide for ArbCom elections, I've been a critic of the voter guides for AELECT. The first thing I'll say to guide writers is don't bother if you can't finish before voting starts. I voted relatively early, and there were guides that had nothing of value to tell me, and I had no reason to look back later on. I've been a critic of guides, and of discussion section comments, that simply focus on numerical stats about deletion discussions and the like, because they are poor predictors of what really matters. I continue to feel that way, but this time, something new that I found very helpful were the observations about whether or not the candidates had made comments in deletion discussions that demonstrated understanding of policies and guidelines. That was something I found helpful in voting.

--Tryptofish (talk) 19:28, 20 May 2026 (UTC)

"The importance of getting nominators, and not self-nomming: As noted by many above, this seems very important, and it had a 100% rate of predicting success. There's a chicken-and-egg aspect to this: does having good nominators assure that candidates are well qualified, or do the kinds of candidates who are well qualified have a predisposition to seek out nominators? I suspect it's both of these simultaneously, but it's very clear that self-noms are something that candidates should do only if they understand the risks very well and have solid reasons to think the self-nom won't hurt their chances."

In my view, this is a case of "correlation ≠ causation", rather than a deciding factor in an RfA. Certainly, when you have a trusted member of the community vouching for you, it'll reflect well on your nomination. However, I don't think either of the two candidates who didn't make the cut were opposed because they were self-noms. For G-13114, I suspect that the main issue was the fact that their answers to the questions didn't really give people much to go off of in terms of what they'd actually do were they to regain adminship; as for Vestrian24Bio, it was more an electoral example of WP:NOTQUITEYET. (In the interests of disclosure, I supported all but one of the nine candidates; I opposed Vestrian for reasons outlined in the aforementioned "NOTQUITEYET" essay, and will likely support once they have more tenure.) On the other hand, had any of the successful candidates opted for a self-nom, I'm 100% confident that they all would have still been approved. Kurtis ^(talk) 02:01, 22 May 2026 (UTC)

Thanks for the reply, and for the most part I agree with you. I put it in terms of it not being clear which way the causation might go, and you put it in terms of much of it not being causative at all, which I find quite reasonable. The one distinction that I do want to make is where you express confidence that all of the successful candidates this time would have still been successful as self-noms. I'd like to think that's true, but when I look at the voting patterns in past AELECTs, I become skeptical. Up until this election, we have had an awful lot of unexplained opposes and a strong pattern of self-noms losing. So I'm not arguing for requiring noms, but I said that, going forward, self-noms should understand what they are doing, and should do it with eyes open. I still think that's valid advice. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:01, 22 May 2026 (UTC)

fanfanboy

Yet another successful AELECT! From how things turned out, it looks like around ~10 candidates seems to be the sweet spot for being a large group effort for candidates, but still not over burdening on voters.

Now for self-noms, I don't really see them as a problem. Candidates should be allowed to run in the way they choose. I also suspect that requiring a minimum account age and edit count will also reduce the amount of self noms from inexperienced candidates. Now we should address the issue of inexperienced candidates throwing their hat into the ring. While I haven't before, now I fully support setting some edit count and account age requirements to prevent this issue from occurring.

As for mass questions, we definitely need to discourage them, maybe even disallow them. The amount of questions per candidate this time around was frankly, absurd. We would be doing a favor to both candidates and voters by reducing the total amount of questions they have to answer/read.

Other than that though, I'd say this AELECT went fairly well, only other thing I'd note is that I think that there is no need to lower pass threshold. fanfanboy (block_talk) 02:30, 21 May 2026 (UTC)

Vanamonde

I echo the thanks given to the election officials for volunteering for some very necessary but tedious tasks. A few disconnected thoughts that I believe merit consideration for the future:

• There is palpable frustration with mass questions. I feel we should focus on the purpose of questions to a admin candidate, which is to assess their suitability for the tools: this may mean limiting mass questions to the directly relevant, without prohibiting them altogether.
• Much ink has been spilled over the "problem" of NOTYET candidacies. To summarize what I've said elsewhere, I would prefer that these editors spared themselves some time and frustration, but we ought to be careful about legislating major eligibility limits. There will always be people who do not read all the advice.
• We have had four AELECTs, and appointed 5233 new admins. This is a considerable success by any reasonable measure. The people who made this happen, especially Novem Linguae, deserve major thanks. At the same time, in my estimation it has made qualified candidates who might otherwise be reluctant to chance an RFA willing to step up, but it hasn't really broadened the pool of candidates. This is not a criticism: this initiative arose out of concerns with the culture of RFA, and has done something to address that. But it is something to consider, because we have had some hints, especially in the first AELECT, that a wider pool of candidates were at least considering adminship for the first time. Vanamonde93 (talk) 03:26, 21 May 2026 (UTC)

The 52 seems incorrect. I suspect that number comes from WP:AEN which tallies the quantity of successful nominators, but it seems that successful candidacies have an average of more than one nominator. The actual number of elected admins by my count is 33 at WP:AELECTRESULTS which is corroborated by Category:Successful Wikipedia administrator election candidates listing 34 minus an error of a stray category at WP:Administrator elections/May 2026/Discussion phase. Left guide (talk) 04:43, 21 May 2026 (UTC)

You are correct of course, my apologies for typing while sleepy. The total is not the same as the number of successful nominations. Amended. The rest of my point remains. Vanamonde93 (talk) 17:01, 21 May 2026 (UTC)

JustARandomSquid

Congrats to our new admins! For the record, I think a pre-review of mass questions (perhaps during the discussion phase) would be in order. JustARandomSquid (talk) 08:16, 21 May 2026 (UTC)

JayBeeEll

Assorted comments:

• Congrats to those elected, thanks to the other candidates, and thanks to everyone involved in making this system work.
• The entire discourse above "some candidates weren't going to be elected, so we should raise the bar to nomination" is silly. There is nothing wrong with candidates who aren't going to be elected running, and there was too much time spent on discouraging candidates who weren't going to be elected from running. It would be healthier if there were more candidates running, some of them were getting 40%, 50%, and 60% of the vote, and everyone was more chill about that.
• I agree with George Ho that everyone who has gotten above 65% (actually I would have said even somewhat lower than this) at elections would have been a good choice for administrator and that it's a shame none of them have run again/done RfA with nominators.
• The copy-paste questions are mostly useless. I like Hiobazard's suggestion about this.
• When I go to vote, I have three options: to vote in support of a candidate, to vote in opposition to a candidate, or to not be counted in the vote. The idea that there should be some other category (like abstains counting as half a no vote) is silly. Maybe I want to vote and only have opinions about some of the candidates! If I want my vote to count against a candidate, I will vote against the candidate.

--JBL (talk) 22:26, 21 May 2026 (UTC)

There's nothing wrong with an inexperienced editor running in theory but in practice it's a nightmare. Look at NYC Guru's discussion page. Despite dropping out 2 days into the discussion phase, they recieved 26 (!!) optional questions, a lot of them being pointy pile-on questions. Their discussion page recieved 143 edits, the most out of all candidates (the highest discussion page edit count out of the successful candidates was 61). An admin mentioned the idea of "pblock from Wikipedia space for disruptive editing". It was a car crash. NYC Guru has not made any edits since withdrawing. The idea of raising the minimum thresholds isn't to streamline the AELECT process, it's to stop the mob going head to head with naive but otherwise good-faith editors when it can be easily avoided. BugGhost 🦗👻 23:43, 21 May 2026 (UTC)

a lot of them being pointy pile-on questions the monitors should not be permitting pointy pile-on questions, regardless of why they are asked or whether the candidate has any hope of being elected. It's not fair on the candidate or on voters. Thryduulf (talk) 23:52, 21 May 2026 (UTC)

they recieved 26 (!!) optional questions ... pointy pile-on questions ... 143 edits ... stop the mob going head to head with naive but otherwise good-faith editors when it can be easily avoided. Yes, I agree, the community behaved very poorly in that case. If there's a behavior that should have been restricted there it was that of the person asking the 20th question or adding the 100th comment. People who are not experienced enough to win should be free to run; maybe moderators should be encouraged to tell discussants to knock off bad behavior and chill out. --JBL (talk) 00:24, 22 May 2026 (UTC)

@JayBeeEll and Thryduulf - I agree that the monitors should have been firmer (I suggested the same in my debrief section above), but preventing the problem in the first place is far more effective than expecting monitors to be continually policing these messes. BugGhost 🦗👻 07:57, 22 May 2026 (UTC)

IMO, there is no reason to believe that if the problem is "voters behaving badly" then changing the rules for candidates will solve the problem.

There is a really big problem with RfA: no one wants to run an RfA because it's unpleasant, so only candidates who are basically assured of succeeding ever bother. It is very, very important to the success of administrator elections as an alternative that this dynamic not be allowed to replicate itself here. Making it harder and more intimidating for people to run is exactly the opposite of a good response; it does nothing to address the problem and in fact basically serves as an endorsement of the bad behavior. Instead, we should encourage all sorts of people to run, even if that means some candidates are marginal or clearly doomed; voters should vote against candidates who shouldn't be administrators instead of pillorying them; and anyone making a 20th question or 100th comment in a discussion whose outcome is overdetermined should be blocked from further participation in the discussion. --JBL (talk) 17:42, 22 May 2026 (UTC)

Airship

If this community believes Wikipedia:Administrator elections/May 2026/Candidates/NYC Guru is an appropriate response to an inexperienced editor running for adminship, I’m ashamed to be a part of it. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 08:26, 22 May 2026 (UTC)

@AirshipJungleman29, even after this and this and this and this? They were told, with increasing clarity over the entire leadup to the election, that this was a bad idea. They said that they wanted to see what questions people had. At the earlier RfA, after multiple people tried to advise them on their talk to withdraw, they objected when it was snow closed because they wanted to see. Literally they copied the RfA to its talk page and pinged everyone who had participated. This editor was literally asking for this -- and I do mean literally -- because they thought it would be helpful to them. This even after it was pointed out to them that they were wasting other people's time, a point they completely rejected, saying think how long it takes to vote -- 2 minutes? I don't think even ignoring their candidacy altogether would have been kinder, as they simply were unwilling to accept anything but allowing them to see what questions and concerns people had. Valereee (talk) 11:15, 22 May 2026 (UTC)

And their withdrawal statement? Due to limited access over recent days I’m withdrawing. Not: "I see the community is not supportive of this." Not: "I guess I should have listened to advice." Not "Now I see what kinds of things I need to work on." Not: "I've gotten some good feedback." Valereee (talk) 11:39, 22 May 2026 (UTC)

Good on them. No more need to appease the mob baying for blood. Sorry you didn’t get your grovelling apology for forcing you to waste your time, I guess. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 11:49, 22 May 2026 (UTC)

Wow. I wasn't looking for a groveling apology. I was looking for them to recognize, "Oh, okay, this is what happens." Valereee (talk) 11:52, 22 May 2026 (UTC)

But why? You needed them to recognize that in advance because it would have what good impact on the world if they did so? (This is rhetorical: obviously it doesn't have any material consequences at all whether they realized it before the discussion, during the discussion, or after the vote totals came out.)

You were the one leaving short pointers without further commentary to the advice to candidates page, right? That was a great activity. Basically every single other comment devoted to chasing off candidates after that point was bad. --JBL (talk) 17:57, 22 May 2026 (UTC)

Yes, I was leaving just a link on their talks for the most part. I don't agree with the characterization that others were 'chasing off' candidates, though. I'm too lazy to go track down the deleted noms, but IIRC we had nearly as many ill-considered as we did well-considered candidacies this time, and the majority of the ill-considered either decided not to run after getting advice or withdrew.

I'm open to the idea that we simply ignore the ill-considered and pretend they don't exist -- don't love it, really would prefer to inform people, but clearly not everyone agrees so maybe that's better? -- but do we really want half our candidates in each election to be ill-considered just because no one has sat them down and really explained? You really think it's not kinder to tell inexperienced people, who don't know what they don't know, that this is a bad idea? I just feel like we should be cluing peope in. Valereee (talk) 22:01, 24 May 2026 (UTC)

Nobody is saying that we shouldn't tell inexperience people what they don't know. What we are saying is that we should tell them once and then let them make their own decision based on what they do now know rather than continually badger, hound and even bully them until they make the decision that you want them to make. Thryduulf (talk) 22:19, 24 May 2026 (UTC)

Thry, are you saying one person goes in and tells them, "Bad idea", and no matter what, unless the candidate asks for more info, that's it? No one else chimes in, no one else clarifies, it's one and done? Valereee (talk) 22:46, 24 May 2026 (UTC)

I join those who say, after initial warnings, seeing a teenage support % is feedback enough. In solidarity, Aaron Liu (talk) 22:51, 24 May 2026 (UTC)

Sorry, Aaron, I'm probably just being obtuse...'teenage support %'? Valereee (talk) 00:10, 25 May 2026 (UTC)

I'm assuming he means a support percentage in the teens, ex. 13%. Chess enjoyer (talk) 00:12, 25 May 2026 (UTC)

OH! lol Valereee (talk) 00:15, 25 May 2026 (UTC)

In my opinion, I don't think there needs to be hard rule of "exactly one person", but I do think those wishing to provide feedback should read the room and see that the potential candidate has been sufficiently warned. If we really want a system that stops certain users from running, then we should be explicit about it and put it in place, and not just continually ask such users to withdraw. isaacl (talk) 23:06, 24 May 2026 (UTC)

Option 1) ignore an obviously unsuitable nomination and vote oppose. No time wasted.

Option 2) take offence at the editor pointing out option 1) existing, and leave many tendentious comments (including, by yourself, threatening a block) because they were forcing you to waste your time “helping” them.

Come off it. I thought we wanted to make running for admin not a big deal? Then make it not a big deal to fail. We’re not some company seeking high pass rate percentages! ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 11:46, 22 May 2026 (UTC)

I'm not offended. I just thought, in all good faith, that it was possible you weren't aware of the previous lengthy attempts people had made to help this editor and their rejection of that. Valereee (talk) 11:54, 22 May 2026 (UTC)

If someone doesn't want to be helped then just let them be, don't force them to accept what they might not even perceive as help. Offer friendly words of advice once, twice at most, and then leave them be. If they take your suggested course of action, great. If they don't, that's fine. If you don't let them make their own decision, regardless of how much you do or don't like it or agree with it, at some point it crosses the line into bullying. Make sure you stop well before it gets to that point. Thryduulf (talk) 13:00, 22 May 2026 (UTC)

I did offer a single link to advice, once. There's no 'letting' them make their own decision; there isn't even policy around SNOW here. I asked followup questions that I hope they read and thought, "Hm, maybe there actually is a reason people want to see more experience than simply edit-count-as-a-hoop-to-jump-through." I hope they actually learned something from the experience. I honestly think most of the people commenting and asking questions were hoping the same thing: that this editor would think carefully about a third run without listening to advice. And that maybe others who receive similar advice ditto.

I get that some people think it's better to ignore such candidacies. I thing being ignored for reasons you don't understand is worse. For me it's like saying you aren't even worth the time it takes to explain. Valereee (talk) 13:49, 22 May 2026 (UTC)

When you posted that comment there were already 7 other comments in the thread telling them the same thing - the message was already pretty clear at that point. I think this is a bit of a WP:Being right isn't enough situation. Not you specifically, but to the "please drop out" group as a collective. Yes, it probably would have been easier if NYC Guru had dropped out earlier in the cycle. Yes, someone should have prompted them about their odds early on. But once they indicated that they were planning to run anyway, there was no need for the continued insistence on their talk page, followed by the inundation of pointy questions, followed by the snark in their discussion page, followed by the implication from an admin that they could be blocked. This isn't ANI, there are no boomerangs, NYC Guru is an editor in good standing who merely made a long-shot request for permissions. There are no rules against this, and the appropriate response is just an oppose vote. The large group of editors chanting "you won't succeed!" at them was far more disruptive than the actual candidacy. BugGhost 🦗👻 16:45, 22 May 2026 (UTC)

While I don't think negative comments are necessarily a bad thing if they carry genuine feedback, this (especially from an admin) ran the risk of a chilling effect, both towards NYC Guru and towards editors considering a future candidacy. Chaotic Enby (in solidarity · talk · contribs) 17:42, 22 May 2026 (UTC)

+1 to AJ29's comment and +100 to The large group of editors chanting "you won't succeed!" at them was far more disruptive than the actual candidacy. Dear fellow editors: suppose you see a candidate running who shouldn't be an administrator. What should you do? (1) If you are the first person to notice this: leave a polite comment explaining why in the discussion section, and maybe one question that would allow the candidate to address the central point of your objection. (2) If you are not the first person to notice this: wait until the voting period and vote "no". (3) There is no (3). In the future, the moderators should take aggressive steps to control people trying to do a (3). --JBL (talk) 17:47, 22 May 2026 (UTC)

I heartily endorse everything in JBL's comment, and very strongly encourage the moderators to take note of In the future, the moderators should take aggressive steps to control people trying to do a (3). Thryduulf (talk) 18:44, 22 May 2026 (UTC)

“Helpful attempts” seems to me a textbook case of your rhetorical dismissals. You helped nothing save your self-admitted need to gawp at trainwrecks. (If e.g. Voorts wants to explain what purpose this vindictive tirade served, they’re welcome to.) ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 01:41, 23 May 2026 (UTC)

Well, we can agree to disagree, maybe. I will take your comments on board, and I appreciate the opinion as one being expressed in good faith. Valereee (talk) 10:38, 23 May 2026 (UTC)

As Valeree has said, this editor wanted questions. I think my questions were reasonable and my comment was one that would be helpful for the candidate if they wanted to amend their answers and voters who might not have tuke to read all of them. What about the tone of my questions or comments do you find vindictive? voorts (talk/contributions) 19:02, 23 May 2026 (UTC)

@Voorts: Personally it seemed to me like you were ... very invested in getting NYCGuru to withdraw. The point "I don't think this person should be an administrator" was already clearly conveyed by your first comment, and your second comment, and your first question, and .... That unrelentingness was inevitably going to come off as personal and aggressive, and all the moreso when lots of other people are also piling on. If discussion had been cut off after 1 hour, the outcome (NYCGuru not being an administrator) would have been exactly the same. --JBL (talk) 20:03, 30 May 2026 (UTC)

This is very much badgering of NYC Guru, not unlike the badgering of oppose !voters that led to the monumental RfA reform RfCs. See Wikipedia:Please do not bite the newcomers#cite ref-3 and especially the accompanying footnote. A support ratio of 1% would have resulted in the exact same outcome. In solidarity, Aaron Liu (talk) 04:02, 23 May 2026 (UTC)

asilvering

• Thanks to everyone for your continued work on all this.
• Ban the mass questions. Please. Very few voters want to read through all that. If they do anything more than waste candidates' time, what they're doing is probably depressing turnout, as editors look at the enormous walls of text and think "screw that".
• Can we please, please stop having such angst over the candidates who will obviously not pass. I know it is painful to watch. They will survive. Let it go.
• Femke and Vanamonde93 together nominated six of seven passing candiates. This is a critically low bus factor. Admins: please consider doing some recruiting work yourselves. You don't end up nominating five candidates because they come to you. You find them (and, in some cases, mentor them for months in advance of a run). If you want advice, suggestions, gut checks, or whatever else, I am confident that any of the recently prolific nominators would be happy to speak with you about it, myself included.

In solidarity, asilvering (talk) 18:34, 22 May 2026 (UTC)

Yes, I don't think it was necessary to keep harping on those candidates. We got lucky with the fact that NYCGuru said he would keep editing, but who knows, what if someone else comes along, but can't handle the criticism and quits editing altogether. fanfanboy (block_talk) 02:58, 23 May 2026 (UTC)

leeky

1. Monitors should be removing irrelevant questions, answering them was a timesink for candidates and nominators. (I am now realizing I should've named FOCIE better, though ...)
2. Mass questions should be constrained heavily or banned outright. See above.
3. I don't blame editors for trying to save nonviable candidates from the process (you have the patience of a saint, Valereee), because as Airship points out, the questions and comments can still be brutal. But at the end of the day, candidates make their choices, and more than a message or two just isn't going to do much.
4. We should be adding a note in the next call for candidates on the lowest edit count to pass in the last two years for a quick-but-purely-descriptive comparison.
5. The de facto requirement to write content is a silly and an arbitrarily high standard – speaking as someone who has written a lot of it – and I am glad to see us moving away from it in the spirit of electing more qualified admins to do desperately needed work. They clearly know what they're doing and we should let them.

theleekycauldron (talk • she/her) 05:59, 23 May 2026 (UTC)

I will say that I very much wanted to remove the irrelevant mass questions as a monitor; I didn't, because I was fairly confident it would simply end up with the question added back and somebody mad at me for censorship or something. We should certainly change things so that they are not allowed (or much easier to remove) come next election. CoconutOctopus talk 19:29, 24 May 2026 (UTC)

I would certainly support page-blocking anyone re-adding (without explicit permission) something removed by a monitor. Thryduulf (talk) 20:10, 24 May 2026 (UTC)

As someone who did some pretty involved monitoring during AELECT3, I can very much sympathize with that feeling. Chaotic Enby (in solidarity · talk · contribs) 20:13, 24 May 2026 (UTC)

S Marshall

The mass questions need to stop here. Going forward, each and every question needs to be focused and relevant.—S Marshall T/C 16:15, 23 May 2026 (UTC)

If you (and others here) want mass questions restricted, then such questions should be restricted also at RfA. Somehow, I'm uncertain whether proposals restricting "mass" questions will succeed. If I ask a "mass" question, like one of civility-related questions, what would you do with it? George Ho (talk) 16:27, 23 May 2026 (UTC); edited, 19:32, 23 May 2026 (UTC)

(Per replies below, George Ho (talk) 19:32, 23 May 2026 (UTC))

Summarily remove the question, and if re-added, page block the re-adder.—S Marshall T/C 17:36, 23 May 2026 (UTC)

I'm not sure how mass questions are possible (let alone problematic) at RfA, since there's generally no more than one RfA occurring at any given time nowadays. It's uniquely an election phenomenon. Left guide (talk) 18:30, 23 May 2026 (UTC)

Mass questions at RfA, when multiple RfAs happen simultaneously, are usually struck by monitors (cf. my own RfA which was the latest such example). Chaotic Enby (in solidarity · talk · contribs) 19:25, 23 May 2026 (UTC)

I agree. I'm not going to create my own subsection (at least not just yet) to say that we should ban mass questions as well, but by my count, there were at least nine optional questions that seem to have been asked verbatim of every single candidate. (For example, questions about AI and content creation.) Perhaps we should be encouraging more personalized questions. – Epicgenius (talk) 22:20, 23 May 2026 (UTC)

HouseBlaster

To join the chorus: we need to ban mass questions. I'll acknowledge there is some gray in what constitutes a mass question; this question about content creation was asked to multiple candidates who did not have any audited content, and I wouldn't put that in the same basket as "how will you, personally, save Wikipedia from AI?" or "tell me your thoughts on this arbitration principle".

To address two rejoinders: even if the community ignores a question, the candidate still had to spend editor time answering it. As the principle goes, editor time is our most valuable resource which should not be wasted. That definitely applies to answering meaningless mass questions. On the other hand, if the candidate treats the optional question as optional and ignores it, there are social consequences ("this person not might meet ADMINACCT! Look at all these unanswered questions!"). We need an unwaivable right to fix this problem. Best, HouseBlaster (talk • he/they) 20:33, 23 May 2026 (UTC)

Also scrolling cost for voters. 500 people taking an extra second to scroll is 500 seconds lost that could be better spent doing other things. That's ~8 minutes per generic question. CNC^{in solidarity} (talk) 20:40, 23 May 2026 (UTC)

ActivelyDisinterested

Rather than having a strict requirement to take part in the election, would stating what the minimum qualities of anyone that passed be an idea? "No editor with an account younger than (time) and less than (count) edit has been successfully elected". If an editors does read it, they might realise that they still have a way to go before the community would elect them and at the same time it doesn't create a bureaucratic definition. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 10:13, 5 June 2026 (UTC)