Wikipedia:Administrator elections/October 2024
Current status
- Thank you for participating in the October 2024 administrator elections. The results are now available and certified.
- Call for candidates (October 8–15)
- Discussion phase (October 22–25)
- Voting phase (October 25 – November 1)
- Results
- Debrief
- RFC workshop
- RFC phase
In October 2024, the first administrator elections were held as a trial process. The community voted on 32 candidates, 11 of whom were successful.
Schedule
[edit]- October 8–14 – Call for candidates
- October 15–21 – SecurePoll setup phase
- October 22–24 – Discussion phase
- October 25–31 – SecurePoll voting phase
- November 1–5 – Scrutineering phase
- Results
- Debrief phase - to collect feedback
- Workshop phase - to draft mini RFCs
- Mini-RFC phase - many little RFCs to improve the process for a hypothetical next election
- Renewal RFC phase - one RFC to get permission to do additional election(s)
Voter eligibility
[edit]The trial election used the Arbitration Committee Election suffrage requirements. To vote, an editor must have met the following criteria:
- created their account over 2 months before the election
- have 150 mainspace edits by 1 month before the election
- have 10 live edits in the year running up to 1 month before the election
- not be sitewide blocked during the election
- not be vanished
- not be a bot
- not have already voted with this or another account
Procedure
[edit]The overall process lasted 10 days: an initial 3-day period for discussion and questions, and a 7-day period for a secret ballot vote. Election cycles were advertised in advance, including watchlist notices. Novem Linguae performed the todo list.
Period 1: Candidates sign up
[edit]Candidates signed up by a specified date prior to the discussion and questions period. Just like RFA, candidates could be nominated by other editors. During this phase and the SecurePoll setup phase, candidates and nominators could adjust their candidate subpage as they saw fit.
Period 2: Discussion and questions
[edit]During this 3-day period, the community asked questions and raised issues, as well as providing positive feedback. Candidates were encouraged to participate in the discussion period, answering questions and responding to feedback.
During this discussion-only time, participants were discouraged from posting messages of support/opposition that lack points for discussion. This phase was for sharing thoughts on the candidate or any other topic that may relate to the candidate's applicability – not for indicating personal voting intentions.
The monitors for this phase were Theleekycauldron and Pickersgill-Cunliffe. Discussion for all candidates can be found at Wikipedia:Administrator elections/October 2024/Discussion phase.
Period 3: Voting
[edit]Once the discussion period is complete, a secret ballot was held for 7 days, using SecurePoll. During this period, discussion was closed. The ballot contained multiple candidates; however, this was not a competitive election. Voters were asked to evaluate each candidate individually, and all candidates who met the pass threshold were selected to become administrators. Thus all, some, or even no candidates could have been selected.
Tallying and results
[edit]After voting has ended, the election was scrutinised by three stewards whose home wiki is not the English Wikipedia. They checked for any duplicate, ineligible, or sockpuppeteer votes, and struck them as necessary. Once scrutineering was complete, votes were tallied, results were announced, and new admins were granted administrative privileges. The pass threshold was 70% or greater. The vote tally was calculated by Support / (Support + Oppose) for each candidate. The scrutineers for the October 2024 election were Johannnes89, EPIC, and Yahya. The SecurePoll election clerk was JSutherland (WMF). In the October 2024 administrator elections, scrutineering took 4 days.
The results of the October 2024 administrator elections are as follows:
659 votes were cast, of which 43 were determined to be duplicates, leading to a total of 616 valid votes. [1]
| Candidate | Support | Abstain | Oppose | Support / (Support + Oppose) |
Result |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Queen of Hearts (talk · contribs · candidate page · assign permissions) | 389 | 122 | 105 | 78.74% | Elected |
| SilverLocust (talk · contribs · candidate page · assign permissions) | 347 | 195 | 74 | 82.42% | Elected |
| ThadeusOfNazereth (talk · contribs · candidate page · assign permissions) | 321 | 207 | 88 | 78.48% | Elected |
| Rsjaffe (talk · contribs · candidate page · assign permissions) | 319 | 208 | 89 | 78.19% | Elected |
| Dr vulpes (talk · contribs · candidate page · assign permissions) | 322 | 195 | 99 | 76.48% | Elected |
| Ahecht (talk · contribs · candidate page · assign permissions) | 303 | 219 | 94 | 76.32% | Elected |
| SD0001 (talk · contribs · candidate page · assign permissions) | 306 | 209 | 101 | 75.18% | Elected |
| DoubleGrazing (talk · contribs · candidate page · assign permissions) | 306 | 206 | 104 | 74.63% | Elected |
| Sohom Datta (talk · contribs · candidate page · assign permissions) | 298 | 210 | 108 | 73.40% | Elected |
| Peaceray (talk · contribs · candidate page · assign permissions) | 270 | 239 | 107 | 71.62% | Elected |
| FOARP (talk · contribs · candidate page · assign permissions) | 268 | 242 | 106 | 71.66% | Elected |
| MarcGarver (talk · contribs · candidate page) | 266 | 230 | 120 | 68.91% | Not elected |
| Pbritti (talk · contribs · candidate page) | 254 | 239 | 123 | 67.37% | Not elected |
| The Squirrel Conspiracy (talk · contribs · candidate page) | 264 | 207 | 145 | 64.55% | Not elected |
| Valenciano (talk · contribs · candidate page) | 221 | 293 | 102 | 68.42% | Not elected |
| LindsayH (talk · contribs · candidate page) | 240 | 255 | 121 | 66.48% | Not elected |
| AntiDionysius (talk · contribs · candidate page) | 248 | 233 | 135 | 64.75% | Not elected |
| Mdewman6 (talk · contribs · candidate page) | 195 | 290 | 131 | 59.82% | Not elected |
| Robert McClenon (talk · contribs · candidate page) | 259 | 151 | 206 | 55.70% | Not elected |
| Starship.paint (talk · contribs · candidate page) | 219 | 213 | 184 | 54.34% | Not elected |
| Sable232 (talk · contribs · candidate page) | 175 | 298 | 143 | 55.03% | Not elected |
| Bastun (talk · contribs · candidate page) | 186 | 253 | 177 | 51.24% | Not elected |
| Velella (talk · contribs · candidate page) | 157 | 297 | 162 | 49.22% | Not elected |
| SWinxy (talk · contribs · candidate page) | 168 | 271 | 177 | 48.70% | Not elected |
| Hawkeye7 (talk · contribs · candidate page) | 199 | 165 | 252 | 44.12% | Not elected |
| Spy-cicle (talk · contribs · candidate page) | 131 | 283 | 202 | 39.34% | Not elected |
| Pharaoh of the Wizards (talk · contribs · candidate page) | 154 | 236 | 226 | 40.53% | Not elected |
| EggRoll97 (talk · contribs · candidate page) | 146 | 250 | 220 | 39.89% | Not elected |
| Frost (talk · contribs · candidate page) | 102 | 246 | 268 | 27.57% | Not elected |
| Leonidlednev (talk · contribs · candidate page) | 89 | 262 | 265 | 25.14% | Not elected |
| Knightoftheswords281 (talk · contribs · candidate page) | 59 | 249 | 308 | 16.08% | Not elected |
| Zippybonzo (talk · contribs · candidate page) | 75 | 194 | 347 | 17.77% | Not elected |
Scrutineer ratification
[edit]- EPIC (talk) 19:23, 4 November 2024 (UTC)
- —Yahya (talk • contribs.) 19:25, 4 November 2024 (UTC)
- --Johannnes89 (talk) 22:50, 4 November 2024 (UTC)
Rationale
[edit]The number of requests for adminship (RFA) has declined from a peak of 920 in 2007 to just 36 in 2016, and has since averaged around 23 per year. This suggests problems with the RFA process, which might be mitigated with a different process, such as administrator elections. Ways that administrator elections might help include:
- Reducing contention via secret voting - Reduces the opportunity for contentious discussion amongst participants. For example, voters do not have to disclose their vote, nor give an explanation for it. This avoids unnecessary direct confrontation of opposers, or of the candidate.
- Shorter discussion period - The discussion period is limited to three days, instead of seven.
- No possibility of a bureaucrat chat
- Many candidates - So less pressure on individual candidates.
Reasoning for holding the trial
[edit]The result of the request for comment discussion regarding running a trial election was The community supports trying this proposal for 1 election, after which it will be reviewed in Phase II.
While there are concerns regarding the implementation details of this proposal, given this is a trial run, there is sufficient support to run the election as written.
Accordingly, the trial election was held, with implementation details (such as scrutineering) worked out based on discussions on the Admin Election talk page.
After the trial, further request for comment discussions were held to discuss how to proceed, thus allowing the community to alter the process if desired, or choose not to continue.
Comparison with requests for adminship
[edit]The trial election differed from WP:RFA in several ways. Some of these aspects were unique to the trial, and were later revised at RFC.
| Requests for adminship | Trial administrator election | |
|---|---|---|
| Discussion period | 7 days (overlapping) | 3 days |
| Voting period | 7 days | |
| Ballot | Open | Secret (using SecurePoll) |
| Success criterion | Consensus | Supermajority |
| Success threshold | 65–75%[1] | 70% |
| Suffrage | Extended confirmed account | See § Voter eligibility |
| When it can happen | Any time | October 2024 |
Newsletter
[edit]If you'd like to receive a user talk message about administrator election milestones, please add yourself to the mailing list.
Post-election RFCs
[edit]After the October 2024 trial election, a series of RFCs were workshopped and then opened for comment to gather community opinions on how the process should be fine-tuned in the future, if administrator elections are to happen again. The results from these RFCs were used as the basis for a proposal for running more admin elections. From the RFCs, the following conclusions were drawn:
- Pass percentages should remain at 70%.
- There should be no limit to the number of candidates in an election.
- Elections should be scrutineered by 3 English Wikipedia CheckUsers.
- The main election page will link to a category containing unofficial voter guides, and other election pages and talk pages may include direct links to voter guides. There will not be an "official" voter guide.
- Suffrage requirements will be the same as at RfA (ie. voters must be extended-confirmed, not blocked, and not a bot).
- Candidates will require a 20-support minimum in order to be successful.
- Candidates may nominate themselves only during a specified window of time.
- Candidates will be ordered alphabetically on the candidates page and in SecurePoll.
- The discussion phase will be 5 days long, prior to the voting phase.
- Unsuccessful candidates may reapply in future elections without restriction.
- Ideally, elections are to be held every 5 months, without a required minimum number of candidates.
Further details can be found on the RFC page.
See also
[edit]- Proposals and RFCs
- Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/2021 review/Proposals/Admin elections – detailed proposal
- Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/2021 review/Proposals § Closed: 8B Admin elections – no consensus for admin elections
- Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/2024 review/Phase I § Proposal 13: Admin elections – consensus for a trial admin election
- October 2024 election
- phab:T371454 – ticket to coordinate with WMF Trust & Safety to set up SecurePoll
- meta:Steward requests/Miscellaneous § Scrutineering of enwiki admin election in late October – ticket to coordinate with stewards for scrutineering
- Wikipedia:Administrator elections/October 2024/Subpages
- Wikipedia:Administrator elections/October 2024/Detailed schedule
References
[edit]- ^ As RfA is a consensus-based process, there is no exact threshold for success, but in practice a candidate with below 65% support is almost always unsuccessful, and above 75% almost always successful. Candidates with between 65 and 75% support are typically subject to a bureaucrat discussion about the consensus for their request, and outcomes vary on a case-to-case basis.