Wikipedia talk:Administrator elections

Hashing out Details - Voter guides

In WP:ADE#Period 1: discussion and questions, would it be a good idea to add this?

Personal voter guides are strongly discouraged, and will not be linked to from the RfA page.

My thinking here is that editors are accustomed to using Secure Poll for ArbCom elections, where voter guides are used, and so someone might get the idea of creating a guide for the admin elections too. But this would be contrary to the intention of keeping "support/oppose" off of the public page. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:51, 15 May 2024 (UTC)

Noting: [1]. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:27, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

I removed it for now for the reasons in my edit summary ("not mentioned in Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/2021 review/Proposals/Admin elections. policing people's userspaces seems unenforceable"). If this gets more supporters though, feel free to add it back. I am not strongly opposed but I feel it can benefit from more discussion. On the one hand, it could reduce toxicity. On the other hand, it might be weird to have an election without a voter guide. –Novem Linguae (talk) 05:27, 16 September 2024 (UTC)

I do not have strong opinions either way.

The admin elections does specifically say "No (public) discussion" after 2 day period, so some form of time control over the guides will still be needed, but mostly as a "Do not bypass discussion period" more than anything. Perhaps only allow guides listed while the period is open?

I do find @Tryptofish's "generally discourage guides" the simplest solution though, but we don't have consensus for it. If we don't have that, mentions of guide should be policed at least. Soni (talk) 06:01, 16 September 2024 (UTC)

Disclosure: I was the one that added it to the page. Election guides are useful for elections where there is a need to compare candidates (i.e. elections appointing users to a number of seats on a committee), which this is not. Admin elections are basically a bunch of concurrent RfAs with voting on SecurePoll, and so I don't see a real benefit in having the voter guides -- we don't have them for regular RfAs, and I don't think that should change here.

Having voter guides would let people comment on candidates outside of the election pages with the intent of influencing voters. Given how the discussions at RFA2024 lent towards increasing moderation at RfA, this seems like a step in the wrong direction. I don't think we can ban them, but we can certainly discourage them (or ban linking to them). Giraffer (talk) 09:39, 16 September 2024 (UTC)

First, I did this: [2], because that language was really bad. Second, the reason I brought up voter guides in the first place (a long time ago), was because this is an entirely different kind of process than ArbCom elections. ACE-style voter guides would be seriously antithetical to the spirit behind this trial RfA process. As for the argument that we shouldn't police userspace, I'm usually someone who agrees that we shouldn't do that, but this seems to me to be something different, particularly if we are discouraging, rather than prohibiting it. Anyway, I now suggest: "Personal voter guides are discouraged, and will not be linked to from the RfA page." --Tryptofish (talk) 17:58, 16 September 2024 (UTC)

With the high quantity of candidates signing up, do we want to reconsider our official discouragement of voter guides? These may become essential for doing proper research on candidates. It may be unreasonable to expect voters to read every discussion page and/or check the background of every candidate. –Novem Linguae (talk) 16:39, 8 October 2024 (UTC)

I have considered making one myself and support allowing voter guides in general. It looks like there will be too many candidates for us to reasonably expect every voter to do a deep dive on each. Toadspike [Talk] 23:05, 9 October 2024 (UTC)

@Giraffer@Tryptofish@Soni Pinging because this has become a much more important question since you last discussed it a month ago. The number of candidates is extraordinary, which pleases me greatly, but I (as a voter) would love to have a voter guide instead of having to dig through 13 nom/question pages, user pages, xtools summaries, contribs, and anything else myself. Expecting due diligence from voters without a guide will add up to hundreds of hours of volunteer time wasted, with each voter duplicating the same research efforts. Toadspike [Talk] 19:29, 10 October 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for the ping. I didn't anticipate having this many candidates, which does change things. My primary concern remains keeping the voter guides consistent with the rules on supporting/opposing candidates publicly, but I think educating voters is the more important thing here, and so I would support allowing them but banning explicit declarations of support or opposition. Giraffer (talk) 19:51, 10 October 2024 (UTC)

I think at a minimum we should remove our sentence discouraging voter guides, replacing it with no statement about them. I think another option would be to maintain a list of them on an AELECT subpage somewhere so people can find them, and maybe replacing that "discouraged" sentence with a sentence such as "A list of unofficial voter guides can be found here." I would support allowing them but banning explicit declarations of support or opposition. I don't recommend trying to police what is allowed in the voter guides themselves. Is it really the role of AELECT to tell people what to write or not write in their userspaces? –Novem Linguae (talk) 20:33, 10 October 2024 (UTC)

For those that we link. It just seems odd to me we would ban support/oppose comments on the discussion pages but allow them in linked user guides. It's a minor point, though. Giraffer (talk) 21:52, 10 October 2024 (UTC)

I'm quite happy this is the problem we are facing now. Much better than not having any candidates at all.

I think NL's suggestion is a clean way forward. Link to an (unofficial) list of guides, remove the discouragement line. Let the community have the tools they need, without us explicitly getting in that way. Soni (talk) 03:16, 11 October 2024 (UTC)

If we want to change our minds and allow discussion for (looks at date) two weeks instead of the three days that passed in the RFC, there's a place for that. On the pages labelled "discussion". —Cryptic 03:26, 11 October 2024 (UTC)

I do not want to have a 2 weeks discussion process. While 3 days may be too short, there is value in reducing the amount of time candidates would go through fretting and worrying about the questions. A couple months back when we were ironing things or confirming consensus, I'd have supported 1 week and opposed 2 weeks. Now I am against both, as they significantly change the candidate experience, too close to the deadline. Comparatively, voter guides can cause a lot less stress for candidates, therefore I consider them fair game for WP:CCC.

I understand that you prefer something significantly longer. But your goals are not necessarily the idea behind the process at large. It may be worth considering amendments in a future run (or another process altogether) that aligns with how you expect RFA to improve. Soni (talk) 04:32, 11 October 2024 (UTC)

You misunderstand me. I'm not advocating a longer discussion period (at least, not in the comment you're replying to), and certainly not two weeks of it. I'm against changing the schedule that people have already signed up for. Voter guides are discussion. If we permit them then we are, in effect, starting the discussion period right now extending it until whenever it is we stop permitting them. Voting period starts in two weeks; that's where I got that number from. —Cryptic 04:58, 11 October 2024 (UTC)

Some background: The one week intermission to set up SecurePoll was my idea. Some of my emails to WMF T&S were taking awhile to get responses, so I wanted to make sure there was plenty of time to set it up in case there were delays. If SecurePoll is able to be set up quickly this election, we could definitely shorten or eliminate the intermission in the future (assuming the community wants to renew admin elections, we'll see how it goes). The length of the discussion phase and probably lots of other things can also be discussed. –Novem Linguae (talk) 05:31, 11 October 2024 (UTC)

Ah, I understand now. I have no strong opinions on when voter guides should begin/end. My natural instincts say letting them be is perfectly fine (Aka, voter guides can exist) but I also understand if we choose to restrict (listed) voter guides to specific timeframes. Soni (talk) 05:52, 11 October 2024 (UTC)

• I really don't see how voters are meant to assess this many candidates properly. For candidates I don't know, I normally, as a minimum, look through the last 500 mainspace non-minor edits, sample at least five page creations, and look through talk-page archives for the past 18 or so months, as well as reading all the answers to questions. I'm only going to have time to do that properly for a fraction of the candidates. It would really help if trusted editors who have experience in nominating candidates were to provide their insight. Espresso Addict (talk) 21:14, 10 October 2024 (UTC)
• I continue to think the draconic limit on discussion time plus actively encouraging everybody to run at once is the worst idea ever, but if we must do that - and I suppose at this point we must - then the only reasonable way to making voting guides consistent with that is to forbid their presence on-wiki until the discussion period begins. At which point the people who want to make them should just, y'know, discuss the candidates on the candidate discussion pages. Like everybody else. —Cryptic 00:14, 11 October 2024 (UTC)
• Reading the original proposal I do not think there's grounds for discouraging voter guides or blocking linking to them. The relevant parts of the proposal are During [discussion phase], no bolded !votes should be cast, it should be a clear discussion. - I read this as just saying "this isn't the period where voting happens" - it's setting the expectation that it that discussion part of the page is not the vote itself. It's effectively just saying "don't bother writing Support or Oppose on the discussion page because it won't get tallied". The other relevant part is [while the securepoll is running,] discussion should be closed, and while candidates may be asked direct questions on their user talk pages, the intent is that they should not be required to watch their discussion page, nor the election for the full period - this again is just referring to the discussion page - it still explicitly allows further thought on the candidate in userspace (via questioning candidate on their talk page). In my view there isn't any notion in the proposal that would stop anyone writing their opinion/voting intentions in userspace before/during the election, nor does it stop anyone linking to a userpage like that from the main discussion page. BugGhost🦗👻 07:26, 11 October 2024 (UTC)

  To be more specific: I think Novem Linguae's above suggestion of maintain a list of them on an AELECT subpage somewhere so people can find them, and maybe replacing that "discouraged" sentence with a sentence such as "A list of unofficial voter guides can be found here." is the right thing to do here, seeing as we're likely to have at least 13(!!!) candidates being discussed simultaneously. BugGhost🦗👻 08:42, 11 October 2024 (UTC)

  (never hide links behind "here" for accessibility. The wording at ACE is: "These guides represent the thoughts of their authors. All individually written voter guides are eligible for inclusion.") —Femke 🐦 (talk) 07:55, 12 October 2024 (UTC)

  I didn't know that was an accessibily concern, thanks. The "here" link was part of a quote from another's comment, and I don't think it was intended as a proposed exact wording. BugGhost🦗👻 08:25, 12 October 2024 (UTC)

• I don't think we have to worry about having to review so many candidates because to be honest, there are a few candidates who if they went with RFA instead would've been closed as NOTNOW by now (which I think is a good thing that we have some brave ones). All we really need to do is review candidates who have at least some chance of passing. fanfanboy (block) 12:58, 11 October 2024 (UTC)
• I've just gotten back from a wiki-break, and I see there have been a lot of comments. A lot of what I'm reading isn't really about voter guides, and I don't think it belongs in this talk section. If some editors feel that there are more candidates than were expected, and/or feel that this makes the trial process more cumbersome than expected, that's a separate issue. For the specific issue of voter guides, I don't think that voter guides as a solution to being able to vet a lot of candidates is a sufficient reason to override the basic premise of the trial: that candidates should be able to run without having public statements of support or opposition. Remember folks, the rationale for the trial is that we might get more good candidates if candidates didn't have to go through being discussed critically in public. That should remain the decisive consideration here. If you don't like having to do the same things you might do for traditional RfAs for multiple candidates at the same time (which doesn't seem like such a big deal to me, but I realize others may differ), then that's a reason to oppose continuation of the the process after the trial. It's not a reason to encourage voter guides, and I continue to be opposed to linking to them from the RfA pages. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:02, 11 October 2024 (UTC)

  @Tryptofish and others – voter guides do not have to express support or opposition. Would you be opposed to a voter guide that summarizes xtools stats, userrights, and objective criteria like "answered questions on discussion page yes/no" in one big table for all candidates? Even that would be helpful. Toadspike [Talk] 07:32, 12 October 2024 (UTC)

  I think an overview of candidates akin to Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee Elections December 2023/Candidates/Guide would be uncontroversial. However I don't think it should include xtools stats directly within the guide, or something like "answered questions on discussion page", as that would make a presumption that those characteristics are important to note in an overview of the candidate, unless a community consensus agreed upon it. isaacl (talk) 21:43, 12 October 2024 (UTC)

  Right – that doesn't go quite as far as I'd like, but it's a step in the right direction that I am happy to support. Toadspike [Talk] 15:23, 14 October 2024 (UTC)

  re: the basic premise of the trial: that candidates should be able to run without having public statements of support or opposition - I think this is a bit of a stretch. The discussion phase will definitely have statements of implicit support/opposition. If, for instance, a discussion participant posts a big list of damning diffs from the candidate, its clearly an "oppose" at heart, whether it explicitly includes that word or not. And this wouldn't be a problem, because the purpose of the discussion phase is to discover and analyse reasons for support/opposition. The election process definitely aims to reduce contention but it makes no promises that candidates will avoid public scrutiny or to disallow voters summarising their due dilligence. BugGhost🦗👻 08:49, 12 October 2024 (UTC)

  I'm absolutely opposed to any sort of personal voter guide that is "officially sanctioned" by linking to it from any sort of election-related page. If someone wants to create one in their user space and let their friends know about it, there's no reason to stop them, and it would be difficult to do so. I think the idea of some sort of wink-wink guide that just has "objective" statistics would either be of little use, or would be endorsing some candidates over others without saying it out loud. I do realize, of course, that there are going to be comments in the discussion period that skirt the line of supporting or opposing. That seems to be an unavoidable flaw in the system (as it was for the two-day discussion trial that the community recently decided was not worth continuing), but the existence of one flaw is not a good reason to allow more flaws. Perhaps some editors paid no attention during the discussion that led to the consensus to conduct this trial, but it is absolutely the case that the rationale for the trial, and one of the most appealing features of it, was that it would reduce the exposure of candidates to being publicly evaluated, and it was hoped that this would make more qualified candidates feel willing to undergo the process. Anyone pretending otherwise doesn't know what they are talking about. Look, I'm someone who has long been writing a voter guide of my own, for ArbCom elections. But this isn't an ArbCom election, and there aren't a fixed number of seats to be filled. Either we conduct this trial according to what was agreed to originally, or we might as well just pack it in. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:33, 12 October 2024 (UTC)

What should the page say on voting guides?

Seeing as the wording on voter guides was removed and then later added again, lets do a quick poll to get some clarity on what the page should indicate regarding voter guides.

• Option 1 - Voter guides should be discouraged, and they should not be linked from election pages.
• Option 2 - Voter guides should be allowed and collated in a list.
• Option 3 - No wording should appear regarding voter guides.

Feel free to add other options above if needed. BugGhost🦗👻 16:42, 12 October 2024 (UTC)

• Option 2 - I think voter guides would be helpful, and the wording from the RFC proposal didn't indicate that they should be discouraged. BugGhost🦗👻 16:42, 12 October 2024 (UTC)

  To clarify - I am working on the assumption "voter guiders" would be like overviews or summaries of due dilligence from the perspective of the writer, not just several lists containing "CandidateXYZ - Support" over and over. I agree that people simply listing their voting intentions is not a net benefit to this trial or the candidates (or even voters) - I was just thinking some unofficial personal summaries of relevant info/diffs for potential voters to read over going in, in addition to (not instead of) participation in discussion pages or gaining their own perspectives on. I personally have started making a couple of notes on candidates (private, offwiki) in order to meaningfully participate during the discussion phase (which I will be IRL quite busy during) - one reason I am pro-guides is that that those notes may be useful for someone else, and so I would have preferred to put this info on-wiki. BugGhost🦗👻 21:50, 13 October 2024 (UTC)

• Voter guides have value in things like the arbcom election, because there's a fixed number of positions to be filled, and the candidates are running against each other; you want to compare them to each other, so that you pick the best ones. That's not the case here: each candidate is running on their own merits independent of the others. If they're all qualified to be admins, voting for all of them is perfectly valid. If they're all unqualified, voting against all of them is perfectly valid. And if you don't have time to assess all the candidates, then - unlike arbcom and other fixed-number-of-positions elections - voting neutral for the rest neither helps nor harms the ones you do vote on. So at best guides would be a distraction from the candidates' discussion pages, which is what people should be concentrating on.
  More importantly, we must not allow voting guides before or after the designated discussion period. There's no way to tell why candidates are choosing to run in this process short of asking them (which we're not allowed to yet), since there's so many changes from the base RFA process; but since restricting discussion to only three days was part of the proposal, it's reasonable to assume that that was at least a factor for some of the candidates, and not unreasonable that it was a major or the primary factor for some of them. The last thing we want to hear when we're trying to figure out whether to do this again is something like "Hey, I signed up for this because I didn't want to deal with everyone expounding upon my flaws for seven days at normal RFA, but you let people say I was the worst candidate running for a full two weeks, in a place where neither I nor my supporters could defend me? Dude, wtf?" —Cryptic 18:36, 12 October 2024 (UTC)
• Disallow them completely (option 1 as second choice). Voter guides are tolerable at ArbCom elections, as there are a limited number of seats that candidates are running for. That is not the case here, where each candidate must be evaluated on their own merits based on your own research of their actions, their nomination statement and their responses during the limited question period. The idea of voter guides at RFA would be laughed out of town, and the same should happen here. If there are too many candidates for people to evaluate in the time available that is a sign that the trial was not completely successful, not a sign that we should outsource determining who should be an admin to a self-selecting group of opinionated people with an agenda. Also what Cryptic said. Thryduulf (talk) 19:30, 12 October 2024 (UTC)
• Option 2 > Option 3 > Option 1 > Disallow. I have not strong enough opinions on this. This was an unfortunate case of something we missed discussing before, so I just want a quick consensus on this here more than anything. I believe as passed, the currently passed RFCs favours Option 3. My personal preference is to have guides than not, because 13 candidates is a lot to evaluate. Ultimately, I still am okay if we disallow guides, as long as this poll is resolved reasonably quick. Soni (talk) 20:00, 12 October 2024 (UTC)
• Option 3. So far I see about equal numbers of people on the pro-voter guide (4) and anti-voter guide (4) "sides", which to me reads as "no consensus". A "no consensus" on this issue should mean that voter guides are not mentioned nor facilitated by the AELECT process, which most closely aligns with option 3. I think this option 4 that some folks have created ("banning" voter guides) is improper, and would require more than a local consensus in order to reach into people's user spaces and forbid the creation or compel the deletion of voter guide pages. –Novem Linguae (talk) 20:20, 12 October 2024 (UTC)
• I appreciate the reasoning behind encouraging more individual research by trying to avoid reliance on voting guides. (I'm more ambivalent about avoiding public critical discussion of candidates as a rationale. Many participants in the RfA review discussions, including those related to the discussion-only period trial, have expressed a desire to be able to openly raise concerns and have them considered by others. A voting guide is essentially that.) English Wikipedia, though, generally stays out of regulating what people say in their own userspace. So I feel if an official rule is to be put in place, even if it's just to say that there will be no links to voter guides from the election pages, I think it should come out of community consensus. Thus I don't favour putting a statement on encouraging or discouraging voting guides on the election page for this election. Afterwards, it can be discussed with the general community. isaacl (talk) 21:58, 12 October 2024 (UTC)
• Option 1 or disallow, per the very reasonable comments of Cryptic and Thryduulf, above, as well as per what I said above the section break. The hypothetical quote at the end of Cryptic's comment really nails the issue here, and the fact that some editors seem to want to have someone else do their homework for them isn't a cogent rebuttal. Just not saying anything about it might seem like a compromise, but it's changing the rules of the game after some candidates have already entered the race. I sense that some editors who want guides are reacting to the apparently large number of candidates to be evaluated, but if this trial is successful, we could have future elections sufficiently frequently that there won't be such a large number of candidates at any single time. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:39, 12 October 2024 (UTC)
• I would not go so far as to discourage voter guides, even if I prefer people create candidate overviews, with simple summary stats rather than opinions to the suitability to adminship. Discussions on suitability should happen out in a place where candidates can respond to them, during the 3-day discussion period. On the other hand, it's difficult to review 20/25 candidates, and having some overviews as a starting point may be helpful to voters. I would be happy for such candidate overviews to be linked on the page. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 18:01, 13 October 2024 (UTC)

  With even more candidates (yay!), I'm now in favour of plain option 2. I think people feeling overwhelmed might lead to unfair opposes, and voter guides can mitigate this. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 20:39, 14 October 2024 (UTC)

• I think voting guides, whatever you call them, should be allowed. People are going to discuss it, if not here, than in other places. Here sounds like a better place than certain other places. And given the many candidates, the short time allocated for review, voter guides make sense to me.--Wehwalt (talk) 22:40, 13 October 2024 (UTC)
• Option 3: We shouldn't control what people have in their userspace. C F A 💬 03:05, 14 October 2024 (UTC)
• Option 1 > Option 3 > Disallow, Oppose Option 2. Option 1 says to "discourage" not "disallow". I agree that we shouldn't control what people do in their user space, but that doesn't mean what they do in their user space should be advertised here. fanfanboy (block) 03:56, 14 October 2024 (UTC)
• Option 1 > Option 3, Oppose Option 2, and do not link. If I am interested in the opinions of another editor in an Wikipedia election, I should ask them. If I think other people are interested in my opinion, I should post it on my talk page, which is my designated forum for communicating about Wikipedia matters. I don't see why we should be platforming anybody's opinion in the way we do via centrally linked voting guides, whether at ACE or AELECT. Vanamonde93 (talk) 16:03, 14 October 2024 (UTC)
• Option 3 > Option 2, I prefer these above Option 1. Discussions about candidates already occur as of October 8th. I don't think anyone expects the "voter guides" to be collated anywhere like they would be for an arbcom election. I hope mine isn't, but I still intend to write about candidates in my userspace (mainly for my own personal sanity, and ability to rationalize my thoughts before the tiny amount of time there is for questions). Something at "/elections" or something. Although, like Femke stated earlier, I prefer the term "candidate overviews", as I have zero intention of trying to influence or "guide" a vote. We won't be publicizing guides/overviews here ofc (at least I don't think so), but I don't think we should condemn people for it either, as long as it's in their own zone. I don't have a problem with people starting it RIGHT NOW either; there are some fundamental truths that won't change within the week for stats people care about, such as edit count, active months, etc. Better to get a head-start sooner, than be frantic managing 37 candidates over 72 hours come next week, to know exactly what types of questions to ask, and to whom. Utopes _{(talk / cont)} 06:21, 15 October 2024 (UTC)
• Option 2 > Option 3 While I appreciate the idealism, expecting the average voter to properly evaluate over 30 candidates is unrealistic and a waste of editor time. As Bugghost pointed out at the top, voter guides are objective and informative, and I have never seen one created by "a self-selecting group of opinionated people with an agenda" – language like this makes me worry that folks are missing the point. However, the significant opposition to guides/overviews here means it's unwise to make this change during an ongoing election, so I would settle for Option 3. Toadspike [Talk] 20:38, 15 October 2024 (UTC)

  @Toadspike: - I must object to your statement that voter guides are objective. Choosing what information (and how much context) to showcase is subjective. Supporting or opposing is subjective. Separately, since I am a candidate, my current position is to neither support nor oppose voter guides. starship.paint (RUN) 12:09, 16 October 2024 (UTC)

Making changes after candidates have declared

I'm uncomfortable about discussing this kind of change – something that changes the experience of candidacy – this late in the trial process. At this point, we are quite close to having all the candidates already having publicly entered the election process, based on their understandings of what the page currently says. It seems to me to be unfair to the candidates to consider changing the rules about guides this late, almost like a bait-and-switch. There's nothing wrong with discussing changes that might be made for the next election, if there is a consensus to have one, but I think it's too late to change this feature for this election. Of course there's also nothing wrong with continuing to discuss things about making the process run smoothly, but I think the language about voter guides should be left as-is, for now. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:02, 13 October 2024 (UTC)

I 100% agree, we are already to far into the process to make drastic changes such as this one. If there is consensus to keep this process, only then should we discuss big changes. fanfanboy (block) 03:59, 14 October 2024 (UTC)

Seeing as the above poll seems to be an almost exact tie between the different options (I count four Option 1's, four Option 2's, five Option 3's, and three Disallows when tallying every participants first and second preferences), I'm conceding this and am personally viewing it as a no-consensus, and so I'd be fine leaving the wording as-is for this cycle to minimise surprise for candidates. I still think voter guides (or candidate overviews, however they are framed) would be useful and non-harmful for candidates in future elections, and maybe necessary if we also receive this number of candidates next time round - but I agree there's not a strong enough consensus for changing the wording this close to the election. BugGhost🦗👻 15:57, 14 October 2024 (UTC)

I don't think changing the voter guide rules mid-election would be a big deal. The kinds of things I think it'd be a big deal to change mid-election would be the schedule (when and how long each phase is). The fact that we have so many candidates has completely changed the pros and cons of having voter guides compared to when the rule was first created. –Novem Linguae (talk) 20:21, 14 October 2024 (UTC)

And it's not necessarily a rules "change" anyway. Option 3 (which I personally favour) changes nothing, but a revert back to this page's status quo. The main RFC didn't add the wording around voter guides, we self-decided here. I do not feel overly attached to keep to that, just because a few more days have passed. Soni (talk) 20:34, 14 October 2024 (UTC)

First, thank you to BugHost for saying that. Second, for those editors who disagree with what I said, I'd like to point to the end of Cryptic's comment in the sub-section just above, where one can see how it might feel for some candidates. I want to avoid making anyone feel like that, and I believe that this is a significant concern. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:57, 14 October 2024 (UTC)

This iteration of admin elections are quite clearly an experimental process, which I think makes any (minor) mid-election changes more justifiable. It would be pretty naive of candidates to enter into the first instance of a process and not expect a couple corrections to be made; there was no way we were going to get everything right the first time. Giraffer (talk) 22:37, 14 October 2024 (UTC)

Discussion at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Clarification and Amendment § Clarification request: Desysoppings

 You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Clarification and Amendment § Clarification request: Desysoppings. –Novem Linguae (talk) 09:55, 12 July 2024 (UTC)

Phab ticket

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T371454

As requested by WMF Trust & Safety, I've created phab:T371454 to discuss the technical details of setting up the admin election in SecurePoll. –Novem Linguae (talk) 05:56, 31 July 2024 (UTC)

Ways to help

If you're interested in helping, it'd be really nice if some of the following pages could mysteriously appear mostly written, and then everyone can go through and make adjustments:

• Wikipedia:Administrator elections/October 2024/MMS/Call for candidates
• Wikipedia:Administrator elections/October 2024/MMS/Candidate instructions
• Wikipedia:Administrator elections/October 2024/Call for candidates
• Wikipedia:Administrator elections/October 2024/Discussion phase
• Wikipedia:Administrator elections/October 2024/Candidate subpage template
• Wikipedia:Administrator elections/October 2024/Watchlist messages/Call for candidates
• Wikipedia:Administrator elections/October 2024/Watchlist messages/Discussion phase
• Wikipedia:Administrator elections/October 2024/Watchlist messages/Voting phase
• Wikipedia:Administrator elections/October 2024/Results
• Wikipedia:Administrator elections/October 2024/SecurePoll setup

I think some of these details might end up needing discussion or adjusting. But I think the quickest way to get these discussions going is to create drafts and then tweak from there. Any help is appreciated. Please feel free to WP:BEBOLD and create some of these pages :) –Novem Linguae (talk) 06:21, 7 September 2024 (UTC)

How do we want to structure the candidate end of things? We could take the ACE route and have the nomination at (hypothetically!) WP:Administrator elections/October 2024/Candidates/Giraffer and discussion at WP:Administrator elections/October 2024/Discussion/Giraffer, or we could go RfA-style and keep it all on the former -- I would prefer to keep it together as much as possible. I like the idea of transcluding all candidate pages (with or without discussion) onto another page, but I'm not sure if I would call it /Discussion phase. Maybe /Candidates/All? It's probably worth working these out before the candidate instructions are created. Giraffer (talk) 18:41, 7 September 2024 (UTC)

My first thought is that people supporting the RFC for elections would have had the ACE elections in mind as their comparison, so unless the discussion specifically and clearly mentioned some kind of divergence from how ACE is run, this trial of "EFA" should probably take "the ACE route" wherever possible. -- asilvering (talk) 19:38, 7 September 2024 (UTC)

No objections from me. Want to adjust Wikipedia:Administrator elections/October 2024/Subpages to create to match your idea? –Novem Linguae (talk) 20:32, 7 September 2024 (UTC)

Nice try! But since I know very very little about ACE I shall leave that to the older and wiser. -- asilvering (talk) 20:54, 7 September 2024 (UTC)

You see? All the wiser people have showed up now. -- asilvering (talk) 19:45, 8 September 2024 (UTC)

I have the opposite view—I think most people would have had the current RfA process in mind and so would expect that everything except the voting would run much like RfA. isaacl (talk) 21:07, 7 September 2024 (UTC)

I completely see where you're coming from, but I don't think one process should be presumed to be the main blueprint over the other. ACE should be the model for the proper election bits (timeline, voting, notifications, suffrage, etc.) but for other things I think we can choose, and in this instance, given the novelty of admin elections, it might be less stressful for candidates to work with the RfA page format they've seen used repeatedly before. Giraffer (talk) 22:25, 7 September 2024 (UTC)

Keeping the names of the individual RfA pages the same may furthermore help with scripts analysing historical RfAs? As it shouldn't matter which election somebody becomes an admin in, the ACE naming makes less sense. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 19:03, 8 September 2024 (UTC)

Hmm. It's a toss up since we don't have any precedent on what is preferred. The perks of trailblazing . In my super professional opinion, given this, even if not approved, is still a pretty historical thing for enwiki, the simpler we can make it, the better.

I'd say have 1 sub-page to describe how it works (both for candidates and voters) and then another that contains every candidate's templates and full discussion. Having a sub-page for each candidate would be theoretically neater, but we also don't know how many people plan to run, and being able to direct everyone to a single page to participate, when the entire idea of a whole new process to select admins may be inherently overwhelming to the front-facing folks, may be more appealing and garner more participation. To spitball, something like Wikipedia:Administrator elections/October 2024/Candidates/Discussion instructions and then Wikipedia:Administrator elections/October 2024/Candidates/Discussion phase, and then each candidate gets a level 2 heading, kind of like how the RFA2024 P2 proposals worked. —Sirdog (talk) 01:20, 9 September 2024 (UTC)

With the current RfA process, each candidate request is on a separate page, and they are all transcluded onto the RfA page. I think the simplest approach is to do the same. It keeps the discussion history for each candidate separate and reduces some potential for edit conflicts. Since there will be a fixed number of candidates, there won't be any churn in transclusions when the discussion period starts. isaacl (talk) 02:46, 9 September 2024 (UTC)

Didn't think about the edit conflict issue, good point. Fully agree with your proposed approach. —Sirdog (talk) 01:50, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

These messages and pages should explain clearer that this is like a regular RFA so being nominated by someone is fine (or expected) even. A lot of the watchlist notices for candidates etc say "nominate yourself" which isn't quite right Soni (talk) 01:06, 10 September 2024 (UTC)

You just answered the exact question I was thinking of asking. fanfanboy block 01:50, 10 September 2024 (UTC)

If you're willing, feel free to adjust the messages by just editing them. These changes sound fine. –Novem Linguae (talk) 02:20, 10 September 2024 (UTC)

Regardless of how we want to format discussion, would it not make the most sense to have the candidate nomination pages at /Candidates/XYZ rather than /Discussion phase/XYZ? Added bonus that /Candidates follows the ACE format, for those preferring we stick closely to that. Giraffer (talk) 10:26, 10 September 2024 (UTC)

Or perhaps they can be in the same place as now: a subpage of the Wikipedia:Requests for adminship page. isaacl (talk) 18:11, 10 September 2024 (UTC)

@Novem Linguae What's the point of Talk page messages and how are they different from the MMS versions? It feels like we can just copy the latter everywhere we need to manually, right? Soni (talk) 12:43, 10 September 2024 (UTC)

You're right. In my mind I thought they needed to be different, but now that you point it out they are redundant. I have deleted the redundant talk page message redlinks. –Novem Linguae (talk) 15:44, 10 September 2024 (UTC)

I pretended I know what I'm doing and created Results, based off ArbCom results tables with some AELECT info. Should that be worded exclusively as a past-tense official election results, or are we incorporating some element of tying back to the policy proposal outcome based on its results (after the elections, the community did xyz based on the outcome of the trial?) Perfect4th (talk) 02:04, 1 October 2024 (UTC)

Looks good to me! At the proper time, I might throw some noinclude tags in there and transclude it onto the WP:AELECT page. –Novem Linguae (talk) 02:56, 1 October 2024 (UTC)

Prohibiting supports and opposes

The original text of the AELECT proposal was During this time, no bolded !votes should be cast, it should be a clear discussion., which I read as meaning that there should not be bolded supports and opposes, but that I read as meaning that "I plan on voting for this candidate" or "I support this candidate" would be acceptable.

Looks like it keeps getting changed to During this time, no votes or expressions of support/oppose (with or without boldface) are cast. and variations of that.

How strict do we want to be about forcing folks to keep their planned votes secret? I am leaning against this personally. –Novem Linguae (talk) 18:06, 16 September 2024 (UTC)

I'm the one who changed it to that wording, so don't think it keeps getting changed to that.

True enough, as you state, the original wording is straight from the 2021 proposal (upon which the 2024 proposal was based). My personal feeling is that it doesn't matter if the expression of support was in bold or not, so I don't think it's a good idea to emphasize that. I appreciate the message was that it's not done the way it is during the traditional open-viewpoint RfA, but I see no meaningful difference between "Support" and "I support the candidate". Maybe there's another way to word this without barring people saying things like "At the moment, I'm leaning towards supporting the candidate." isaacl (talk) 18:28, 16 September 2024 (UTC)

A previous wording said During this time, commenters must not indicate their support or opposition, which I read as being a bit on the stricter side. –Novem Linguae (talk) 18:34, 16 September 2024 (UTC)

I don't know how to square the circle: I don't think it's sustainable for anyone moderating the discussion to have to draw fine distinctions between "this wording is a clear vote" and "this wording just falls short enough of a vote to be OK". I think a strict rule on expressions of support/opposition is the only way for the restriction to work. isaacl (talk) 18:47, 16 September 2024 (UTC)

Also, my apologies: I did not remember making that previous change in April, or else I would have opened a section for discussion. isaacl (talk) 18:53, 16 September 2024 (UTC)

First of all, as I pointed out in another section of this talk page, "it should be a clear discussion" is extremely suboptimal. Are we saying that discussion should not be unclear?

I agree with isaacl, that the whole point of a secret ballot process, being trialed to see if it's less stressful for candidates, becomes moot if we also have editors posting public votes. The discussion should be an opportunity to get questions asked and answered, and for editors to point out strengths of the candidate, as well as areas of potential concern. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:57, 16 September 2024 (UTC)

I also don't think we need to say "(with or without boldface)". --Tryptofish (talk) 19:00, 16 September 2024 (UTC)

I think the intent was that comments should clearly not be votes, but discussion about the candidate's characteristics, not that everyone should be expressing themselves clearly to everyone else.

I also don't think the parenthetical is necessary. I included it as an incremental step in order to preserve the idea that the discussion is not like the support/oppose/neutral sections of the open-viewpoint RfA process, but am happy with omitting it. isaacl (talk) 19:09, 16 September 2024 (UTC)

My general view would be that making it obvious how you're going to vote is fine, but editors should be strongly encouraged to include some sort of point/evidence/opinion, even if it's a little vague.

Just statements of support/oppose with no further substance should maybe be given a reply to point out the purpose of the discussion phase. Striking/removing any messages would probably be counterproductive, a reminder reply would probably be fine. Examples of the kind of messages I'm referring to:

• Easy support! - Example (talk)
• I think they'd be a great admin so I'm going to support! - Example (talk)
• No chance I'm voting for them - Example (talk)
• I thought they were already an admin - support!!!! - Example (talk)
• Oppose - per ExampleUser2 - Example (talk)

Statements of support/opposition that include any form of point to discuss should be allowed - eg:

• Easy support, always been a pleasure to work with at DYK - Example (talk)
• This diff makes me find it impossible to support this candidate - Example (talk)
• Oppose - sorry, but not enough content creation for me. - Example (talk)

BugGhost🦗👻 13:15, 4 October 2024 (UTC)

I've BOLDly edited some of the wording about the discussion period - feel free to revert if anyone feels I missed the mark here. BugGhost🦗👻 13:38, 4 October 2024 (UTC)

Generating the eligible voter list

Hey @Cyberpower678. How are you? I hope you're doing well. I think we're ready to start working on the administrator elections eligible voter list. The criteria are laid out at Wikipedia:Administrator elections#Who can vote and appear to be identical to WP:ACE.

Question. How many days out do you typically generate this list for ACE? Do you try to wait until the last minute to include more voters, or do you generate it like a month out? If a month out, then I think we can begin. And if last minute, then let's pick a date that is right around when T&S needs the list to configure the poll.

Thanks a lot. Looking forward to your feedback. –Novem Linguae (talk) 10:05, 17 September 2024 (UTC)

Sure. Happy to serve. I can generate lists whenever. I can do it right now, but I would always recommend a list minute generation which accounts for vanished users and renamed users, and avoids having to whitelist legitimate during the process. I can reach out to Joe to get the list loaded. —CYBERPOWER (Chat) 16:41, 18 September 2024 (UTC)

@Cyberpower678. Alright buddy, it's your time to shine! Think you can run your eligible voter script soon and drop a link to it here or in the Phab ticket? If not right away, got an ETA on it? Thank you very much for your help. –Novem Linguae (talk) 22:40, 15 October 2024 (UTC)

Dropping out

I can envision a scenario where a candidate has a brutal discussion phase and decides to withdraw either during the discussion phase or during the election itself. However the SecurePoll software may not allow this or it may become impractical to take someone's name off the ballot after a certain point. We should think about how we want to handle this. This also extends to how widely we publish the SecurePoll results of a candidate that has withdrawn. Say a withdrawn candidate was forced to stay on the ballot and gets 5% support, 80% oppose, 15% neutral. Do we still want to publish this far and wide, or do we want to keep this off of the results page? –Novem Linguae (talk) 20:37, 30 September 2024 (UTC)

If someone withdraws, I don't think we should be publishing the results. We don't force RFA candidates to keep the vote open for a full week either. -- asilvering (talk) 20:42, 30 September 2024 (UTC)

I say only publish the results of candidates who haven't withdrawn, no matter how it goes. For those that have withdrawn however, don't publish it. A question I would like to ask though is whether it would be okay to show the withdrawn candidate their results if they request it. fanfanboy (block) 22:34, 30 September 2024 (UTC)

It may not be possible to fully hide the results. For example WMF T&S and/or the stewards might post them on a talk page somewhere, or the software might display it. But keeping it quiet by not reposting it on the results page is probably the way to go, judging by the replies so far. –Novem Linguae (talk) 22:36, 30 September 2024 (UTC)

A good way to keep it from getting out would probably be to mention on the AELECT page that withdrawn candidate results won't be published. fanfanboy (block) 23:25, 30 September 2024 (UTC)

I agree with the above - if a candidate withdraws, results shouldn't be published. The "result" is that they withdrew - the vote outcome stops being relevant (eg. if they withdrew during the vote but still got 95% support, the withdrawal would still be the final outcome) and so the votes casts shouldn't be published, as much as can be avoided. BugGhost🦗👻 12:37, 4 October 2024 (UTC)

People withdraw from ACE elections fairly frequently, just do it the same way? – Joe (talk) 12:45, 4 October 2024 (UTC)

Similar to ACE, I suggest that once the discussion phase begins, anyone that withdraws should get listed in a "withdrawn candidates" section (so that other editors that participated in discussion, ect should be able to find out what happened) at Wikipedia:Administrator elections/October 2024/Call for candidates and so long as it is still feasible should be removed from securepoll. Once voting begins, they can't be removed from securepoll - but there would be no need to report their results as anything other than withdrawn. — xaosflux ^Talk 12:03, 13 October 2024 (UTC)

e.g. see Wikipedia:Arbitration_Committee_Elections_December_2019/Candidates#List_of_withdrawn_candidates, notice the w/d are just simply not in the results table. — xaosflux ^Talk 12:08, 13 October 2024 (UTC)

If someone does withdraw during voting, they should prob be listed in the results table, but could just be as "withdrawn". Hopefully this is rare once a candidate makes it that far. This result should be published, so that editors that did vote would know what happened to their vote - though if the tally should or should not be included is a separate matter. — xaosflux ^Talk 12:11, 13 October 2024 (UTC)

Rationale section

Regarding this edit: as this page describes the process of administrator elections, I think the rationale is better placed at the end of the page. Putting it at the top gets in the way of learning about the process, and makes the page feel more like a proposal page than a process documentation page. Notifications for the initial trial can include a link to the rationale section, so anyone interested in the reasons for the trial can jump straight to them.

Regarding the wording, I dislike using the word "toxicity", as it has been used by people to cover a wide variety of issues, and is a loaded word. I prefer the wording I previously wrote, "reduce the amount of contentious discussion amongst voters, thus making the process less antagonistic and increasing the number of candidates willing to volunteer to be administrators." isaacl (talk) 16:13, 3 October 2024 (UTC)

Replaced toxicity with lighter wording similar to what you said. However I don't want to be the one to move the section as you suggested. fanfanboy (block) 16:31, 3 October 2024 (UTC)

The whole section seems out of place to me. Assertions that RfA "standards have been creeping higher over time"* or that it is "toxic" are unsubstantiated and debatable. The actual rationale for trying this will vary from participant to participant in the RfC. In any case, I cannot off the top of my head think of a similar process page that attempts to self-justify in this way. We should just remove it.

* Incidentally, I've tried several times to test this claim quantitively, and by every way I can think to measure at it—pass percentage, edit count, length of tenure, edit count over length of tenure, featured content counts—standards have not significantly increased since around 2010. I really should write that up some time. – Joe (talk) 12:48, 4 October 2024 (UTC)

Yeah I agree with this - the section seems unnecessary. The full and varied rationale can be found at the RFCs that are linked at the bottom of the page, if anyone is actually looking for it. We also don't know if admin elections will actually reduce toxicity/contention yet, seems odd to claim it as fact before even running a trial. BugGhost🦗👻 14:16, 4 October 2024 (UTC)

In any case, I cannot off the top of my head think of a similar process page that attempts to self-justify in this way. Maybe more new processes and policies should explain themselves, their motivations, how they came about, etc. My inability to find this info succinctly stated factored into my decisions to oppose both the meta:ucoc and meta:movement charter. –Novem Linguae (talk) 16:50, 4 October 2024 (UTC)

I find the difference between "There should be info about upcoming decision-making" and "There should be rationale for already-agreed on decisions" to be sufficiently large. I feel like the latter gives more room for bickering based on precise wording, and attempts to overturn consensus.

In either case, I agree that even if kept, rationale is better suited at the end, so I have moved it to a more reasonable ordering. Soni (talk) 11:03, 6 October 2024 (UTC)

I'm not sure whether there's more or less room for bickering about a rationale section on a process page, but I do think the purpose is different on a proposal page versus a process page. On a process page, the rationale is written by the proposer and is selling the proposal to gain support. On a process page, it's summarizing the reasoning of the established consensus viewpoint. Thus while on a proposal page it's reasonable to talk a bit speculatively about other potential problems with the open-viewpoint RfA process, on the admin election process page, it's a bit of a digression to discuss other possible reasons why fewer admins are being selected. Having a secret ballot allows editors to vote without having to discuss their vote, thus reducing opportunity for contentious discussion, as editors do not receive individual replies regarding their votes. The intended goal is to encourage greater participation (both from potential candidates and voters) as a result. isaacl (talk) 15:30, 6 October 2024 (UTC)

I propose removing the second sentence of the "Rationale" section, to avoid the digression. Alternatively, the clause including that the standards have been creeping higher over time and that we are recruiting or retaining fewer editors than we used to, could be removed from the second sentence. isaacl (talk) 21:51, 7 October 2024 (UTC)

Regarding this edit: I deliberately used the word "participation" to include candidates and other participants. I feel that reducing contention is intended to encourage participation from everyone, including voters with the election process. isaacl (talk) 01:41, 10 October 2024 (UTC)

I don't think it hurts to emphasize candidates here, since the main problem with RFA isn't a lack of voters, but rather a lack of candidates. I won't revert you if you change it back though. –Novem Linguae (talk) 02:41, 10 October 2024 (UTC)

In my view, one relates to the other: getting more participants involved in commenting with less confrontation makes the whole process more effective, which makes it more attractive to potential candidates. isaacl (talk) 03:15, 10 October 2024 (UTC)

Redirecting RfA subpages to AELECT candidate pages?

Should we do this (ie. Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Foo → Wikipedia:Administrator elections/October 2024/Candidates/Foo)? I mainly ask for the purposes of WP:MoreMenu, which automatically detects RfAs (but not AELECTs), and if someone runs for AELECT and later RfAed, it would be misleading for the RfA to not have "2nd nomination" IMO. Charlotte (Queen of Hearts • talk) 08:24, 8 October 2024 (UTC)

I'd support this. Should probably get another opinion or two though. Other thoughts? –Novem Linguae (talk) 08:26, 8 October 2024 (UTC)

You said exactly what I was thinking; I was just about to ask the same thing. – DreamRimmer (talk) 08:27, 8 October 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for you two's comments; I'll go and do it (except for MarcGarver, who had an RfA under an old username and will be a (2nd nomination).) Charlotte (Queen of Hearts • talk) 09:23, 8 October 2024 (UTC)

Honestly I'd say no. People can always link to the past admin election pages (and I strongly doubt that a past nomination here would ever not come up at RfA) but one of the features of this process is not needing to end up with the social shame of a failed RfA. I think the redirect subtly contributes to that. -- Ajraddatz (talk) 20:42, 8 October 2024 (UTC)

What about the social shame of a failed administration election? I don't see how a redirect will add anything to that. And if a redirect keeps tools and scripts happy, then that seems like a good reason to do it — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 08:28, 11 October 2024 (UTC)

In my experience, there tends to be less shame associated with large securepoll elections like this one compared to single-candidate evaluations with recorded/reasoned votes. I would prefer if the scripts/tools could be updated, though I guess if a redirect is the easiest way it wouldn't be a terrible thing. -- Ajraddatz (talk) 16:46, 11 October 2024 (UTC)

"shame" is the wrong metric to go by here. What not having redirects would do is instead try to hide the fact that someone was here in the first place. On a truly open system like Wikipedia that never works. Support having redirects. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 16:54, 11 October 2024 (UTC)

Support: It makes sense. While this is not a traditional RfA run, it's still a relevant RfA run that should be detected and linked from the MoreMenu where appropriate. Hey man im josh (talk) 17:16, 11 October 2024 (UTC)

Support. I agree completely with Hey man im josh and Pppery. Being a candidate here is a request for adminiship, even if it isn't a Request for Adminship, so it makes sense to document it in the same place. If someone is successful in the election, it needs to be easy to find how they became an administrator. If someone is unsuccessful and subsequently requests (via any method) adminship or any other advanced rights (e.g. arbcom) then it needs to be easy to find why they weren't successful previously. If someone is unsuccessful and their behaviour and/or actions are discussed anywhere then the comments on their admin candidacy need to be easy to find (so people can judge whether they are relevant or not). Thryduulf (talk) 11:37, 14 October 2024 (UTC)

Support, per josh, Thryduulf, Pppery and Charlotte - particularly Thryduulf's point that standing in an admin election is still a request for adminship (despite not being technically a traditional WP:RfA) and should be easily discoverable. BugGhost🦗👻 11:59, 14 October 2024 (UTC)

It sounds like most of the above is about ensuring that future RfAs are clear that the person was up for an admin election in the past. I presume there's some mechanism to indicate the reverse? i.e. indicating whether a candidate for admin elections has a past RfA? — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 16:16, 14 October 2024 (UTC)

I don't know, but there should be. If there isn't someone can ask it as a question for every candidate and/or put a comment in the discussion section. Thryduulf (talk) 16:34, 14 October 2024 (UTC)

The WP:RFA/Name 1, WP:RFA/Name 2, etc. type subpages should indicate this as long as the candidate doesn't overwrite a redirect when making their RFA. –Novem Linguae (talk) 20:24, 14 October 2024 (UTC)

Right, but what about the election nomination page? I don't see any indication as to whether a candidate has a past RfA. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 16:41, 15 October 2024 (UTC)

Although this option isn't directly on the election nomination pages, it is easy to find. If you use the MoreMenu gadget, you can go to the candidate's user page and click on the user dropdown menu in the p-cactions portlet. If that candidate has any past nominations or reports, you'll see an option called Rfxs. Clicking on it will show any SPI, CCI, or RfA related to that candidate. – DreamRimmer (talk) 16:58, 15 October 2024 (UTC)

To make it easier to find previous RfAs, we could add a direct option in the toolbar on nomination pages. Something like {{#ifexist:Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/{{{1|{{{User|{{{user|Example}}}}}}}}}|[[Special:Prefixindex/Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/{{{1|{{{User|{{{user|Example}}}}}}}}}|previous RfAs]]|no prior RfA}} could be included in the {{usercheck-short}} template, but I think consensus would be needed to implement this change. Since the RfA subpages for all the candidates redirect to the AELECT nomination pages, it would display "previous RfAs" option for every candidate. – DreamRimmer (talk) 17:40, 15 October 2024 (UTC)

3 of the candidates have had past RFAs. 2 of the 3 had past RFAs under different names, so I am not sure that a wikicode solution would display those RFAs. This would be excellent information to include in a voter guide in a "Previous RFAs" column. –Novem Linguae (talk) 21:19, 15 October 2024 (UTC)

It's standard practice to redirect RfAs from current name to past name (cf. Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Just Step Sideways), so as long as the redirect's there, there shouldn't be issues. Charlotte (Queen of Hearts • talk) 21:27, 15 October 2024 (UTC)

I've gone ahead and redirected the remaining RfA subpages to the AELECT candidacy pages. – DreamRimmer (talk) 13:37, 15 October 2024 (UTC)

Now that the pages are redirected, should we be including the "Previous RfAs""RfAs for this user" code that's included on regular RfA pages?

<div class="other-rfas" style="width:50%; border: 1px solid #a2a9b1; background-color: #f8f9fa; color: black; margin: 0.5em 0 0.5em 1em; padding: 0.2em; float: right; clear: right; font-size: 88%; min-width:20em; max-width: 100%">RfAs for this user:
{{Special:Prefixindex/Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/{{SUBPAGENAME}}}}
</div>

--Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 20:25, 15 October 2024 (UTC)

My first thought was yes, the redirects will be detected by the template and could give a false impression that every candidate has had one greater previous RFA than they do. If this can be resolved (ideally treating a redirect to the AELECT candidacy page the same as the candidacy page, if that that is possible) then yes we should do it (imo). If it can't then adding the manual equivalent to each is probably the best we can do for this election. Thryduulf (talk) 20:39, 15 October 2024 (UTC)

@Thryduulf Not sure how this is different from a regular RfA, as this box will always show the current RfA. In this case, because it is a redirect, the current RfA page should show up in italics. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 21:22, 15 October 2024 (UTC)

It's different because on a normal RFA the current one is shown in bold and unlinked, clearly distinguishing it as referring to the current page. Italics in that template in a normal RFA almost always refers to a previous RFA under a different username or occasionally a previous run named differently for some reason, essentially never the current page. Thryduulf (talk) 23:15, 15 October 2024 (UTC)

Should candidates be shuffled?

Should the table of candidates on the page Wikipedia:Administrator elections/October 2024/Call for candidates be shuffled? It would maximize fairness and reduce bias, wouldn't it? —⁠andrybak (talk) 10:41, 8 October 2024 (UTC)

If the intent is to mirror RfAs, then no, as they are presented in order of nomination. Espresso Addict (talk) 11:50, 8 October 2024 (UTC)

Unlike other elections, the candidates aren't running against each other, they're being evaluated individually. I don't think shuffling is necessary. Legoktm (talk) 00:07, 10 October 2024 (UTC)

I think it is likely that the candidates listed towards the top of the list will receive more attention than those lower down, just because most people will start reviewing from the top and some may not have enough time to complete the process — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 08:24, 11 October 2024 (UTC)

Frankly, shuffling candidates without the ability to sort them was annoying when it happened during U4C and BoT elections. I had notes on how I'd want to vote for each of them, and had to Ctrl-F 30+ names to vote properly.

If we end up having shuffled names via SecurePoll, I will request WMF T&S folks to make it so at least people will be able to also sort them alphabetically/by nom order Soni (talk) 12:47, 11 October 2024 (UTC)

@Soni that feature isn't available so asking election admins to enable it is useless. See screenshot of what the poll looks like. You could file a feature request here to ask software developers to build that. — xaosflux ^Talk 17:04, 13 October 2024 (UTC)

I plan to ask for an alphabetical listing of candidates and no shuffling, unless folks object. –Novem Linguae (talk) 17:57, 13 October 2024 (UTC)

I think it should be shuffled, not alphabetical. theleekycauldron (talk • she/her) 18:06, 14 October 2024 (UTC)

Though I appreciate the concern about matching one's personal notes with the ballot, I agree with randomizing the order of the candidates on the SecurePoll ballot.

I don't really know what to do with the candidate page. With so many candidates, I think there is a risk that the candidates will get an uneven amount of consideration, but there's no readily available mechanism to address that in a satisfactory way. The easiest way to continually shuffle the candidates would be to do something similar as for the arbitration election page: implement the shuffle-on-purge approach, and then purge the page regularly, but that's likely to be annoying, assuming that most voters won't be visiting the page once, keeping that page in their browser without ever reloading it (or the browser restarting). Now that gadgets can be loaded on a per-page basis, it is possible for someone to implement the ability to shuffle the order once for a given user (using the same browser with Javascript enabled) without affecting the page load time for all pages, but it's highly doubtful anyone will do so and that approval of the gadget will attain consensus support in time for the election. isaacl (talk) 18:45, 14 October 2024 (UTC)

I support shuffling, as it fixes the (valid) concern that only the top few candidates will be reviewed. There are quite a few people up for election, you can't expect every single voter to evaluate every single one. ULPS ^{(talk • contribs)} 23:29, 14 October 2024 (UTC)

@Xaosflux What I was saying was "In U4C elections, having many candidates on always-shuffled order was a pain". So I'd like either "Candidates are presented in some set order" (I don't mind any, personally) or "Candidates are shown shuffled, but you can re-sort them to alphabetical". I don't know if the latter is available, but surely the former is. Soni (talk) 05:31, 14 October 2024 (UTC)

The latter is not. Charlotte (Queen of Hearts • talk) 07:58, 14 October 2024 (UTC)

Currently they can be in the order programmed in securepoll, or shuffled. There is no sorter regardless. Creating a sorter would require software feature request to make that functionality in the securepoll tool (which will certainly not be delivered in time for this election even if you were to submit it today). — xaosflux ^Talk 09:40, 14 October 2024 (UTC)

I support shuffling. It makes voters think a bit harder, but it avoids anyone getting an unfair (dis)advantage because their username starts higher or lower through the alphabet or because they were quicker or slower in getting their nomination statement up. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 22:27, 14 October 2024 (UTC)

I think I see enough support for shuffling to go ahead and turn that on instead of fixed order. Will be sure to ask for shuffling in the Phab ticket. –Novem Linguae (talk) 03:08, 15 October 2024 (UTC)

If we were talking about a one off then I have no objection. But if they are in a different sequence each time I look at the list, then how am I supposed to keep track of which ones I have scrutinised? And if the ballot paper shows a different sequence to the list I looked at when I was scrutinising them than we have a problem -especially if I can only go to secure poll once for the whole batch rather than vote on each one when I've assessed them. ϢereSpielChequers 12:40, 16 October 2024 (UTC)

User:Cyberpower678/RfX Report

Cyberpower678's user thing is really cool, is/will there be something similar for Diesen Prozess? SerialNumber54129 13:26, 8 October 2024 (UTC)

We will not see support/opposes until the last day, so I doubt something like that will be useful? Sohom (talk) 17:28, 8 October 2024 (UTC)

Maybe not one that lists support percentages, but I could see something like the List of Candidates on the Call for candidates page being a useful substitute in some cases. Happy editing, Perfect4th (talk) 20:35, 8 October 2024 (UTC)

{{Wikipedia:Administrator elections/October 2024/Call for candidates}} should work for that now :) Sohom (talk) 00:57, 9 October 2024 (UTC)

AELECT monitors?

Adding on to the trend of building the plane mid-flight, should there be something similar to RFA monitors during the discussion phase to keep things civil and to also make sure no support/oppose is expressed? fanfanboy (block) 16:34, 8 October 2024 (UTC)

That would be a good idea, yes! We can ask for volunteers next week, as some people might consider becoming a nominator this week. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 17:43, 8 October 2024 (UTC)

Pretty sure I'm not nominating anyone, so I'll be standing by to monitor :) theleekycauldron (talk • she/her) 18:06, 14 October 2024 (UTC)

Also happy to put myself foward. Worth questioning whether the "may not !vote in the RfA" rule still stands? Pickersgill-Cunliffe (talk) 18:27, 14 October 2024 (UTC)

Edited for pay statement

See Wikipedia talk:Administrator elections/October 2024/Candidates/rsjaffe and a couple other candidate talk pages. Looks like @ToBeFree is reminding candidates to declare whether or not they have edited for pay. If there's a consensus that this is required for administrator elections, can someone please add it to Wikipedia:Administrator elections/October 2024/Candidate subpage template? Thanks. –Novem Linguae (talk) 20:21, 9 October 2024 (UTC)

Has it worked at RfA? The first editor to give that required denial was praised for her excellent response.[3] But she turned out to be running a sockpuppet account after her first (also admin) account was site-banned due to allegations of paid editing.[4] And after coming out, people realized she was still editing in the same COI areas.[5] Rjjⁱⁱⁱ (talk) 20:35, 9 October 2024 (UTC)

It's not part of the RFA boilerplate either, so the consistency may be fine, and a lack of the required disclosure might be a sign that the candidate hasn't completely read the WP:Administrators policy. At least that's my personal interpretation of why this isn't yet mentioned in the template or an editnotice, but relatively well-hidden in the instructions for self-nomination only... I'd make it more prominent for both processes or abolish the requirement in case it turned out to be ineffective. It shouldn't be a trap. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 20:40, 9 October 2024 (UTC)

Are those instructions even correct? If you follow the instructions, when you get to the line that says Re-edit the page again, and make sure to delete the acceptance line. Remember to keep the text about disclosing paid editing., all that you should actually be seeing on the acceptance line is | acceptance =. If you do actually remove that line and save the page again then there will be text about paid editing, but if you just leave that parameter blank it will not show up. Actually come to think of it, step 5 of the self-nomination instructions mean that a self nomination will see the boilerplate, but someone nominated by someone else never will. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 15:40, 10 October 2024 (UTC)

It's a requirement to be an administrator that was agreed upon by consensus, and all the same requirements have been inherited by the elections process, so it's a requirement for election candidates. isaacl (talk) 21:29, 9 October 2024 (UTC)

Could someone point to the discussion that established this consensus? Also, we should probably add this to the standard RFA template as well, I do not remember it being present there. (Probably discuss this further in WT:RFA though, I completely agree with the template change if the consensus is already established) Soni (talk) 07:19, 10 October 2024 (UTC)

See Wikipedia talk:Administrators/Archive 17 § RfC about paid use of administrator tools (found a pointer to it using using Wikiblame; I remembered the discussion took place but not where). isaacl (talk) 07:35, 10 October 2024 (UTC)

Modifying the RfA template was discussed at the time (see Wikipedia talk:Requests for adminship/Archive 249 § Standard question from RfC at WT:Admin). Adding another standard question did not receive consensus support, and so a note was left in the RfA instructions. isaacl (talk) 07:43, 10 October 2024 (UTC)

I do not think a single line on WP:CANDIDATE is enough, it's too hidden and easy to miss. If we treat it as established consensus that every candidate needs to follow, I believe it should be added somewhere accessible in candidates templates (say around the line Candidate, please indicate acceptance of the nomination here in Template:RfA).

Either way, we're talking WT:RFAs than AELECT now, so we're probably best discussing it there. Soni (talk) 07:51, 10 October 2024 (UTC)

I'm just pointing you to discussions as you requested. For better or worse, a consensus wasn't reached to modify the RfA template. isaacl (talk) 07:58, 10 October 2024 (UTC)

I've updated the candidate subpage template with an instruction to disclose. isaacl (talk) 21:36, 9 October 2024 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Requests for adminship

Couldn't see any mention of this process on Wikipedia:Requests for adminship or the associated templates, e.g. Template:RfA Navigation? — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 09:38, 10 October 2024 (UTC)

Follow up: there is a note on Wikipedia:Requests for adminship, and I've added a link to the navigation template — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 11:17, 10 October 2024 (UTC)

There is a mention of this process in the 4th paragraph of WP:Requests for adminship. fanfanboy (block) 12:03, 10 October 2024 (UTC)

I noticed this too - maybe we should add an Ombox at the top of WP:RFA saying something like this:

(Haven't added this myself because I'm not confident with editing templates, and changing the RFA header seems like a bad place to practice). BugGhost🦗👻 12:58, 10 October 2024 (UTC)

Looks good to me. fanfanboy (block) 13:24, 10 October 2024 (UTC)

Nice - I've added this info box to WP:Requests for adminship/Header BugGhost🦗👻 13:47, 10 October 2024 (UTC)

Timeline?

I'm confused about the timeline. Candidates sign up until the 14th, and discussion starts on the 22nd. What happens during the week in between? RoySmith (talk) 14:52, 10 October 2024 (UTC)

At the top of the talk page, there is a detailed schedule that explains everything. But it's to have plenty of time to set up for the discussion phase and secure poll. fanfanboy (block) 15:12, 10 October 2024 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Voting will be conducted through SecurePoll, so in the meantime, SecurePoll will be set up for this election. I think this will include entering candidate information, configuring voting requirements, and other preparations. – DreamRimmer (talk) 15:15, 10 October 2024 (UTC)

Thanks. I've added the intermission to the schedule, with a hatnote. RoySmith (talk) 15:41, 10 October 2024 (UTC)

Kind of a shame we can't start discussing while SecurePoll is being set up. With so many candidates, 3 days seems quite short for this period — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 08:22, 11 October 2024 (UTC)

Yeah I understand that three days discussion was set in the RfC (though I also think it's too short) and that giving plenty of time to set up SecurePoll is wise on the first run, but why can't these run in parallel? E.g.:

• October 8–14 – Candidate sign-up
• October 15-18 – Discussion phase
• October 15–21 – SecurePoll setup phase
• October 22–28 – SecurePoll voting phase

IMO it makes more sense to have the "pause" after the discussion, not before, to give time for voters to digest what was said. – Joe (talk) 08:55, 11 October 2024 (UTC)

Joe Roe, it looks like you meant to write 28 October instead of 38. – DreamRimmer (talk) 09:11, 11 October 2024 (UTC)

...or did I? – Joe (talk) 11:15, 11 October 2024 (UTC)

This extra week should give some time for someone to do a deep dive on all the candidates. Plus it can be used by said candidates to prepare to address any potential problems that they think might raise some concerns. fanfanboy (block) 12:15, 11 October 2024 (UTC)

I'm not sure we want to encourage people spending a week investigating candidates? And the candidates have as much time as they like to prepare – before they nominate themselves. – Joe (talk) 12:54, 11 October 2024 (UTC)

I 100% agree with your first point. As for your second point, I also agree but I find it unlikely someone would prepare for a new process that they potentially only just now heard of (though this would only be true for this trail). fanfanboy (block) 13:44, 11 October 2024 (UTC)

I also agree that three days is too short. I haven't been following the RfC in detail, but if three days is what came out of the RfC, then certainly that's what we should do here. After this trial run is over, we should consider making it longer. RoySmith (talk) 14:43, 11 October 2024 (UTC)

I think the idea behind the 3 days was to lower stress/scrutiny/time investment for the candidates, making the process easier and more pleasant for the candidates.

At this point I don't anticipate changing the schedule for this election (barring extraordinary circumstances such as a very strong talk page consensus, WMF T&S making us change election dates, etc.)

Can definitely re-evaluate both of these details post-election if another election is approved. –Novem Linguae (talk) 19:27, 11 October 2024 (UTC)

Testing candidates with no chance in trial elections?

Hi. Should there be a candidate in the trial admin elections that obviously won't pass to test early closures or withdrawals? Rotideypoc41352 (talk · contribs) 20:58, 10 October 2024 (UTC)

It's probably not needed. I don't think we do this for other elections such as ArbCom elections. Thank you for the idea though. –Novem Linguae (talk) 21:18, 10 October 2024 (UTC)

An early closure is comparatively unlikely to happen when the results are only published after the election. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 01:58, 11 October 2024 (UTC)

There's not much to "test" - once the polls open the ballot wouldn't be changed. — xaosflux ^Talk 16:47, 13 October 2024 (UTC)

So many candidates

Without indicating how I will end up voting, I just want to say that I am very impressed at how many editors have stepped forward and that many or most of them have positive connotations in my mind. If this new method for selecting/electing administrators ends up adding a significant number of new administrators, I for one will be very pleased. Cullen328 (talk) 04:03, 11 October 2024 (UTC)

Yes it is very pleasing to see. I am a little worried about how much time it will take to give each candidate proper scrutiny, but I guess this is a good problem to have?! — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 08:30, 11 October 2024 (UTC)

I think this lack of "proper scrutiny" might be beneficial as it may prevent opposes over minor details which we see happen often at RfA, though there are a few potential problems. It might allow for admins who aren't ready for the tools get accepted, though a remedy could be the proposed administrator recall that is currently under discussion. Another problem could be that voters will only do a surface level look through (xtools, edit count, candidate page, etc) and judge solely based on that, which might lead to more opposes than there really should be. I think the latter is unlikely though. fanfanboy (block) 13:35, 11 October 2024 (UTC)

Yeah, I would say that one of the metrics for success here isn't necessarily how many successes we get, but if those successes prove to be good admins. One of the concerns with a process like this is that we get another Lourdes situation. (Not that the traditional RFA process stopped that either, but just an uncontroversial example of a 'bad' admin.) Parabolist (talk) 00:32, 13 October 2024 (UTC)

Just to add some additional context, there have been 14 RfAs so far in 2024. There are currently 13 candidates for the elections, with an additional 2 who have sub pages and have not been added - and we're only half way through the sign up period. I believe this vindicates the position that man of us who have worked in RfA have - Candidates do not want to go through the RfA process, even if they are encouraged by those who believe they would make a good admin.

I expect there will be teething issues, I expect there will be disappointed candidates - I am hopeful that the whole process will be more pleasant for everyone, and that it will encourage additional runs in the future. Worm^TT(talk) 13:35, 11 October 2024 (UTC)

Really impressive amount of people signing up - I few days ago I worried that there might not be any candidates! Big props to @Novem Linguae for getting this ball rolling from the offset and doing a lot of coordination - I know the process isn't over yet but it's looking very promising and we should get a few good new admins out of it. BugGhost🦗👻 14:59, 11 October 2024 (UTC)

On the "good problems to have" front, has anybody checked with the SecurePoll folks to see if there's an upper bound on how many candidates the system can handle? I don't think there is, but if there is it would be better to find out sooner rather than later. RoySmith (talk) 16:35, 11 October 2024 (UTC)

I don't believe there is, but just noting that we are still far far away from the number of candidates in some past securepoll elections - the first U4C election, for example, had 37 candidates on the ballot. Unless we are approaching 50 or more, we probably don't have anything to worry about. -- Ajraddatz (talk) 16:44, 11 October 2024 (UTC)

@Novem Linguae: Many thanks for the effort to move this forward. Whatever the ultimate outcome, I am very pleased to see a good number of candidates and that some OG Wikipedians from as far back as 2006 have been moved to throw their hat into the ring. It all bodes well. Geoff | ^{Who, me?} 21:42, 13 October 2024 (UTC)

So, voting is anonomyous?

Is voting in this anonomyous to everyone except bureaucrats? Steel1943 (talk) 23:33, 11 October 2024 (UTC)

The list of who voted will be public, but no one will be able to tell who you voted for (including bureaucrats). Extraordinary Writ (talk) 23:36, 11 October 2024 (UTC)

Interesting... I like this. Steel1943 (talk) 14:51, 12 October 2024 (UTC)

One exception, in any unopposed RFAs the list of who voted will be a list of supporters. In the past this has been a non trivial proportion of RFAs. The same would apply in an unsupported RFA. I'm pretty sure we have never previously had an unsupported RFA that ran the full 7 days, but given the ballot is secret it would now be possible. ϢereSpielChequers 20:56, 12 October 2024 (UTC)

Only if they also had no abstains (i.e. their number of supports == the number of all voters). Same for the other categories (100% of all voters oppose or abstain on a candidate). — xaosflux ^Talk 01:04, 13 October 2024 (UTC)

Interesting point, I had been assuming there wasn't an option to abstain because of other comments about the percentage being support over Support plus oppose. But yes if secure poll gives that option as well and includes abstainers in the list of voters, then such RFAs will be rarer, but we've had unanimous RFAs under the normal system. ϢereSpielChequers 07:04, 13 October 2024 (UTC)

Yup, that's why they have to keep saying S/(S+O), not %S, because abstain is there. This same unlikely scenario applies to other common elections like ACE and boardvote. — xaosflux ^Talk 11:55, 13 October 2024 (UTC)

Voting choices and defaults

I think it will be set up as every candidate having 3 radio buttons: support, neutral, and oppose. All defaulting to neutral.

I imagine with this volume of candidates, we'll definitely get some voters that vote neutral for almost everyone, and cast a vote for a few of their friends or the ones they feel most strongly about. –Novem Linguae (talk) 15:26, 13 October 2024 (UTC)

I agree about the 3 radio buttons, but there was discussion at Wikipedia talk:Administrator elections/Archive 1#Voting options, that the default button should be "abstain", rather than "neutral". --Tryptofish (talk) 21:52, 13 October 2024 (UTC)

Sure, sounds good, we can do support/abstain/oppose. I wonder if there's a way to have no radio button selected by default? Maybe that would be better than having abstain selected by default. –Novem Linguae (talk) 22:23, 13 October 2024 (UTC)

I prefer the abstain option be present, both for clarity and so someone can recover from an accidental click, or if they change their mind. isaacl (talk) 01:21, 14 October 2024 (UTC)

I wonder if there's a way to have no radio button selected by default? They're telling me in the Phab ticket that this isn't possible, so abstain will indeed be the default. –Novem Linguae (talk) 04:06, 14 October 2024 (UTC)

I think there may have been a miscommunication in the phab ticket - jrbs has commented this morning to clarify: This is actually untrue, you can just leave no value as the default and it will force users to select an option for each candidate. Personally though I prefer having "abstain" being a pre-selected default, as it means those who only want to vote on particular candidates aren't encouraged to vote on candidates they don't have strong feelings on. BugGhost🦗👻 12:17, 14 October 2024 (UTC)

@Bugghost I'm not sure where you intended to link, but I don't think a comment by DreamRimmer 4 days ago is it? Thryduulf (talk) 20:06, 14 October 2024 (UTC)

Whoops - must have accidentally clicked a timestamp. Correct link to phabricator ticket comment. BugGhost🦗👻 20:54, 14 October 2024 (UTC)

Thinking about it more, even if all blank is available, I think having all abstain by default would be a good choice for this election with 30+ candidates. Then a voter that only wants to vote for one candidate and leave the rest abstain has a lot less clicking to do. I will have abstain be the default unless there are objections. –Novem Linguae (talk) 20:28, 14 October 2024 (UTC)

Agree, especially with so many candidates. Also, if anyone makes a mistake or changes their mind they can always fill out a replacement ballot. — xaosflux ^Talk 23:32, 14 October 2024 (UTC)

Bureaucrat flipping the bits

I'm assuming that at the end of the process when we have a list of candidates who have achieved 70%, we crats are expected to simply flip the bits for those successful candidates. This raises two issues for me. Are we still expected to stay detached from RFAs that we have voted in? And while it is unlikely, what happens if we have a successful candidate who no crat will flip the bits for? The last scenario is still a bit unlikely, but our crat numbers have now fallen to fifteen. I'm sure we won't have a crat shortage for this election, but if these elections continue and the RFB drought also continues, then there could come a time when we have an elected admin where all the active crats voted in their RFA. ϢereSpielChequers 09:50, 13 October 2024 (UTC)

Obviously such lofty considerations are way above my !pay grade, but FWIW, I would have thought that if success is defined in purely objective, binary terms only (did the candidate get 70% or more, yes or no?) without room for discretion, then mop-issuing becomes wholly nonelective, and it therefore shouldn't matter whether the crat handing out the mops has voted for the successful candidates or not. -- DoubleGrazing (talk) 10:16, 13 October 2024 (UTC)

IMO: since there's not really any crat discretion in this process, to the point where a closing bot could flip the bits, it's basically impossible to be WP:INVOLVED and I'd say it falls into the "straightforward cases" clause of that policy. The only reason I can think of that a candidate attaining 70%+ shouldn't be given the bit is due to election onomolies (like socking of voters, but that falls in the realm of the scrutineers and crats have no visibility on this), or socking of the admin candidate (but that falls into the realm of CU and ArbCom, and crats have no visibility into this either). ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 11:23, 13 October 2024 (UTC)

I think that ideally a non-participating 'crat should do this, but isn't strictly necessary. — xaosflux ^Talk 11:57, 13 October 2024 (UTC)

Maybe if we run out of crats, a steward could do it? RoySmith-Mobile (talk) 12:04, 13 October 2024 (UTC)

Technically possible, but would need a discussion. Ideally, when the election is done the election coordinator should just post a request at WP:BN asking to promote the winners. If a situation arose where all of the active 'crats actively recused then a steward would likely process the request. Assuming I'm available in the windows - I do plan on voting in this election - and also would not actively recuse (I'd passively recuse for a short time hoping that another 'crat came along). — xaosflux ^Talk 12:40, 13 October 2024 (UTC)

Voting in a SecurePoll election then receiving the results of it and being asked to flip bits seems like it could be a reasonable exception to WP:INVOLVED. Even if a bureaucrat is very biased towards or against certain candidates, there's no opportunity for this bias to present itself if they simply receive election results and then flip bits, right? There's no discretionary range and bureaucrat chat, there's no reading a 75.2% support RFA and deciding whether it should go to bureaucrat chat or be instantly promoted, etc. –Novem Linguae (talk) 15:31, 13 October 2024 (UTC)

Discretionary, not really - but could the community come together and contest the election, such that a consensus formed that the election was defective - I suppose. — xaosflux ^Talk 16:46, 13 October 2024 (UTC)

(ec) We've had a candidate in the past, long before I became a crat, where disqualifying info came out immediately after the RFA and they were hounded into a resignation. One of the downsides of this election system is that the questions are supposed to all come in the first three days, and there are a lot of people running simultaneously so the scrutiny of candidates is likely to be spread out. This increases the risk that anything serious might not emerge until late in the day, possibly even between close of poll and confirmation of results. So while there is no discretion for the crats to promote someone who fails to get 70%, there is the possibility of a candidate ending with over 70% but no crat being willing to flip the bit for them. ϢereSpielChequers 16:59, 13 October 2024 (UTC)

there is the possibility of a candidate ending with over 70% but no crat being willing to flip the bit for them. Maybe that's a reasonable safeguard to have. If a candidate is blocked for being an Icewhiz sock during the scrutineering phase, then of course I think we'd all want the bureaucrats to use discretion and not grant them sysop, even if they achieved >70% in the SecurePoll results. Seems like a good check and balance. –Novem Linguae (talk) 17:42, 13 October 2024 (UTC)

I disagree that we should be relying on bureaucrats to permanently refuse to grant such a candidate administrative privileges (either for the open-viewpoint RfA process or the arbitration election process). An arbitration case request should be filed. The community has not given bureaucrats discretion to override its consensus agreement. isaacl (talk) 00:10, 14 October 2024 (UTC)

That would be WP:Requests for adminship/FlyingToaster 2, Wikipedia:Bureaucrats'_noticeboard/Archive_15#Flying_Toaster_RfA. I have no idea why I know that despite it being seven years before my time, but I somehow do. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 00:27, 14 October 2024 (UTC)

Yeah, that was quite the shocker at the time, I filed my first RFA just before I became aware that the previous candidate was retiring under a cloud. It kinda killed my mood. I'm so old. Just Step Sideways ^{from this world ..... today} 22:48, 14 October 2024 (UTC)

The same issue can arise with the open-viewpoint RfA process, so I feel it's something the bureaucrats should incorporate into their working procedures. That being said, with the election process, the bureaucrat role is strictly ministerial, implementing the decision made by the community. So there's no concern about which bureaucrat assigns administrative privileges, as they aren't making a decision about whether or not to do so. isaacl (talk) 00:16, 14 October 2024 (UTC)

• I thought acting on an unequivocal yes-or-no decision already made by others was exactly why we have 'crats and is, like, their favorite thing? So, like, congratulations, really, you don't have to worry about making the wrong decision as there are no decisions for you to make. Just Step Sideways ^{from this world ..... today} 22:41, 14 October 2024 (UTC)

  To offer a more serious answer: If the scenario described by WSC were to arise, I can't see an outlet besides ArbCom that could handle it. Just Step Sideways ^{from this world ..... today} 22:50, 14 October 2024 (UTC)

If the candidate is blocked during scrutineering as an Icewhiz sock, then does it make any difference whether the sysop flag is flipped? Are they then a blocked administrator who is still blocked, or can they unblock themselves? If a reason is found, such as being an Icewhiz sock, why they should be blocked, will they be globally locked by stewards? I agree that no bureaucrat should flip the bit in that case, but does it matter? Robert McClenon (talk) 21:22, 15 October 2024 (UTC)

30 hours left in Call for Candidates phase

Hello friends. Just a friendly reminder that the Call for Candiates phase will be officially closing in around 30 hours. If you are planning to submit a candidacy and haven't done so yet, please do so soon.

Courtesy ping to folks that have created subpages and not listed them on the Call for Candidates page yet. @AntiDionysius, Dr vulpes, FOARP, Sohom Datta, The Squirrel Conspiracy, and Velella: Please add your subpages to the Call for Candidates page soon! I may automatically add these at some point after the Call for Candidates phase closes, but for now because of the comments in Wikipedia talk:Administrator elections#Nominations, it seems like a sensitive issue and I think the community wants you to control the timing of when you share your subpage. –Novem Linguae (talk) 17:54, 13 October 2024 (UTC)

I think we have enough candidates now... Just Step Sideways ^{from this world ..... today} 22:42, 14 October 2024 (UTC)

Amazing outcome in terms of people coming forward - hats off to the designers/creators of this process. Comprehensively solved the issue of getting people to go for RfA. Helpful where admins co-nom, and I hope they can still do that after the closing? Aszx5000 (talk) 00:55, 15 October 2024 (UTC)

Notifications

Will there be a mass message sent out to all eligible voters, similar to ArbCom elections? C F A 💬 19:59, 14 October 2024 (UTC)

No plans for that at this time. We are planning a watchlist message and T:CENT. We also did some posts to admin-ish and RFA-ish noticeboards/talk pages a couple times previously, but no further plans because I wanted to reduce the amount of WP:MMS spam. –Novem Linguae (talk) 20:11, 14 October 2024 (UTC)

I get avoiding spam as much as possible, but with nearly 40 candidates I think it's best to try to notify as many people as we can. This is the first time this process has ever happened — many less-active users will be completely unaware this is taking place unless they are actively checking their watchlists. Maybe it's too late to consider a mass message, but I'd argue this on par with (or maybe even more significant than) ArbCom elections. C F A 💬 23:33, 15 October 2024 (UTC)

An additional MMS would not be difficult. I can do that if desired. Anyone else want to weigh in before a final decision is made? Also do we want to MMS the start of the discussion phase, the start of the voting phase, or both? –Novem Linguae (talk) 00:16, 16 October 2024 (UTC)

Certainly start of discussion phase, or perhaps both. Espresso Addict (talk) 00:41, 16 October 2024 (UTC)

I support sending out a MMS at the start of discussion phase, due to the number of candidates. I would say having another one before the voting phase might be overkill (and could encourage people voting without reviewing candidates). BugGhost🦗👻 10:29, 16 October 2024 (UTC)

It will be covered in The Signpost News and notes, but of course not everybody reads it (just the cool kids). ☆ Bri (talk) 03:31, 15 October 2024 (UTC)

Remove the "Are additional RFCs required" section?

It comes off a bit defensive. This probably made sense in the lead-up to this election, but now that it's "clearly happening", should it be removed? The "After the trial, request for comment discussions will be held" sentence could be kept and moved elsewhere. Leijurv (talk) 20:10, 14 October 2024 (UTC)

@Leijurv:, Its still needed imo. Atleast changing the section title may be worth it but not removing the whole paragraph though. Cowboygilbert - (talk) ♥ 02:24, 15 October 2024 (UTC)

Adding a Link to an Essay?

I have a question. I was asked a question about my thoughts on incivility, and I answered, and then realized that my answers could be tweaked into an essay that may be linked to for voters to read, since dealing with incivility is an important consideration for administrators. My question is whether I can update my nominating statement to include a link to an essay on incivility, and, if so, can I do this now, or should I wait until the discussion period? If in the discussion period, can I do this by asking myself a question and answering it? Robert McClenon (talk) 19:25, 15 October 2024 (UTC)

Unless others object, I assume that candidate subpages are still considered drafts and not a live RFA-ish page until the discussion phase opens. So feel free to modify your nomination statement. –Novem Linguae (talk) 21:22, 15 October 2024 (UTC)

I agree with that. My understanding is that the intention has been that no more nominations will be made, but there is no restriction on candidates updating or correcting their existing nominations. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:21, 15 October 2024 (UTC)

I think we should probably encourage them to do so if they want. Some may wish to based on the discussions here, and those who threw their hats in the ring early would be at a disadvantage if we didn't allow it. Valereee (talk) 10:08, 16 October 2024 (UTC)

SecurePoll settings

Hello friends. Below is a draft of what I plan to post in Phabricator to ask WMF T&S to set up SecurePoll for us. If you have suggestions for things to change, or you have suggestions for settings to add to this list, or if you see an obvious error, please let me know in this talk page section. Will post this on Phab after a day or two. Thanks.

Current settings can be viewed at https://vote.wikimedia.org/wiki/SecurePoll:1691 and https://vote.wikimedia.org/wiki/SecurePoll:1691/msg/en

* Scrutineers
    * Johannnes89
	* EPIC
	* Yahya
* Candidates
	* Queen of Hearts
	* EggRoll97
	* SheriffIsInTown
	* Rsjaffe
	* Leonidlednev
	* Zippybonzo
	* Joseywales1961
	* MarcGarver
	* Iwaqarhashmi
	* NoobThreePointOh
	* ThadeusOfNazereth
	* SilverLocust
	* Ahecht
	* Hawkeye7
	* Sable232
	* Mdewman6
	* Starship.paint
	* Frost
	* The Squirrel Conspiracy
	* AntiDionysius
	* Dr vulpes
	* Valenciano
	* Sohom Datta
	* SWinxy
	* FOARP
	* LindsayH
	* Velella
	* Robert McClenon
	* SD0001
	* DoubleGrazing
	* Pbritti
	* Knightoftheswords281
	* Pharaoh of the Wizards
	* Bastun
	* Peaceray
	* Spy-cicle
* Poll type:
    * Range voting (histogram range)
* Poll radio buttons for each candidate:
	* Support
	* Abstain       <-- ticked by default
	* Oppose
* We will need the exact support count and the exact oppose count for each candidate. Whatever the best way to set that up is.
* Options
	* Shuffle candidates on the voting page = yes
    * Return-to URL: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrator_elections
    * Feedback link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Administrator_elections
* Poll dates:
	* Election Start Date: 2024-10-25 00:00:00 UTC
	* Election End Date: 2024-11-01 00:00:00 UTC
* Poll question:
	* Shall the following users be given administrator permissions on English Wikipedia?
* Eligible voter list:
	* [Cyberpower678 will generate for us. Will add link here.]

–Novem Linguae (talk) 22:54, 15 October 2024 (UTC)

2 other items to get ready. On the "entry link" you can link to something, suggest to the admin elections page; after the poll there is a "feedback" type link - that should prob be to this page. — xaosflux ^Talk 00:02, 16 October 2024 (UTC)

 Done. Added those two. Thanks for the ideas. –Novem Linguae (talk) 00:19, 16 October 2024 (UTC)

Notice not on watchlist

Moved from Wikipedia talk:Requests for adminship § Notice not on watchlist

 – Charlotte (Queen of Hearts • talk) 23:04, 15 October 2024 (UTC)

The notice, and link to the page, has now come off my watchlist (while that for the zzzzArbcom commission remains). Given I think we all agree that proper scrutiny will be a big problem here, that should be fixed. Johnbod (talk) 21:42, 15 October 2024 (UTC)

@Johnbod for the election? It is currently the fallow period, there is no call to action because there is nothing for the community to do right now, the timeline has a much abbreviated discussion period and questions aren't able to be entered until then. — xaosflux ^Talk 21:54, 15 October 2024 (UTC)

@Johnbod, Wikipedia:Administrator elections/October 2024/Detailed schedule says there will be watchlist notices for the call for candidates and discussion but not during the intermission. WT:AELECT is a better place to discuss this. Charlotte (Queen of Hearts • talk) 21:55, 15 October 2024 (UTC)

Could this perhaps be rethought? No-one can properly evaluate 37 candidates in a few days, and this is far more important than the usual watchlist material. Espresso Addict (talk) 22:58, 15 October 2024 (UTC)

Exactly! Johnbod (talk) 02:59, 16 October 2024 (UTC)

Changing things to account for the larger than expected number of candidates has been suggested multiple times (for various reasons) and as far as I can tell the rough consensus has consistently been that the timetable, etc cannot be changed because the precise details were agreed in an RFC. If the discussion period is extended (and there are arguments both for and against doing so) then absolutely the watchlist notice should be extended similarly, but I do not support a watchlist notice during the fallow period. Thryduulf (talk) 23:22, 15 October 2024 (UTC)

Changing the timetable now would indeed seem impossible, but I don't see the same prohibition for changing the way it is advertised; surely that was not discussed in detail in the RfC? And by the way, I've been commenting on Talk:RfA rather than here deliberately, so as to gain a wider audience. Espresso Addict (talk) 23:28, 15 October 2024 (UTC)

We need to let go of the notion that it's important for every voter to vet every admin candidate. Those who want to have like three weeks to do it. For everyone else, there's an "abstain" button. And for any who get through who shouldn't, there's undo, recall, and arbcom. We'll be fine. Levivich (talk) 23:30, 15 October 2024 (UTC)

I think it's far more likely there's the oppose button. Espresso Addict (talk) 23:31, 15 October 2024 (UTC)

Yes, if I don't think there has been proper scrutiny, I'm liable to Oppose them all, which would be a great pity. I'm sure I'm not the only one. Johnbod (talk) 02:59, 16 October 2024 (UTC)

• Agree vetting is time-consuming and we should help voters make a fair decision. Let's add the following: "People are invited to review candidates in preparation for the WP:administrator elections discussion period, which opens October 22." —Femke 🐦 (talk) 07:33, 16 October 2024 (UTC)

  Support this - for this to work with this quantity of candidates we need voters to review candidates before the discussion phase. BugGhost🦗👻 10:01, 16 October 2024 (UTC)

Transclusions

Regarding this edit (and the subsequent modification): I guess it's OK for Wikipedia:Administrator elections/October 2024/Call for candidates to be transcluded elsewhere, but it feels like one more thing to remember to keep working. Perhaps another approach can be followed, such as section transclusion? isaacl (talk) 03:47, 16 October 2024 (UTC)

I think the idea behind the edit was to have a {{RFX_report}} style transcluded report that folks could add to their user-page/user-subpages. (see #User:Cyberpower678/RfX_Report above). My initial edit was a minimal effort way of making it work, we could definitely go for making it a seperate template and use section transclusion if it is easier to maintain. Sohom (talk) 10:39, 16 October 2024 (UTC)