Wikipedia:RFA study

This page aims to list not just every RFA that happened this year so far or the four years before, but also lots of characteristics about them and the candidates therein, to try to see if there are patterns that predict whether the RFA will be successful or not.

General trends

These trends are based on data from 2004 to 2018*, taken from WP:SRFA and WP:RFAU. In total, there have been 4,418 RFAs during this time period.

The annual number of total RFAs here on en.wiki peaked in 2007 at 920; the lowest number of RFAs in a given year thus far was 36 in 2016. Currently there have only been 13 RFAs this year, suggesting that this year will probably have the fewest RFAs of any year in en.wiki's history (barring a remarkably rapid blitz of RFAs in the last four months of the year).

The highest success rate for RFAs was in 2004, the first year for which data exists; that year, 79% of RFAs were successful. By contrast, the lowest success rate was in 2012, when only 29% of RFAs were successful. The most recent success rate, for 2018 so far, is a somewhat-less-discouraging 46%. Interestingly, the average success rate for RFAs over all years is 45%.

From these statistics two things are obvious, as many others have already pointed out:

There are now way fewer RFAs than there were in the (relatively) distant past, and
RFAs are now much less likely to succeed than they were in the past.

*This is based on all RFAs that have closed so far this year.

Accounting for deleted RFAs

One significant limitation to accurately estimating the number of RFAs in a given year is that for the past few years or so, admins have frequently deleted RFAs that were created by very-new users in clear violation of WP:NOTNOW. As noted on the page WP:RFA by month, "By 2015 admins had started deleting "NotNow" RFAs which artificially reduces the unsuccessful figure." So this means that for at least the past 3 or 4 years, the success rate of RFAs based only on the data below will be higher than the real success rate, since this page currently excludes RFAs that were unsuccessful if they were deleted, as such RFAs aren't preserved at WP:RFAU.

The most logical way to try to solve this problem (at least for non-admins) seems to be to look at the history of the page WP:RFA to see when someone edits it to add an RFA that has since been deleted. Then you can count up all the instances when new users do this, only to be reverted quickly by more experienced users. Doing so reveals, first, that new users adding (or at least trying to add) their newly created RFAs to WP:RFA became much less common right after Mz7 indefinitely extended-confirmed protected the page in November 2017, ending a more than 5-year period of continuous semi-protection. By looking at the WP:RFA page history in this way, I have estimated that there were 4 failed deleted RFAs (FDRFAs) this year so far, and that there were 19 FDRFAs in 2017. Adding the 19 FDRFAs to the total number of RFAs for 2017 lowers the success rate from 21/40 = 53% to 21/59 = 36%. I have also identified 13 FDRFAs in 2016; adding them to the total RFA count for 2016 lowers the success rate for that year from 44% to 33%.

However, this approach involves yet another questionable assumption: that all of the users who tried to add an RFA for themselves genuinely wanted to become an admin, and made their edits to the page in good faith. But this assumption seems to be false pretty frequently: of the 36 users who attempted to add their now-deleted RFA to the main page in 2016, 2017, or (so far) 2018, 22 of them (61%) have since been blocked indefinitely. (Note: this is only based on the ones I included in the above counts; it doesn't include obvious trolling or vandalism, just edits that were clearly attempts to create RFAs.)

2018

Candidate name	Edit count (total, incl. deleted)	Years editing	First RFA?	Self-nomination?	Successful?	Years since last block	Content contributions
Justlettersandnumbers	59227	7.81	Yes	No	Yes	N/a	"...a bunch of DYKs" according to co-nominator Amorymeltzer, but very little experience with the GA/FA process.
L235	16675	5.14	Yes	No	Yes	N/a	"...a Good Article and half a dozen DYKs." -Nominator statement by MelanieN
Philafrenzy	179908	8.02	Yes	No	No	N/a	>300 DYKs and 2 GAs (albeit no FAs)
Jbhunley	21797	7.24	Yes	No	No	N/a	One DYK and a lengthy draft in his userspace}}
Sro23	45069	3.12	Yes	Yes	Yes	N/a	Most of the articles they created were stubs/start-class; user stated "I think my most valuable contributions are my removals of BLP-violating content, which left alone could have the potential to cause real life harm."
TheSandDoctor	23445	1.41	Yes	No	Yes	N/a	"5 GAs under his belt" (according to co-nominator)
Pbsouthwood	43739	8.81	Yes	Yes	Yes	N/a	"one FA and a few GAs" on scuba diving-related articles, as Pbsouthwood pointed out himself in answering question #2
The Diaz	1426	1.92	Yes	Yes	No	N/a	None, really; when describing his proudest contributions, candidate cited "all the vandalism reverts that went unnoticed, as well as blatant violations of obvious rules on high-viewed pages."
GreenMeansGo	45465	9.8	Yes	Yes	No	N/a	Candidate stated, "I've gotten content on the front page a few times, but mostly I just whittle away in the background." According to HJ Mitchell, candidate wrote a featured article (apparently this article is Baltimore railroad strike of 1877).
Hoppyh	20183	7.8	Yes	Yes	No	N/a	Significantly contributed to 19 FAs and 5 GAs
Cordless Larry	41859	12.27	Yes	No	Yes	N/a	According to co-nominator, "He's got a fine corpus of articles he's worked on, including the featured article Gateway Protection Programme, and is a major contributor to Somalis in the United Kingdom where's he's kept a cool head despite numerous discussions and disagreements over the content. He's created some perfectly serviceable short biographies from scratch too, including Susan Baker, Susan Hanson (geographer) and Fiona Macpherson, and I fully trust him to know exactly what it takes to put things in mainspace."
331dot	68457	5.8	Yes	No	Yes	N/a	According to co-nominator, "His content creation is respectable though it's fair to say that he has been more involved in the behind the scenes work."
Lourdes	17942	2.22	No (2nd)	No	Yes	N/a	1 FA, 2 FLs, 3 GAs, 7 DYKs
Uebelhoer	562	3.87	Yes	Yes	No	0.60	very few: 11 pages created in mainspace not yet deleted, and when RFA was started had only created 4 of these
Cameron11598	10074	7.51	Yes	No	No	N/a	Significant number of GA credits: as nominator states, Cameron11598 has "...brought Djibouti at the Olympics to good topic status by bringing all every appearance of that country at the Olympics to GA status, and working on bringing three other countries Olympic articles to good topics." Co-nominator claims that Cameron has "...countless contributions to our content under his belt - articles such as those mentioned above (and a fair few more) which he has helped bring to GA, along with those he improves ad-hoc."

2017

Candidate name	Edit count (total, incl. deleted)	Years editing	First RFA?	Self-nomination?	Successful?	Years since last block	Content contributions
Muboshgu	201663	10.77	Yes	Yes	Yes	8.8 (24-hour block for edit warring)	One FA (Derek Jeter), one FP, many GAs and FLs, and a whopping 358 DYKs(!)
Power~enwiki	11375	14	Yes	Yes	No	N/a	According to the candidate, "Some of the "vital" articles I feel I have improved include Newspaper, Atlas, and Engineering; I've also been very present at the most contentious AP2 articles; Roy Moore and Donald Trump. Some less-prominent changes include tracking down what a Lerotse is, and adding references to pages like Fergana or Kielce Synagogue."
Joe Roe	15317	12.66	Yes	No	Yes	N/a	One GA and many other articles created; also helped the article creator expand Barbara Robb to B-class and get it posted as a DYK. In answering question 2, candidate also noted, "...last year I started a task force for improving our coverage of women in archaeology, which we've been making steady progress on."
TonyBallioni	22618	10.01	Yes	No	Yes	N/a	"Credited with seven good articles and 15 DYKs, TonyBallioni has a lot of experience with content building..." --MusikAnimal's co-nominator statement
Rickyc123	1000 (approx.)	0.87	Yes	Yes	No	N/a	Created a few UFC-related articles (no GAs or FAs or anything like that, though)
Megalibrarygirl	33013	6.42	Yes	No	Yes	N/a	349 total articles created at time of RFA. With respect to article quality, candidate stated, "I do have a few Good Articles here [removed link to deleted section on her userpage] that I worked on with other editors. I don't have any FA, though I did have several go to DYK." Candidate also emphasized her work rescuing articles at AFD in her answer to question 2, rather than her content creation.
Headbomb 4	196622	11.39	No (4th)	No	No	N/a	Candidate stated he is proudest of the FA Quark and the FL List of baryons.
Kostas20142	6800 (approx.)	1.15	Yes	Yes	No	N/a	According to candidate, "In terms of content creation, I have contributed to black-necked grebe, mainly by adding the status. I have also reviewed some GA nominations."
Crboyer	17028	11.83	Yes	Yes	No	N/a	Not very much; candidate pointed to their contribs reporting vandals at AIV.
Paul2520	7747	4.25	Yes	No	No	N/a	Not very much; candidate responded to question #2 by stating, "I have started 29 articles so far, one of which was deleted due to notability."
Ansh666	13205	10.01	Yes	No	Yes	N/a	Not very much (no GAs or FAs).
Robert McClenon 2	77057	12.16	No (2nd)	No	No	N/a	Not much. As nominator himself (Alex Shih) put it, "Robert is not the strongest editor in content creation, his record as a copyeditor is more than solid."
Cullen328	47499	8.05	Yes	No	Yes	N/a	Made "major contributions" (as he puts it) to 6 GAs
GeneralizationsAreBad 2	39134†	2.4	No (2nd)	No	Yes	N/a	One FA and 2 GAs (the FA apparently took an especially large amount of effort).
Anarchyte 2	25584†	2.24	No (2nd)	No	Yes	N/a	According to user themselves, "...I've written (or helped write) eight GAs, one FA, and I have 14 DYKs (though one was not nominated by me)."
Pvmoutside	95206†	10.74	Yes	Yes	No	N/a	Over 3,600 articles created
Dane	13063***	10.63	Yes	No	No	N/a	As Dane himself put it in his RFA, "In terms of content work, I have created 7 articles and i'm very proud of my contributions to the Shooting of Philando Castile article..."
GoldenRing	2400	12.66	Yes	Yes	Yes	N/a	Not much, by his own admission.
CaroleHenson	75000	6.09	Yes	No	No	N/a	"She has created nearly 500 pages, including multiple GAs and DYKs, and has improved innumerable articles along the way." -MelanieN in co-nomination statement. Note that CaroleHenson has brought 10 articles to GA status, and created one of them (Mary Brewster Hazelton) from scratch.
SuperCarnivore591	2273	1.72	Yes	Yes	No	1.21	Created multiple articles, none of which were GAs or FAs; said he was proudest of creating Mario Merola (lawyer)
Amortias	27268	2.8	Yes	No	Yes	N/a	Not much; user says his best WP contribs were anti-vandal work. Also said, during RFA, "...I have recently been advised that there is a distinct lack of articles on Suffolk Churches (an area I am familiar with geographically and ecumenically through volunteer work) and have started on a mini-spree of creation..."
Dodger67 2	78746	9.59	No (2nd)	No	Yes	6 (though this block seems to have been a mistake as it was undone soon afterward)	A couple GA credits, active in multiple WikiProjects, and founded one (WikiProject Disability).
Primefac 2	62639	6.27	No (2nd)	No	Yes	N/a	Not much; candidate himself says that " My best contributions to Wikipedia come from AFC and TFD."
FriyMan	1108	0.11	Yes	Yes	No	N/a	Improved the article Kubinka
Mz7	34571	6.82	Yes	No	Yes	N/a	According to candidate himself, "While I’m certainly not a prolific content creator, I do enjoy writing and improving articles about any topic that happens to catch my interest." He has, however, written two GAs mostly or entirely from scratch.
Cyberpower678 2	20502	5.53	No (2nd)	No	Yes	5.11 (not counting accidental block)	Not much; one supporter said in his support statement, "The lack of content work is a concern, but I trust that Cyberpower knows what they don't know, and will act appropriately."
Ferret	21729	8.15	Yes	No	Yes	N/a	Has brought 2 articles to GA status, rewritten parts of Edge Games, helped another editor with another article
Ealdgyth	95466***	9.58	Yes	No	Yes	N/a	"...this editor has a phenomenal track record with over 50 featured articles and 100 good articles..." -co-nominator statement
K6ka	81151	6.85	Yes	No	Yes	N/a	Not many; by candidate's own admission, "I will admit that I do not have much content creation tucked under my belt."
Schwede66	104177	7.25	Yes	No	Yes	N/a	5 GAs, lots of DYK article creations and reviews
NinjaRobotPirate	30257	9.82	Yes	No	Yes	N/a	"... more than 250 article creations and three Good Articles..." -Nominator statement
Onel5969	114251	7.16	Yes	No	No	N/a	As co-nominator put it, "Onel is an accomplished content creator, with somewhere in the region of 800 article creations, including a number of Good Articles."
Mike1901	10588	11	Yes	No	No	Only blocked once, for having a compromised account, unblocked soon afterward	Created 7 articles (one of which was deleted, and another of which was a disambig), helped create Workington North railway station, working on getting Marylebone station to GA status
TheMagnificentist	4756	0.96	Yes	Yes	No	0.19	38 articles (C-class to disambigs)

***This is a bit too high as it includes all the edits made in the month in which they were nominated.

†This is a bit too low as it doesn't include any of the edits in the month in which they were nominated.

2016

Candidate name	Edit count (total, incl. deleted)	Years editing	First RFA?	Self-nomination?	Successful?	Years since last block	Content contributions
Ivanvector	16254	7.2	Yes	No	Yes	N/a	18 articles, incl. stubs/disambigs
Ad Orientem	12935	6.173	Yes	No	Yes	N/a	9 articles
Boson	16455	13.48	Yes	No	Yes	N/a	60 articles
YborCityJohn	3524	5.737	Yes	Yes	No	N/a	7 articles
Paul Benjamin Austin	16048	14.39	No	Yes	No	N/a	66 articles
Yash!	17200 (est.)	4.581	Yes	No	No	N/a	11 GAs, 14 DYKs, 88 articles total
Godsy	15890 (est.)	2.016	Yes	Yes	No	N/a	7 articles
Samtar	18250 (est.)	8.345	Yes	No	Yes	N/a	Not much
RickinBaltimore	41307	10.44	Yes	No	Yes	N/a	Not much
Rehman 4	18100 (est.)	8.386	No	No	Yes	N/a	170+ articles
Vanamonde93	24434	3.71	Yes	No	Yes	2.56 years (1 24-hour block for edit warring)	6 GAs, 27 DYKs
Oshwah	136849	9.63	No (2nd)	No	Yes	N/a	Not much--one supporter said that "I'm not concerned about lack of significant content creation as there are many roles in building a free online encyclopedia."
RegistryKey 2	4174	1.87	No (2nd)	No	No	N/a	4 articles; 3 stubs, 1 deleted
Steel1943	74457	4.72	Yes	No	No	N/a	Disambigs mostly
BU Rob13	47680	1	Yes	No	Yes	N/a	3 GAs, 39 DYKs
Jo-Jo Eumerus	17199	3.81	Yes	No	Yes	N/a	3 GAs, many DYKs
Checkingfax	25769	6.33	Yes	No	No	N/a	"He works on a wide variety of articles, mainly fixing small errors and problems, but also improving prose, organization, and sourcing. ...He helped her [User:Natalie.Desautels] get the article on Michael Laucke through the GA review until it was approved, and helped her get the DYK approved. See his many comments here and Talk:Michael Laucke/GA1."
Anarchyte	14305	1.17	Yes	No	No	N/a	According to nom statement, "Anarchyte is more of a wikignome than a heavy content contributor. Nevertheless, he has done some respectable content work, which you can see linked from his user page. In particular, he has put a lot of work into Rust (video game), and has ambitions to get it to Good Article status."
FAMASFREENODE	200	0.01	Yes	Yes	No	N/a	Very little
Tavix	32125	9.25	Yes	No	Yes	N/a	"Good quality article content and a few DYKs"
AustralianRupert	63321	7.33	Yes	No	Yes	N/a	4 FAs, 19 A-class, 57 GAs
Maile66	53877	9.33	Yes	No	Yes	N/a	3 FAs, 4 FLs, 4 GAs
Amakuru	28000	10.17	Yes	No	Yes	N/a	Got Rwanda and Paul Kagame to FA status
Zppix	3000	1.58	Yes	Yes	No	N/a	1 major article (most of rest was reverting vandalism)
Xx Cool Guy7202 xX	195	0.01	Yes	Yes	No	N/a (until after RFA)	Very few
Midas02	33581	5.92	Yes	No	No	N/a	Not very much
Widr	12764	5.08	Yes	No	Yes	N/a	Has created some relatively short articles on Finnish people, but as he put it, his "...contributions tend to be gnome-like fixes here and there."
GeneralizationsAreBad	16000	1.00	Yes	No	No	N/a	"...has been significantly involved in the GA-promotion of four articles..." --Nominator
NeatCoronet458	137	0.25	Yes	Yes	No	N/a	Very few
Wikimayor	1172	6.92	Yes	Yes	No	N/a	15 or so articles created, also says he is proud of contributions to "Occupy Nigeria and The Future Awards".
Josef9	77	2.92	Yes	Yes	No	N/a	Few, some articles that have been converted to redirects
Brianhe	57399	11.58	Yes	No	No	N/a	2 GAs and more than a dozen DYKs. Summarized here.
Peacemaker67	42856	4.25	Yes	No	Yes	14 months (blocked twice, most recent of which was 14 months ago).	15 featured articles and, as candidate put it, "I’ve helped to promote over a dozen Featured Articles/Lists, 40-odd Good Articles and a Good Topic, but I’m most proud of the half-dozen or so articles and lists I have created from scratch and developed to FA/FL, and those that have been TFA/TFL."
Hawkeye7	62711	10.58	No (2nd)	No	No	N/a	According to nom statement, "he is responsible for 46 featured articles, over 200 good articles, and even more DYKs."
Pablothepenguin	409	1.67	Yes	Yes	No	abt. 8 months (since unblocked, indef block originally imposed abt. 6 months earlier )	Very few, if any.

2015

Candidate name	Edit count (total, incl. deleted)	Time editing*	First RFA?	Self-nomination?	Successful?	Years since last block	Content contributions
78.26	34,918	6, 8	Yes	No	Yes	Never blocked	According to co-nominator, "He got Elmo Tanner to GA status, and he has created an impressive 133 articles, 37 of which have been featured at DYK. (He has 44 DYKs in total.)"
BethNaught	24,579	1, 10	Yes	No	Yes	Never blocked	Quote from candidate: "In terms of content my best work is definitely Jessie Bonstelle, which I created and brought to GA status myself. (Thanks go, of course, to the GA reviewer and to those who pointed out typos.) In addition, I have eight other DYKs, concerning either British MPs or female scientists."
Supdiop 2	<8K	8 months	No	Yes	No	about 5 weeks	19 articles created
Vanjagenije	>50k	9, 5	Yes	No	Yes	Never blocked	No good or featured articles, but >190 articles created
Biblioworm	8,786	1, 3	Yes	No	Yes	Never blocked	"...I've created three GAs; I think my latest one, William G. Farrow, is the best example. It passed its GA review quickly with very few issues. I'm currently working to bring Battle of Brunanburh (a very important but, surprisingly, relatively unknown battle of Anglo-Saxon England) to GA status. I also have nine DYKs, with one currently pending at review (at the time of writing)." -Candidate
Yamaguchi先生	40000	10 years	Yes	Yes	Yes	Never blocked	"I consider most of my work to fall under the category of WikiGnome, in that much of my work is not particularly characteristic or immediately visible as my time is largely spent making grammatical improvements and corrections, the removal of vandalism, and identifying WP:BLP concerns." -Candidate
Wikicology	6300	1, 5	Yes	No	No	Never blocked	6 DYKs
Freghttrain	<61	<1 month	Yes	Yes	No	Never blocked until after RFA closed	Essentially none
Thine Antique Pen	61000	5, 4	Yes	No	No	3.5 (Once, indefinitely, unblocked 4 hours later, see answer to 3rd question )	"...I have brought...18 articles to Good Article status, a few list articles to Featured List status, and am still working on achieving my potential first Featured Article." (also nominated 27 articles for DYK successfully in one hook. )
nms642	145	<0.01 month	Yes	Yes	No	Never blocked	Essentially none
Ian.thomson	37,432	9, 8	Yes	No	Yes	One 24-hour block in 2011 for violating 3RR	According to candidate, "I've either created, recreated, or almost completely rewritten Arbatel de magia veterum, Debtera, Idealism (Christian eschatology), Lesser Key of Solomon, Liber Officium Spirituum, Livre des Esperitz, Magical Treatise of Solomon, Reuben Swinburne Clymer, Shemhamphorash, and this article about some conspiracy theorist garbage."
Paine Ellsworth	88039	6, 7	Yes	No	No	Never blocked	51 articles created (16 deleted)
Supdiop	6000+	6 months	Yes	Yes	No	Never blocked (at the time)	According to candidate, "I created a few articles, mostly geography related," also apparently has at least 1 DYK credit.
Montanabw	75000+	9, 6	Yes	No	No	Never blocked	According to candidate, "I have created over 200 articles, have been a significant contributor to 20 featured articles, a couple dozen additional GA-class articles and recently reached the 50 DYK mark."
APerson	17000	3, 6	Yes	No	No	Never blocked	Some, but according to nominator, "...none of their articles have been through GA/FA..."
Oshwah	24000	7	Yes	No	No	Never blocked	Not very much
Happy Attack Dog	1500	1.5	Yes	Yes	No	Never blocked	Not very much
APerson	17266	2.5	Yes	No	No	Never blocked	Quote from nominator statement: "APerson is also a content contributor, albeit none of their articles have been through GA/FA..."
Wbm0158	45043	4	Yes	Yes	Yes	Never blocked	No GAs or FAs (according to WereSpielChequers)
Doniago	54000	7	Yes	No	No	Never blocked	Quote from candidate: "my best contributions have been the "little things"."
Ceradon†	9912	4	No (2nd), but 1st was successful	Yes	No	Never blocked	5 GAs, two articles at FAC (at time of RFA)
Nrwairport	680	0	Yes	Yes	No	Blocked only after RFA closed	Negligible
Cyclonebiskit	41044	7.5	No (2nd)	Yes	Yes	Never blocked	23 FAs/FLs, 157 GAs
Liz	45809	8	Yes	No	Yes	Never blocked	Quote from candidate: "I focused on organization, that is, categories, and small editing fixes rather than content creation."
Primefac	13677	5	Yes	No	No	Never blocked	Negligible
Hexatekin	8494	2.33	Yes	Yes	No	Never blocked	Negligible
Cyphoidbomb	45554	7	No (2nd)	No	Yes	Never blocked	Negligible
Dovikap	619.5**	1	Yes	Yes	No	Never blocked	Negligible
GamerPro64	15544**	7	No (2nd)	No	No	Never blocked	6 GAs, one FA (although some RFA !voters say he didn't write this article)
Ceradon	7276	4	Yes	No	Yes	Never blocked	5 GAs
Cyberpower678	15262	4	Yes	No	No	3 years, 7 months (indef block, unblocked 3 days later)	Negligible
GottaGoFast	2813	0	Yes	Yes	No	Never blocked	Negligible
Rich Farmbrough	985001**	11.33	No (2nd)	No	No	2 years, 3 months (1 year block)
Mdann52	26563	3.5	No (3rd)	No	No	Never blocked	Negligible with the possible exception of GA work on Oblivion (roller coaster)
Ser Amantio di Nicolao	1140141	9.5	Yes	No	Yes	Never blocked	Negligible
Voidxor	9412	10	Yes	No	No	Never blocked
As11ley	516**	2.25	Yes	Yes	No	Never blocked	Negligible
NeilN	80657	9.75	Yes	No	Yes	Two blocks, both accidental	Described by co-nom as having a "relative lack of content contributions"
Weegeerunner	3077**	0	Yes	Yes	No	Self-requested block	No articles created
Jacob Lott 8	61	0	Yes	Yes	No	Never blocked
TheGRVOfLightning	3387	2	Yes	Yes	No	Never blocked
Abecedare	23025	8.5	No (2nd), but 1st was successful	No	Yes	Accidental block	Quote from candidate: "...most of my content contributions involve improving content and sourcing of articles on a more piecemeal basis, say, a few sentences, paragraphs, or a section..."
Ritchie333	32522	9.4	Yes	No	Yes	Never blocked	41 GAs
Opabinia regalis	7164	9	No (2nd), but 1st was successful	Yes	Yes	Never blocked
Everymorning	50899	2.25	No (2nd)	Yes	No	Self-requested block	2 GAs
Wackslas	547	6	Yes	Yes	No	1 year, 3 months
Panewithholder	24	0	Yes	Yes	No	Blocked only after RFA closed
Moosehadley	2628	7	Yes	Yes	No	Accidental block
Jakec	16123**	2.583	No (2nd)	Yes	Yes	Never blocked
Buggie111	10401.5**	3.3	No (2nd)	No	No	Never blocked
Koavf	1449617**	10	No (2nd)	No	No	4 years, 11 months (48 hour block for edit warring)
EuroCarGT	23846	3	Yes	No	No	Accidental block
Fenix down	22267**	5.58	Yes	No	Yes	Never blocked
SarekOfVulcan	44510.5**	11	No (4th)	Yes	Yes	3 years, 2 months (21 day block for edit warring)
Cadillac000	1449**	2.33	Yes	Yes	No	Never blocked
MelanieN	31357.5**	8.5	Yes	No	Yes	Never blocked
Titodutta	67719	3.75	Yes	No	Yes	Never blocked
Heythereboy	175	0	Yes	Yes	No	Blocked only after RFA closed
Ethically Yours	4126	1.17	Yes	Yes	No	Never blocked
RegistryKey	807.5**	0	Yes	Yes	No	Never blocked

2014

Candidate name	Edit count	Years editing*	First RFA?	Self-nomination?	Successful?
Rcsprinter123	47000**	4	No (3rd)	Yes	No
Jkokavec	400	0	Yes	Yes	No
Sarahj2107	12800	8	Yes	No	Yes
Czar	32900**	9	Yes	No	Yes
Samwalton9	8400	3	Yes	No	Yes
Northamerica1000	252000	3	No (2nd)	No	Yes
Thomas.W	24000	8	Yes	No	No
I JethroBT	17500	8	Yes	No	Yes
Jackmcbarn	20700**	1.5	Yes	No	Yes
GamerPro64	13000**	6	Yes	No	No
Vladimirrizov2	13	0	Yes	Yes	No
Jacobfeliciano1	60	0	Yes	Yes	No
Dodger67	44900	7	Yes	No	No
Philg88	21500	8	Yes	No	Yes
Mkativerata	27500	7	No (2nd)	Yes	No
Armbrust	212000	6	No (3rd)	No	No
Solarra	25600	4.5	Yes	No	No
AlanM1	7900	6.5	Yes	No	No
Arumpostasest	200	0	Yes	Yes	No
StringTheory11	10600	4	Yes	No	Yes
A.Minkowiski	1892	0	Yes	No	No
Deor	74600	7.5	Yes	No	Yes
Grfr12345	250	0	Yes	Yes	No
Go Phightins!	17000	3	Yes	No	Yes
Picapicacuckoo	250	0	Yes	Yes	No
Koavf	1287900**	9	Yes	No	No
AbigailAbernathy	7000**	5	Yes	No	No
JohnSmith5000100	260**	0	Yes	Yes	No
Anne Delong	44000	1.5	Yes	No	Yes
MusikAnimal	37700	4	Yes	No	Yes
Randykitty	30000	1.5	Yes	No	Yes
Little Mountain 5	20000+	6	Yes	No	Yes
harrybrowne1986	approx. 100	6	Yes	Yes	No

Methods

I determined the amount of time a user had been on Wikipedia at the time of their RFA based on the date of their first edit (as determined from this tool) and the date in the signature in the nominator statement. In the case of Jakec, he was active under the account King jakob c before switching to his current account. Similarly, Liz used the account Nwjerseyliz before switching to her current account. If the nomination was accepted (which defines the start of an RFA) at least a few days closer to the end of a month than to the beginning I included that month's edit count, but if the acceptance occurred at least a few days closer to the beginning, I did not include that month's edits. Edit counts, like the date of first edits, were determined using the Edit Counter tool on XTools.

Time editing was calculated using this tool and the dates described above. The number of days was then divided by 365.25 to get the number of years.

*Time is listed in years, months, unless less than 1 year, in which case, months. Also, if # of months in addition to years is <1, only years will be included.

**These edit counts were estimated by averaging out the difference between edit counts not counting the month of the RFA and counting the month of the RFA, because the RFA did not occur very close to the end or beginning of a month and, in some cases, there was no talk page edit stats summary available.

†This user had admitted to engaging in sockpuppetry, which was why he resigned his position as an admin.

Results from 2015

59 total RFAs in 2015.
Overall, 21 (36%) were successful and 38 (64%) were not.
22 self-nominations, 20 nominated by other users.
Of the self-nominations, only 5 (23%) were successful. In contrast, of the 20 RFAs in which the candidate was nominated by another user, 10 (50%) were successful.
30 RFAs were first-time nominations, 12 were not.
Of the 12 non-first-time nominations, four (SarekOfVulcan, Abecedare, Rich Farmbrough, and Opabinia regalis) had passed RFA before. However, Rich Farmbrough (unlike the other three) was desysopped by ArbCom in 2012. Of the other three, two (Abecedare and Opabinia regalis) lost their adminship status due to inactivity, while the other (SarekOfVulcan) resigned as an admin in 2013. The remaining eight had never been administrators before.
Also, of these 12, half were successful and half were not. The proportion of the remaining 28 that were successful was very similar (15/28 = about 54%).
In 2015, so far, there have been 5 users who have run for adminship who had previously been blocked (not counting self-requested or accidental blocks). Of these only 1 (SarekofVulcan) was successful.

Edit counts

The average edit count of the 15 successful RFAs this year so far is just above 110,000. However, this is skewed considerably by Ser Amantio di Nicolao's edit count of over 1 million edits. Excluding his edit count, the average drops to about 36,000 edits.
The standard deviation of edit count among successful candidacies in 2015 is over 285,000 when including Ser Amantio di Nicolao and about 21,000 when excluding him.
Overall, including both 2014 and 2015 data, the mean edit count of successful RFAs is about 78,000, and the standard deviation is about 209,000.
The mean edit count of unsuccessful RFAs in these two years was higher than that for successful RFAs: about 96,000. The standard deviation was about 312,000.
Excluding Ser Amantio di Nicolao, the average edit count of successful RFAs is much lower: about 40,000.
With respect to the unsuccessful adminship candidacies, there were three outliers: both of Koavf's RFAs and that of Rich Farmbrough. At the time of his RFA, Rich Farmbrough had nearly a million edits, and Koavf had over a million at the time of both of his. Excluding them, the average for unsuccessful RFAs drops even more, to about 16,000.
With respect to median edit counts, the median edit count for successful RFAs in 2014-2015 was about 31,000, and that for unsuccessful ones during the same time period was about 6,000.

Results from 2016

Avg. EC for successful RFAs: 36400
For unsuccessful ones that number is 18224
9/19 of unsuccessful RFAs were self-noms as compared with none of the successful ones.
All 9 self-noms were unsuccessful compared with 16/26 of non-self-noms.
Three RFA candidates had been previously blocked; two of their RFAs were successful.
16/19 (84%) of unsuccessful RFAs were the candidate's first, as were 14/16 (88%) of successful ones.
Of the 30 first-time RFAs, 14 (47%) were successful; whereas of the 5 non-first-time RFAs, 2 (40%) were successful.
Avg. # of years editing for successful RFAs: 7.35
For unsuccessful RFAs this figure was 4.38

Results from 2017

Average EC for successful RFAs: 50365
For unsuccessful RFAs that number is 42258
Average # years editing for successful RFAs: 7.8
For unsuccessful RFAs that number is 6.9
Of the 21 successful RFAs in 2017, we again see a clear pattern: only 2 of them (10%) were self-noms. In contrast, 8 of the 19 unsuccessful RFAs in 2017 (42%) were self-noms.
Looking at this issue the other way, of the 10 self-noms, only 2 (20%; and yes, these are the same 2 as above) were successful. In contrast, of the 30 non-self-nom RFAs, 17 (57%) were successful.
14 out of the 33 (42%) first-time RFAs were successful, compared with 5/7 (71%) of the RFAs by candidates who had done one before.