User:Durin/Guide to Requests for adminship

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WP:GRFA

This is a guide to Wikipedia's requests for adminship (RfA) process, the mechanism by which editors are considered for administrator status. To become an administrator, there needs to be a clear consensus that you are committed to Wikipedia and can be trusted to uphold its policies and guidelines.

For an unprepared user, even a very valuable contributor, the process can be frustrating and disheartening. In no circumstances should any editor considering acceptance of a nomination construe the contents of this guide as a barrier to nomination. Consequently, no Wikipedian should reference this guide to deter a candidate from accepting a nomination. This is only a guide to current practice on WP:RFA, not policy.

For an informal look, please see the miniguide to requests for adminship.

Contents

[edit] Overview

RfA is the means by which the Wikipedia community develops concensus on whether an editor should be given Administrator rights, such as the abilities to delete a page, protect a page, and block a user.

[edit] General advice for nominees

The nomination process is not intended as a forum for voting on a nominee's popularity or strength as an editor. It is a forum by which consensus is generated on whether an editor should be given administrator rights. An editor should not construe the outcome of a RfA as praise or condemnation of their efforts as an editor. Instead, it is an evaluation of their likely ability to appropriately use administrator rights.

An RfA is a very open voting process where your record will be looked at by experienced (and sometimes opinionated) users who have already made up their minds about what kinds of people they want as administrators. An RfA is open to everybody, including anyone you may have had disagreements with in the past, as well as new and inexperienced users you may be disagreeing with at the time.

You need around 70-80% support for your RfA to succeed. Some users find the level of scrutiny and frankness very difficult. Some editors have left Wikipedia as a consequence of an RfA that has gone poorly. This should not happen, as this process does not judge an editor's value to Wikipedia. There are many fine editors who would not make good administrators.

[edit] Things to consider before accepting a nomination

Things that a potential administrator nominee should consider before accepting a nomination include:

  • RfA can be a harsh process. Contentious administrator nominations can and have hurt feelings in the past. If you have been involved in significant conflicts in the past, it is likely that the conflict will be raised again in the RfA. You need to consider if you are ready to accept the possibility that your nomination may go sour. If you are quick to anger or often in heated disagreements, you may be ill-suited to being a Wikipedia administrator. Some examples of contentious nominations:
  • Nominees with less than 1,000 edits are less likely to succeed. Many administrator nominations for editors with less than 1,000 edits have been rejected for this alone, although some have succeeded. With fewer edits, you should be prepared to respond to this objection, or, better, explain in your nomination acceptance why you think you would nevertheless make a good administrator. Editors with less than three months of active experience on Wikipedia can expect similar concerns. Those editors with more than 1,000, but well under 2,000, edits may face concerns but many such nominees have passed.
  • RfA contributors have differing standards for what they consider to be acceptable administrator candidates. Some of these standards are outlined at Wikipedia:Requests_for_adminship/Standards. RfA voters may also use standards that may seem perverse or irrational. It is generally not well looked upon for the nominee to question the validity or good faith of those standards. But while each RfA contributor may use whatever criteria they wish, you can ask them why they think a criterion is important.
  • Some people who oppose RfAs do not explain their opposition. This does not make their votes inherently worthless. While it is generally regarded as poor form not to explain the rationale behind the opposition as it does not give an administrator nominee useful feedback, RfA contributors are not required to explain their opposition. Some contributors may not wish to explain their rationale because they wish to avoid creating a sense of piling on.
  • Ask yourself, "Am I ready to be an administrator?" Administrators can be and often are more involved in contentious disputes than regular editors. If you think you will likely not respond well in such situations, perhaps being an administrator is not for you. Adminship is not a statement of worth or acceptance in the Wikipedia community. Some of the most valued and active editors have said they do not want to be administrators, and many administrators find that they prefer to contribute largely or solely by editing articles.
  • Declining is allowed. Declining a nomination does not mean you cannot be nominated later. Declining a nomination will not be held against you; indeed, the opposite may be true. An earlier declined nomination can be interpreted as a desirable thoughtfulness.
  • Administrator status is not a trophy. Editors who regard being an administrator as an affirmation of their contributions as an editor or an award for good editing or other good service will generally be disappointed. Administrator status does not place you in an elevated status within Wikipedia. Every good-faith editor, from the newest editor to the most experienced bureaucrat, has the same status within Wikipedia. You will not gain respect simply by being an administrator.

[edit] Follow instructions

The nomination process has clear instructions for constructing, accepting, and posting a nomination. A number of RfA contributors look askance at nominees who do not follow the instructions properly. Administrators are expected to read and follow policies. The inability to do this here is a bad sign. If something is unclear, then ask the person who nominated you, put a message on the discussion page of WP:RFA, or ask a user who has nominated someone else. Avoid mistakes rather than making them and then fixing them.

[edit] What RfA contributors look for

RfA contributors want to see a record of involvement and evidence that you can apply Wikipedia policies calmly, maturely and impartially. What are often looked for are:

  • Strong edit history with plenty of material contributions to Wikipedia articles.
  • Varied experience. RfAs where an editor has mainly contributed on one subject, e.g. Pokemon, or Schools, have tended to be more controversial than those where the user's contributions have been wider.
  • User interaction. Evidence of you talking to other users, on article talk or user talk pages. These interactions need to be helpful and polite.
  • Helping with chores. Evidence that you are already engaging in administrator-like work and debates such as RC Patrol and articles for deletion.
  • Featured Articles – getting articles featured is often used to determine if a person has got the grasp of Wikipedia.
  • Edit summaries. Constructive and frequent use of edit summaries is a quality some RfA contributors want to see. See Wikipedia:Edit summary.

If you think back over your contributions and any of these is missing, it may be better to broaden your experience before an RfA.

There are also several other things that contributors will raise, such as whether you have an email address set.

  • Complete answers to the RfA questions. Curt or uninformative answers to the standard questions are mildly offputting for some RfA contributors. Spend a bit of time preparing your answers; there is no time limit to the acceptance of a nomination.

[edit] What RfA contributors look for and hope not to see

No matter how experienced you are, some actions will cause problems. According to recent RfAs, your record as a Wikipedian needs to be near-exemplary. In roughly decreasing order of seriousness, here are some things which, if seen in your edit history, will be raised and thoroughly discussed:

  • Vandalism: A serious vandal will never be made an administrator; one of the primary tasks of administrators is fighting vandalism (and a truly "bad" administrator could cause serious damage to the site). Even a relatively minor disruption, like making a joking edit to an article, can cause problems.
  • Incivility: If a nominee has responded to unpleasant or irritating users by leaving insulting messages which violate the spirit of civility.
  • Intransigence: If a nominee has ever refused to be involved in good faith efforts to reach consensus on talk pages, and instead engaged in edit wars.
  • Controversial activity on AfD Voting according to criteria not relavent to the purpose of AfD, persistently starting AfDs on articles on the kinds of subject generally (let alone explicitly) recognized as worth an article.
  • Abuse of process: If a nominee has ever started an inappropriate RfC, or made seemingly frivolous complaints via official channels.
  • Edit wars: If a candidate has ever stepped across, or come close to, the three-revert rule. To most RfA contributors, it does not matter who is right, it matters how a candidate handles themselves during a debate.
  • "Advertising" your RfA: Some editors do not like to see an RfA "advertised" by the nominee on other people's talk pages or on IRC. RfA is not a political campaign. The intent is to develop concensus. Impartial evaluation of a candidate, not how popular they are, is the goal.

However, many RfAs have succeeded despite some of these charges. The important factors are:

  • Time. If a nominee has demonstrated high standards of conduct for a few months, the RfA contributors may discount any earlier undesirable behaviour.
  • Disclosure. If a nominee brings up past missteps him or herself, and either apologises or explains how such missteps will be avoided in the future, the candidacy will be more likely to succeed.
  • Approach to opposing votes. Responding in a calm, rational, and (if needed) apologetic manner will be to a candidate's credit. A candidate who shows anger or frustration or makes insults when presented with opposition is likely to engender more opposition.

[edit] Other controversy

If you have been involved in discussions on very controversial articles, your adminship may be a target for heated objections on the basis of your involvement in those pages. This may reduce your chances of becoming an administrator. In some cases voters may attempt to maintain a "balance of power" across controversial subjects by opposing all potential admins involved on the opposite sides of controversial edit wars.

It may be a good idea for you to highlight the controversy in answering the standard question "Have you been in any conflicts over editing in the past or do you feel other users have caused you stress? How have you dealt with it and how will you deal with it in the future?". You can note how you dealt with the controversy, cite example edits by you and your responses to uncivil comments made by others. In referring others to a past edit it can be useful to provide a "Diff", a unique and durable link to a post. To obtain this, click on the "History" tab then right-click (Mac OS X users ctrl-click) on a "last" button for a contextual menu and select "Copy this link location" ("Copy Link to Clipboard"). However, if you have been involved in edit wars (other than against blatant vandalism), or been uncivil on those pages, it may adversely affect your RfA.

One possibility is to start an RfC on yourself, and contact all editors who may have conflicts with you. If you can have all objections raised against you before your RfA, you will be able to better respond to any objection and you can judge your prospects of being made an administrator.

[edit] General advice for nominators

Nominators should be careful in their decision to nominate someone for administrator status. As noted above, the RfA process can lead to unsavory results. A nominator should consider the possibility of the negative impact on a nominee, and ensure they are making appropriate nominations.

When you craft a nomination for someone, including yourself, you should outline in the nomination statement why you think the nominee should be an administrator. You might offer some information on where the nominee has done significant work, areas where the nominee has already helped out with administrator appropriate tasks, how long they have been with the project, and their ability to handle stressful situations. Single-line nomination statements will do little to aid the nominee, and may hinder the RfA.

When nominating someone, it is generally a good idea to ask them if they would like to be nominated before crafting an RfA nomination per the instructions at Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/nominate. If the person you want to nominate is willing to accept the nomination, you should place the {{subst:RfA-nom|YOUR USERNAME}} template on their talk page. This provides some basic information on what the nominee should do.

Once the RfA has been created, it is a good idea to work in concert with the nominee to carefully craft the nomination before listing it at WP:RFA. You can advise the nominee on their answers to the questions, fix any errors that might have been made on the RfA either by yourself or the nominee, and generally prepare the RfA for a successful run. Common errors include not formatting the closing date properly, not officially accepting the nomination on the RfA, and the nominee voting for themselves. Poorly prepared RfAs are not looked upon well by RfA contributors as for some this shows a lack of careful attention to process and detail and a lack of respect for the RfA process.

While voting is in progress be ready to answer any enquiries the applicant puts to you, and if the process goes sour consider advising the applicant of the option to withdraw (as Closure below).

[edit] General advice for contributors

Any registered user is welcome to vote on any active RfA. Non-registered users are free to make comments in the appropriate section on RfAs but any votes by non-registered users will be ignored or deleted. In making contributions to RfAs, you are contributing to Wikipedia by helping to improve administrators and non-administrators alike. RfA tends to discourage negative behaviors on Wikipedia and encourages positive behavior.

[edit] How to evaluate a candidate

You are welcome to develop your own set of criteria against which you measure a nominee's suitability to be an administrator. There is significant debate regarding various measures that people use. None of these are by definition wrong or right. There is currently no feedback loop to verify the validity of any particular criteria. Some users have developed subpages for their particular criteria (examples 1, ). Some of the more common criteria that are used are:

  • Analysis of individual edits to develop a sense of the nature of the nominee's contributions. For many RfA contributors, this is the most important criteria above all others. Reviewing edits is a time consuming task, but is considered by many to be the best way to develop a complete picture of the suitability of a candidate.
  • Observes policy Does the nominee seem to have an understanding of policy? Does the nominee have a demonstrated track record of working within policy?
  • Trustability Can the nominee be trusted to use administrator rights? There are ways that administrators can damage the site that are irreversible, or are extremely difficult to reverse.
  • Works on administrator related tasks Does the nominee have a track record of working in areas where an administrator typically works? Such areas include WP:AFD and similar deletion areas, Copyright issues, vandal fighting among others. If a nominee already works in such areas, being granted administrator rights would help their work in those areas.
  • Behavior under stress How does the nominee handle stressful situations? Administrators are more frequently involved in contentious issues than editors.
  • Distribution of contributions Does the nominee contribute across multiple namespaces beyond direct editing on articles?
  • Active on talk pages Being active on talk pages across namespaces shows a willingness to be involved in discussions.
  • Uses edit summaries Does the nominee make frequent, productive use of edit summaries?
  • Edit count This is highly controversial and is frequently debated. Nevertheless, many RfA contributors have stated minimums for number of edits for a nominee. Others feel that edit count tends to reward those who have made certain types of contributions (such as disambiguating links and fixing spelling) over others (such as adding major content, or starting new articles).
  • Time on Wikipedia This is also very controversial. Again, many RfA contributors have stated minimums.

[edit] Recommended behavior

In the interests of maintaining RfA as a productive process, there are recommendations on how to conduct yourself:

  • Learn what administrators are expected to do prior to commenting on RfAs. You will be ill-equipped to understand how suitable a nominee is without understanding what an administrator does. Wikipedia:Administrators' reading list is a good resource for this.
  • Strictly observe Wikipedia:Civility. In making contributions to RfA, you are not commenting on articles. You are commenting on people. Nominees have and can take great offense to comments made on RfA. Being incivil can quickly devolve into extended meta-discussions. RfA is not the forum for such debates. It is inappropriate to say things like "I will leave Wikipedia if this person becomes an administrator". You are free to make your own choices. It is not fair to inflict your intentions against others, however justified you may feel. If you have a reason to support or oppose a nominee, state it but be civil.
  • Be constructive in comments that you make. Even a failed RfA can bring about positive results as it can serve as a list of what a nominee should improve upon if they want to be an administrator in the future.
  • Be sincere in comments that you make. Ill-considered comments can have a snowballing effect.
  • RfA is not about whether you like someone. It is about whether the community feels the nominee is suited to being an administrator. Even if you like someone, they may not be well suited to being an administrator.
  • Explain your vote especially if you make an oppose vote.
  • Keep discussions on topic. Meta-discussions about RfA or other elements of Wikipedia are beyond the scope of an individual RfA. Extended debates about a candidate can be difficult for others to follow, and some people will not read them.
  • You can vote while an RfA is still listed at WP:RFA Even if the time for voting has expired, you are free to continue to make contributions to the RfA until it is officially closed by a bureaucrat. If it aids the closing bureaucrat in determining concensus it will be considered. After an RfA has been closed, please do not make any other edits to the RfA except to properly close the RfA if it has not already been done.
  • Do not criticize other contributors criteria. Each contributor is free to make comments based on their own criteria. Good faith contributions to RfAs should be taken as such. Criticisms of other vote criteria is a meta-discussion and external to the RfA in question. Saying "I find the oppose votes unconvincing" is acceptable. Saying "Your criteria is irrelevant" is not and should be taken to a contributor's talk page.

[edit] Edit RfAs properly

When you are making a contribution to an RfA, you should be careful to follow proper editing technique. In particular:

  • Ensure that the ending time is set correctly The ending time should be set to exactly seven days after the acceptance of the nomination. All times are in UTC. Please spell out the month to avoid confusion over the date format. (In particular, be aware that "9/11" is September eleventh in the United States, but November ninth in many other nations.)
  • Update the vote tally There is no automatic mechanism for updating the vote tally. If you make a vote of support, oppose, or neutral then please update the tally. Do not just add one to the appropriate number at the top of the RfA. Doing a 'preview' of the page to see how many votes are in each section is useful for updating all the numbers. The vote tally is by no means an indicator of how many valid votes there are, just how many votes there are in each category. It is up to the bureaucrat who closes the RfA to determine what votes are invalid.
  • Use proper prefixes for comments When making comments on a vote, do not put a space between your comment and the preceeding vote you are commenting on. Make sure you put a "#:" before your comment; this will preserve the numbering of subsequent votes. If you need to indent further, you can use "#::" or longer. "#:*" also works.
  • Use bolding properly When voting, place three single quotes (''') before and after your vote. For example, '''Support''' shows up as Support.
  • Avoid extraneous prefixes on votes Of late, there has been a trend for people to use various extended forms of a vote, such as Extreme Ultra Mega Lesbian Support. Such votes have no more weight than a simple Support or Strong support. Inside jokes of a particular set of voters are not understood by other voters and can lead to misunderstandings and consternation among other RfA contributors.
  • Be logged in and sign your vote Votes by non-logged in users do not count in RfAs and may be deleted. Be certain you sign your vote to clarify you are a registered user making a vote.

[edit] Nomination process

The RfA nomination process has evolved and continues to evolve. Years ago, such nominations were an ad hoc assemblage of comments made on a mailing list. Later, the process became more formalized as the WP:RFA page. As time has gone on, efforts have been made to improve the process. The process we have in place now is relatively straightforward.

[edit] Before nomination

Either you or another editor may nominate you to be an administrator. Anyone can be an administrator, and anyone can nominate a candidate. However, keep in mind that nominators who have not been on Wikipedia for very long are not necessarily well regarded, as it is presumed they may not understand the gravity of being an administrator, or whether a nominee would be an appropriate candidate for adminship.

To nominate yourself, follow the instructions as they are outlined at Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/nominate. For someone else to nominate you, they likewise follow the appropriate instructions on that page. If you have been nominated, then again follow the instructions on that page. Once, by following the instructions, an RfA has been transcluded (i.e. posted) to WP:RFA, the nomination is open for discussion. Occasionally, RfAs are commented on before being posted to WP:RFA. There is no policy against this, and is entirely normal.

Administrator nominees should move slowly in this process. There is no deadline, and no need to rush. It is better to get it right than to move too quickly and make errors.

[edit] During the nomination

An RfA remains open for seven days, beginning from when the nomination is posted to WP:RFA. RfA contributors will make comments when they wish. Occasionally, RfA contributors add on additional questions to the standard three questions that currently are part of every RfA. Administrator nominees should stay involved on their RfAs so that they may answer these questions or any other comments raised on their RfA. Absence by the nominee from the RfA process during the seven days it is open can harm the chances of success. While it is appropriate to respond to comments and questions raised on the RfA, it is important to keep in mind that the RfA is not a forum for debate except as it closely relates to the nominee's acceptability as an administrator. Poor behavior by an RfA candidate will generally have negative consequences.

[edit] Closure

Sometime after the seven days for the RfA have elapsed, a bureaucrat will review the RfA and close it. There are few bureaucrats (because RfA closure is one of their few additional responsibilities), and when your RfA is to be closed there may not be a bureaucrat available. Nevertheless, a bureaucrat will close the RfA as soon as this is feasible. Do not be concerned if the RfA remains at WP:RFA well past the time expiration of your RfA: this is normal (and probably unrelated to the merits of the RfA). Do not remove your own RfA from WP:RFA unless you are intentionally withdrawing your nomination from consideration. In the past, RfAs have taken up to 24 hours to be closed.

Currently, there is an open-ended debate regarding whether a nomination that is going poorly should be removed from WP:RFA. There is no standard by which such nominations are removed, nor any consensus on whether they should be removed. Nevertheless, some bureaucrats and other parties occasionally do remove RfAs that are going poorly. You should not take offense if this happens; it is being done to protect you from ill will that may be generated by the RfA. If you did not wish to have your RfA prematurely removed, you may petition the person who removed it to reinstate it. You may find who removed the RfA by reviewing the page history of WP:RFA.

If you would like to withdraw your nomination after it has opened, you may do so simply by editing the RfA to strike out your acceptance of the nomination and indicating your desire to withdraw instead. To do this, place <s> before your nomination acceptance, a closing </s> after your acceptance, and indicate your desire to withdraw. This might look like this: I accept the nomination I withdraw my nomination. If you'd like, you may remove the RfA from WP:RFA on your own, but you are not required to do so. If you do so (though again you are not required to), you should edit the RfA after you have removed it from WP:RFA and place {{subst:rfaf}} at the very top of the page, {{subst:rfab}} at the very bottom of the page, remove the entire line that contains the "vote here" link and replace it with '''Final''', change the ending date to the date you withdrew, and update the final tally of votes. Additionally, you should edit Wikipedia:Unsuccessful adminship candidacies appropriately to include your nomination. The date you should use on that page is the date you withdrew.

[edit] If you disagree with consensus

It is important to understand that consensus within this context is determined by the bureaucrat who is closing the RfA. RfA is not a voting process. A bureaucrat's process for determining consensus is not transparent, nor can we reasonably expect it to be so. If an RfA included notes from a bureaucrat on why a particular vote was discounted, or why their opinion of consensus appears to be in contradiction with the majority opinion, both the bureaucrat and the RfA process would be subject to divisive debate. This is not to say that a bureaucrat's decision on a particular RfA cannot be discussed. However, few decisions by bureaucrats on these matters have ever been contested. As a group, they are careful in their decisions.

If you feel that a nomination is wrongfully declared as unsuccessful, you may petition the bureaucrat who made the decision. This can usually be determined by looking at the page history of WP:RFA and seeing which bureaucrat removed the RfA from the page. Bureaucrats do have the option of extending RfAs where they think this is necessary. Another possibility is to wait for some time and either renominate yourself or have someone else nominate you for a second time. Many current administrators did not pass their first nomination, yet had a later nomination easily succeed. In some cases, an administrator nominee has tried more than twice. In one case, a nominee tried four times. Your first nomination is not your only chance to become an administrator.

[edit] Meaning of consensus within this context

Consensus in this context has generally been taken to mean that:

  • If 80% of the people voicing an opinion on a candidate's nomination page support the nomination, the nominee is generally given admin rights.
  • If 70-80% of the people voicing an opinion on a candidate's nomination page support the nomination, the nominee may or may not be given admin rights based on the judgement of the bureaucrat reviewing the nomination.
  • If fewer than 70% of the people voicing an opinion on a candidate's nomination page support the nomination, the nominee will generally not be given admin rights.

Note that there have been and can be exceptions to the above measurements. Moderate numbers of well documented oppose votes will sometimes doom an RfA even with larger numbers of supportive votes. RfA is not a democracy; it is a means of building consensus. It is extremely important that admins be trusted to be neutral and fair. If even a small minority of the Wikipedia community distrusts the potential admin, it means that their effectiveness as an administrator may be compromised. If in the estimation of the reviewing bureaucrat consensus exists to override the above percentage guidelines, they have the authority to make a decision outside of those boundaries; however, it is extremely rare for anyone to be elevated with less than 75% of the vote without serious objections being raised.

[edit] Bureaucrat nominations

Bureaucrat nominations (RfB) are also considered on WP:RFA. Bureaucrats are at present responsible for one task; determining consensus on RfA and RfB and granting rights on successful nominations. In the past, they have also been responsible for answering requests to change usernames. This functionality is currently suspended. The RfB process is similar in nearly all respects to the RfA process with a few exceptions:

  • Bureaucrat nominations are generally done only by request of the nominee.
  • The bar for determination of consensus for acceptance as a bureaucrat is usually held to be 90% of contributors to the RfB.
  • Bureaucrats nominees typically undergo significantly more scrutiny than an administrator nominee.
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