Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/2024 review/Phase III/Administrator elections

Survey

• Option C. The trial went really well. Anecdotally, I think it received mostly positive feedback, and I don't think I heard a single complaint about any of the admins that ended up being elected. We're a tiny bit blocked on waiting for WMF to make some updates to the SecurePoll software, but let's go ahead and get the renewal RFC out of the way so that when the SecurePoll changes are all done, we can hit the ground running.
  Also, we recently finished a series of 22 mini-RFCs that double checked consensus on some things and improved some things about the AELECT process, and I'd encourage folks to take a look at the summary of that. We now have a really good idea of what community consensus is on important issues such as the support threshold, voter guides, length of the discussion phase, who should do the scrutineering, how often to hold elections, etc.
  An additional trial instead of a full renewal does not seem necessary. If the AELECT process ever became a problem, it could always be paused or cancelled by RFC. –Novem Linguae (talk) 06:22, 21 February 2025 (UTC)
• Option C, Novem sums up my thoughts perfectly. (for disclosure I was one of the admins elected throught the first trial) Sohom (talk) 06:24, 21 February 2025 (UTC)
• They should not.
  People think the trial was a success because it resulted in eleven more administrators. That's the wrong metric: promoting anyone who asked politely would get us many, many more, but couldn't be called a successful process either. The right criteria for a successful process is that everyone who should be an administrator became one, everyone who shouldn't be one shouldn't become one, and - crucially - all of them know why they either passed or failed.
  This trial failed abjectly in the last part, and so badly that we don't even know for certain how well it did in the first two. (Probably not very well; only about a third of the candidates ended up passing, which is well below the rate at RFA even accounting for early withdrawals.) The discussion pages for candidates who failed in the 60-70% range don't look appreciably different from the pages of candidates who passed. Almost none of the discussion pages, even for those who finished below 50%, look like those of a failed RFA candidate.
  Worse, the changes made in the Phase 2 RFC do nothing at all to mitigate the problem: there's no limit on number of simultaneous candidates, making it likely we'll again see too many to properly evaluate and that most will again get largely pro-forma questions, the same as asked of all the others; the pass threshold is, absurdly, still lower than at RFA, despite there being indisputably less scrutiny; and the discussion phase timing and full-throated approval of canvassing guides are still set up to minimize feedback to both the candidates and the voters.
  If all you want to do is get more administrators, there are much better, easier, and less stressful ways to do it. If what you want to do is get more legitimate administrators, there are hardly any worse. —Cryptic 06:27, 21 February 2025 (UTC)

  I think your argument here would be more impactful if you could summarize/explain/quantify what you mean by discussion pages looking similar/different Czarking0 (talk) 18:35, 22 February 2025 (UTC)

  A lot of these arguments (excluding the pretty good point on failed candidates not having feedback) were rejected in phase II. The administrators elected were good, a lot more people oppose in SecurePoll ballots for some reason, and there was consensus that voter guides did not have any outsized effect compared to normal comments. Aaron Liu (talk) 01:33, 24 February 2025 (UTC)

• Option C No point in further trials, this is probably the best election process we can develop and decide on, especially with the recent RfCs regarding the particulars of elections. ~/Bunnypranav:<ping> 06:28, 21 February 2025 (UTC)
• Option C (and for the poor closer who has to determine the !votes, I explicitly prefer as many trials as possible if there is consensus for option B). We got 11 admins out of the ordeal. We need more admins – I think that is near-universally agreed upon. I explicitly reject the idea that there were too many candidates to scrutinize effectively: You can always abstain from some candidates if you can't personally scrutinize them, and I don't find "but I was unable to personally give my Very Important Opinion on every single candidate!" to be a compelling argument. We seemed to have managed alright scrutinizing 30+ candidates. We got a lot out of this process, and therefore we should continue it – the elections, not the RfC train. Hence no option B, please. HouseBlaster (talk • he/they) 06:48, 21 February 2025 (UTC)
• Option C There is widespread agreement among highly active editors that we need more administrators, and I believe that the first round went smoothly for an entirely new process. Let's forge ahead. Cullen328 (talk) 06:53, 21 February 2025 (UTC)
• Option C, the trial run got us more new admins in just one month than has happened in a long time with RFA, and as far as I know, they've all done a fine job since becoming admins. In my book, that's a success, so there's little point in more trial runs, especially since we now have a well-laid-out system. Mr. Starfleet Command (talk) 07:00, 21 February 2025 (UTC)
• Option C per above and per –Novem Linguae.The first trail run was a success and got more new admins in just one month than in ages.See little point in running more trail runs.Pharaoh of the Wizards (talk) 07:25, 21 February 2025 (UTC)
• Option C – this is the best idea for fixing RfA I've ever seen. The trial showed that even in suboptimal conditions (too many candidates, not enough time) the system works well and its results were well accepted by the community. Every detail was discussed and refined in the Phase II RfCs to remedy the issues faced in the trial, and we will continue to improve the process as we gain more experience – that is the wiki way. Toadspike [Talk] 07:36, 21 February 2025 (UTC)
• Option C, I was delighted by the result of the trial, and hope to see these elections become a regular event.-Gadfium (talk) 07:45, 21 February 2025 (UTC)
• Option C, good process. Some points in response to Cryptic: (1) The last time someone failed RFA despite getting at least 70% was in 2015, so this isn't really a demonstrably lower threshold than RFA (which goes to a WP:CRATCHAT when it's between 65–75%), it's just a sharper cutoff; (2) the election's secret ballot makes it more painless to oppose a candidate, which is part of why many of us would have even preferred to renew it with a slightly lower threshold, such as 65%; there was rather little support in the discussion on the pass percentage for increasing it; (3) if a candidate "crucially" wants to "know why they either passed or failed", they can still go through the RFA process where everyone's reasons for supporting or opposing is stated; people who choose the election process evidently don't find that crucial given the tradeoff of the higher stress process and so forth; (4) voter guides can be helpful in arriving at a position on candidates, and they aren't canvassing given that no notifications are sent out and that anyone who wants to make a guide and include it on the list/category can do so; you can note info or views about a candidate either in the candidate discussion page or by creating a guide, so there isn't anything nefarious about putting that in a guide. SilverLocust 💬 07:50, 21 February 2025 (UTC)
• Option C > Option B (maximum possible) The trial worked on nearly every possible aim it had. We got more admins, we got more competent editors to consider being admins. The process was less stressful for each of them. And the community is by and large happy with the quality of new admins we selected. If that's not considered a massive success, then I do not know what will be. I understand that enough editors were not happy with the level of scrutiny each participant recieved. And I believe Phase II tried sufficiently many changes to improve that. If editors still believe 2nd AELECT suffers from this, I encourage them to iterate and improve further. But by and large, this is the resounding success many of us were hoping for. Soni (talk) 07:55, 21 February 2025 (UTC)
• Option C. It went really well! I was also pleased with the phase 2 RfC outcomes. Leijurv (talk) 08:05, 21 February 2025 (UTC)
• Option C The trial was effective. We can always create new RfC is problems arise in next election. Ca ^{talk to me!} 08:06, 21 February 2025 (UTC)
• Option C. I think we should fall into a rhythm of tweaking the election rules every 2 times or so. For instance, while I understand the rationale of not going down on the support percentage, a few more trial runs will show if this is needed. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 08:24, 21 February 2025 (UTC)

  @Femke: I don't hate the idea of taking a page out of ArbCom's book and doing yearly RFCs to improve the election. QuicoleJR (talk) 14:09, 21 February 2025 (UTC)

• Option C I do understand and agree with Crytic's third point; i was one of the unsuccessful candidates in the election trial and, no, i don't know why i did not pass which is, TBF, a bit annoying. On the other hand, RfA is open to me (and others, of course) if i want more feedback on a second result. As i perceived it at the time and still do, the election suggestion was made and implemented as a way to reform the horror that RfA can be for candidates and yet still generate more admins and, yes, that's what happened: We have eleven more of them, and (for me, at least) there was no horror and almost no stress in the process ~ Lindsay^Hello 08:29, 21 February 2025 (UTC)
• Option C I consider the trial an absolute success. We can always change the rules if needed. Mox Eden (talk) 08:31, 21 February 2025 (UTC)
• Option C. Others have echoed my reasons for supporting - but mainly it is because I think it is a good process, as it still allows candidates to prove they have community trust without having to go through the RFA meatgrinder.
  In response to Cryptic's very reasonable oppose: the lack of feedback for candidates is sort-of by design, in order to prevent contention. Candidates who fail can immediately open a RFA if they want more feedback (and some of the candidates who were unsuccessful during the trial probably should have done as I'm sure they would have passed, due to my next point). The lower-than-RFA passrate was partially attributable to the number of voters who blanket opposed all/most candidates due to fear of lack of scrutiny; and partially attributable to the landslide nature of RFA results, where dissenting voices publically get told off, and so opposing feels both scary and rude.
  For the candidate quantity issues, I believe the large number in the trial was a build up of candidates who wanted to become admins but were put off by the RFA process. While it was unweildy, I don't think we'll ever see those sorts of numbers again, and I think the quantity indicates the community's desire for an alternate system. BugGhost 🦗👻 09:02, 21 February 2025 (UTC)
• Option C please. I've mostly stopped looking for RfA candidates because I think the elections are a nicer way of getting the tools. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 09:32, 21 February 2025 (UTC)
• Option C per Novem Linguae. No point in further trials, and the process can always be halted or amended by RfC. And RfA still exists. (Full disclosure: was an unsuccessful candidate in the trial election). Bastun^{Ėġáḍβáś₮ŭŃ!} 10:49, 21 February 2025 (UTC)
• Option C, the trial went well, we got great admins out of it, it would be great to have this be more regular now. Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 11:06, 21 February 2025 (UTC)
• Option C - I don't have new arguments in favor of Option C, but I do have a comment on Cryptic's generally sensible oppose - I do not believe that if all you want to do is get more administrators, there are much better, easier, and less stressful ways to do it. Wikipedia is a deeply conservative place and it is not easy to make changes to our processes. I struggle to think of any alternate proposal for actually generating more admins which would gain consensus, as empirically demonstrated over the last year's discussions. On the other hand, I think a two-pronged approach of RfA and Admin Elections will generate more admins - and good ones, too. —Ganesha811 (talk) 11:45, 21 February 2025 (UTC)

  • Reaffirming, since my comment came quite early that I don't find any of the arguments below for Options A or B convincing. —Ganesha811 (talk) 12:32, 27 February 2025 (UTC)

• Option C. It is unlikely that the election system is perfect, but it is good enough and the only way we will know how to improve it is to get more data about how it operates and there is nothing stopping us tweaking things at any point if we find the need. In response to Cryptic, the lack of feedback is not ideal but elections are a choice. If you want detailed, extensive feedback about your candidacy then you can always choose to stand via a traditional RFA. Thryduulf (talk) 12:06, 21 February 2025 (UTC)
• Option C As others have said, the trial went well. It brought in more admins and made the process easier and less stressful than RfA. – DreamRimmer (talk) 12:14, 21 February 2025 (UTC)
• Option C The trial seemed to go well, there have been refinements since, and I'm sure it will continue to evolve as we learn more about it in practice. -Kj cheetham (talk) 12:26, 21 February 2025 (UTC)
  • P.S. I don't oppose option B. -Kj cheetham (talk) 11:53, 22 February 2025 (UTC)
  • I want to reiterate I still think C>B after reading the more recent comments from people. Although there was no concensus at the recent RfC for a maximum number per election, I would support reviewing that again after the next round, to see if it really does fall off after the first trial, or having a suitably high (>20) limit for the next election. -Kj cheetham (talk) 11:10, 1 March 2025 (UTC)
• C duh. (Disclosure for, AELECT in elected was I.) charlotte ^👸♥ 12:33, 21 February 2025 (UTC)
• Option C: Propose abolishing them if there's ever an issue, let them go on indefinitely until such a time. Hey man im josh (talk) 12:42, 21 February 2025 (UTC)
• Option C We don't need to waste any more time on something we already know works. fanfanboy (block_talk) 13:19, 21 February 2025 (UTC)

  Would like to note that I'm not against doing evaluations after every election fanfanboy (block_talk) 19:37, 21 February 2025 (UTC)

  Would also like to note that I have a weak support Option B, but Option C takes preference with a strong support. Would also like to thank Novem Linguae (should have done that earlier) for carrying the whole process. Couldn't have happened without them. fanfanboy (block_talk) 15:59, 4 March 2025 (UTC)

• Option C The initial elections went fine. If we exhaust the electable candidates, the community will let us know by not electing anyone.--Wehwalt (talk) 13:51, 21 February 2025 (UTC)
• Option C The first one seems to have been a success, we need more admins, keep it going. --rogerd (talk) 13:55, 21 February 2025 (UTC)
• Personally I'd go with Option C. The trial run of elections seemed like it was successful to me, given how many more candidates were willing to sign up, compared with normal RFAs that tend to attract fewer than one qualified candidate a month these days. I don't think the lack of feedback is a problem; if people want that, they can RFA the old way. Actually, since people tend to be more willing to not support a candidate in an administrator election (seeing as how none of the trial elections were unanimous), I think it's a viable alternative to the old method of RFAs. – Epicgenius (talk) 13:58, 21 February 2025 (UTC)
• Option C The elections were extremely successful. Worst-case scenario, if we make a mistake, we have RECALL now. QuicoleJR (talk) 13:59, 21 February 2025 (UTC)

  Note: Option B is my second choice if consensus goes that way. I strongly prefer Option C, but I would gladly take B over A. QuicoleJR (talk) 14:32, 13 March 2025 (UTC)

• C please. lets goooo Thank you Novem Linguae for all your work during this process. Aaron Liu (talk) 14:01, 21 February 2025 (UTC)

  +1 charlotte ^👸♥ 14:29, 21 February 2025 (UTC)

• C, of course! E_F⁵ 14:07, 21 February 2025 (UTC)
• C, I thought the first round of elections went well! Ternera (talk) 14:10, 21 February 2025 (UTC)
• C we seem to be on a good path, and it seems less of a drain on candidates and community. Star Mississippi 14:25, 21 February 2025 (UTC)
• C: The last election was great, no more trials needed. GrabUp - Talk 14:31, 21 February 2025 (UTC)
• C * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 14:36, 21 February 2025 (UTC)
• C There's no feedback from elections, if candidates want that they can always choose to stand using the pre-existing process. Also there probably were to many candidates in the initial election but hopefully that is simply pent-up demand. If in a year elections still have so many candidates then limits can always be revisited, consensus can change - nothing is written in stone, but not using elections because the process is not yet perfect misses that it will never be perfect (that is simply the nature of the world). -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 14:50, 21 February 2025 (UTC)

  I would also like to add my thanks to Novem Linguae for all there work on the admin elections process. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 14:51, 21 February 2025 (UTC)

  Just to add that I explicitly oppose both A and B. Although I believe the process may still be improved after subsequent elections, I oppose the idea that those would then require reconfirmation for more elections to happen. The idea that anyone answering C, while suggesting future RFCs could tweak the process is, also tacitly approving B doesn't work. As tweaking the process doesn't mean that it needs to be reapproved each time, minor changes to a policy don't require that the whole policy needs to be reappoved each time. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 19:59, 13 March 2025 (UTC)

• Option C per Novem Linguae, Toadspike, and ActivelyDisinterested. The trial went well and I believe the drawbacks it did have were primarily growing pains resulting from being the first iteration of a new process. ModernDayTrilobite (talk • contribs) 15:36, 21 February 2025 (UTC)
• Option C. I think the first one went relatively well, all things considered, although I'm obviously biased. --Ahecht (TALK
  PAGE) 16:00, 21 February 2025 (UTC)
• C. Given how this is going, it doesn't seem worth the time to write out my reasons. Manifestly the least-bad option. Gog the Mild (talk) 16:06, 21 February 2025 (UTC)
• Option C. The trial went well and admin elections are a needed alternative to RfAs. Tenpop421 (talk) 16:39, 21 February 2025 (UTC)
• C. Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Mach61 16:43, 21 February 2025 (UTC)
• Option C. Maybe not the perfect solution, but I think it's evident they serve a useful alternative for people qualified and capable of adminship who don't want to have to put themselves through the arduous RfA process. We can always just cancel them later if they turn out detrimental. CR (talk) 16:44, 21 February 2025 (UTC)
• Option C every single point for why has already been made, so I'm not going to reiterate them; should have a longer scrutiny period though, or a cap on number of candidates. DWF91 (talk) 16:46, 21 February 2025 (UTC)
• Option C per most people here... 2601AC47 (talk·contribs·my rights) Isn't a IP anon 16:47, 21 February 2025 (UTC)
• Option C is clearly the best option. An absolute success! Kingsmasher678 (talk) 17:07, 21 February 2025 (UTC)
• C Seems to have worked well, and to the extent that there is proof in such a relatively newly-created pudding, without any egregious mis-elections. Let's have a few more batches and see how it goes. --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 17:10, 21 February 2025 (UTC)
• C. I agree with Femke that having somewhat regular RFCs on the topic, as in ACE, is the way to go instead of some number of trials and then a reconfirmation. Again, we can hold an RFC and cancel the whole thing if we decide EFA is detrimental. -- asilvering (talk) 17:15, 21 February 2025 (UTC)

• Option C. I don’t know if my opinion counts since I didn’t see the debate but we haven’t had problems with administrators in the past and we probably won’t in the future. Admins are a huge part in keeping Wikipedia truthful, unbiased, and reliable. Going for Kyle Larson in the NASCAR Cup Series. GO NUMBER 5!(Boeing747Pilot) Boeing747Pilot (talk) 17:18, 21 February 2025 (UTC)
• Option C. SWinxy (talk) 17:37, 21 February 2025 (UTC)
• Option C per all the above, though I'm also a fan of Femke's/QuicoleJR's suggestions to evaluate improvements regularly. Cryptic brings up a good point, but RFA provides a great deal of feedback and candidates are free to choose the process they desire. I would support trying to improve that facet of AELECT in the future. I don't think it's significant enough to need to delay continuing with the process, though, given that it seems to have worked well otherwise. If it comes down to it (though it looks unlikely currently), for the closer's sake option B is my second choice with as many trial elections as possible. Perfect4th (talk) 17:45, 21 February 2025 (UTC)
• Option C: As someone who did not clear the threshold during the election, the low acceptance rate is a feature, not a bug. Inevitably, the RfA approach prevents otherwise suitable candidates for running. Not every admin should be able to survive a week of scrutiny by a massive community that's occasionally prone to discourteousness. The election process is generally sufficient to vet candidates. It also enable editors concerned with having their name attached to a particular !vote—whether due to fears of retaliation or incessant discussion—to support or oppose in private. Wikipedia should not be a democracy, but this is a good system. ~ Pbritti (talk) 17:52, 21 February 2025 (UTC)
• Option C and regular post-election evaluations of the process. — rsjaffe 🗣️ 18:07, 21 February 2025 (UTC)
• Option C per Novem. Andrew Lenahan - Starblind 18:11, 21 February 2025 (UTC)
• Option C The elections went great. More administrators will always be beneficial. Letting the elections run without any more trials and renewals will simplify the process. This decision should only ever be reanalyzed if problems from the elections arise. -- NeonCranberries (talk) 18:26, 21 February 2025 (UTC)
• Option C while I had my misgivings, we tried it and it worked. Glad to finally see some meaningful changes. LEPRICAVARK (talk) 19:27, 21 February 2025 (UTC)
• Option C I also think that if any administrators attempt to do anything which is detrimental to Wikipedia and it's culture, there should be a contingency where a no confidence vote could be permitted in cases where administrators break the rules or become power hungry in their roles. -- Editor00744 (talk) 19:41,21 February 2025 (UTC)
  • There are processes for situations like this, including WP:ADMINRECALL. PrinceTortoise (he/him • poke) 20:10, 21 February 2025 (UTC)
• Option C The trial run demonstrated that admin elections are a welcome alternative to RfA for admin hopefuls, and of course the election process can be fine-tuned as necessary. ^Complex/_Rational 20:17, 21 February 2025 (UTC)
• Option C, seems to have worked well enough. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 20:20, 21 February 2025 (UTC)
• Option C. I do not see any issues blocking this, although we may decide to fine-tune the process along the way. Risker (talk) 20:32, 21 February 2025 (UTC)
• Option C is best, although it seems an odd choice to not use a divisor of 12. Would 4 months or 6 months really have been that bad? --Floquenbeam (talk) 20:38, 21 February 2025 (UTC)

  @Floquenbeam: It was actually intentional to not align to the same time each year, see here. Leijurv (talk) 21:20, 21 February 2025 (UTC)

• Option C is so obvious it isn't even close. The process went incredibly well, no candidates were subjected to overly-stressful microscopic discussions of their conduct, no one could engage in overly WP:POINTY !oppose voting, and no legitimate opposition votes could be excessively berated for daring to disagree. And, at the end of it all, Wikipedia got 11 new administrators. All around a triumphant success. --Pinchme123 (talk) 20:42, 21 February 2025 (UTC)
• (edit conflict) Option C. I really liked the election format and I think it is something we should continue. I would not be opposed to option B but I am worried we would end up in an endless trial loop. Ultimately, I echo Perfect4th's sentiments on refinements. If there are any issues in the future, of course we should refine it, but I believe that the elections are a positive development. ❤HistoryTheorist❤ 20:43, 21 February 2025 (UTC)
• (edit conflict) Option C Per all of the above - I am for a post-election evaluation every few elections to improve this process but that doesn't mean we shouldn't keep holding elections. ~ Matthewrb ^{Let's connect · Here to help} 20:45, 21 February 2025 (UTC)
• Option C -- anything that makes RFAs less stressful, given all the absolute horror stories on the Signpost, is worth it, especially since it just worked. Mrfoogles (talk) 21:00, 21 February 2025 (UTC)
• Option B. I admit, I was not really active the last year(ish), with real life and whatnot, so I can only comment on it in hindsight. I do agree with most of those above that it seems that the process worked reasonably well. However, I also note that not much time has passed since then to adequately judge the long-term results of the single election (which is not saying that I mistrust any of those elected!), so making a process permanent at this stage seems premature when having a second trial to see whether the results can be duplicated would not hurt us. If a second trial confirms the results of the first trial, we can always make them permanent after that trial. Regards SoWhy 21:55, 21 February 2025 (UTC)
• Option C. For once, we have had a proposal for improving RfA that actually worked. As I see it, authorizing this to go forward without expressly requiring further evaluations is not the same thing as ruling out further evaluations and revisions. We can continue to refine the process, but we don't need to specify in advance when we will do that. And this has proven good enough as is, that it definitely should be continued. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:00, 21 February 2025 (UTC)
• Option C, and I have no desire to elaborate. But ... weak Option B if necessary. Steel1943 (talk) 22:16, 21 February 2025 (UTC)
• Option A. Hard NO. The discussion (vetting) length & participation is already insufficient as it stands. Casting votes with insufficient time to get to know & potentially raise challenging inquiries to the candidates is a recipe for disaster. Casting votes in the blind would mimick the outcomes of political elections... why would we want to subject ourselves to that here? Someone below mentioned extending the discussion period from 3 to 5 days. I say go longer... 2 weeks, maybe more. Give the editors & potential voters ample opportunity. Not everyone lives on WP and can engage on such short timelines. Longer timeframe would make it accessible to a larger and more informed voting base. I am actually shocked and quite disappointed that a 600 editor participation rate is considered acceptable by all you voting Option C. If we cannot at least extend the time and the base to something more reasonable - then I'd prefer to stick with the administrative peer review & consensus method previously used. --Picard's Facepalm • ^{Made It So} _Engage! • 22:19, 21 February 2025 (UTC) —  Blocked sockpuppet of Srobak, see investigation. . WP:SOCKSTRIKE. –Novem Linguae (talk) 22:43, 28 February 2025 (UTC)

  The discussion period has already been extended to 5 days in this Phase II RfC. By "a 600 editor participation rate", I'm guessing you're referring to the 616 valid votes counted in the trial election, which is about three times the number of votes cast in a typical successful RfA in 2024. I'm not sure how this is a bad thing. Toadspike [Talk] 11:26, 22 February 2025 (UTC)

  There is a reason why a typical RfA only gets the number of participants it does. While it might be open to "the public" - it is never really presented as though it is, nor does it feel like it is to the average user. I have heard that from multiple people over the years. An election by nature is far more open and inviting than RfA - nevermind it reorting to administrative concensus, anyhow. That being said - as I mentioned - 5 days is not enough. And you are right - no, a tripling in participation is not at all a bad thing - but it also could, should and absolutely needs to have quite a bit more participation than 600. --Picard's Facepalm • ^{Made It So} _Engage! • 16:09, 24 February 2025 (UTC)

  You don't have to vote for everyone. Aaron Liu (talk) 01:35, 24 February 2025 (UTC)

  I never said you did - and that's not the point of anything that I wrote. See the discussion section below for perhaps a better spelling out of it. --Picard's Facepalm • ^{Made It So} _Engage! • 15:58, 24 February 2025 (UTC)

• Option C per all of the above. I might be more persuaded by Cryptic if there was any evidence at all as they contend that there is a better, easier, less stressful way of getting new administrators that the community would accept. People have been saying that RfA is a problem for as long as I can remember and this is the first time any alternative has made any progress towards being implemented. As for Picard's Facepalm's comment about 600 participants being insufficient above: only a handful of very contentious RfAs have ever got anywhere close to that level of participation. Virtually no on-wiki discussion of any kind gets 600 participants. Expecting more than that is completely unreasonable. Caeciliusinhorto (talk) 22:27, 21 February 2025 (UTC)

  The casting of election ballots ≠ discussion. Two completely different contexts & methodologies. --Picard's Facepalm • ^{Made It So} _Engage! • 17:30, 24 February 2025 (UTC)

• C. Should this RFC close early? Myrealnamm (💬Let's talk · 📜My work) 22:31, 21 February 2025 (UTC)

  I think the outcome is kinda obvious but it's a big enough change that it requires a very clear consensus, so in my view it should at least be open for a few days. BugGhost 🦗👻 22:45, 21 February 2025 (UTC)

  The main discussion about whether to close the RFC early is at Wikipedia talk:Requests for adminship/2024 review/Phase III/Administrator elections#WP:SNOW. –Novem Linguae (talk) 23:22, 21 February 2025 (UTC)

• Option C though I do think Cryptic raises valid concerns about the limited qualitative feedback loop provided here beyond the pass/fail threshold. Future RfC's and norms can adjust how we engage in discussions that leave all candidates better informed of community expectations regardless of outcome. ~ 🦝 Shushugah (he/him • talk) 22:35, 21 February 2025 (UTC)
• Option A This didn't fix the toxicity problem (the main problem worth fixing). Monitors jumping on anyone who dares say something negative/controversial made this process seem better than RfA, but we have no evidence that it actually is. Secret ballot voting is generally a bad idea. RfA candidates need honest feedback. Polygnotus (talk) 22:42, 21 February 2025 (UTC)
• Option C. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 23:35, 21 February 2025 (UTC)
• Option C. This is for sure the best process. Secret ballots make outcomes more honest. ꧁Zanahary꧂ 23:43, 21 February 2025 (UTC)
• I'm not going to dignify this RfC with a vote. It doesn't deserve one. We have absolutely no data at this point whether the trial election worked. We only have supposition. It's as if we designed a ship by "floating" it in a completely dry drydock, and since it didn't fall over it must be safe for the ocean so let's build a hundred of them. This is insanity. This will pass obviously with very strong support for C. C'est la vie. Be careful what you wish for. You just might get it. This is a gobsmackingly stupid, stupid move. --Hammersoft (talk) 23:48, 21 February 2025 (UTC)
  • Thanks—this is the funniest rant I have read all week! ❧ LunaEatsTuna (talk), proudly editing since 2018 (and just editing since 2017) – posted at 00:01, 22 February 2025 (UTC)

    There's unnecessary. People are allowed to have their opinions on a process that affects us all, and I'm disappointed to see you respond this way @LunaEatsTuna. Hey man im josh (talk) 00:16, 22 February 2025 (UTC)

    People's opinions are apparently "gobsmackingly stupid" with a focus on the latter word added by repetition, so the entire RfC is of course invalid enough to require explicitly labeling the de-facto-option-A-vote as non-participation. Describing the rant about our "insanity" as "funny" takes away its fire in a way few other comments could. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 00:35, 22 February 2025 (UTC)

    I apologise to you Hammersoft for my rude remark; it was indeed unnecessary and impolite of me to say. Rather, I will be constructive and recommend that your input be less.. “passionate” .. might be the right word; using the type of language you have used here will not convince anybody of your side. Remember to be civil and assume good faith, even when your colleagues seem to have opinions that are totally illogical to you (trust me—I know how that feels!!). Keep up the good editing that you to for this project, ❧ LunaEatsTuna (talk), proudly editing since 2018 (and just editing since 2017) – posted at 02:37, 22 February 2025 (UTC)

    It's been a while since I've seen someone try to pull off "I apologize... for my rude remark" and "remember to be civil" in the same post. LEPRICAVARK (talk) 03:56, 22 February 2025 (UTC)

    It’s possible for a post to be both serious and funny. I’m currently scrolling through this discussion, picking out the responses that don’t start with a vote for option C, and noting that Hammersoft was not the first or last user to claim a lack of data. So I take their comment seriously. But I also find it funny. Brianjd (talk) 01:31, 23 February 2025 (UTC)

  @Hammersoft: I feel like we'll end up needing to see some de-adminships happen in order to push back against the idea of this process. Can you add anything for those of us unaware of why this might be a bad idea? I do value your opinion and feedback, so I'd be interested in hearing more about why you're so strongly against this, especially as someone who nominated someone in the past election and wants to continue to nominate folks. Even if you don't stop this from passing you can still put something out there for many of us to keep in mind regarding potential issues you expect to surface. Hey man im josh (talk) 00:18, 22 February 2025 (UTC)

  If you conduct an experiment, you don't then implement a change before the results of the experiment can be determined. The RfA election experiment happened four months ago. Risker notes the admins elected in that experiment are doing ok. No disrespect to Risker, but we have absolutely no idea how they're doing nor has their been any analysis. If we went through this list and measured the time from their RfA to forced de-adminship, the average gap would probably be measured in many years. I'm not suggesting many years need to pass before we can analyze the results of this process, but four months? That's beyond light speed. I've long, long felt that with all the proposals for 'reform' that have happened over the years that eventually something would stick like throwing spaghetti on the wall. Something would stick not because it was a good idea but because (a) people would get fed up with all the proposals and (b) the average person these days has absolutely no idea about problem solving. Instead, it's 'hey it is new, it is different, sounds like fun, we should do it!' and consequences be dammed. This project is tetering on collapse from the lack of administrators. No, the sky isn't falling. But, long term trends don't get solved by throwing the latest glitzy 'solution' at a problem. Without having a thoughtful, reasoned, analytical approach to this problem you stand a great deal more chance of destroying what you're attempting to save than you do in saving it. With that in mind, if calling this nightmare gobsmackingly stupid and insane counts as uncivil, then fine, block me now because I fully intend on remaining 'uncivil' without remorse. --Hammersoft (talk) 13:16, 22 February 2025 (UTC)

  It's hardly a blockable offense. However, the strength of your views appears to be an outlier, even among those who oppose option C. Don't try to bait admins into unjustifiably blocking you, when the more productive approach would be to moderate your tone and help seek consensus. Plenty of others have supported Options A or B without generating controversy. Inflammatory language simply wastes the community's time. —Ganesha811 (talk) 13:44, 22 February 2025 (UTC)

  To be blunt, I don't care if you think I'm wasting anyone's time. Nobody's forcing you to read what I have to say. I'm not trying to bait anyone into doing anything against me. I am pointing out that it's absurd to think my calling this RfC insane and gobsmackingly stupid is somehow wrong. I'm not being uncivil towards anyone. I will not dial down my opinion into milk toast so that it's somehow more palatable and consensus building. The consensus on this is already blatantly clear at more than 10:1 in favor of Option C over A or B. There's not going to be some massive change to that. In the end, no amount of huffing and puffing by you, me, or anyone else is going to change this reality. I don't know if this project is going to be significantly wounded by this RfC/election process. What I do know is nobody has a freaking clue and we're proceeding ahead at ludicrous speed into who knows what, because nobody's done a damn thing to address the lack of analysis. You think having a two-pronged approach will generate more, better admins. But, you have absolutely no idea. You're just guessing. If you think that assessment is 'inflammatory', tough. I don't care. --Hammersoft (talk) 17:32, 22 February 2025 (UTC)

  @Ganesha811: the strength of your views appears to be an outlier, even among those who oppose option C. I agree with Hammersoft, although I used different words. Perhaps others will too, but not everyone has read their comments. Don't try to bait admins into unjustifiably blocking you that is not what they are doing at all; you appear to be misreading the situation moderate your tone Attacking people is a bad thing. Attacking ideas is a good thing. A good idea will survive unscathed while a bad idea will crumble and fall. Polygnotus (talk) 01:32, 23 February 2025 (UTC)

• Option C, but make it 6 months. There's no reason that it shouldn't be a round number (i.e. 2 per year), and there's no reason they shouldn't be scheduled (ex: a spring election and a fall election) so people can predict and choose to "run" or not. -bɜ:ʳkənhɪmez | me | talk to me! 00:42, 22 February 2025 (UTC)

  It's intentionally made 5 months so that people who are always unavailable on the same months can participate. Mox Eden (talk) 01:49, 22 February 2025 (UTC)

  I see no reason someone unavailable in, say, October, could not simply sign up in August or September before the elections. I see no reason that someone should not be able to sign up for an election and state that they will be unavailable during the (time frame) immediately preceding it. In fact, I see no reason that candidates for the next election shouldn't be allowed to "run" immediately following the prior election. I envision it like this - if elections are in, say, October and April, then someone unavailable in both of those months could "run" in December or January, have questions asked of them (within reason) between that time and the actual election in April, choose to answer (or not), with them clearly stating "I will be unavailable after March 15th to answer further questions". Not to mention that anyone who is unavailable for an election is still allowed to run at any time through RfA. -bɜ:ʳkənhɪmez | me | talk to me! 07:44, 22 February 2025 (UTC)

  I see no reason someone unavailable in, say, October, could not simply sign up in August or September before the elections. There was consensus against open signups and consensus for a nomination window at Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/2024 review/Phase II/Administrator elections#Q12: Call for Candidates phase duration (when signups open). –Novem Linguae (talk) 08:49, 22 February 2025 (UTC)

  Ah, well then yeah, that wouldn't work (can't say I agree with any of those arguments at all though). But the bottom line is that RfA is still available 24/7/365 on demand. I would like there to be a revisiting of that question, since it doesn't really determine what a nomination window is.. but I don't think that's good enough reason to not have regularity in the elections year to year. -bɜ:ʳkənhɪmez | me | talk to me! 21:37, 22 February 2025 (UTC)

• Option A by default, though really the option I'm looking for is "defer this discussion for 6 months to 1 more year". Cryptic, Hammersoft, and the few others willing to speak in opposition to this are absolutely right -- there is zero data on whether it "worked" yet. Without naming names, at least one of the candidates who I supported has since made a number of calls that make me regret my vote. ⇒SWATJester ^{Shoot Blues, Tell VileRat!} 00:47, 22 February 2025 (UTC)
• Option C though Option B with more trials would also be fine: This seems to have worked by most standards. I've read the objections and I agree there are still flaws, but don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. I would have advocated for a cap of eight or ten to be sure everybody got sufficient attention, but I'll roll with what we have. SchreiberBike | ⌨  00:53, 22 February 2025 (UTC)
• Option A per Swatjester. If it works well, sure, go with C, but we ought to wait longer and see if we end up having any medium-term (e.g. months from now) difficulties with the newly elected admins, i.e. more difficulties than we can expect to have with admins chosen via the normal process. Also, have we had any short-term issues (i.e. they've already happened) with the new admins, beyond what we'd expect with admins chosen via the normal process? Basically, I'm convinced by the point that it's too soon to say, but I don't think this kind of problem could be addressed properly with further trials. Nyttend (talk) 01:31, 22 February 2025 (UTC)
• Option A For me, the way to evaluate this model is to come back to it in 6-12 months and examine what has happened with the new admins. Did they prove to be excellent (as they may well do)? Are they still editing? Or have they stopped editing, or have displayed problems as admins? The goal was not simply to increase the number of admins, because of that was the case we have a huge number of options. The actual goal was to increase the number of admins by creating a more comfortable process without lowering the standards we need to apply. I hope that this model succeeded in that, but I agree with Nyttend and SWATJester that it is a bit too early to know. - Bilby (talk) 02:08, 22 February 2025 (UTC)
• Option C I think it has the right balance on the issue. Urbanracer34 (talk) 02:28, 22 February 2025 (UTC)
• Option C until we have a better sense of whether the admins elected by this process are high-quality. An ideal process would result in everyone who should be an administrator becoming one, everyone who shouldn't be one not becoming one, and all candidates knowing why they either passed or failed. But an ideal process also doesn't depress candidates so much that those who pass are traumatized and those who fail are wont to retire. We don't know if AELECT works. But from what I can tell, RfA does not. PrinceTortoise (he/him • poke) 02:46, 22 February 2025 (UTC)

  Option B (with yet another RfC after one trial) might be better to address the concern that we don't have enough data. If elections are as successful as we hope, then the second RfC will close quickly with an avalanche of support. PrinceTortoise (he/him • poke) 18:48, 26 February 2025 (UTC)

• This is a clear C from my perspective. Reaper Eternal (talk) 02:52, 22 February 2025 (UTC)
• Option C. I thought we got a lot of good new admins out of the process. Instituting ongoing admin elections does not foreclose the opportunity to further refine them through additional RfCs. However, the process was sufficiently well done with extensive feedback that further trials are not necessary. Traditional RFA remains an option if candidates want to go through a process that delivers more feedback about the outcome. Dclemens1971 (talk) 03:11, 22 February 2025 (UTC)
• Option B > C. I think that continuing on a provisional basis is best as we continue to work out potential issues. Eluchil404 (talk) 05:08, 22 February 2025 (UTC)
• Option C - per Novem. This is for the best. — Benison (Beni · talk) 05:19, 22 February 2025 (UTC)
• Option C -I am starting to look at this. But my impulse is for Option C.Dogru144 (talk) 05:50, 22 February 2025 (UTC)
• Option C, endeavoring to prevent the perfect from becoming the enemy of the good. Innisfree987 (talk) 06:28, 22 February 2025 (UTC)
• Option C. To state a Generation X cliché, it's efficient and reasonable. Bearian (talk) 07:38, 22 February 2025 (UTC)
• Option B, with 2-4 further pilot runs I believe the first election worked well and ran smoothly (well, I guess I would say that, given that it got me the mop!), but we haven't tested the system with the revised parameters. More to the point, we don't know what sort of campaigning, electioneering, lobbying, partisanship, etc. ecosystem ensues once all this becomes a regular thing; we already got some glimpses of this regarding the role of election voter guides, but that is just the tip of the iceberg, I suspect. The proof-of-concept has been built, and shown to be working. The design has been tweaked somewhat. Before we go to full-scale production, let's have a test batch, please. --DoubleGrazing (talk) 08:35, 22 February 2025 (UTC)
• Option B I share Cryptic's concern that a large number of people were rejected who would likely have passed a normal RFA. I'd also add that the election system we used is liable to have different results depending on the number of candidates standing and possibly their quality. So the next run could have half as many candidates and almost all of them elected, or twice as many candidates and almost none elected. I'm not going for C because though the election has brought forward a lot of people who weren't willing to run an RFA, I'm not convinced we have yet got this procedure to the point where it is as effective as RFA at sorting those ready for adminship from those not ready or suitable. I think we could resolve this, maybe elections every five months will stabilise with about the right number of candidates, maybe we can tweak the system so that those doing voter guides are evenly spread across the candidates so all get about the same level of scrutiny. So yes, the election worked, but in my view not well enough to simply make the default new system. ϢereSpielChequers 09:29, 22 February 2025 (UTC)
• Option A. Cryptic expressed some of my concerns wonderfully, and I'm surprised much others don't share a similar sentiment. Toxicity is impossible to resolve; what this process has done is completely void the nomination process of critical commentary. General discussion is completely barren across the board. The number of questions per candidate has been cut to a third of the average amount. And, it's still crazy toxic! Some of the comments you all made and the "questions" you asked you wouldn't dare say if you were standing right in front of this person. I wasn't there for the election trial so I'm reading these discussion periods fresh. I am failing to see how users like Robert McClenon and Sable232 could have possibly failed based on their discussion periods alone. Sable232 didn't even get any. But, somehow, individual voters tripled. And that's not good. If a user votes oppose for something stupid, whether they hate what they stand for on a personal level (religious, politics), or their back just really hurts that day, we won't know. It's a "crazy person" vote that we'll never know. It's the kind of bullcrap that would have been ridiculed at RFA that would scare everyone else out of doing it. Because admins are supposed to make tough choices, tough choices that some will despise, but now discussion-free zone generalizes the lovers and the haters into a 50/50 voting group. Sound familiar? It's politics, you reinvented politics. Hate it as you should, but the open floor for public, personal scrutiny led to neutral opinions being shared in a traditional RFA. And if it wasn't neutral, you would know, because then the whole RFA gets flipped around over something stupid, Hog Farm moves a long chain to the talk page, and SerialNumber made another joke about it that led to another comment chain that Hog Farm moved to the talk page.
  The process isn't toxic. You are toxic. Separate your values from the person, don't be a dick to others, and don't write "questions" that are backhanded "I didn't like what you did here, and you are absolutely wrong, so what did you learn from this?" ordeals. And nominees, own up to your choices. Admins make choices. Don't fold at the first sight of criticism. Just suck it up and don't put up with those stupid, nitpicky gripes.
  And a personal gripe, there were simply too many at once. I just had to be there and keep up with the, like, 50 billion discussions all happening at once. I don't have time for that and it hurts my head. I could be editing Wikipedia instead. If the problem is toxicity, there's nothing you can do without sacrificing quality commentary. I spy some toxic comments in this discussion alone. If the problem is just getting more admins, then just nominate more admins. Panini! • 🥪 09:37, 22 February 2025 (UTC)

  Saw a comment below that inspired me to say: Novem Linguae, you have done a wonderful job coordinating and establishing this process! That is a lot of hard work and dedication, especially on a bold stride. Your work here is irrelevant to my commentary here; my problem lies in its outcome I suppose. Panini! • 🥪 09:41, 22 February 2025 (UTC)

  I'm not going to deny that some of the toxicity is just due to the people, but we don't control the people. We control the process. And the current state of things is that we've been trying to change this for 20 years straight -- and successful admins write stories on the Signpost about how their RfA experiences literally traumatized them. Given that the RfA process is still an option if you want more feedback, and even if this format could be improved, and even if it is kind of annoying to need to read like 30 things (which I also hate in comparison to just reading 1 RfA at a time), anything that helps is still worth it with regards to the people that volunteer their time to administrate this site and keep it afloat. Mrfoogles (talk) 05:32, 24 February 2025 (UTC)

• Option A, at least until a nomination cap is imposed. I know that there was a proposal for this but I don't believe it actually happened, but regardless this isn't the kind of thing that should be !voted on. There needs to be a cap, and ideally a strict one, and this shouldn't be done at all until it has one. It wouldn't even lock anyone out - just hold another set of elections in a month if there's another huge wave. There simply isn't room for scrutiny with so, so many candidates at once. Ain't nobody got time to look over 30+ editor's accounts in detail. I get the idea of this being a less stressful process so some amount of less scrutiny is to be expected, but the last time went way too far in the other direction. SnowFire (talk) 10:20, 22 February 2025 (UTC)

  I will note that Phase II of AELECT RFCs (conducted after the trial elections) had a proposal to cap nominations and it was rejected by consensus. The same RFC also had discussion of the logistical feasibility of hosting multiple elections within a short timeframe, and it was not really feasible to try 2 elections within a month or even three. Soni (talk) 11:10, 22 February 2025 (UTC)

  • I'm familiar and mentioned said question in my !vote above, but it doesn't change the fact that discussion went the wrong way, and correctly running an election isn't really something to !vote on anyway. I'll expand in the "Discussion" section so as not to derail, but if someone's apartment is flooding, it doesn't matter if the rest of the building voted that their apartments were currently dry and that no action is required. SnowFire (talk) 16:46, 22 February 2025 (UTC)

• Option A or B - if the numbers are capped, then I'm a B. Per SnowFire above, there were way too many people in the last tsunami of candidates to actually scrutinise them properly. There is also zero data yet on whether it was successful in the medium to long term, so a little caution in having a second trial of a limited number of people would be far better than rushing in where angels fear to tread. - SchroCat (talk) 10:29, 22 February 2025 (UTC)
• I've read through the opposition above, and I land on C, mainly because I am optimistic about this process working. There are good parts to this process. Many people don't want to go through "normal" RfAs because of all those public commentary. I know I didn't feel great when initially opposes outnumbered the supports on mine. There is evidence that the elections helped a lot with attracting candidates who otherwise would never run a "normal" RfA, therefore I think there is value in continuing with the elections. As for whether to continue with trial runs or make it official right now, my main concern is "what harm would this make?" Supporting a C now does not mean that the community will stop having discussions about how best the process for giving people admin perms, or the admin elections specifically. But it means that it won't be necessary to open even more large scale RfCs where people essentially relitigate their points. So in the interest of editor time, C is better than B. Another point is, are there any major mistakes in the process that indicates we need more runs to figure things out? I haven't seen a substantial argument that made me jump over to B.
  I also want to address some opposes above. It is a reasonable criticism of the elections process that candidates are given inadequate feedback and/or not given clear reasons for why they failed while others passed. We can rethink some norms at discussion sections on how best to give feedback, but if feedback must be attached to oppose votes, then that's pretty much why the process is so toxic. If the volume becomes smaller (or where feasible), we can consider splitting candidate's voting pages and allow people to justify their votes, which I know zhwiki has done in their elections before.
  And some opposes above might have also moved the goal post. Re. Better ways to get admins: Suggesting that a better alternative exists does not help much here, because it depends on whether the community agrees that the better alternative is really better and should be implemented. Re. Toxicity: Sure, we might not ever be able to fully solve the toxicity problem, but I'd say the process has at least helped with the problem partially. Re. Swatjester about regret: Regretting your vote after the elections has nothing to do with the process being a bad process. That will always happen no matter the process, unless there is evidence to believe that the election process has caused you to be less informed about the candidate (which is unfortunate). 0xDeadbeef→∞ (talk to me) 11:32, 22 February 2025 (UTC)
• Option C: I don't know if I can talk, as a newer editor, but this process let me actually vote on the future of Wikipedia; but you'll never see me in a RfA, which I see as intimidating not only for the nominee but also new editors like me. I want newish editors who are involved in the community enough to find the AELECT page to be able to participate, and I cannot see that with a RfA. Nominees who wish to get feedback can always run a poll or simply go towards the RfA route. win8x (talk) 14:54, 22 February 2025 (UTC)

  I don't think that an editor with 5,314 edits is "new" by any means; there are people, like myself, who comment here with far less experience. You seem like a respectable contributor, and you have the right to make your voice heard! JuxtaposedJacob (talk) | :) | he/him | 01:37, 24 February 2025 (UTC)

  In my experience the "bigger" you get as a Wikipedia editor the more you realize how much edits & knowledge other people have about Wikipedia (to the point that it becomes slightly scary). I agree that anyone who finds their way here and has an opinion absolutely can and should talk, though. Mrfoogles (talk) 05:36, 24 February 2025 (UTC)

  In the three (and a bit) years that you have been here, you have already contributed more edits than me. I have been here more than two decades and I like to think that I am a reasonably experienced user here, but I have been less active in recent years.

  Anyway, one of the good things about Wikipedia and related projects is that good arguments carry weight, regardless of the speaker’s experience or lack of. Brianjd (talk) 02:39, 24 February 2025 (UTC)

  Thank you @Brianjd (and @JuxtaposedJacob) for your messages. I've only been contributing since the end of last June, which is mainly why I called myself a newer editor. The edit count may be high, but that's because I do semi-automated edits, using Twinkle. I do agree that it is great that good arguments carry weight (which why I'm here!).

  Maybe I am too shy, but I think some people do try to stay away from RfA because of its poor reputation, and it especially affects users who aren't well known and don't really have a reputation. I don't want to get on people's bad side! I may be alone on this, but I hope I'm not the only one. win8x (talk) 03:03, 24 February 2025 (UTC)

  You do make some (unfortunately) good points about RfA, which perhaps points to how it is biased towards experienced contributors. The notable opposes here have been mainly by experienced people, which in no way lessens their arguments, but is still interesting. JuxtaposedJacob (talk) | :) | he/him | 03:11, 24 February 2025 (UTC)

  Yeah, I think I agree with you. If I ever had a poor interaction with Giraffer, I would not want to be first one to oppose his RfA. I might be wrong, but I think a more experienced contributor wouldn't care as much. win8x (talk) 03:37, 24 February 2025 (UTC)

  I've messed around with RFCs enough to feel confident-ish with them but I definitely also felt that way previously. Experience gives you confidence that you know what is permitted and what isn't, and also what arguments you can make and what will get laughed down (e.g. do not try to convince the people at Human feces to change the lead photo, because they are very, very committed to WP not being censored). I'd also be hesitant to put in an oppose vote in someone's RfA, but not to vote oppose in an election. Mrfoogles (talk) 05:41, 24 February 2025 (UTC)

  I did not expect to get rickrolled on Wikipedia today, much less at all. fanfanboy (block_talk) 15:08, 24 February 2025 (UTC)

• C based on the trial and extensive previous community discussion. Arcticocean ■ 14:54, 22 February 2025 (UTC)
• C I love the new admins we elected in the last elections. Warm Regards, Miminity (Talk?) (me contribs) 15:17, 22 February 2025 (UTC)
• Option C, based largely on reading the "A" votes. I think many of the points raised against WP:AELECT apply more strongly to WP:RFA. So if one is "disappointed that a 600 editor participation rate" is accepted, how much lower is the average RFA? It's probably true that "RfA candidates need honest feedback." but do they get that or do they get inscrutable hostility and passive aggressive questions? Someone suggests to "just nominate more admins" but it seems like the number of admins is gradually but constantly falling and that RFA has become only more toxic as a forum. Several people comment that there were a lot of candidates when one problem this is meant to address is declining numbers of admin candidates at RFA. Several people talk about needing to really wait it out to see how the candidates do, but wasn't AELECT a result of the same discussions that created WP:ADMINRECALL to move away from the norm that admins are appointed for life? We had over 20 editors do AELECT. Not one of those pages had to be courtesy blanked out of shame, Rjjⁱⁱⁱ (talk) 16:50, 22 February 2025 (UTC)
• option C: i think the october elections went really well, for a brand new experimental process ... sawyer * any/all * talk 16:57, 22 February 2025 (UTC)
• Option C Gladcape2013 (talk) 18:22, 22 February 2025 (UTC)
  • Hi Gladcape2013, since it seems you are a relatively new user, I want to clarify that while you can solely list an option, Wikipedia discussions are not votes. In other words, consensus is decided by which side collectively presents the strongest arguments, not a tally of how many users select Option C. ViridianPenguin🐧 (💬) 19:30, 22 February 2025 (UTC)

  Basically it is ok but it counts for more if you spend a few words saying why Mrfoogles (talk) 05:42, 24 February 2025 (UTC)

  In most places on Wikipedia (RFA support sections being the only counter-example that jumps to mind), not explaining your rationale will cause your "vote" be ignored by the closer. So I think ViridianPenguin's comment is good advice. –Novem Linguae (talk) 06:02, 24 February 2025 (UTC)

• Option C I think it's great, encourages engagement and mop-handling skills, and is great new addition to the wiki ~Gwennie🐈｟💬 📋｠ 19:16, 22 February 2025 (UTC)
• Option C As unsuccessful candidates, LindsayH and Bastun offer the best rebuttal to Cryptic. Even when candidates fail near the threshold without clear advice, they can always come to RfA explaining their achievements in a fuller form. Hammersoft worries that we need more than four months to see if the newly elected admins screw up, but if this batch really goes mad with the mop, then we can always reverse this consensus. ViridianPenguin🐧 (💬) 19:30, 22 February 2025 (UTC)
• Option A per Cryptic and Hammersoft. It's too soon to know if this election really worked as desired or not. It only has been 4 months. Why so many votes saying "It worked"? Just because we have 11 more admins? Its all about the quantity? Rpo.castro (talk) 19:33, 22 February 2025 (UTC)
• Option C the doom-and-gloom prognostications get quite tiring after a while. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 19:58, 22 February 2025 (UTC)
• C - admin elections worked better than anyone could have reasonably predicted. Tazerdadog (talk) 20:30, 22 February 2025 (UTC)
• Option C The secret ballot is especially useful for both the case of people wanting to not be seen tainting someone's 100% approval, or for people who have quieter opinions they'd rather not have picked apart. and per Risker, there are procedures for removing the mop regardless of how someone got it. lizthegrey (talk) 20:31, 22 February 2025 (UTC)
• Option C We can iterate on the process to fix issues raised, but we seem to finally have a found a change to RfA that meaningfully increased the number of admins promoted, while still providing vetting, and shouldn't abandon it. Galobtter (talk) 20:50, 22 February 2025 (UTC)
• Option A, not because the admin elections were a failure (they actually went better than I expected), but because the constructive changes that do need to be made for admin elections to work (a cap at the absolute bare minimum) seem to be getting stonewalled by those that think it will just magically fix itself. Wizardman 21:23, 22 February 2025 (UTC)

  To be fair, if it doesn't fix itself consensus for fixing it will probably arise. Mrfoogles (talk) 05:43, 24 February 2025 (UTC)

• Option A per Polygnotus and Panini!. Even if there were a cap I'd still prefer RFA over admin elections anyday. –Davey2010^Talk 22:00, 22 February 2025 (UTC)
• Option B I feel comfortable with this middle option. I have no problem with how the elections went, except maybe for some people I thought were excellent candidates not making the threshold, but that's not what we can do anything about now. And only Swatjester has pointed to any complaints specific to that iteration of the process. The other issues are largely hypotheticals at this point.
  However, for that same reason, I agree with Hammersoft that one trial is hardly enough to make this a permanent process. And I would urge the community to take seriously the suggestions that some aspects of that process need to be changed ... especially a longer discussion period before actually calling the vote.
  In sum, we do not have enough experience to make this process a permanent feature yet, but neither do we have enough to say it was a bad idea and never again. Daniel Case (talk) 22:18, 22 February 2025 (UTC)
• Option C. Cryptic has made a well-expressed and compelling argument against, so I feel rather foolish in making a poorer and less coherent case for C; but here we go. When I was once examined for a promotion I wanted, and was rejected (for good reason), I found the process stressful and depresssing, it's something I have never wanted to go through again. When I once stood for public office, and came last in the poll, I shrugged my shoulders and moved on. We need more admins. Many candidates are deterred by the RfA process (which, being public, is worse than what I went through). Any reasonable path to adminship which spares them that must be welcome. Maproom (talk) 22:25, 22 February 2025 (UTC)
• Option C. The election process was good. The "phase II" revisions are overall an incremental improvement. And the opportunity to make further incremental improvements always remains. Further trials, i.e. forcing another round of the same RFC, are unnecessary and repetitious at this point. Adumbrativus (talk) 22:37, 22 February 2025 (UTC)
• Option A. As per Polygnotus.Rja13ww33 (talk) 02:21, 23 February 2025 (UTC)
• Option C per Novum 𐩣𐩫𐩧𐩨 Abo Yemen (𓃵) 09:11, 23 February 2025 (UTC)
• Option C: per Novem Linguae (top of page). Thanks.-Mushy Yank. 09:41, 23 February 2025 (UTC)
• Option B per Hammersoft and WereSpielChequers. I very much agree that the election worked but it's not ready to make it the default new system. Give this process more time so we can make sure it works well. I would propose three trials five months apart. - tucoxn\^talk 09:53, 23 February 2025 (UTC)
• C I find the arguments against moving forward presented here, generously speaking, unconvincing. ^Thanks,L3X1 ◊distænt write◊ 13:12, 23 February 2025 (UTC)
• C (but the practical difference to "B with two more trial elections" is just that we will only have to debate this again next year if the process ends up failing, not if it works). No evidence has been brought forward that the election produced more incompetent admins than usual RfAs, and the trial election did produce admins at a nearly acceptable rate, unlike RfA. —Kusma (talk) 14:27, 23 February 2025 (UTC)
• Option C after seeing firsthand how the current RfA system can affect a person and a friend. Never again. Fathoms Below (talk) 16:03, 23 February 2025 (UTC)

  Excellent point. The status quo ante is not a safe default to return to. —Kusma (talk) 16:44, 23 February 2025 (UTC)

• Option C, without any shadow of a doubt. Conventional RfA is unfixable. (It's not the process. It's the people.) We're overreliant on legacy admins at the moment and there are several obvious points of failure. We have to offer a route to adminship that candidates can stomach.—S Marshall T/C 18:13, 23 February 2025 (UTC)
• Snow close Option c. it went well. and every agrees. more admins to help wikipedia out is always good. User:Bluethricecreamman (Talk·Contribs) 20:06, 23 February 2025 (UTC)

  Whether to snow close this discussion is being discussed at Wikipedia talk:Requests for adminship/2024 review/Phase III/Administrator elections#WP:SNOW, where there is actually a consensus to keep this discussion open. One of the reasons for that is that not everyone agrees that the admin election went well. I don’t know what you mean by every agrees. Brianjd (talk) 03:41, 24 February 2025 (UTC)

• Option C. It is the rationale choice per Novem. scope_creep^Talk 20:54, 23 February 2025 (UTC)
• Option C. The arguments for A and B so far are just deeply uncompelling. Cryptic's falls apart immediately at the word "crucially", since the thing Cryptic calls crucial is in fact completely unimportant, and since the standard RfA process is still available. Some seem to be on par with "administrator elections did not result in every Wikipedia editor getting a pony, so I oppose them". Not a single one of the "I can't make up my mind for 6 more months" people offers an objective test that they would apply six months from now that can't be applied today. RfA is an awful, broken process, so there should be a presumption in favor of any alternative; the fact that the replacement on offer ran smoothly, drew major participation, and successfully elected a bunch of people that no one is unhappy with all reinforce that this particular alternative is good. It should be continued indefinitely. --JBL (talk) 21:23, 23 February 2025 (UTC)

  I think that there is very little space between many of the B votes and many of the C votes: I (and a great many other C voters) agree that the process should continue to be evaluated and tweaked as time goes on. The distinction is whether we should have to formally re-authorize its existence again later; in my view this would be a silly waste of time, given that the new process is obviously such a big improvement over the previous status quo. The main thrust of this set of B votes is "yes the process is a good start, and we should continue to tweak it in response to any issues that may arise", with which I agree entirely; I just don't see why "let's throw it out entirely and go back to just doing RfAs" should still be left on the table as an option. JBL (talk) 17:29, 7 March 2025 (UTC)

• Option C per Novem, however, I would also state that I think the process went well. Dreamy Jazz ^{talk to me | my contributions} 23:59, 23 February 2025 (UTC)
• Option C. Despite the thoughtful opposes from Cryptic and Swatjester, I think that we need more administrators, and that the process for getting rid of bad ones works well enough to put a check on their power. JuxtaposedJacob (talk) | :) | he/him | 00:52, 24 February 2025 (UTC)
• Option C. This is a great initiative and should be continued forthwith. Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 05:11, 24 February 2025 (UTC)
• Option C. I am pleasantly surprised by how well the elections turned out, even though I had doubts. From my experience, all the administrators elected are competent and really help Wikipedia reduce its backlog. I would say it is a success. jolielover♥talk 05:50, 24 February 2025 (UTC)
• Option C This was a big success, and a welcome step to simplifying and removing drama from the process of selecting admins. Nick-D (talk) 07:04, 24 February 2025 (UTC)
• Option A. The trial run election was absurd and it showed clearly why this process should not be used again. There were over 30 candidates (plus several more who dropped out). Even the ArbCom elections have significantly fewer candidates and they only occur once a year. Very few editors can, or can reasonably be expected to, look at the records of so many candidates in any kind of substantive detail and cast an informed !vote. Please don't continue this absurdity. Nsk92 (talk) 12:02, 24 February 2025 (UTC)

  As others have stated convincingly in the various RfCs and surveys, I suspect there was pent-up interest and a backlog of people who might have gone for a regular RfA but waited to try out the election process once it was on the horizon. As a voter in the elections who has not been a regular at RfAs, I did not find it overwhelming to review the voter guides and discussions and make decisions, even with the majority of candidates with whom I was not previously familiar. If the candidate pools turn out to be unmanageable, the community can always reconsider future elections. Dclemens1971 (talk) 18:32, 24 February 2025 (UTC)

• Option A I think the regular RfA process is fine, but I also think that the RfA process could be improved to focus more on consensus rather than numbers of votes for or against, if you know what I mean. I can understand the idea behind the administrator elections, but focusing on plain voting kind of takes the human factor away from the administrator candicacy process. --Minoa (talk) 17:20, 24 February 2025 (UTC)
• Option C and that the process should be opened to tweaking every few rounds or so so as to fine tune the process via future RfCs. It is a new process, let's not lock everything down. Many comments here seem to assume that processes can't change here, but they do.– robertsky (talk) 17:27, 24 February 2025 (UTC)
• Option C per Novem and Femke, although I'm cautious about establishing an important process after only one trial. Thankfully, nothing is permanent, so issues can be worked out down the line. What's important to this RfC is that administrator elections work; the minutiae of a specific iteration can always be changed. UpTheOctave! • 8^va? 18:39, 24 February 2025 (UTC)
• Option C - a lovely change in decades-long status quo of RfA being a horrible place to be. Finally, a venue with slightly lower stakes that encourages more candidates to come forward and results in lots of quality new admins. -- Ajraddatz (talk) 22:19, 24 February 2025 (UTC)
• Leaning option B with at least one more trial run. The first run did very well with some minor details that needed ironing out, which is what the Phase II RFCs were about. We should do another run now that most of everything has been theoretically streamlined so see if any further changes are required before moving the process to production. cyberdog958^Talk 01:55, 25 February 2025 (UTC)
• Option C the trial went very well, both concept and execution were smooth, and the mini RfCs allowed for ironing out the last details. I have not found any of the option A arguments compelling, and while I understand the cautious approach of doing another trial run, I do not see the necessity. Choucas0 🐦‍⬛ ⸱ 💬 ⸱ 📋 09:35, 25 February 2025 (UTC)
• Option C The process is much the same as we use for Arbcom, which has been done many times, and so is not so experimental that more trials are needed. It's far better than RfA because it's a secret ballot and so I was able to vote without any of the aggravation, drama and intimidation commonly seen at RfA. And there doesn't seem to have been any novel problems with the slate of candidates which were approved. Andrew🐉(talk) 15:31, 25 February 2025 (UTC)
• Option A. Insufficient time to vet candidates. Insufficient feedback for candidates who failed. Useight (talk) 16:03, 25 February 2025 (UTC)
• Option C or Option B, mainly because I find the arguments against uncompelling. — Qwerfjkltalk 16:58, 25 February 2025 (UTC)
• Option B I think one more trial with perhaps a cap on the number of candidates would be best, so that voters can do a proper evaluation. There were just too many last time. Pawnkingthree (talk) 00:38, 26 February 2025 (UTC)
• Option B – love the new process, but it seems to need some more refining. Would be worth running another trial or two. (I was also not actively editing at the exact time AELECT happened, so I haven't seen it play out in real-time.) Skarmory (talk • contribs) 03:59, 26 February 2025 (UTC)
• Option B. Not enough data yet for option C. At minimum one more trial is needed. I think we should do another trial with the revised rules, but it's kind of silly to think that with this many moving parts we've got this in the bag. I want to see under the rules changes how many candidates show up, what the pass rate is, etc., before I support this fully. Valereee (talk) 17:31, 26 February 2025 (UTC)
• Option C per Novem. --JackFromWisconsin (talk | contribs) 18:52, 26 February 2025 (UTC)
• Option B with a cap on nominees, otherwise option A. The nonsensical number of nominees last time meant that proper scrutiny was totally unavailable unless you were prepared to put literally hours of effort in; we should not be asking people to do that when it is unnecessary. Run elections more often if you wish, but have a cap of, say 8-10 nominees for each one. Trying to assess over 30 at once was utter stupidity. Black Kite (talk) 12:29, 27 February 2025 (UTC)
• Option C or what I will suggest here: condense the timeline to some reasonable timeline. When there are more admin candidates we can just hold more closely spaced elections. Why every five months? Why not six or seven? Or one? I don't think it matters. Aasim (話す（はなす）) 13:07, 27 February 2025 (UTC)

  The idea was that every six months would mean they occurred at the same time every year. To avoid this, a number relatively prime to twelve was required. Hence 3, 4 and 6 were out. Seven or more would mean only once per year in some years, so five was chosen. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 17:55, 27 February 2025 (UTC)

  See also Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/2024 review/Phase II/Administrator elections#Q20: Election frequency (how often). I think the main argument against very frequent elections (1 month, for example) was that they are expensive in terms of overhead. Someone has to coordinate them, scrutineer them, etc. –Novem Linguae (talk) 05:47, 28 February 2025 (UTC)

• Option C I think the trial was successful. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 17:55, 27 February 2025 (UTC)
• Option C. To respond to some opposes:
  1. The idea that there was insufficient "vetting" is incorrect. For almost every single candidate, @asilvering posted an analysis of their AfD record, @MtBotany posted a general analysis of their editing patterns, @Mike Christie posted an analysis of their GA/FA contributions, and @Ritchie333 posted a list of all of their declined speedies. That's more than most candidates get at RfA, including the currently pending RfA.
  2. People who didn't get accepted were and still are free to seek feedback, including at WP:ORCP. I think that the closer of this discussion should afford little weight to opposes based on this argument, unless that editor actually went through the process and regrets not receiving such feedback during their candidacy. Additionally, per @Rjjiii, RfA opposes often do not provide useful feedback; from reviewing old RfAs, it appears that a lot of them are based either on idiosyncratic RfA standards or misunderstandings of the candidates' contributions.
  3. There's no evidence that the admins who were elected are doing a bad job.
• I also agree with @0xDeadbeef's points. voorts (talk/contributions) 21:26, 27 February 2025 (UTC)
• Option C. There is no point in having a cap. The trial run has a crapton of candidates because it was explicitly described as a trial run and dozens of editors who may not want to put themselves through RFA considered the trial run as possibly their only chance. It is unlikely that future admin elections would attract as many candidates, especially if the elections are run frequently. feminist🩸 (talk) 02:58, 28 February 2025 (UTC)
• Option C., of course, but with the caveat that depending on the number of candidates in the next run, a cap might well be needed to be redebated. To vote seriously it took an absurd amount of time to evaluate each candidate properly so the danger is that voters will just click through on the secure poll and vote from the hip. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 06:01, 28 February 2025 (UTC)
• Option A - Unless and until there is a cap on the number of nominations. This first election had thirty-five editors running, which is too many editors running with not enough time for most people to realistically assess them all in any substantive way. I would much rather gain a few good admins that were properly assessed than have a larger number of potentially problematic admins that were not. Even with a cap, however, I would suggest Option B over Option C, as a single trial run is not enough evidence to say the process should move forward without further assessment. - Aoidh (talk) 05:27, 1 March 2025 (UTC)
• Option C - This option doesn't commit us, irrevocably, to the changed approach to RfAs. Rather, if we see a bunch of problematical admins as a result of new approach, we can make revisions, including (worst case) returning to the old RfA process. If there are enough controls that problematical admins are fairly quickly identified and damages mitigated, then Option C is not particularly risky. No, Option C is not perfect, but it's better than the alternatives. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 06:51, 2 March 2025 (UTC)
• Option B - fine to run another trial. Is there a rush? Regards, --Goldsztajn (talk) 00:50, 3 March 2025 (UTC)

  To clarify, fine to run multiple trials. Regards, Goldsztajn (talk) 10:33, 10 March 2025 (UTC)

• Option A chiefly per Cryptic and Pannini. Their logic is solid and I can neither improve on nor meaningfully add to their comments. -Ad Orientem (talk) 00:58, 3 March 2025 (UTC)

  The only place Pannini appears on this page (even in the markup) is in your comment. That user’s last contribution was in 2021. I assume you were trying to refer to the confusingly-similar Panini!. Brianjd (talk) 03:18, 3 March 2025 (UTC)

  Thats a name I havent heard in a long time. Good riddance. Panini! • 🥪 18:14, 4 March 2025 (UTC)

• Option B Largely as per Aoidh and Black Kite. Fundamentally I think it went fine, however, TBH there were too many names on the ballot to allow meaningful examination of the candidates. This does both the community and the candidates a disservice. There have been numerous studies on the deleterious impacts of ballot fatigue on public elections (, , etc.) and I have no reason to believe some of those deleterious impacts willwon't carry-over to our elections if we continue to have dozens of candidates each round. I suspect, however, that the great number of candidates was largely due to the novelty of this being the first attempt. On that basis, I continue to support elections, but would like to see another test to affirm my suspicion that this was merely a novelty and thereby assuage my concern. If this was not a novelty, we need either a first-come, first-served cap on candidates, or require them to surmount a threshold (i.e. receive a third-party nomination) to appear on the ballot. Chetsford (talk) 02:27, 3 March 2025 (UTC); edited 05:17, 3 March 2025 (UTC)

  I have no reason to believe some of those deleterious impacts will carry-over to our elections if we continue to have dozens of candidates each round Is the word no meant to be in there? Brianjd (talk) 03:25, 3 March 2025 (UTC)

  Thanks - was multitasking! Chetsford (talk) 05:17, 3 March 2025 (UTC)

• Option C, with option B and any number as a second choice. We are hæmhorraging sysops and any increase to our numbers would be welcomed. Stifle (talk) 15:54, 4 March 2025 (UTC)
• C or B with a sufficiently high number of trials (4? over a year?). Have been away from all of this for a while, but looks like this + admin recall together solve many of our issues with admin availability and conduct. I note the concern that there might be too many candidates (and the views of some that there already were the first time round) but I'd prefer to say "let's go ahead and do it and, if we need to, find a way to optimise it". The Land (talk) 20:27, 4 March 2025 (UTC)
• A Per Polygnotus. Lectonar (talk) 13:53, 5 March 2025 (UTC)
• Option C. This is so much better than the previous RfA process that there's no question that this is the way forward. — The Anome (talk) 15:16, 5 March 2025 (UTC)

  I'm going to note that this won't replace RfA. Editors can still choose to run via RfA at anytime, or AELECT during a nomination window. fanfanboy (block_talk) 16:05, 5 March 2025 (UTC)

  Agreed. At some time in the forseeable future it might become desirable to retire the old RfA process, but that's not what's being asked here. — The Anome (talk) 15:37, 9 March 2025 (UTC)

• C – not a perfect process, but I would rather see it implemented full time and amend it as we go than try another trial (I want to avoid any chance of creating a cycle of run a trial election / find an issue / propose a solution / run another trial election / repeat indefinitely). RunningTiger123 (talk) 15:52, 5 March 2025 (UTC)
• Option B. It certainly seems like this last election went swimmingly, I agree with that. This is, however, a big change, and there's almost no downside to having another trial election. There is more information that can be gathered from another round. For instance, what if the first election was unique, there having been a backlog of candidates who were considering running for admin but never pulled the trigger at RfA. That first batch could be entirely different from the "usual" crop of candidates using this process going forward. I have my doubts in this theory, but it would be nice to have it disproven by another trial. Feet to the fire, my second choice is C. It seems by all measures a good system. TheSavageNorwegian 20:29, 5 March 2025 (UTC)
• Option B. I'll be honest: relative to the amount of tracking of discussion and hullabalo surrounding the development of the process, my level of scrutiny of the actual trial election itself and discussion thereof has been fairly limited. That said, if there's an area where we should be taking a "walk, don't run" approach to project/administrative reform, this is surely it. Even a cursory review of the election process demonstrates a smorgasbord of unanswered questions about the value and implications of this new process, with regard to the high impact community interests in recruiting and vetting candidates for such especially advanced permissions and remits. Mind you, I imagine that I'm near the tippity-top of the scale of worry about the consequences of the longterm trends in administrator recruitment and retention and the resulting shortfalls in our manpower for crucial processes--which is why I have been cautiously eager to welcome a parallel process to RfA, and why I am glad the community finnally greenlit the trial. But that receptiveness should be counter-balanced by a fair deal more observation and diligent consideration before we validate the elections as a permanent process; there are a bevy of open questions relating to the longterm advisability of such an immensely consequential process as this, questions which generally cannot be reliably resolved with a sample size of one. (Indeed, in just the immediate !vote to my own, Thesavagenorwegian identifies one such, and I can't emphasize enough how large that class of possible outlier effects could be, when we stop to think about it).
  Again, the need for something like the process that has been created here (after substantial community input already, I concede) is far from trivial. But meaning no offense to any one respondent, there seems to be a rush to codify a process here that is perceived as having gone well on the basis of one set of observable outcomes. That strikes me as imprudent, given the complexity of the issues involved, and the scale of influence the process will have on the future of the project. And even as regards the diligence, scope and thoroughness of the review of that one experiment, I wouldn't say I am bowled over by the level of analysis I have seen thus far. My input: let's take a pause for the cause and continue to trial this process and to have its positive benefits without implementing it as a regularized feature just yet. There's very little downside to that approach, relative to normalizing a process which may end up having unintended impacts we would have seen if we had taken a bit more time and care. Put otherwise, the slow approach gives us the best cost-benefit results and a much, much easier posture to pull the process or continue to tailor it, based on further results and observations. Reproducibility is the lode stone upon which all progress resulting from empirical investigation is built. SnowRise ^{let's rap} 02:27, 6 March 2025 (UTC)
• Option B: multiple beta test runs. I'm responsible for the somewhat awkward non-binary RFC question wording. In this edit I likely affected the phrasing from the original formulation Now that the one time trial is complete, are Wikipedia:Administrator elections authorized to continue indefinitely?. In my edit I made it clear I would be a vocal opposer unless further trials were made an option. I have so far made no opposition here, waiting two weeks after the process began before this comment. I should begin by saying I'm sure I distressed User:Theleekycauldron & User:Novem Linguae, both of whom should be applauded for getting this massive process moving forward, and it has moved far forward. Now the question is called. Congratulations, everybody! The high level of participation in the multiple RFC process which brought us to this renewal RFC has invested a large number of wikipedians in the success of the entire process. This is a good thing! Optimism is good! But as anyone who has done a product version release can tell you first hand, feature-complete does not mean beta tested. Enthusiasm does not equal product sustainability; these are entirely unrelated factors. Yes, we elected able admins, but that's not by itself a successful rollout. That's the bare minimum we should expect. We have been made aware of issues which concern contributors in this discussion: no cap on participants, an insufficient time to vet a large group, an increased focus on the horse-race, gaming and politics. Worse, our elections are made so pain-free to participants they don't even receive appropriate feedback required to earn the community's trust in a later run. Candidates might just choose admin elections because they look less threatening, perhaps to escape the sort of close scrutiny which revealed a truly dedicated disrupter like Eostrix just as they were to receive a mop. As a community, we have been made aware of significant bugs during the fleet of RFCs. We've made adjustments, but tested none of those sufficiently. As English Wikipedia perhaps transitions from !voting to voting, it's important to remember we are not a disagreement-based culture; instead wikipedias have evolved as an agreement-based society, a consensus-based self-governance. These elections will always be in an open-beta state, but let's try it more than once before we fully adopt stuff as policy. BusterD (talk) 04:42, 6 March 2025 (UTC)

  If I was forced to choose a number of beta runs, I'd say five would be optimal. BusterD (talk) 05:19, 6 March 2025 (UTC)

  There are editors above that make the case that if a potential candidate actually wants feedback, they may be better off with traditional RfA. Elections have demonstrated to offer less candidate feedback, based on the single run. How is that a good thing for admin candidates? Or admin !voters? BusterD (talk) 05:33, 6 March 2025 (UTC)

  Hiding things like who voted support/oppose and offering less candidate feedback reduces the toxicity of the AELECT process, and reduced toxicity is its main selling point compared to RFA. There are no plans to deprecate RFA, so a candidate can choose either process depending on which tradeoff they want to make (AELECT's less toxicity, less feedback vs RFA's more toxicity, more feedback). –Novem Linguae (talk) 07:57, 6 March 2025 (UTC)

  Less toxicity equals virtually zero feedback, based on the limited data we have been presented to date. A person may run multiple times and end up with no earthly idea why they failed. That's not a satisfactory result under any circumstances. After 3-plus weeks, the apparent minority view in this discussion is to continue to calibrate any known system defects by further testing. The majoritarian view of this discussion is to dash headlong, because more admins. I don't want to go full Willie Stark here, but this process is clearly not fully trusted. Based on my initial tally, after this discussion started at 7/2/79 (A/B/C) in the first 24 hours (and snow predicted by the proposer at 18 hours), it seems to be going 14/25/60 in the three weeks since (quibble about my precise count if you wish). 39% of !voters since 2/22 have asserted either B or A. Our closer will be unable to simply ignore the trend, because this discussion is not a vote. It's not about winning this discussion either; it's about making us all comfortable with the changes which are agreed. BusterD (talk) 16:03, 13 March 2025 (UTC)

  This may not be a vote, but it is still a FPTP situation, and it will take a brave closer to close this as anything other than the clear plurality option, as long as arguments on all sides have at least some substantive merit. -- DoubleGrazing (talk) 16:49, 13 March 2025 (UTC)

  The fire escape's failure will have already occurred when we find this too cursory process has failed to properly scrutinize the next malicious candidate (like Eostrix) past the post, because RFA was just soooo toxic. This new election process has already failed a number of clearly qualified and respected candidates in the first test, not by rejecting them, but by demonstrating unspoken sentiment against them while giving them no path forward. BusterD (talk) 17:17, 13 March 2025 (UTC)

  On a very quick headcount (not counting any 'C with B second choice' and excluding those who had only a specific proposed change such as a greater candidate cap), at least 29 of the C-only editors have also indicated preference for continuing to iterate/improve/RFC the process as we go along. Not a majority certainly, but with an additional 20% of all C-only editors also explicitly expressing support for a B-adjacent outcome, I think it's at least a relatively strong minority. Perfect4th (talk) 17:13, 13 March 2025 (UTC)

• Option B exactly per Snow Rise: if there's an area where we should be taking a "walk, don't run" approach to project/administrative reform, this is surely it. I was generally happy with how things turned out in October, but there are several reasons why the first election might not be representative (the number of candidates, the level of interest, etc.), and I'd be more comfortable waiting to give the green light until we have a better sense of how a "normal" election goes. We shouldn't expect to get everything right on the first try; it's good to build opportunities for discussion and revision into the process. I'd be fine with up to three more trials. Extraordinary Writ (talk) 05:04, 6 March 2025 (UTC)
• Option C because the status quo is unacceptable and unhealthy for nominees. "Move fast and break things" stops being nonsense if you're trying to prevent people getting hurt. If changes are needed, we can work them out later. Even if there's something not ideal about this process, RfA should not be thought of as a reasonable alternative. 3df (talk) 09:49, 7 March 2025 (UTC)
• Option C Administrator elections seems to be a great process. Use of SecurePoll software make supporting or opposing an candidate painless. But I have a proposals: Make the discussion period a week longer so more people can comment on the candidates. RealStanger43286 (Let's talk!) 06:09, 12 March 2025 (UTC)

  Expanding the discussion length has already been discussed and the consensus was 5 days. Any longer was determined to be too stressful. fanfanboy (block_talk) 17:52, 13 March 2025 (UTC)

• Option C This process is the only one that has succeeded and the only one which has (unknowingly) addressed and solved two of the three main problems with RFA. It could use a few tweaks but that can be done in the future. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 19:33, 12 March 2025 (UTC)
• Option B since there is indeed a lack of sufficient data for evaluation. I'm not too sure how much of a success this first trial run was, and would rather wait for some time and some more cycles to pass before passing judgement. Let us not be hasty. JavaHurricane 07:23, 13 March 2025 (UTC)
• Option A or B. Cryptic makes a great point: the criteria for success here should not solely be whether it gave us more admins or not, but also the rationale/feedback given to those who were not. As it stands, the process does not provide any feedback beyond what might be brought up in the comments (which is an incredibly small sample size anyway). The feedback is important for more than just the candidates themselves—if we establish a process that fails people mysteriously, how is it going to be more inviting than the alternative, which has everyone's thoughts on record? Ideally we should incorporate a feedback mechanism into the votes, like the UCOC ratification vote did. In any case, if we do want to continue this, I think a limited trial is the best way forward, for reasons better explained by the people above me. Giraffer (talk) 10:31, 13 March 2025 (UTC)

  I agree with a lot of your rationalisation, but I'm surprised with the end result of voting A. Do you feel that the process should be scrapped based on these problems? BugGhost 🦗👻 12:27, 13 March 2025 (UTC)

  My vote for A is kind of a "wait until these problems are resolved". I'm not opposed to admin elections happening, but I think we shouldn't automatically greenlight a new round without fixing the issues mentioned first. If consensus is against discontinuing/pausing the elections to fix the issues, I prefer a trial (B). Hopefully that makes sense. Giraffer (talk) 13:33, 13 March 2025 (UTC)

  This is an interesting line of argument, but it leads me to think we should immediately suspend RfA until it has been fixed? —Kusma (talk) 18:26, 13 March 2025 (UTC)

  For all its flaws, RFA is a well-tested process. It may need repair, but it's a known quantity. We have no meta history with AELECT whatsoever. We've never seen the current version operate, yet we're about to enshrine it as the primary method for promotion, such as it is. BusterD (talk) 20:18, 13 March 2025 (UTC)

  RfA has its flaws, but it works—it passes some candidates and gives all of them feedback. Maybe it can be improved, but I don't think it's missing something major like this process is, or at least not to the extent that we should suspend it pending a fix. Giraffer (talk) 20:37, 13 March 2025 (UTC)

  RFA has not been "working" in any meaningful sense for well over a decade, producing an unsustainably low number of new admins at an unacceptably high cost to candidates' mental health. So many people have quit Wikipedia after a failed RfA that fear of losing a good Wikipedian makes me hesitate to even nominate anyone. I am not as optimistic as you to think that RfA can be improved in any substantial way: many good people have tried and failed. —Kusma (talk) 21:14, 13 March 2025 (UTC)

  @Giraffer - "The feedback is important for more than just the candidates themselves—if we establish a process that fails people mysteriously, how is it going to be more inviting than the alternative, which has everyone's thoughts on record? - This is my feeling entirely. I passed, with no-one offering any negative comments nor anything but pro-forma questions. I do not know why any of the 106 candidates who voted against my candidature voted as they did. In contrast MarcGarver got two fewer support-votes and 14 more oppose-votes, and I honestly cannot say what the difference between their candidature and mine was. FOARP (talk) 14:58, 2 April 2025 (UTC)

• Option B. I am supportive of the process of admin elections, but I think we need more data and to refine some elements of the procedure. For instance, elections with 30+ candidates and only a short question period are unreasonable as they make it near impossible to have an informed opinion of all the candidates. I'd like to see a second trial, and some workshopping changes to the process. Trainsandotherthings (talk) 18:07, 13 March 2025 (UTC)

  Just FYI that lots of workshopping has already been done at Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/2024 review/Phase II/Administrator elections. We spent a month or two on it, and asked over 20 questions. This was in addition to a feedback phase. –Novem Linguae (talk) 12:39, 14 March 2025 (UTC)

  Just FYI? This is all linked at the top of the page! The user is reasonably suggesting a second round of the same. It's one of the three options! User:Novem Linguae, at 3+ weeks, it appears the reform proposals are coming to pass. To continue to flutter about the conversation and speak down to !voters (as if you had some specific interest in the outcome) approaches bludgeoning behavior. BusterD (talk) 13:13, 15 March 2025 (UTC)

  BusterD, I think that's unfair. Simply telling someone about previous discussion that they appear to have missed is not disruptive, and Novem Linguae has, overall, done outstanding work in overseeing this vast reform project. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:37, 15 March 2025 (UTC)

  I agree with Trypto here, Novem's comment is just trying to provide context that could have been easily missed. BugGhost 🦗👻 01:06, 16 March 2025 (UTC)

  Noted. I have spoken more directly at User_talk:Novem_Linguae#You_should_give_it_a_rest,_dude.. My issue with Novem Linguae's comment is that they can't seem to accept yes for answer. They (of all people) should allow other sorts of !votes without undue comment. I'm not some editor who showed up lately. I have a long-term interest in the continued success of this project and this particular pedia. I'm not commonly known as a disruptive editor. I've stayed quiet for two weeks, to not unduly influence this process. BusterD (talk) 01:24, 16 March 2025 (UTC)

  And (entirely by coincidence) I'm the editor whose actions led to User:Picard's Facepalm's block. I have been extremely careful not to unduly influence this process, with which I almost entirely agree. BusterD (talk) 01:31, 16 March 2025 (UTC)

• Option C, more administrators are better than less furthermore with the use of secret balloting there are greater opposition than normal RfAs. We should allow the process to play out as with regularly scheduled election as I suspect that the number of candidates in each election would not be as high as the trial election. Lightoil (talk) 11:45, 14 March 2025 (UTC)
• Option B. Like others above me, I support admin elections in principle but think the process is far from perfect. ~~ Jessintime (talk) 13:18, 15 March 2025 (UTC)
• Option B. I thought the first admin election was mostly fine if somewhat imperfect. The changes in the first workshop are a slight improvement, but it would be helpful to have another round before cementing the current process as the permanent one (Yes, we can always come back to change it, but in that case no consensus defaults to the status quo). -- Patar knight - ^chat/_{contributions} 21:01, 15 March 2025 (UTC)

  Thanks for pointing that last (no consensus defaults to the status quo) out. BusterD (talk) 01:27, 16 March 2025 (UTC)

• Option B. Very much agree with the way WereSpielChequers put it above. Arbitrarily0 ^(talk) 00:35, 16 March 2025 (UTC)
• Option B. Like others, I thought the first trial was promising but some tweaks may be needed going forward, specifically with the number of candidates and the frequency/timing of elections. Let'srun (talk) 02:47, 19 March 2025 (UTC)
• Option C Late to the game. I don't see any significant disruption or design problems of the process or candidate onboarding problems that need to be solved, that needs another trial. It was remarkably straightforward and efficient. scope_creep^Talk 09:34, 24 March 2025 (UTC)
• C. It should continue until a serious concrete problems manifests. The interval of several months between cycles will allow for the problem to be discussed, and if needed it will be possible to pause the process.—Alalch E. 19:30, 25 March 2025 (UTC)
• Option B - Speaking as someone who passed through the first trial, this one still needs a bit more time in the oven before being rolled out permanently. FOARP (talk) 13:13, 2 April 2025 (UTC)
• Option C although keeping things to less than 32 (!!!) names might be a good idea. Carrite (talk) 22:36, 2 April 2025 (UTC)
• Option C Ensuring editors who are willing and capable of performing admin work acutally become admins overrides the lower amount of feedback candidates receive during the ordeal. Much of the feedback that candidates receive in the traditional RfA is toxic in any case and puts them off from editing actively post-RfA. And that option will still exist as an alternative. Elections won't replace RfAs but complement them. Gizza (talk) 00:10, 4 April 2025 (UTC)
• Option B I felt that the trial went badly, in that there were too many candidates to assess each adequately. At least I could not see myself ever having the time. On present evidence I would go for Option A, except that maybe we should give it another try or two in case the high number of candidates in the first trial was an outlier. JMCHutchinson (talk) 11:28, 5 April 2025 (UTC)

Discussion

This discussion has been disrupted by block evasion, ban evasion, or sockpuppetry from the following user: Picard's Facepalm (talk · contribs · block log · spi) Their comments should be excluded from assessments of consensus.

• I am not against this, but I think some work still needs to be done. My only concern is the constructive criticism. In standard RfA, in oppose votes, or other means, the candidate could easily get information on what they lacked, or what their strengths are. With elections, while the participation has almost doubled (and tripled for some candidates), there was not much feedback for the candidate. For example, on Wikipedia:Administrator elections/October 2024/Candidates/Zippybonzo there were (75/347/194) votes, and on Wikipedia:Administrator elections/October 2024/Candidates/EggRoll97 there were (146/220/250) votes, yet feedback was non-existent. Apart from that "lack of feedback/constructive criticism", I do not have any concerns/reservations. —usernamekiran (talk) 16:44, 21 February 2025 (UTC)

  I think the raise of the length of the discussion phase from 3 days to 5 may make this issue be less prevalent. fanfanboy (block_talk) 16:58, 21 February 2025 (UTC)

  If there is a happy medium between AELECT and RfA in terms of the amount and quality of the constructive criticism then that would be ideal. I don't see where you can get that, though; people seem equally reluctant to use WP:ORCP as they are to submit an RfA. Reconrabbit 17:42, 21 February 2025 (UTC)

  As I understand it, removing the criticism was the whole point of AELECT. People were too afraid to run because they didn't want to be criticized by oppose !votes, so this was created as an alternative. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 20:18, 21 February 2025 (UTC)

  Mandating ORCP (and linking to it) at least once for all candidates could be something I could support. It would require candidates to seek feedback without a timed consequence and if they feel next day or a year later that can run at Admin elections without receiving wrath or crowd and simply get the vote/lighter discussion. This would give flexibility to candidates on one hand but also allow community to provide feedback without tying to immediate election. ~ 🦝 Shushugah (he/him • talk) 22:38, 21 February 2025 (UTC)

  I'd strongly opposed that. Everyone doesn't need to go through that process because many people privately receive feedback from folks who are familiar with the process and expectations. It can be a helpful tool for many, but making it mandatory would not be helpful. Hey man im josh (talk) 00:24, 22 February 2025 (UTC)

  Mandating ORCP was discussed in the workshop phase (Wikipedia:Administrator elections/October 2024/RFC workshop#WP:ORCP as a requirement), but did not achieve consensus. –Novem Linguae (talk) 06:33, 22 February 2025 (UTC)

  @Usernamekiran: As someone who commented a lot on Zippy's page, I felt their issues were pretty clear. I am still willing to, both privately and publicly, provide feedback about why I felt so strongly against them at the time (and still do). The problem is people being willing to put their names behind what they perceive as an issue from my perspective. If I am willing to oppose someone I'm also going to be willing to do them the courtesy of stating why I feel that way. We need others to be willing to do the same. With that said, I agree with you. I voiced a lack of feedback as being a concern after the last election. The next we can do is be willing to actually tell people why we did not support them and not hide behind the anonymity of the secure polls. Hey man im josh (talk) 00:22, 22 February 2025 (UTC)

• Could voters have an optional box to fill out giving a reason anonymously for their oppose vote, and then the user has the option to read them? Can imagine not knowing why you failed being frustrating, and it'd probably be helpful to get constructive criticism. Kowal2701 (talk) 17:59, 21 February 2025 (UTC)

  @Kowal2701 This would require a very significant change to the software so it's definitely not something that is possible in the short term. It's something that might be worth discussing for the longer term though. Thryduulf (talk) 23:21, 21 February 2025 (UTC)

  Anonymous oppose reasoning would enable trolling to a degree that I cannot support. I suppose if a candidate is willing to take it, then we could look into it, but I would certainly not have this functionality required for all candidates. Toadspike [Talk] 11:41, 22 February 2025 (UTC)

  Agreed, this sounds like a recipe for absolute toxicity. Retswerb (talk) 03:15, 23 February 2025 (UTC)

• I think there should be evaluations after each of the next few elections to tweak the process. The passing percentage, in particular, may need to be tweaked. It is not clear why many apparently well-qualified candidates ended up in the 60-69% range: was it too many candidates, an inherent property of confidential voting (easier to oppose), or what? But if we continue to fail well-qualified candidates, that value needs to change. — rsjaffe 🗣️ 18:06, 21 February 2025 (UTC)

  I think it's an inherent property of confidential voting (easier to oppose). WP:ACE and WP:AELECT both have their best candidates only achieve 80%. However I was unable to persuade folks of this in the mini RFC about lowering the pass percentage, so the pass percentage will stay at 70% for now. Identical-ish to RFA. –Novem Linguae (talk) 19:49, 21 February 2025 (UTC)

  RSJaffe, I'm going to suggest that it's a tradeoff and a candidate can make their own choice. It's clear candidates feel elections are more appealing than RfA. If it turns out (after several iterations) that elections are also less likely to succeed, a given candidate is free to decide in favor of RfA instead. I think trying to ensure elections are just as likely to succeed as RfA is not a goal we need to set. It's two different processes. Candidates are clearly seeing something they value from opting for an election: lower risk, less drama, safety in numbers, no public raking-over, whatever. If it turns out they're also giving some things up -- likelihood of passing, or constructive feedback -- that's their choice, and I don't think it's necessarily a problem. Valereee (talk) 20:59, 27 February 2025 (UTC)

• Why was there a high amount of "abstains" and did those votes effect the AEs in the first trial? For several people, there were more abstains than supports or opposes. As rsjaffe stated, almost every passing nom ended up in the 70-80% range (several failed candidates were also within 10% of the passing line), which seems pretty low compared to the most recent RfA, which had an 100% percentage of support. Do we know why the support-to-oppose percentages were so low? There were well over fifteen candidates, it seems strange that zero got a support rating over 82%. E_F⁵ 18:36, 21 February 2025 (UTC)

  A lowering of the support percentage was anticipated, with two factors. First, in recent years, it seems editors are more reluctant to make a request for administrative privileges unless they feel strongly assured of being approved. Second, the shy voter effect reduces the number of editors willing to openly oppose a request. This effect is no longer in play with an anonymous ballot, though it may be counterbalanced by more participation by those interested in supporting a candidate. There was some discussion of these considerations during the preparation for this request for comments discussion. isaacl (talk) 18:49, 21 February 2025 (UTC)

  First, in recent years, it seems editors are more reluctant to make a request for administrative privileges unless they feel strongly assured of being approved.

  I think this is true. Emir of Wikipedia (talk) 20:04, 11 March 2025 (UTC)

  I dont think there was a high abstain rate if you compare it to normal RfAs. When you look at the !voters of the last 30 RfAs, you will see a lot of people that only vote in one or a small subset. Such people "abstained" on the other RfAs. Many people will likely not have had time to evaluate all candidates. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 18:55, 21 February 2025 (UTC)

  Agreed, abstention would only become a problem if everyone was going through the candidates in the same order and some people at the end were not being greatly scrutinised. ϢereSpielChequers 12:56, 22 February 2025 (UTC)

• I do not feel like we were able to properly vet people in the first election. This is SNOWing so I won't oppose it, but the discussion phase definitely needs to be longer. SportingFlyer T·C 19:23, 21 February 2025 (UTC)

  Per a recent rfc, the discussion phase length will increase from 3 days to 5 days in the next election. This should hopefully help a little. –Novem Linguae (talk) 19:52, 21 February 2025 (UTC)

  It should be at least a week. SportingFlyer T·C 21:32, 21 February 2025 (UTC)

  That was proposed in the Phase II RFCs, and did not gain consensus. I suspect we'll have more RFCs to tweak this after the next election or two, I recommend making this point there so others can evaluate it. That way we will increase the discussion to a week if it gains consensus. Soni (talk) 04:35, 22 February 2025 (UTC)

  That's not enough. It needs to be much more. 2 weeks or even more, TBH. --Picard's Facepalm • ^{Made It So} _Engage! • 16:10, 24 February 2025 (UTC)

  Making a process meant to be less stressful than RfA more than twice the length of RfA is a terrible idea. AELECT discussion phase is shorter than RfA for a reason. fanfanboy (block_talk) 17:21, 24 February 2025 (UTC)

  Making the review/discussion phase longer ≠ being more stressful. In fact - I'll go so far as to say having too short of a phase of vetting is actually more stressful for those who are wishing to participate in the discussion, and especially those who wish to participate in voting. --Picard's Facepalm • ^{Made It So} _Engage! • 14:37, 25 February 2025 (UTC)

  We're not talking about the voters stress, we're talking about the candidates stress. While I can't speak for others, being a voter was hardly any stress at all. The most stressful thing was when I accidently refreshed the voting tab on my computer and lost all my vote progress because I didn't write it down. This is nowhere near the stress a candidate whose every action is being scrutineered by multiple people with varying ideas of what qualifies a person for adminship. The whole reason for Admin Elections was to make it less stressful for candidates not voters. fanfanboy (block_talk) 15:36, 25 February 2025 (UTC)

  If an admin candidate is not capable of a little stress over being scrutinized for their readiness and ability to be an admin, well - then I don't think I need to finish the rest of that sentence. I also must have missed the part where the intent of the elections for them to be easier and more accessible to a wider group of editors to have greater weight on who is appointed was changed to coddling the candidates. Yes - peer or user reviewed candidacy for admin due to scrutinization is stressful, and it absolutely should be. The actions and decisions, contributions and involvement of candidates should without a doubt be highly scrutinized to see if they are a good fit for that position and responsibility. They are being handed the keys to the kingdom, afterall. Over the years there have been several who had their adminship revoked because it provven out over time that they were not fit for the position. The more scrutiny you can have up-front, the less likely that is to happen later on. The more scrutiny and "stress" that is applied will help ensure only the best candidates come through the other side. This is not at all a bad thing, and it is absolutely what you should want. --Picard's Facepalm • ^{Made It So} _Engage! • 17:18, 25 February 2025 (UTC)

  Re: "I also must have missed the part where the intent of the elections for them to be easier and more accessible to a wider group of editors to have greater weight on who is appointed was changed to coddling the candidates" - Picard, you have completely misread the purpose of admin elections. They have never been to increase !voter participation, it has always been in order to provide a process less toxic and stressful than RFA, in order to be more appealing to potential candidates. Admin numbers are dwindling, and the primary cause of this is because RFA is a horrible stress-inducing place for the candidate, so no one wants to do it - even qualified editors who would make great admins.

  The reasoning for having elections is present on WP:AELECT#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"), and text indicating this has been there since the day it was created ("The idea behind keeping this information private is that it will reduce the toxicity of the process for the candidates, resulting in an increase of candidates willing to go through the process to become administrators."). Providing a less stressful pathway to adminship is the primary focus of doing this whole thing - trying to deliberately add more stress into the process is counterproductive and misguided. BugGhost 🦗👻 17:46, 25 February 2025 (UTC)

  Fine. The ONLY possible net result of that direction is going to be lower-quality admins. You don't throw numbers at a problem to resolve it - you throw GOOD numbers at it. If this is not the goal of this effort then it is going to blow up spectacularly. As much as I hate to use the analogy - you have not given me any other choice: Do you want more cops on the street for the sake of numbers to fight crime, or do you want more quality cops on the street who do so with high ethical and moral standards? You cannot have both, and the same applies here. --Picard's Facepalm • ^{Made It So} _Engage! • 17:56, 25 February 2025 (UTC)

  There is no indication that anyone who has been (or will be) successful at an admin election will be a worse admin than one who went through RFA. If you read the responses above, you'd actually see that a lot of people have mentioned that there were multiple unsuccessful candidates in the trial who most likely would have passed at RFA - implying AELECT is actually more discerning than RFA. RFA also isn't flawless at vetting people, and your hyperbole about how much a difference elections would make is based on nothing. (I won't be replying further on this, I don't think it's beneficial) BugGhost 🦗👻 18:20, 25 February 2025 (UTC)

  And with that we circle back to my original point - it can only be more discerning and yield quality admins if there is sufficient time to vet the candidates. There wasn't during the trial, there isn't now - and other than "not having true results data" (which addresses your final point in your reply above), the lack of vetting time is the next highest complaint by those who have commented with Option A, or in the discussions below. --Picard's Facepalm • ^{Made It So} _Engage! • 19:25, 25 February 2025 (UTC)

  "A little stress"? What is "a little stressful" about putting yourself and all your edits up for aggressive scrutiny on a platform which you like to be on so much that you want to gain adminship to help out even more? I believe adminship is no big deal, but I also understand that it may be a big deal to the candidates who are willing to bet their entire editing career on it. fanfanboy (block_talk) 17:48, 25 February 2025 (UTC)

  Which is precisely why the vetting and scrutiny, along with the stress that comes with it - is inherent, if not required. You have made my point for me. --Picard's Facepalm • ^{Made It So} _Engage! • 19:27, 25 February 2025 (UTC)

  It's clear neither of our views are changing, I think I'm going to stop responding to this thread instead of dragging this on any longer than necessary. We made our viewpoints clear, let's leave it at that. fanfanboy (block_talk) 19:33, 25 February 2025 (UTC)

  The interval between announcing the candidates and the start of the discussion phase is also a vetting period. I noticed that most of the data-based vetting was made available the first day of discussion, which shows that work was ongoing before. — rsjaffe 🗣️ 21:27, 21 February 2025 (UTC)

  That's a good point to clarify for those not considering it. I myself had prepared questions for some candidates based on vetting I did ahead of the elections. Hey man im josh (talk) 00:26, 22 February 2025 (UTC)

• I just want to take a moment to thank Novem Linguae and several others who have really spear-headed this process. Risker (talk) 20:35, 21 February 2025 (UTC)

  Yes, NL deserves abundant thanks for a job well done. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:01, 21 February 2025 (UTC)

• Question... why "approximately every 5 months"? Every 6 months would mean twice a year?Turini2 (talk) 21:24, 21 February 2025 (UTC)

  @Turini2: This was the result of a discussion at Phase II question 20. Elections every five months allow aspiring administrators who are always unavailable at the same times of year (e.g, in January and July) to participate. PrinceTortoise (he/him • poke) 21:57, 21 February 2025 (UTC)

  @PrinceTortoise Thanks for replying and explaining :) Turini2 (talk) 22:29, 21 February 2025 (UTC)

• The discussion (vetting) length & participation is already insufficient as it stands. Casting votes with insufficient time to get to know & potentially raise challenging inquiries to the candidates is a recipe for disaster. Casting votes in the blind would mimick the outcomes of political elections... why would we want to subject ourselves to that here? Someone in the discussion above mentioned extending the discussion period from 3 to 5 days. I say go longer... 2 weeks, maybe more. Give the editors & potential voters ample opportunity. Not everyone lives on WP and can engage on such short timelines. Longer timeframe would make it accessible to a larger and more informed voting base. I am actually shocked and quite disappointed that a 600 editor participation rate is considered acceptable by all you voting Option C. If we cannot at least extend the time and the base to something more reasonable - then I'd prefer to stick with the administrative peer review & consensus method previously used.--Picard's Facepalm • ^{Made It So} _Engage! • 22:24, 21 February 2025 (UTC)

  I had absolutely no time to participate the last time round and found it very short. I am fine and confident with trusting my fellow editors to find any glaring gaps with candidates and express it. In that sense it also saved me time. We have more important things to mobilize people's energy on. As we increase number of admins, we will also need to ensure they do a good job and this is where even though I missed the election, my careful eyes are looking afterwards. To date, I have no evidence that the limited pool of voters missed anything in who they approved. I can imagine some quality candidates were narrowly voted off, which is a shame, but given that 30 people ran, there’s no comparable number in recent years with RfA. ~ 🦝 Shushugah (he/him • talk) 22:49, 21 February 2025 (UTC)

  How often does the administrative peer review & consensus method previously used yield a 600 editor participation rate? LEPRICAVARK (talk) 23:17, 21 February 2025 (UTC)

  Never. Not once. Over 300 is already extremely unusual. Tamzin's didn't crack 500. -- asilvering (talk) 00:02, 22 February 2025 (UTC)

  WP:RFX300 is pretty exclusive. Hey man im josh (talk) 00:28, 22 February 2025 (UTC)

  There is a reason why a typical RfA only gets the number of participants it does. While it might be open to "the public" - it is never really presented & communicated as though it is, nor does it feel like it is to the average user. I have had that discussion and heard that from multiple people over the years. An election by nature is far more open and inviting than an RfA - nevermind it reorting to administrative consensus, anyhow. You are right - this increase in participation is not at all a bad thing - but it also could, should and absolutely needs to have quite a bit more participation than 600 --Picard's Facepalm • ^{Made It So} _Engage! • 16:32, 24 February 2025 (UTC)

  There is currently an active RfA. I know this because it is linked on my watchlist. RfA are absolutely presented & communicated as being open to "the public." LEPRICAVARK (talk) 19:42, 24 February 2025 (UTC)

  The watchlist notice points to the RfA page (as a whole); it does not point directly to the current nomination(s). On that page, there are several screens of text to scroll through before the current nominations, which are not clearly distinguished from the rest of the page. Those several screens of text include various headings, body text, hatnotes, tables, and other templates (including a collapsed section). There is a link to skip to the current nominations, but I did not even notice it until I scrolled back up and looked closely.

  All that material is surely useful to users who know how to use it, but the way it is presented makes the page not at all welcoming to unfamiliar users. Brianjd (talk) 00:40, 25 February 2025 (UTC)

  Then perhaps this point should be raised with the people who set up the watchlist notice. I'd point you in the right direction, but I haven't the foggiest idea what that direction is. However, I still maintain that RfAs are hardly being conducted in a state of secrecy. LEPRICAVARK (talk) 01:08, 25 February 2025 (UTC)

  I never said they were. Even with the RfA notifs - compounded with the ultimately admin weighted consensus - the existing methodology still has an air of exclusivity to it, not to mention the inadequate length of time. I have heard this perspective from numerous users over the years, who would have otherwise been interested in participating. --Picard's Facepalm • ^{Made It So} _Engage! • 14:45, 25 February 2025 (UTC)

  Consensus at RfA is weighted by bureaucrats, not admins. You are possibly the first person I have ever seen make the argument that one week is an inadequate length of time. We already have a great deal of difficulty finding candidates who are willing to subject themselves to a full week of the RfA gauntlet. LEPRICAVARK (talk) 00:20, 26 February 2025 (UTC)

  You may have misunderstood what I said... the consensus takes more of its weight from the admins than it does from the general public. Another user commented elsewhere in the discussion that this is not the case - yet it has been firsthand observed numerous times over the last couple of decades.
  

  There are also numerous comments in this discussion indicating that the vetting period is too short. Part of the reason candidates don't subject themselves is because the period is too short, with too much to tend to in too short of a time constraint. Quality candidates would have to take a week off from work to be able to properly run the gauntlet in the period permitted. Lengthen that out and it takes the pressure of time out of the equation... do this for both RfA and Election. This would serve dual purpose - giving more people more time to get to know the candidate(s) as well as relieve the time constraints for the candidate. --Picard's Facepalm • ^{Made It So} _Engage! • 15:39, 26 February 2025 (UTC)

  the consensus takes more of its weight from the admins than it does from the general public do you have any evidence for that? My experience is that in contested RfAs, admins tend to support a lot more than non-admins. The most demanding voters are usually the highly qualified non-admins; they are the ones who have driven the explosion in edit count and experience standards at RfA. —Kusma (talk) 15:56, 26 February 2025 (UTC)

  As I said in a parallel thread below - that issue is not in scope for this discussion, and would very much derail this one. That being said - it is an issue which is completely remediated by Elections, however - so it is imperative that if Elections are brought forth and made permanent that they are done so correctly and completely. Proper vetting time is very much a part of that.--Picard's Facepalm • ^{Made It So} _Engage! • 16:11, 26 February 2025 (UTC)

  Part of the reason candidates don't subject themselves is because the period is too short. I find that exceedingly difficult, nay impossible, to believe. To be fully forthright, after reading your many comments through this page, I am leaning toward the conclusion that you have substituted the repetition of fine-sounding words for an actual, substantive understanding of our processes for promoting editors to admin status. LEPRICAVARK (talk) 23:08, 26 February 2025 (UTC)

  Well, we are all free to have our own beliefs, even if it is not in alignment with the facts. That being said - I am far from the only commenter on this page who has said in no uncertain terms that the vetting period is too short. --Picard's Facepalm • ^{Made It So} _Engage! • 23:12, 26 February 2025 (UTC)

  Specifically with regard to admin elections, yes. That is a reasonable concern, albeit one that I find insufficiently persuasive. LEPRICAVARK (talk) 23:17, 26 February 2025 (UTC)

  Well, we are all free to have our own beliefs, even if it is not in alignment with the facts. have you listened to anybody who has stood for RFA in the past few years, or who has considered standing but chosen not to? Before, during and after the admin elections trial there was extensive feedback sought from and provided by a large number of exactly these people and I don't recall a single one saying that the RFA period was too short. It strikes me that the belief here that is not in alignment with facts is yours. Thryduulf (talk) 23:49, 26 February 2025 (UTC)

  @Picard's Facepalm, you have added over three times the amount of text to this page as anyone else. Valereee (talk) 21:09, 27 February 2025 (UTC)

  I think you are conflating two ideologies in how they are applied, here. The point of an election is to get votes from "the people". By default, design and intent - it is desired to the get the highest amount of participation from said people as possible. That simply cannot be done in such a short timeframe, and without a sufficient run-up of people getting to know the would-be candidates. It is a half-assed implementation of how an actual election is supposed to work. Expand the window... hell - even include a "campaigning" period for lack of better words... or an opportunity to put forth the platform upon which they are running. Whatever gives the thousands of regular editors ample time to truly review the candidates, and participate.

  This is notably different than the current RfA process, which takes very little weight on the input from the people, and ultimately is decided upon by administrative consensus. It is far closer to an appointment than it is an election. I can appreciate the differences in both approaches - as well as the deficiencies in them both. But at the end of the day - if the election method is not implemented properly - it is only going to do more harm than good, and also result in a LOT of wasted time and votes (look at the abstains in the trial). In that case - it is better to stick with the existing process, and work towards improving it. Having 2 deficient systems in place makes no sense vs. implementing a single, notably improved one. --Picard's Facepalm • ^{Made It So} _Engage! • 08:42, 22 February 2025 (UTC)

  This is notably different than the current RfA process, which takes very little weight on the input from the people, and ultimately is decided upon by administrative consensus. That's totally incorrect. Frankly, I think you are missing the point of both RfA and admin elections. Maybe it's the word 'election' that is causing confusion. Our candidates are not meant to be politicians who compete against one another for votes, so there's no benefit in having them campaign on a platform. As for sticking with the current process and improving it, we aren't discarding RfA. It's still an option for anyone who wants to use it. Throughout the years, the community has made many attempts to improve RfA, and those attempts have been largely fruitless. We are well past the point where we should be trying something different, as evidenced by the widespread support for continuing elections above. LEPRICAVARK (talk) 15:42, 22 February 2025 (UTC)

  No, I understand fully that they are not competing against each other, and I never stated anything above along those lines. But they are competing against themselves in a sense - by presenting themselves & offering themselves up for review, scrutiny and a yes/no decision. That is something that the voting users should have an opportunity to dig into, if this is to be implemented properly, and actually takes the opinion of the voting public into consideration. It would be in all their best interest to have as much opportunity to do so in order to make sure they are making as informed of a decision on a "candidate" as possible.

  While you may say that my perspective of the RfA process is incorrect - I have observed exactly what I described, firsthand, multiple times. But that is not a dispute we need to engage in here, as it is out of scope for the question at hand.

  Trying something different just for the sake of doing so, without proper design and implementation is going to be just as fruitless, if not moreso than the failed efforts to refine the RfA process. The act of desperation in all the supporters who are just itching for change is not taking into account the full and long-term effects, nor the inadequacies up front. Supporting something just because it is different - especially with that in mind - is misguided at best. But out of that desperation - a message should be absolutely been heard and understood extremely loudly and clearly: The status quo isn't working, and we need something better.

  No - not just different for the sake of being different... but absolutely better. Proper architecting of that solution is what is needed at htis point, not just throwing up a haphazard and incomplete implementation. --Picard's Facepalm • ^{Made It So} _Engage! • 04:48, 23 February 2025 (UTC)

  I don't support this merely because it is different. When admin elections were first proposed, I was among the minority who opposed them. However, after seeing elections in practice, I believe we should continue having them. Nor do I agree that all of the above supporters can be dismissed as acting out of mere desperation. We already did an experiment, and it wasn't a failure. So let's keep doing it. That line of reasoning hardly smacks of desperation. The suggestion that this implementation is haphazard and incomplete ignores all prior discussions and the many hours that have been spent fine-tuning the election process. We have had plenty of time for proper architecting of a solution to RfA's problems. It's time to move past this community's perpetual fear of change and take a calculated risk. LEPRICAVARK (talk) 14:54, 23 February 2025 (UTC)

  Not at all opposed to change - when it makes sense and works. This election process is certainly heading that direction, but is far from complete & where it needs to be per the earlier statements I made above. While it wasn't a failure - looking through the comments not voting Option C, and the discussions below - it is quite clear that it also wasn't a success. It is heading there - yes - but needs quite a bit more refinement. As tested - it was an incomplete solution, and one with several areas of legitimate concern. --Picard's Facepalm • ^{Made It So} _Engage! • 16:43, 24 February 2025 (UTC)

  I believe very strongly that we are in a "don't let the perfect become the enemy of the good" situation. So often, Wikipedians stifle the possibility of positive change because a proposal isn't fully perfected in every respect. I'm glad to see that we aren't doing that this time. LEPRICAVARK (talk) 17:24, 24 February 2025 (UTC)

  I never said perfection. Nothing ever is. But as I said - still far from where it needs to be. --Picard's Facepalm • ^{Made It So} _Engage! • 17:26, 24 February 2025 (UTC)

  Time will tell. I'm comfortable with what we have now. LEPRICAVARK (talk) 17:41, 24 February 2025 (UTC)

  Re: "While you may say that my perspective of the RfA process is incorrect - I have observed exactly what I described, firsthand, multiple times. - could you expand on this? It doesn't look like you've ever commented on an RFA. Your statement that you are "actually shocked and quite disappointed that a 600 editor participation rate is considered acceptable" is also surprising, seeing as no RFA has ever made it close to 600 participants. BugGhost 🦗👻 16:28, 24 February 2025 (UTC)

  No, I will not expand on that here, because as I said in the rest of that line - the discussion of that issue is out of scope for the one being discussed here. I've commented in the past with a previous account - but because of this issue have not bothered in quite some time. You are right - this increase in participation is not at all a bad thing - but it also could, should and absolutely needs to have quite a bit more participation than 600. --Picard's Facepalm • ^{Made It So} _Engage! • 17:25, 24 February 2025 (UTC)

  600 participants is plenty enough. While that is around only 1/3 of ACE this year, keep in mind that ARBCOM is actually a big deal compared to adminship. Not to say adminship isn't important, because it is, but not ARBCOM levels of important. fanfanboy (block_talk) 15:49, 25 February 2025 (UTC)

  We are going to have to respectfully agree to disagree on those points, then. --Picard's Facepalm • ^{Made It So} _Engage! • 17:19, 25 February 2025 (UTC)

• It seems clear that consensus to continue will be reached in the discussion above, but I hope there will still be another conversation about the number of simultaneous candidates if things continue as they did last time. I can't imagine we get better results out of the process by running dozens at a time than we would splitting the group into more manageable portions. Reviewing all of the candidates took a prohibitive length of time in the first election. Dekimasuよ! 02:06, 22 February 2025 (UTC)

  FYI, there was some discussion at Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/2024 review/Phase II/Administrator elections#Q2: Maximum # of candidates in each election (numerical limit). Not saying this to wave away your concern, just dropping a link to a relevant conversation. –Novem Linguae (talk) 06:36, 22 February 2025 (UTC)

  I propose we use the arbcom strategy of tweaking the rules roughly every year. If the enthusiasm remains this high, increasing the frequency or putting limits on the number of candidates makes sense. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 07:49, 22 February 2025 (UTC)

  I fully agree – we should continue discussing and revising the rules as needed. If the first election has >20 candidates, I would not be surprised if a candidate cap were instituted by a SNOW-closed RfC during the sign-up phase. Toadspike [Talk] 11:49, 22 February 2025 (UTC)

  Such a discussion should include both the number of candidates and the number of elections per year. If there are elections every month, I don't mind having a limit of 10 candidates per election, but if we have only one per year, it will be difficult to promote the 50 admins per year we need to break even with a sub-30 limit on number of candidates. —Kusma (talk) 09:36, 27 February 2025 (UTC)

• I want to take a moment to address the valid concerns put forward by Hammersoft. This change is moving awfully fast in Wikipedia terms; and yes, it is difficult to tell if the administrators selected in the last election will be huge successes. What I do note is that the same can be said of any RFA. We really don't know if an admin is going to be good at the job for many months (and sometimes even years) afterward. But none of the elected admins have broken Wikipedia, none of them have been so terrible as to show up as a topic on AN or the subject of an Arbcom or request for desysop. The reality is that they're no better or worse than most new administrators. The systems that would remove an admin who was selected by RFA and an admin that was selected by RFA (Election) are identical. As a community, we have exactly the same ability to remove someone from adminship regardless of how they become admins. This is a key point. I know many people have, in fact, been watching the elected administrators. My own observation is that they are a varied lot and each is having their own learning curve, but that they're doing pretty well as a group, and nobody is raising any particular red flags. Bottom line, I'm not seeing any difference between new elected admins and new RFA'd admins. Maybe others have a different view. Risker (talk) 08:34, 22 February 2025 (UTC)

  Very true for the recently elected admins. I hope anyone who didn’t make the cut but was otherwise suitable (subjective) is not discouraged from running again. Whether this is a risk, is something we need to discuss as a community. ~ 🦝 Shushugah (he/him • talk) 13:07, 22 February 2025 (UTC)

  (ec) Yes the most likely time for a desysop is after about three years and it is way too soon for that. But IMHO most of the admins who cause problems years after their RFAs are people who have drifted away from community norms and it is hard to say what could have been spotted at their RFA that would have disqualified them. Whilst there have been some admins who have been desysopped within months of their RFA. Here we are three months after an election and not only do people seem happy with the 11 who passed, I'm not seeing anyone say what a close shave we had in any of the candidates who came close to passing. In the past we have had some candidates pass and immediately lose the tools, including for things that might have been spotted at RFA. ϢereSpielChequers 18:14, 22 February 2025 (UTC)

• Perhaps we should have an open criticism month for all admins. Editors can dig up dirt for a limited period of time, and admins can get feedback. We don't really want admins that cannot handle criticism. It is one thing not to want it, but if it comes, our existing corps and candidates should be able to handle it. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 11:20, 22 February 2025 (UTC)

  This sounds like requiring all admins to stand for reconfirmation RfAs. Several have said that if such a requirement were instituted, they would rather resign than stand. This would drastically reduce the number of admins while having no benefit to the quality of their work. Toadspike [Talk] 11:46, 22 February 2025 (UTC)

  Not sure if you are suggesting that criticism should be limited to a specific month? Currently, feedback can be given to administrators at any time. There is also the administrator recall process, specifically when editors have serious concerns that cause them to question their trust in an administrator. isaacl (talk) 18:06, 22 February 2025 (UTC)

• I might have missed it somewhere, but if this RFC is approved, what is the expection for when the next round of elections would be? I'm assuming not 5 months from the end of the trial. (I'm partly thinking in terms of observing how the newly elected admins get on.) -Kj cheetham (talk) 11:50, 22 February 2025 (UTC)

  The community seems to want a 5 month gap, so probably 5 months from the end of the first election (November 2024 + 5 months = April 2025). And that would be at the earliest, since there may be some other delays, such as SecurePoll software upgrades, coordinator schedules, etc. –Novem Linguae (talk) 11:55, 22 February 2025 (UTC)

• @0xDeadbeef: -- re: Regret. I don't think it's quite accurate to state that it has *nothing* to do with flaws in the process. The elections process compresses analysis of a greater number of candidates into a short period of time than RFA does. That's a problem for some people, and systemically one that makes it harder to scrutinize candidates sufficiently to *prevent* regret because there's so many more of them to deal with at once. But my biggest issue is that we just simply don't know yet how the cohort of test-elected admins will turn out. Are they proportionally better, worse, equal to the average RFA-passer? Are we ready to say that this process *should* be scaled up, out of trials, and into operation? Maybe some people are comfortable making that call today; I'm not, and would prefer to let that experiment run for 6-12 months before we call it a success.⇒SWATJester ^{Shoot Blues, Tell VileRat!} 17:14, 22 February 2025 (UTC)

  There's definitely something, and the different format *might* have caused more uninformed votes. But that's hard to measure. We have to consider the increased participation too, so did the ratio of uninformed votes to all votes really change?

  Anyways, the goal of this is to appoint admins that have community trust. According to the stats for people who got elected, these elected admins have trust from us. To make this about an argument about which process elects "better admins" is not a really good one. Even if they are proportionally worse than the average RfA-passer, this process would still be net positive, as long as that "worse" doesn't mean many times worse (and I can see people arguing that the traditional RfA process could result in "better" admins because it indicates a willingness to get public commentary including criticism, and sometimes bad ones, but in no way should that be a requirement to becoming an admin) 0xDeadbeef→∞ (talk to me) 03:41, 23 February 2025 (UTC)

• @Soni: To go into more detail since you pressed me on my !vote on the topic of a nomination cap - first of all, I didn't even know that RFC actually ran. And I say this as someone who commented on that question in the October 2024/RFC workshop and was puzzled as to why the RFC apparently never was held until finding out it'd already finished months later. Sure, I was unlucky, but the point is that not absolutely every Wikipedia editor participated on that RFC. But more pressingly... fine, let's say that larger turnout wouldn't have changed anything. But some issues aren't really "votable" and talking about a "consensus" behind them is illusory. Let's say there's a multilingual group of 100 people trying to hold some vote, with say 70 English speakers and 30 Spanish speakers. 10 people show up for a preliminary poll on whether the election should be run in just English or in both languages, and let's say it's actually representative (not guaranteed!) and the vote is 7-3 that just English is fine. And yet... it's not fine to just accept this. It's blatantly unfair. Even though the smaller group is outvoted, this is a matter of whether they can even participate in the election properly. It does not matter at all that a large 70% majority sees this problem as no big deal because it's not a problem for them. Let's make this analogy a little more clear: apparently there are many !voters who either don't care that there isn't much time to look over candidates, or have no problem with spending the time to closely investigate a giant wave of candidates. Good for them! Really. That's their prerogative. But a well-run election lets everyone interested participate effectively, and right now that's either a huge drain on time OR random popularity-contest !votes. You can't just say it's not a problem for people for whom it is a problem. A fair process works for all !voters and will produce better results. SnowFire (talk) 17:14, 22 February 2025 (UTC)
• I came to this discussion as a strong C — the election went well and I think it's a process that will serve the community well, especially as it continues to be refined and adapted over time. I appreciate the A !votes here, though, and the thoughtful discussion. My sense is that perhaps this discussion is just taking place too soon. No, we can't wait years sitting on our hands to decide whether to continue down this path, but I wonder if this conversation might still be a few months premature. Retswerb (talk) 05:36, 23 February 2025 (UTC)

  If we want to do something other than sit on our hands we have no choice but to pick one of these three options. If you think we have enough information to know whether the elections are a good thing or not, then choose options A or C. If you think we don't have enough information, then choose option B. If you think we have enough information to make a decision then there is no benefit to waiting to make the decision. If you think we don't have enough information then there is no benefit to waiting because waiting won't get us any more information. Thryduulf (talk) 06:09, 23 February 2025 (UTC)

  I disagree that those are the only options. As expressed / alluded to by @Hammersoft, @Swatjester, et al: now that this has been done once, waiting will provide additional information. Whether that information is valuable or worth waiting for is a matter of opinion.

  I'm still leaning towards forging ahead, but I appreciate those urging caution and observation. Retswerb (talk) 07:10, 23 February 2025 (UTC)

• This is just me. But my problem is that before I run a test in industry, I define what the success/fail criteria are. I just built a robot for a client as an alpha, and before I started on this I explained to them what it should be able to do, what I do not expect it to do, and how those expectations do not match the final product and why. Similarly, before running a new RFA model I'd be asking what it is expected to do, what I do not expect it to do, and under what circumstances I would regard it as a success or failure. While I do not feel that success/fail criteria was ever defined with this, the success criteria I would have gone by are:

1. Is it a more comfortable, less confronting, model than RFA is at the moment?
2. Do we get more editors who are qualified to run for RFA nominating than we typically do?
3. Is there sufficient community engagement?
4. Do editors who would normally pass get through?
5. Do editors who would not normally pass fail?
6. Is the vetting sufficient?

My feeling is that it is more comfortable, it did encourage more editors, and there was a lot of community engagement. I hear that some people who would normally pass failed, which does constitue a problem. However, there is still the key issue: is the vetting sufficient? Time will reveal that. Which is why I am not in support of C - I want to see that our standards of selecting admins have been upheld while at the same time the process has become easier. I do not think that lowering our standards was the goal of this, but whether or not we managed sufficient vetting is not something that can be determined in just a few months. (Which is not to say that I have any problems with the new admins - just that it is a process that takes time to consider). Maybe I should have !voted for B, but whether we conduct more tests or wait for definite results from the first one seem to be very different from "It worked! Full steam ahead!" which seems to be C, based on a very marginal set of criteria for "It worked!"

With all that said, I trust the community. Ultimately if we go with C I support the community decision. - Bilby (talk) 10:48, 23 February 2025 (UTC)

• I think the constructive criticism issue is over-rated. When someone submits a draft, they receive criticism such as "needs more independent references". That's constructive, it's something they can address for that draft. But criticism of a potential admin is more likely to be something like "you have a tendency to be abusive to other editors". That's an on-going issue (making it less likely that it'll be permanently addressed); and it's personal (the fault is with the candidate, not the draft), making it harder to accept. Maproom (talk) 11:55, 23 February 2025 (UTC)

  Maybe another point to consider is that the quality of the feedback varies. For mine (because I only recall mine well, sorry), a rough skim gave me around only two (one from Espresso Addict, another from Dekimasu) were ones that had actionable feedback. All the others were rehashing the same idea of low edit count/low tenure/low activity, etc. Though my RfA can probably be considered as a rare RfA, so it probably cannot be generalized. But most !votes on mine were the binary trust/not enough trust yet, which might be more fitting to use an elections format. 0xDeadbeef→∞ (talk to me) 13:14, 23 February 2025 (UTC)

I noticed a lot of abstentions (evidenced by the 2 examples given by Usernamekiran in passing, and as explicitly mentioned by EF5). I recently voted in the Bureaucrat Steward elections, in which one is not required to vote for every candidate, i.e. the set of possible votes is: {YES, NO, Neutral}. I like this, as it prevents uninformed "forced" votes. Is there a reason why the new Administrator Election voting choices are {YES, NO, abstain}? The Steward elections are not secret ballot, unlike non-RfA Admin voting, so perhaps that is why? I would like to get confirmation though. Thanks.--FeralOink (talk) 13:44, 23 February 2025 (UTC)

Can you clarify that? Are ‘no response’ and ‘abstain’ presented differently on the voting screen? Are they treated differently? Brianjd (talk) 14:11, 23 February 2025 (UTC)

Pretty sure 'abstain' and 'no response' means the same thing, "I cast no vote with regard to this candidate". The system defaults to that for each candidate, unless you flip it either way. -- DoubleGrazing (talk) 14:16, 23 February 2025 (UTC)

Ooops, I made two mistakes. First, I meant to refer to the Steward elections not Bureaucrats! Next, I erred in the third response, as it is "Neutral" not "no response". Given that, I understand DoubleGrazing's point about Neutral being no different than Abstain. Thank you for explaining!--FeralOink (talk) 14:36, 23 February 2025 (UTC)

In the steward elections, there is a separate voting page for each candidate, so you can abstain by not voting. (Based on the 2024 results, the support percentage ignores neutral votes, so voting neutral has the same effect.) For convenience, the administrator election anonymous vote bundles together all candidates into one ballot. Thus an abstain option is provided so you can opt out of voting for any given candidate. isaacl (talk) 16:54, 23 February 2025 (UTC)

If the question is about the difference between "abstain" and "neutral" labels, there have been multiple discussions about this in the context of arbitration committee elections with some people strongly preferring one over the other and many people (including me) failing to see any difference between the two in practice. See for example WP:ACERFC2024#Proposal 1: Rename neutral option to abstain. The wording on the admin elections page was (iirc) just copied from the arbcom election wording due to there being no good reason not to do so. Thryduulf (talk) 18:25, 23 February 2025 (UTC)

I proposed using "abstain", for the same reason I made the proposal to restore the abstain label in the arbitration committee election. Thus technically it was the reasoning that was copied. isaacl (talk) 19:31, 23 February 2025 (UTC)

I know of only the one discussion you cited, which seems to have missed the key point. ‘Neutral’ can mean ‘there are good arguments for and against, with no clear way to balance them’. That makes it more specific than ‘abstain’ in a meaningful way. From my limited experience (especially on this project), it seems that Commons understands this better than this project, despite Commons being multilingual. Brianjd (talk) 04:34, 24 February 2025 (UTC)

• Personally, I feel that a frequency of 5 months is very awkward. It should either be 4 or 6 so that it aligns perfectly with a calendar year with elections every x, y (and z) months. With a frequency of 5 months, you get an election in May, then Oct, then March, then Aug, and so on, until it looks back to May after 5 years. Thanks! —CX Zoom[he/him] ^{(let's talk • {C•X})} 13:25, 13 March 2025 (UTC)

  It not matching the calendar is the point - it prevents disadvantaging people who are always busy at the same time of year. Thryduulf (talk) 14:05, 13 March 2025 (UTC)

  While that is true, it has worked out well for WP:ACE. Plus, if someone misses the elections in, say, October, they won't find the same set of candidates in the election scheduled in March. —CX Zoom[he/him] ^{(let's talk • {C•X})} 15:37, 13 March 2025 (UTC)

  Any voter who misses any election misses the opportunity to vote in that election; that has nothing to do with the schedule on which elections are held. The question is about whether some people (potential voters or potential candidates) would be systematically disadvantaged by a schedule that always places the elections at times that are inconvenient for them. (Many countries hold their elections on public holidays or outside of the workweek for precisely this reason.) 100.36.106.199 (talk) 21:00, 16 March 2025 (UTC)

• Is there a TLDR on the changes compared to the previous process? I haven't been monitoring the changes to the RFA process? — BillHPike (talk, contribs) 20:07, 22 March 2025 (UTC)

  Yes, there is - here's the link to it. —Ganesha811 (talk) 20:15, 22 March 2025 (UTC)

• Reflecting the sentiment with certain editors above, I think the vetting period was too short. I could have done with a few more days. I think the balance needs to be right by having a useful amount of time to vet, as against fading out due to boredom. Although once you !vote your done really. scope_creep^Talk 07:32, 25 March 2025 (UTC)

I find it darkly humorous that the purported aims of this process haven't been achieved. At all. This becomes quite apparent looking at WP:RBM and the history of WP:LA. Why is it we're doing this? --Hammersoft (talk) 19:19, 28 March 2025 (UTC)

Without this process those numbers would probably have been even lower. fanfanboy (block_talk) 19:41, 28 March 2025 (UTC)

We can speculate all we'd like, but the statistics don't support that conclusion. --Hammersoft (talk) 20:08, 28 March 2025 (UTC)

How can you make that claim when you yourself said that one trail run wasn't enough data to make any conclusions? Also, I'm pretty sure most of those 11 admins wouldn't have ran in an RfA within the time frame of the elections or the next 1-2 years after, maybe even never. fanfanboy (block_talk) 03:19, 29 March 2025 (UTC)

If I'm understanding your claim correctly, it is close to nonsensical. The process has not been fully established yet. It's only been done once. It's bizarre to say that Administrator Elections haven't been effective when they haven't really started yet! Not only that, but last year, when we had our trial, we had the greatest number of new administrators in more than a decade. And that was with just one election; if established, we'll have at least two per year moving forward. Or did I misread what you are trying to say? —Ganesha811 (talk) 21:19, 28 March 2025 (UTC)

+1. We got a ton of candidates, which is great. It appears to have been because the election process is seen as less awful. Wasn't that the purported aim? Valereee (talk) 23:57, 28 March 2025 (UTC)

I'm not sure if I follow this. The "purported aims" of AELECT is to increase the number of successful adminship requests. The stats on WP:RBM indicate that the trial effectively doubled the yearly number of successful adminship attempts compared to the previous year. What part is darkly humorous? BugGhost 🦗👻 23:55, 28 March 2025 (UTC)

Sure, there was a momentary spike. If you look at the overall trend, no change. It also did nothing to arrest the ever dropping number of active admins. The target of AELECT was to mitigate the perceived problems in the RfA process and thus increase the number of admins. The results so far do not indicate any change in the overall trend. --Hammersoft (talk) 00:51, 29 March 2025 (UTC)

There were 24 new admins in 2024, 11 of whom were from the election, as opposed to 12 total in 2023, all via RfA. I'm sorry, I'm sincerely trying, but I'm having a hard time following your thinking, Hammersoft. How is this not fulfilling the purported aim? I'm not expecting to get that many successful election candidates in future elections due to pent up demand, but clearly this is at minimum not a negative. Valereee (talk) 01:14, 29 March 2025 (UTC)

A momentary spike is meaningless. There is _zero_ indication we have somehow managed to reverse the trend of the ever declining admin base. I've noted the WP:LA history for that. There is little indication we've done anything to change the overall number of new administrators coming into adminship, if we don't take a minimalist view and only look at a few months or a year. For number of passing RfAs, if you look at the overall trend over time, the blip of 11 new RfAs from election is not statistically significant. It's barely a variance. Another way to look at it, if we must take a 12 month window, is the last 12 months rolling from April of last year through March of this year; 21 successful RfAs. Look at the last 10 complete years at WP:RBM and you'll see that number isn't unusual. I.e., no change of note. We also have absolutely no clue about how having admin elections will affect the regular RfA process, and whether there will be a decline in regular RfAs such that the overall net increase will be zero. We don't know. --Hammersoft (talk) 02:34, 29 March 2025 (UTC)

It really feels like you're trolling because I have a hard time believing you don't understand that it is impossible to determine trends from a single event, nor that only one admin election has been held so far and that was a trial. You're correct only in that we have no hard data on success or failure yet, but the way you've expressed yourself is meaningless. —Ganesha811 (talk) 04:24, 29 March 2025 (UTC)

Are you arguing on the hypothesis of having admin elections will have an uplift on the numbers of regular RfAs? I doubt that's on a lot of people's minds here.

The hypothesis for the admin elections trial was will admin elections bring in more admins? Which I would say so no matter which way one cuts it. As a single activity, it brought in 10+ admins. Even if we are to apportion the 10+ admins to across five months, the regularity which has been determined, it is an uplift of 2 admins per month. If we look at WP:RBM, in recent years, we have had months with 0 new admins. I think the next question should be, can admin elections elect in new admins without cannibalising on RfA passes. This would be a tricky one and only time will tell. – robertsky (talk) 09:43, 29 March 2025 (UTC)

Hammersoft, could you tell us what statistical outcome of the trial would you have been statisfied with? I think 11 new admins is enough for many, and expecting a change in "trend" from a single event is nonsensical. BugGhost 🦗👻 10:16, 29 March 2025 (UTC)

• Is anyone going to close this? Been open for a while now. fanfanboy (block_talk) 16:27, 7 April 2025 (UTC)

  Yes. It will happen on the closer's timeframe. Not ours. It's a bad idea to rush a close when somebody ELSE has to do it. BusterD (talk) 16:56, 7 April 2025 (UTC)

  @Fanfanboy, this is going to be a major effort for someone. I suppose someone could volunteer to put a spreadsheet together with editor/policy-related argument (or not)/!vote, it might be helpful? Although a closer would still have to check that work. Otherwise we're waiting for an experienced closer to come along who is willing to do that work and the analysis. Valereee (talk) 21:33, 7 April 2025 (UTC)