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Wikipedia:Guide to requests for adminship

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File:Crystal document2.png This is a guide to a Wikipedia process. It is not a policy or guideline. Please update the page as needed, or discuss it on the talk page.
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This is a guide to current practice at 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 know and uphold its policies and guidelines.

For an unprepared user, even a very valuable contributor, the process can be frustrating and disheartening. Under 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 refer to this guide for the purpose of detering a candidate from accepting a nomination. This is only a guide to current practice on Wikipedia:Requests for adminship, not policy.

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

Overview

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

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 an 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.

A 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.

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.

Things to consider before accepting a nomination

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

  • There is a lot of admin you can do without being an admin! Maybe you are here because you've done several hundred edits and your wiki enthusiasm is now looking for new challenges, new ways to help the Wiki. Well, there are lots of ways in which you can do admin stuff, without being an admin, for example:
There are so many other admin tasks that you can already do that until you really start to find there are things that you cannot do there, there is not much point in trying to become an admin. Indeed, only when you have had a good amount of experience in all the freely available admin tasks are you likely to succeed in an application.
  • RfA can be a harsh process. Your past record will come under scrutiny and any questionable actions can lead to intense open discussion. If you aren't experienced in handling conflicts, this can be distressing. On the other hand, you can take the experience as an opportunity to measure your skills in conflict resolution.
  • Nominees with lower edit counts are less likely to succeed. Many administrator nominations for editors with low edit counts 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 a limited length of time of active experience on Wikipedia can expect similar concerns. If you are unsure if you have enough edits or experience, consider asking another Wikipedian or two that you trust before leaping into an RfA. See this chart comparing edit counts to RFA success rates for June 2005 through March 2006. RFA standards have historically risen over time.
  • 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 will not be held against you and can show a desirable thoughtfulness; you can always accept a later nomination.
  • 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. Since many editors believe administrators should follow a more strict code of conduct than the average user, the opposite may occur. 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. Adminship is, in essence, janitorial duties for Wikipedia. (hence the mop used to symbolise administratorship).

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.

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 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.
  • Trustworthiness. General reliability as evidence that you would use administrator rights carefully to avoid irreversible damage, especially in the stressful situations that can arise more frequently for administrators.
  • Helping with chores. Evidence that you are already engaging in administrator-like work and debates such as RC Patrol and articles for deletion.
  • High quality of articles. A good way to demonstrate this is contributing to getting articles featured.
  • Observing policy. A track record of working within policy, showing an understanding of policy.
  • Edit summaries. Constructive and frequent use of edit summaries is a quality some RfA contributors want to see. Some expect use of edit summaries to approach 100% of the time. See Wikipedia:Edit summary.

These points are not mandatory and there are always exceptions, but 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. This is important for administrators, who may need to be contacted by users who have been blocked from editing.

  • 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.

Some editors have listed their individual rough criteria for support on the RfA standards page.

What RfA contributors look for and hope not to see

No matter how experienced you are, some actions will cause problems. 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 persistent and unreformed 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 relevant 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 is prone to repeating a single edit after it becomes obvious that there is a disagreement with it. 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 consensus. Impartial evaluation of a candidate, not how popular they are, is the goal.
  • Blocks: if your block log has activity and shows you've been blocked in the past then it is likely that voters will oppose you for this.
  • Elaborate sigs: Some have a low opinion of editors who create fancy signatures, especially ones with special characters and images.

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.

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.

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.

A nomination consists of an introductory nomination statement, followed by three questions to be answered by the nominee. 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).

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.

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 nominees who have not been on Wikipedia for very long are not necessarily well regarded, as they are less likely to perform effectively as administrators and they are not widely known by RfA voters. It's considered good practice to approach the nominee first to find out whether he would accept the nomination.

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. RfA subpages should not be commented on before being posted to RfA, nor should votes be cast on the RfA subpage until the nomination is posted to the RfA page.

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.

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.

Closure

Sometime after the seven days for the RfA have elapsed, a bureaucrat will review the RfA and close it. A bureaucrat will close the RfA as soon as this is feasible, which may be hours or even a day or two after the formal closing date. Do not remove your own RfA from WP:RFA unless you are intentionally withdrawing your nomination from consideration.

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:

Candidate, please indicate acceptance of the nomination here: 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.

Do not post "thanks for voting" messages to the voters' talk pages. This is unneeded and a waste of resources (both of your time and harddisk space). Consider posting a thanks message instead on your own talk page and/or the talk page of your RFA page instead.

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. In general, candidates with over 80% support are likely to succeed, and it is unusual for those below 75% to succeed, but all cases are weighed on their merits.

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 seven times. Your first nomination is not your only chance to become an administrator.

Bureaucrat nominations

Bureaucrat nominations (RfB) are also considered on WP:RFA. Bureaucrats are at present responsible for three tasks: determining consensus on RfA and RfB and granting rights on successful nominations, answering requests to change usernames, and assigning bot flags. 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 higher than for an administrator, usually 85%.
  • Bureaucrat nominees typically undergo significantly more scrutiny than an administrator nominee.
  • Bureaucrat nominees are expected to be fully aware of current debates around RfA and of its guidelines.

As a result of the higher level of consensus required, almost half the requests for bureaucrat status have been rejected, whereas more requests for adminship are approved.

Re-adminship

Former administrators may seek reinstatement of their privileges through RfA unless prohibited from doing so by an arbitration remedy.

Admins who resigned voluntarily, under uncontroversial circumstances, can ask to skip RfA. Upon a review to confirm that the user both was in good standing at the time of the de-adminship and is in good standing currently, a bureaucrat may restore access rights. If there is any question that reinstatement would lack community consensus, the user will be referred to RfA. The guiding principle for such decisions, per WP:CRAT, is that bureaucrats may grant adminship only when doing so reflects the wishes of the community.

See also

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