Wikipedia talk:Administrator elections

Suggest isolating implementation notes

I suggest isolating all implementation notes on setting up the process to one section. This would include things like "Will there be another RfC before implementing this?", portions of "To do list" (some of it can transition to a "how to setup and run the election" section), and "How many Administrator Elections will be held?" (at least in its current form, which is focused on the current RfC in process and the potential for future RfCs). That way the rest of the page can be written as a process description, and the implementation notes can be easily archived once implementation is complete. Alternatively, the implementation notes can be moved now to this talk page or a subpage. isaacl (talk) 21:31, 19 March 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for your feedback. I was thinking I'd just delete implementation notes as things were implemented and things became clearer, eventually leaving us with a normal-looking Wikipedia process page as all details are ironed out. –Novem Linguae (talk) 23:04, 27 March 2024 (UTC)

Right now it kind of reads like a stream of consciousness. If most people prefer it that way, so be it. isaacl (talk) 00:40, 28 March 2024 (UTC)

• I have moved the implementation notes to this talk page (with a section for discussions so we can keep "implementation overview" and "discusions about implementation" separate). Soni (talk) 10:52, 15 April 2024 (UTC)

Consultation with WMF

Hey JSutherland (WMF). How are you? I hope you're having a great week.

It's looking like enwiki is interested in starting a process similar to WP:ACE where they elect administrators via SecurePoll twice a year. Are you the correct person to contact about this, and if not can you help direct me to the correct person?

Some questions that would inform our decisions going forward:

• Is WMF willing to set up admin elections for us via mw:Extension:SecurePoll software at a cadence of twice a year (once every 6 months)?
• What is the most laborious part of the SecurePoll process on the WMF side? How can we help streamline the process / reduce the workload of whichever WMF person assists us?
• Right now we plan to copy the ACE suffrage requirements. Does this make the list of eligible voters difficult to generate? If so, are there any suffrage requirement bullets we can delete to make generating these lists easier?
• Right now we are unsure how we will handle scrutineering. If we copy ACE, we may burden the stewards and encounter the same delays that ACE does. What are your thoughts on this? Why is ACE scrutineered so heavily, and is it really necessary to checkuser everyone that votes? What's a happy medium between lowering workload and keeping the election secure?

Thank you for your time. Looking forward to your feedback. –Novem Linguae (talk) 23:02, 27 March 2024 (UTC)

Hi there, unfortunately I'm going on a two-month sabbatical starting next week, but I did speak with others from enwiki about this and let them know this was probably possible. Especially if phab:T209892 is fixed, which would potentially allow enwiki to run the election locally themselves.

The most laborious part of the SecurePoll process on the WMF side is traditionally the translation (not an issue for English Wikipedia) and the voter list generation, which also is not really an issue. For ACE that's done through Cyberpower678's script usually and I assume it'll be a similar process. I would probably work with him on that since he has the most experience putting that together.

As for scrutiny, I think that's up to you. Scrutineers can see that data immediately (for which I filed phab:T35644). I don't think you can turn that off, but I'm not sure about that.

Anyway, since I'm about to leave for two months I think the best thing to do here would be to send this via email to ca@wikimedia.org where one of my colleagues can respond more fully. Joe Sutherland (WMF) (talk) 00:41, 29 March 2024 (UTC)

I've got a fair bit of experience on SecurePoll given my tenure as an ACE Electcom member. I'm more than happy to serve as a medium between SecurePoll and enwiki admin elections until a better process can be set up. —CYBERPOWER (Around) 00:46, 29 March 2024 (UTC)

Awesome. Thank you for offering to help, @Cyberpower678. Just to double check, are voter lists using the ACE suffrage requirements a pain for your script to generate, or is it a non issue? –Novem Linguae (talk) 01:30, 29 March 2024 (UTC)

It’s a somewhat computationally expensive process that can take up to 3 hours to generate, but it’s pretty much optimized as much as could be and usually gets a list produced in about 45 minutes. I just run it and wait. —CYBERPOWER (Message) 02:11, 29 March 2024 (UTC)

I assume phab:T35644 is a typo and should be phab:T356442. –Novem Linguae (talk) 00:56, 29 March 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for these initial thoughts Joe. Very helpful. I'll email ca@wikimedia.org as suggested to get a conversation started. Enjoy your sabbatical. –Novem Linguae (talk) 01:31, 29 March 2024 (UTC)

• Notes from ACE: manual electoral roll creation using bespoke parameters should not have a bus factor of 1, and needs an ongoing process for managing overrides. The first could be resolved if WMF will commit staff to the process. — xaosflux ^Talk 17:19, 29 March 2024 (UTC)`

  The community can help maintain continuity by documenting the steps on a project page, including any scripts used (or links to the corresponding code repositories). Then the person generating the list can be staffed either from the community or the WMF. Community members can practise the process and double-check their results against each other. isaacl (talk) 23:16, 29 March 2024 (UTC)

  A recurring problem we run in to is surely someone else will do this thing that blocks other people from doing something - we see it all the time such as OMG BOT-X ISNT RUNNING!!! or OMG SOMEONES LABS PROJECT IS DOWN!!!. Even "here is a procedure to do this thing" (however it is a thing that 99% of people don't have the capability to actually do) is a poor solution for any critical process. Having dealt with ACE for years, manual electoral roll generation is complicated, poorly accessible to general volunteers, and error prone. — xaosflux ^Talk 10:30, 30 March 2024 (UTC)

  I totally agree that having a written procedure is no guarantee for something getting done. (I've completely documented some procedures and yet found no takers for doing them. In this case, there is a higher level of technical adeptness and setup that is needed, which is why I did discuss the need for any potential volunteers to practise ahead of time.) But it seems to me that it's a basic starting point for finding volunteers. I agree in the longer term it would be beneficial to move to criteria that can be validated by SecurePoll automatically. In the immediate term, though, I think the community would appreciate a process that it can execute on its own, without relying on the WMF approving the allocation of staff time. isaacl (talk) 15:50, 30 March 2024 (UTC)

  It was only error prone in the first few years, and mainly due to bugs resulting from policy change implementations. We haven't had any in recent years and no errors were produced in the lists as a result. Unless I'm mistaken, we didn't need to make any overrides this year in ACE. The script I use is simple enough to convert to a bot job that users can submit to be run. —CYBERPOWER (Happy Easter) 02:39, 31 March 2024 (UTC)

  @Cyberpower678 more and more layers of abstraction--- requiring a bot, that is relies on a dump process, that relies on hosting infrastructure (that is not high-priority for support) is what is lacking in reliability. My primary argument for repeatable processes is to not have to rely on all those layers. For example, if you stop volunteering tomorrow having User:SomeRandomEditorWhoWantsToHelp just step right in is far from an accessible process. — xaosflux ^Talk 17:03, 31 March 2024 (UTC)

  To be fair, if I stop volunteering, I would announce it in advance to make sure somebody else can assume the tasks that many rely on before I go away. —CYBERPOWER (Happy Easter) 17:07, 31 March 2024 (UTC)

  It's called a "bus factor" for a reason :D — xaosflux ^Talk 14:32, 16 April 2024 (UTC)

• One of my friends has told me off-wiki that I'm moving too fast on this, and should wait for the formal close of Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/2024 review/Phase I#Proposal 13: Admin elections. I apologize for moving too fast. I will try not to edit this page again until we have a formal close of proposal 13. I don't want the community to feel like I am pushing this through without consensus. –Novem Linguae (talk) 21:18, 29 March 2024 (UTC)

  I don't think you've done anything wrong. It's blatantly obvious that there's a consensus there and it's a week overdue a close. I suspect there just aren't so that potential closers that haven't participated in one way or another. Anyway, it never hurts to plan. – Joe (talk) 06:30, 30 March 2024 (UTC)

  It certainly looks like "elections" are going to be approved - and the mechanics of using Securepoll requires lots of planning - so it's not a bad idea to start talking about this! (The ACE elections run for months from start up to shut down -- though a good month is rule-change-rfc, but the coordinators are working on parts of it throughout). — xaosflux ^Talk 10:34, 30 March 2024 (UTC)

  I do wonder if a special UI can be made to let approved users on enwiki, push a button and an election admin bot on SecurePoll prepares a new poll automatically. It would then segregate the technical stuff from the procedural stuff and insulate these users from seeing checkuser data when the polls open. Once again, happy to volunteer some time into developing something, if other users want to join in on the work as well. —CYBERPOWER (Happy Easter) 02:43, 31 March 2024 (UTC)

  The things that likely need to be solved there are (a) The privacy stuff that has been argued about for years, (b) details about the private key management process. Fixing those is well beyond the scope of enwiki-specifics. — xaosflux ^Talk 17:05, 31 March 2024 (UTC)

Second email to WMF

I think Joe Sutherland answered most of the questions in the above section, so that's great. Here are the follow up questions I will be asking Trust & Safety.

• Is T&S willing to set up one enwiki admin election for us using SecurePoll software?
• Who will be our point of contact on the T&S team while Joe is out of office?
• Keeping in mind that we want it to run for a week, what dates / date ranges fit into the T&S calendar for running the elections? We can work with the T&S schedule to find a good date for the election.
• Any other configuration you need from us besides the eligible voters list?

Thanks a lot. Looking forward to your feedback. –Novem Linguae (talk) 08:41, 15 April 2024 (UTC)

I sent another email to WMF T&S today to hopefully remind them about this. –Novem Linguae (talk) 04:10, 30 April 2024 (UTC)

Any response from the WMF Novem Linguae? ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 12:01, 16 May 2024 (UTC)

They replied last time saying they were working on a response. I emailed them again yesterday. Will keep emailing them every 2 weeks. I predict things might be slow until @JSutherland (WMF) returns from sabbatical. Sounds like he's the SecurePoll guru. –Novem Linguae (talk) 12:21, 16 May 2024 (UTC)

I believe the arbitration committee meets regularly with the trust and safety team, though I can't recall the frequency. Would they be willing to provide a nudge to the WMF to try to move things along? isaacl (talk) 15:59, 16 May 2024 (UTC)

Good idea. I left a message at Wikipedia talk:Arbitration Committee#Mentioning administrator elections to your WMF contact in your monthly meeting. –Novem Linguae (talk) 01:53, 17 May 2024 (UTC)

• As I've mentioned in response to Novem Linguae's message on the page mentioned above, there is limited staffing resource, and an unusual number of global elections that are going to be happening between now and mid-September, all of which have been on the SecurePoll schedule for at least 10 months, so the few individuals in a position to advise and support are pretty tied up. My impression is that this hasn't been well-communicated to those who are spearheading this project (and thank you very much for taking the lead on it). In the paragraphs and sections above, I see several issues that could probably be addressed in the interim, some of which are pretty critical to the success of this project. Ensuring that there are multiple people who are familiar with and comfortable with writing and modifying the script that creates the voter list should probably be a high priority; it is a task that has to be regularly repeatable, so ensuring there are at least 3-4 people with the requisite skill is critical to the longterm success of this experiment. Xaosflux is absolutely correct that this task should not have a bus factor of 1. This may also be something that Enwiki folks may want to do some outreach on, as I know we aren't the only project considering SecurePoll for admin elections; in fact, I think Farsi and Chinese Wikipedias have already used it, and there should be some specific experience there. I will throw in a plug here for contemporaneous scrutineering of votes; having done scrutineering both at the end of the vote, and contemporaneous to the vote, the latter was much more effective and we were able to produce results within 48 hours of the close of voting, as most issues had already been addressed. (It is actually quite endearing to find out there are so many "Wikipedia couples" out there.) I'd also suggest we start building a profile for home-grown scrutineering of local SecurePoll instances, because as the use of SecurePoll increases across projects, stewards will probably become less available to do this work. It would be unfortunate for this initiative to be derailed by the lack of availability of stewards as scrutineers. Perhaps in the alternative, CheckUsers from other projects might be a possibility. Risker (talk) 05:51, 17 May 2024 (UTC)

  Are there any instructions on how to run the "Script that creates the voter list"? That seems to be the easiest and most critical thing to get sorted Soni (talk) 07:47, 17 May 2024 (UTC)

  Someone could ask Cyberpower to write a work instructions and/or share source code. If it's a problem that needs solving. From what I hear, Cyberpower has done a great job with this for the WP:ACE elections.

  Another way to eliminate that bus factor would be to simplify the voter suffrage requirements to extendedconfirmed and not blocked, which would be trivial to generate a list for and could easily be done on WP:QUARRY by myself or others. We can think about RFCing that after the trial, if folks are interested.

  I'm actually more interested in the scrutineering part of Risker's comment. Sounds like "contemporaneous scrutineering" could make scrutineering much more efficient, and hopefully avoid the weeks of delay that sometimes occurs with WP:ACE scrutineering. –Novem Linguae (talk) 08:00, 17 May 2024 (UTC)

  I was a strong advocate on the earlier phase for not using whitelists here (simplifying the suffrage requirements); it eliminates a lot of technical debt to the community. — xaosflux ^Talk 09:34, 17 May 2024 (UTC)

Scrutineering

The RFC has closed with a consensus to do one trial, without a requirement for further pre-trial RFCs. So talk page consensus regarding any unclear details should probably be sufficient.

It seems to me the last major detail left to work out is how scrutineering will work.

• Anyone have any suggestions for this? I know WP:ACE has 3 stewards do the scrutineering, but this can be a cause of major delays and also of workload for the stewards. Some alternative options to explore might be to have enwiki checkusers do the scrutineering, or to have less thorough scrutineering (maybe only newer users or suspicious users) or no scrutineering.
• By the way, how exactly does scrutineering work anyway? According to phab:T356442, it does look like some kind of checkuser tool is built into SecurePoll. Does this tool show the exact same data as Special:CheckUser, or less data?

–Novem Linguae (talk) 08:28, 15 April 2024 (UTC)

@Novem Linguae it is very similar to a checkuser output on a user; the securepoll scrutineering step basically provides all of the client information (username, IP address, user agent data) for every single vote entry. (File:SecurePollSample-2019-11-26.PNG is a decent example). — xaosflux ^Talk 14:43, 16 April 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for that info. I hope the workflow isn't to click on hundreds of those vote details individually as that seems inefficient. Is there some kind of tool built into SecurePoll that gives a report on votes with duplicate IPs? –Novem Linguae (talk) 20:13, 16 April 2024 (UTC)

Todo list

• Figure out what role bureaucrats will play in the process.
• Make a post at meta:SN asking the stewards if they'd be willing to scrutineer. Give them at least 30 days notice.
• Reach out to WMF Trust & Safety to get confirmation that they are willing to set up SecurePoll for this, and to receive dates that are convenient for them.  Doing... [This is the main blocker. Once WMF T&S gives us some proposed dates and we pick a date, I think everything else will fall into place. A set-in-stone calendar date will create a lot of motivation to work out the final details.]
• Once WMF agrees and sends their convenient dates, set a date. More specifically...
  • last day to sign up
  • day that discussion closes, day that SecurePoll opens (+3 days)
  • day that SecurePoll closes (+10 days)
• MMS everyone on the MMS list at Wikipedia:Administrator elections/Newsletter list with the election date
• Create subpages for each candidate's questions and answers. Probably just copy the RFA process. Have nomination statements, then optional questions and answers. Maximum two questions per !voter?
• Watchlist notice
• Do it!

Areas that may need more discussion, perhaps post-election:

• Is 3 days too short for pre-vote discussion?
• Keep using stewards for SecurePoll scrutineering?
• Should the suffrage requirements be changed to better match RFA's extended confirmed requirement? Currently admin election suffrage requirements do not require extended confirmed.
• RFC to see if the community wants to approve this open-endedly, and how often.

If renewed indefinitely:

• Mention this in the policy WP:ADMIN

Discussion of Todo List

• For candidate pages, how about creating the equivalent of an RfA page for each candidate, just without any support/opppose/neutral sections (e.g. something like this mockup)? Because we aren't filling any positions, the cross-comparison candidate statement and question pages from ACE probably aren't needed, and we could just a central election page with each candidate's subpage linked. Borrowing question limits, candidate eligibility, and crat clerking from RfA is also likely to be the least controversial way forward – for this first election, I would think the more we can reuse from RfA procedure, the better. Giraffer (talk) 16:00, 16 April 2024 (UTC)

  That makes sense, yeah :). —Femke 🐦 (talk) 19:22, 23 April 2024 (UTC)

Hashing out details

@Novem Linguae (cc @Sirdog) re [1], I see where you're coming from with making judgement calls on implementations, but I interpreted the close as meaning that there was consensus to run the election on the timeline specified in the proposal, and also that it did not preclude sorting out other final details (e.g. page structures, scrutineering, crat involvement) through Phase II. I'm probably being overly cautious, but I worry slightly about making decisions about important things like scrutineering without consensus, and whether it would be better to have a supplemental RfC in Phase II establishing a few additional important details (but not altering anything from Phase I, per the close). Thanks, Giraffer (talk) 17:56, 15 April 2024 (UTC)

Howdy! I'm reading the close a bit differently. To me it seems the timeline is run trial election first -> tweak with additional RFCs second. The text I'm looking at is The community supports trying this proposal for 1 election, after which it will be reviewed in Phase II (note the order of the two events), and there is sufficient support to run the election as written.

A pre-election RFC or two may still happen organically as we discuss more on this talk page, but in my opinion pre-trial RFCs are not required by this close. Hope that sounds reasonable. –Novem Linguae (talk) 10:57, 16 April 2024 (UTC)

Yep, I agree that a pre-trial RfC isn't required, but were there to be any details not covered by the initial RfC which get disputed, I think it wouldn't hurt to have one to clarify. Giraffer (talk) 15:29, 16 April 2024 (UTC)

Some things to iron out:

• Is there a volunteer ready to build the electoral rolls using the bespoke criteria? (The electoral roll is an explicit whitelist of voters) - C678 possibly (this will be a critical blocker/failure step)
• Who will be authorized to resolve discrepancies in the electoral roll ("Overrides")? - (As there is no "electoral commission" - perhaps any crat?)
• Especially if this is for one election, with plenty of notice, getting steward scrutineers shouldn't be a problem - just ask over at meta:SN, have the date and number of volunteers needed ready for the request. (Ideally, 30 days lead time+).

— xaosflux ^Talk 14:39, 16 April 2024 (UTC)

Nominally, absent any further refinement of the process, the proposal specified that bureaucrats would manage the process, so yes, they would be authorized to make any decisions about the election. isaacl (talk) 22:19, 16 April 2024 (UTC)

Regarding bullet #1, @Cyberpower678 sounded willing above. I'm more than happy to serve as a medium between SecurePoll and enwiki admin elections until a better process can be set up. If that ever needs to be handed off, I'd be willing to learn the process and software needed for it, hopefully under C678's tutelage. –Novem Linguae (talk) 11:19, 17 April 2024 (UTC)

Voting options

As Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/2021 review/Proposals/Admin elections didn't specify the voting options, if there is an "abstain from voting on this candidate" option provided, I suggest that it be labeled "Abstain", rather than "Neutral" as in the arbitration committee elections. This would more accurately reflect the effect of that choice. isaacl (talk) 22:17, 16 April 2024 (UTC)

Suffrage rules

So the suffrage rules at ACE and the repeated version at Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/2021 review/Proposals/Admin elections is apparently a bit different, as Cryptic noted at this diff.

Since the intent was to use an already existing election criterion for simplicity, I suggest we keep to ACE criterion as they currently are, than the version we copied in the proposal. Still, it probably needs to be at least discussed. Soni (talk) 10:46, 17 April 2024 (UTC)

I like the idea of using the ACE suffrage criteria exactly. This would make the workflow more efficient for the editor that will generate the suffrage requirements, since they won't need to change any of the requirements compared to ACE. –Novem Linguae (talk) 11:16, 17 April 2024 (UTC)

I agree that the wording in the proposal on the Phase 1 page takes precedence over the list of criteria on the 2021 proposal page. isaacl (talk) 16:23, 17 April 2024 (UTC)

Page protection

In WP:ADE#Period 2: voting would it be a good idea to add this (in green/blue)?

During this period, discussion is closed, and the page will be full protected.

That way, it would help prevent unwanted discussion from continuing. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:51, 15 May 2024 (UTC)

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)

Role of bureaucrats to manage process

The proposal for admin elections referred to Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/2021 review/Proposals/Admin elections for details, which said The process would be managed by the bureaucrats, initially in concert with the WMF to set up SecurePoll. Thus I will leave a note at Wikipedia talk:Bureaucrats pointing to this discussion and asking if there are any volunteers who are able to manage the trial run. I imagine Xaosflux is already interested in being involved. (Longer term, it might be good to allow the role to be delegated, but that discussion can be deferred.) isaacl (talk) 21:56, 16 April 2024 (UTC)

I plan to be mostly in an advisory capacity for this one. — xaosflux ^Talk 22:15, 16 April 2024 (UTC)

In that case, there's an obvious gap in volunteers... I encourage any interested bureaucrats to volunteer to help out – the community will greatly appreciate it! isaacl (talk) 22:21, 16 April 2024 (UTC)

Can you please post your message at WP:BN instead? Wikipedia talk:Bureaucrats is just for discussing edits to the page Wikipedia:Bureaucrats, I think. –Novem Linguae (talk) 00:02, 17 April 2024 (UTC)

Message has been posted at the Bureaucrats' noticeboard; I apologize to any page watchers for the duplication. isaacl (talk) 00:24, 17 April 2024 (UTC)

Thanks Isaacl. I'll read up on this and see how I might best be of assistance. 28bytes (talk) 01:46, 17 April 2024 (UTC)

I'm coming here as per the noticeboard notice. I'm not attempting to put a damper on anything, but a few current and/or previous hats privy me to more concerns than most about this. It appears that there has been WMF consultation above - which I did not see before writing a length of this but will attempt to incorporate. SecurePoll is a very difficult piece of software to work with in the fact that:

1. SecurePoll can only be ran in one language at a time. If we are running ArbCom elections at an off time because of this, we are then taking the tool 3 times a year. We have to work around other language projects that also wish to use it for their community, and this could create conflict of not being able to run elections at the same time. (Potentially addressed above - but not in any clarity)
2. SecurePoll by default has a scrutineering role to ensure vote validity because of the closed nature of this.

   Are people willing to give up their data (IP, UA, and CH) to reviewing scrutineers without any justification other than they voted in the election? (I could go on with concerns here, but I'm NDA bound)

   Who are you going to use to scrutinize the vote? Are those people going to have to not vote in order to fulfill that role?

   How long will be afforded for scrutinizing the vote?

   Has the issue of sock puppeting to vote been addressed and whether the votes of the master will struck been discussed since this is a closed vote? - This is not outlined in ACE, and stewards make assumptions about this, which a lot in the community have opinions about.

3. Are bureaucrats to now become essentially the election commission and what role are we supposed to play?
4. This is all the concerns I could generate quickly in an hour...there are likely more.

Like I don't have a problem with the community approval of this process, but as was cited by @Theleekycauldron: here, there could be (and are) concerns here on the implementation side that the community should get input on. 4/94 supporters commented on "2021" in the support column, so I'm honestly not sure how the consensus came out that 2021's implementation came out as consensus (unless we are just pulling an absence consensus) as the roadmap - such as us choosing software other than securepoll, created or otherwise. (Courtesy ping @Sirdog:) I also went to look at what kind of timeline we have for this before phase II, but couldn't find one. I guess that works in the favor of us figuring it out, but leaves a gaping hole as to the implementation side of this policy-only proposal. I'm just not sure how the proposer's (Courtesy ping @Novem Linguae:) comment of in my opinion this proposal contains plenty of detail and could be implemented quickly after this RFC closes. In fact I would prefer it skip RFA2024 phase 2 is viable and how absence consensus requested by the proposer made it's way into the close without discussion on a policy only proposal. -- Amanda (she/her) 06:59, 17 April 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for the detailed reply.

I'm honestly not sure how the consensus came out that 2021's implementation came out as consensus. The 2024 proposal (RFC opening statement) is an exact, word-for-word copy of the 2021 proposal, and both RFC opening statements contain Further explanation is at Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/2021 review/Proposals/Admin elections, which is a link to the implementation details. If your thought is that folks didn't know they were supporting the "2021 version" during the 2024 RFC, I feel confident that they did know.

Also, may I ask what is an absence consensus? I see that mentioned twice but I am not familiar with the concept.

Will give the rest of your message some additional thought. Thank you for sharing your concerns. –Novem Linguae (talk) 07:11, 17 April 2024 (UTC)

Novem Linguae, I assume an absence consensus is WP:SILENCE. — Qwerfjkltalk 13:22, 17 April 2024 (UTC)

As per this comment in 2021, the SecurePoll votewiki server is capable of holding multiple elections at the same time in multiple languages, with a limitation that the languages have to have the same writing direction (left-to-right or right-to-left). Phabricator ticket T301180 is tracking a request to enable SecurePoll to be run on local wikis, which if implemented would avoid any contention. (Progress is currently blocked by a need to upgrade SecurePoll to use a newer version of GPG.) For a single trial run, or even a twice-a-year cadence as stated in the proposal, I think it should be manageable. Scrutineering is something that needs further discussion for a more permanent implementation. However for a single trial, as Xaosflux suggests, it may be feasible to request volunteers from stewards.

Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee Election/Rules was revised in 2022 to specify that votes from sockmasters are discarded.

Regarding the role of bureaucrats in admin elections, that's up to (the collective) you to decide and is why I started this discussion. You could assume responsibility for all tasks related to setting up and managing the vote, you could delegate responsibility to the community in some manner, or something in between. If there aren't enough bureaucrats who feel comfortable with volunteering to perform this new duty, then it might be necessary to recruit new candidates to request bureaucrat privileges. isaacl (talk) 09:07, 17 April 2024 (UTC)

Thank you for the ping, Amanda, and for providing your perspective.

One of the most difficult things in closing proposal 13 was balancing what I believed was the community's consensus against what I knew, with my closer hat off, would be pragmatic barriers - such as the questions being asked now. In the end it is my interpretation that the community was satisfied with the proposal as written given that a trial run is performed, which also had sufficient consensus. If a trial run had not achieved consensus, I would have likely found that Phase II was needed before any attempts so the community could polish it more. The details of what needs to be known to attempt a trial I left at the feet of the volunteers/community, as I do not believe the discussion gave me any remit to determine them, nor do I think the consensus leaned on requiring a formal Phase II RfC before making an attempt.

It's also worth noting that Phase II is not being bypassed, as it exists to both iron out details and hold the RfC's of evaluating trial runs, only that it's not being used to iron out details in this particular proposal. As correctly interpreted in the above section, my close does not prohibit further pre-trial RfC's being made if it's found by volunteers that such a consensus is needed for specific details, only that it's my interpretation that the community is not requiring it. —Sirdog (talk) 10:12, 17 April 2024 (UTC)

I shared a similar concern above, and ideally I would like to have an RfC to sort out any major unresolved points about the implementation (while recognizing the consensus in Phase 1 for certain details). I don't see what the rush is to hold elections without more consensus for the implementation, even if it isn't required by the close – getting consensus for more implementation details is only going to make the process more robust.

The timeline for Phase II isn't explicit, but I struggle to see how a full election could be run in time for RfCs to be opened at RFA2024. If Phase II opens in five days and accepts proposals for three weeks (Phase I was only 18 days), that would mean all proposals would need to be submitted by May 13th, or in 26 days; aka the election would need to be finished by then, and would need to start in, at the latest, 16 days. Giraffer (talk) 15:23, 17 April 2024 (UTC)

The timeline for Phase II isn't explicit, but I struggle to see how a full election could be run in time for RfCs to be opened at RFA2024 - Hmm, that's a good point. If needed, I would not have issue adjusting my wording to reflect that the "how does community like this" review can happen as an RfC at some point in the future, rather than in RFA2024. Joe Roe opted for that in proposal 3b, and it may have been better for me to have done so in the first place. —Sirdog (talk) 15:50, 17 April 2024 (UTC)

To paraphrase a quotation, the phases of an RfC are made for the community, and not vice-versa... We should not be locked into holding a phase 2 for all proposals simultaneously, as each can have their own appropriate timeline. For instance, a request for comments discussion for the proposal on initiating a recall RfA can proceed now, to work out the implementation, while a discussion to review the outcome of a trial for administrator elections can take place whenever the trial is completed. Logistically, in any case, having the discussions at separate times would allow the community to spread out their time commitment to these discussions. isaacl (talk) 16:13, 17 April 2024 (UTC)

Agreed – it looks like only proposals 16 and 13 are going to Phase II anyway, and they don't need to be at the same time. theleekycauldron (talk • she/her) 17:38, 18 April 2024 (UTC)

I'm happy to help, but have very limited capacity due to RL work and other pressures, until early May. If that's not a bar, please do lmk. --Dweller (talk) Old fashioned is the new thing! 11:39, 17 April 2024 (UTC)

• I know some interactions with the WMF require self-identification and/or signing the confidentiality agreement for non-public information. Does any portion of SecurePoll (setting up, using, scrutinizing, etc) require doing that or can we still maintain our anonymity while assisting in managing this process? Useight (talk) 14:17, 17 April 2024 (UTC)

  As I understand it, scrutinising involves evaluating checkuser-like data so that absolutely will require signing the access to non-public data policy. Testing the scruitineering portion will, I presume, also require this. If by "using" you mean "voting" then that doesn't require anything other than a connected account. I don't know what is involved with setting up, but I suspect that the person or people nominated to have overall responsibility for the instance to be limited to people the relevant WMF department trusts and that might be limited to those who are prepared to share their real-life identity with them. Thryduulf (talk) 14:52, 17 April 2024 (UTC)

  Thanks. For "using", I just left that open-ended for anything managerial that happens (if anything) between opening and closing the poll. Useight (talk) 16:12, 17 April 2024 (UTC)

  "Secure poll administrator" is the name of the roll for the people who can manage the poll between opening and closing. I know they can manually add and remove people from the electoral roll mid-election if that's necessary (e.g. at one arbcom election it was discovered part way through that people with a partial block that expired after the close of the election were excluded from voting when they should not have been). The SecurePoll documentation states that Admins of a particular poll can see a list of voters, along with private information that may help to identify duplicate voters (e.g. IP addresses, user agent information, shared cookies). Thryduulf (talk) 17:33, 17 April 2024 (UTC)

  I suspect the only folks that would need to disclose are folks that would be viewing checkuser-like data. That would basically only be the scrutineers, and the T&S staff member that sets up SecurePoll for us. I think the proposal as written when it talked about the bureaucrats was envisioning them as serving more in the role of an electoral commission like the electoral commission in WP:ACE, and also as moderators of the candidate pages (like how bureaucrats kind of do for RFA). That's my take on it anyway. The proposal left this kind of ambiguous and I'm sure we can crystallize the bureaucrat's role in admin elections as we talk it out more. –Novem Linguae (talk) 21:46, 17 April 2024 (UTC)

  I don't think "managing" means doing every single task, but making sure all the necessary tasks are done. For the arbitration committee election, this is done by volunteers. The electoral commission was originally created for the sole purpose of making decisions that due to timeline constraints would be difficult to decide by community consensus. Over time this has morphed into a community expectation that the commissioners help co-ordinate the election, but the work continues to be done by anyone who volunteers to help out (some of these being the same long-time volunteers, whether or not they've also been selected as commissioners in a given election).

  So for the administrator elections process, it's up to the bureaucrats to decide what degree of involvement they would like to have, and how much they might delegate, while still ensuring that that everything that needs to be done is completed. I realize this is a new role that wasn't part of the previous job description. The community would greatly appreciate anyone volunteering to manage the process. isaacl (talk) 22:14, 17 April 2024 (UTC)

• Do we know when this election will take place? Depending on the dates I may be able to help, but there are also times this year when I'm going to be too busy. ϢereSpielChequers 22:18, 17 April 2024 (UTC)

  As there is no fixed timeline for having a trial, I think it can be looked at from an availability perspective: what is the earliest period when there is a suitable number of interested bureaucrats available to help develop an initial process and carry it out? As discussed in other sections, this will also require lining up WMF technical support and scrutineers for the required points of the process. isaacl (talk) 22:34, 17 April 2024 (UTC)

  We should have more clarity on the election date when WMF Trust & Safety responds with what months are convenient for them, since we are dependent on them to set up the SecurePoll software for us. Personally I'd like to see the admin elections happen sometime around July. I suspect 3 months is enough time to get details worked out and get key groups in alignment. –Novem Linguae (talk) 00:06, 18 April 2024 (UTC)

  I'm assuming that Bureaucrats will be needed for more than the week of the election, especially the few days immediately afterwards, though it may not need to be the same bureaucrats throughout the process. As there are now only 17 of us, and there hasn't been a new crat for nearly two years, the next couple of months would be a good time for an RFB or two if anyone is considering running. ϢereSpielChequers 07:36, 18 April 2024 (UTC)

  I feel some upfront time is needed to work out what role the bureaucrats want to undertake. The degree of further involvement will depend on what's decided. The most hands-off approach I can think of would be to delegate all decisions to the community to resolve by consensus, while remaining a venue of appeal for anyone challenging the decisions. A more hands-on approach would be for one or more bureaucrats to develop a list of checklist of items to be completed, and ensure someone is signed up to complete each one. There are of course many other variations that could be considered. I know no one's allocated time for this work; just two months ago, it wasn't on anyone's radar. So a decision made now for the trial run could be an ad hoc one, leaving open the option for a different approach in any future iterations, should they occur. isaacl (talk) 16:12, 18 April 2024 (UTC)

  A potentially valuable consideration may be how long is needed to get possible candidates interested and willing to run in the cycle. The trial lasts for one election period, and if too few (passing) editors are willing to run, likely the trial and entire process will be deemed a failure, based on n=1, which would be a shame.

  Note also the fact that the last WP:RFA was over two months ago. Perhaps it's worth asking frequent nominators of RfA candidates (eg @Barkeep49 and Ritchie333 from recollection, perhaps others these days) if either they have candidates in their pipeline who are interested to use the procedure, or if they think a date of (say) July would be timely enough to attract interested editors to run? (or would sooner/later be better.)

  Perhaps this doesn't matter in practice, just wanted to raise the thought. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 15:18, 20 April 2024 (UTC)

  I have stepped back from all RFA activities and thus have not been paying attention to any of the outcomes from RFA2024 so I have no advice to offer. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 17:19, 20 April 2024 (UTC)

I would be interested in helping out, especially considering there's not many crats around, but for availability reasons I'd want to know when the trial run would be held. Wondering if this proposal would potentially be used for RFB as well? bibliomaniac15 21:30, 23 April 2024 (UTC)

As I discussed previously, I think some upfront co-ordination is needed by the bureaucrats so they can decide how much involvement they want to undertake to manage the process. After that, when the process is run would be determined by overall availability of the required people (such as English Wikipedia volunteers including bureaucrats, SecurePoll support from WMF, and scrutineers) and resources (such as the SecurePoll votewiki server). Novem Linguae is suggesting that July would be the earliest timeframe.

Regarding requests for bureaucrat privileges, there has been no consensus to use elections to select bureaucrats. (Although in past years there's been a little discussion about how to encourage more editors to volunteer to be bureaucrats, there has been much more attention focused on how to select more administrators.) isaacl (talk) 21:50, 23 April 2024 (UTC)

Given the low amount of feedback, I suggest adopting the delegation approach: the bureaucrats delegate responsibility to the community to develop by consensus and implement the process for holding an initial trial administrator election. Any disputes on the process can be appealed to the bureaucrats. After the trial, this can be revisited by the bureaucrats or the community as desired. What does everyone think? isaacl (talk) 21:35, 14 May 2024 (UTC)

I don't fully follow. Do you just mean "Bureaucrats ask some community members to step up and implement the processes - Community does it quickly and reasonably - Crats take care of all disputes - Trial is revisited by Crats + Community"? I do not mind that.

I think as of now we're hard locked by getting dates from T&S. Hopefully we'll get some crats to commit (or tell if they cannot) once the dates are confirmed. Otherwise I am pro anything that gets the gears turning, we should be able to establish quick consensi and move on with small-medium implementation things Soni (talk) 04:40, 16 May 2024 (UTC)

The original approved proposal gave responsibility to the bureaucrats to manage the administrator elections process, but so far we haven't gotten any feedback from the bureaucrats on what role they would like to assume in doing so. Thus I'm suggesting the least hands-on role: let the community work out the trial process and put it in operation, as it is currently doing. Personally I don't see a need for the bureaucrats to delegate to specific community members, but please weigh in if you do. If there is a dispute in the development or operation of the process, then the bureaucrats can be asked to resolve it. This requires no upfront investment of time from the bureaucrats, other than being familiar with the process, and just a general need for availability, similar to their need to be available whenever a request for administrative privileges is opened, which could be at any time. isaacl (talk) 15:53, 16 May 2024 (UTC)

Notification of signup period

Is there some way we can add an option somewhere that would notify people via talk page if they opt in. This would notify them that they can signup for an administrator election. Nagol0929 (talk) 11:50, 18 April 2024 (UTC)

Great idea. I've created a newsletter signup page at Wikipedia:Administrator elections/Newsletter if you'd like to add yourself to it. We can organize an WP:MMS update when we kick off the "accepting candidates" phase of the election. –Novem Linguae (talk) 13:24, 18 April 2024 (UTC)

Comparison

@Isaacl and Novem Linguae: I believe that the comparison table should be under the lead paragraph of the procedure section, as it is a summary of procedure. This should also remove the need for the "see section for more details" part of the lede, and I find the large amount of short sections a bit weird. Aaron Liu (talk) 22:00, 29 April 2024 (UTC)

In my view, the procedure section should focus on the procedure for administrator elections. I don't think that information of lesser relevance to the topic of the section should be placed before the description of the procedure. isaacl (talk) 22:08, 29 April 2024 (UTC)

How is a table that summarizes the procedure section under one column of lesser relevance? It's a general overview, and analogies to RfA are also relevant. Aaron Liu (talk) 22:15, 29 April 2024 (UTC)

The table summarizes characteristics of the overall process, and compares them with another process. If you are already familiar with the two processes, or at least familiar with an overview of them, then you might want to skip directly to the comparison. But if you're coming in fresh to the concepts, I think it's best to walk through the operational procedure first, then have a comparison after. Recall this page is the draft process page for administrator elections, intended to provide guidance to people who are exploring how to become an administrator. isaacl (talk) 22:25, 29 April 2024 (UTC)

The target should be anyone interested in participating in elections, not just anyone who wants to become an administrator. Per the principles behind summary style, we should summarize first before explaining the details. I may be biased as I understand this, but this is text and people should be able to explore the clearly-labeled sections for whatever they don't understand. Aaron Liu (talk) 22:48, 29 April 2024 (UTC)

Yes, I did not mean that the only audience was those who want to become an administrator, but that the page ought to take into account those needs, not just those who are already familiar with the current RfA process and the concept of SecurePoll voting. Yes, to me having a clearly labeled section for comparison would allow people to explore that section for a comparison. Explaining what is being compared before making the comparison makes the comparison more meaningful. isaacl (talk) 23:13, 29 April 2024 (UTC)

The RfA column provides a summary of the existing process for those not familiar with it. Nowhere is SecurePoll explained, and its name is pretty self-explanatory and sufficient for most people. If one wants to compare this process to the existing process, they'd read the section that details the process to compare it themselves, which very logically contains a summary per summary style, and in this case also doubles as a comparison. Aaron Liu (talk) 00:19, 30 April 2024 (UTC)

I don't think it matters a ton either way, this is pretty superficial a change in my opinion. I'd rather focus more on the overarching Todo list, the role of Bureaucrats and what still needs to be sorted by one, and the overall WMF side support and scheduling. There's plenty that needs doing before AE becomes a thing

But my preference is to order it as it is currently (Table at bottom, after everything is explained in prose). We should also link SecurePoll etc when applicable. Soni (talk) 00:36, 30 April 2024 (UTC)