Wikipedia talk:Administrator elections

Impractical: nearly 40 candidates is too much to reasonably review in a single batch

Is the expectation really for users to review nearly 40 candidates, questions, discussions, etc.? I always supported having the option of using SecurePoll for RfAs, but for individual ones, not dozens. Maybe five or ten at a time, at most. If the limitation of SecurePoll is such large batches, then maybe it's a no-go. I realize this is a test of the feature (previously limited to ACE on-project, and WMF proposals cross-projects), but this is a lot to review. I don't think the candidacy size was well thought out, and it may end up dooming this approach. Which would be quite unfortunate. El_C 15:52, 17 October 2024 (UTC)

@El C See #So many candidates above. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 15:58, 17 October 2024 (UTC)

There are currently 35 candidates in this election, which indeed makes it quite challenging to read through all the nominations and answers. We didn't expect so many candidates, but I think this a positive sign that so many users are stepping forward to run. As this is the first time organising an admin election, a lot of feedback has been received from the community, and more input will continue to be gathered until the election concludes. If these elections continue, future ones can be adjusted based on this feedback, such as limiting the number of candidates and tweaking the election and discussion phase dates. – DreamRimmer (talk) 16:18, 17 October 2024 (UTC)

There are two discussions about how we manage this number this time that you might want to join. That is #What_should_the_page_say_on_voting_guides? and #Notice_not_on_watchlist. This was unexpected, and between all the discussion we've had, there seems to be a consensus do to it differently next time. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 16:22, 17 October 2024 (UTC)

That thread says something to the effect of: 'I'm pleased there's over a dozen candidates.' Whereas mine here says: 'I'm displeased there's nearly 40.' See, one thing is not like the other. El_C 15:06, 18 October 2024 (UTC)

I also would have preferred if securepoll allowed us to vote for each individual at our convenience, as opposed to voting on all of the candidates at once. Thankfully, we're able to go back and vote again (albeit on all of them at once again) if we want to change our votes, and our original votes will then be discarded. Hey man im josh (talk) 15:12, 18 October 2024 (UTC)

It's a tradeoff; retrieving the original votes would mean the software would need to store the required decryption key to access that info, which adds a potential surface for attack (and at least partially negates the goal of encryption, which prevents those with access to the database from seeing the votes). Other than a mechanism like that so voting could be broken up over multiple sessions, voting on individuals would require individual ballots, which also affects the user experience. isaacl (talk) 18:37, 18 October 2024 (UTC)

Just to say that I, for one, would be happy to withdraw from this election, or be bumped into a later batch, if either of those would help. (Perhaps I'm not the only candidate feeling this way, either?) -- DoubleGrazing (talk) 18:44, 18 October 2024 (UTC)

SecurePoll for RFAs is the way to go. But, I'm not devoting all of my time to review 40+ candidate in a few weeks. I've voted (since it's truly voting this time) based on name recognition and I've opposed anyone I don't recognize. I know this comment will inflame a lot of people - but this is the reality. I feel strongly enough that the candidates aren't being properly vetted to vote oppose over abstain. Okay, folks, go ahead and hate on me now.--v/r - TP 14:09, 31 October 2024 (UTC)

No hate, but there actually was a ton of vetting done by various editors, who reported their findings in the discussion sections, and multiple candidates had multiple nominators. Valereee (talk) 14:17, 31 October 2024 (UTC)

Everyone obviously votes the way they think is best, but the way I see it, if I don't have an opinion on a candidate, I'll abstain (and be grateful there is that option). Logically, voting against someone because I don't know them would make no more sense (to my mind) than voting for someone because I don't know them. In this election I voted for 7-8 candidates, and against two, leaving the remaining majority as abstentions, precisely because I had no opinion on them either way (partly because I hadn't done enough research on them, in turn partly because of the large number of them). -- DoubleGrazing (talk) 14:50, 31 October 2024 (UTC)

Do a quick pool spilt

If people really are bothered by the number just hold a quick poll, to split into say 4ths by sign up, the first group goes first the second group 10 days latter, etc if one of the candidates can't do it when they are assigned they can go sometime latter when they can (advertise the poll on cent). Some flexibility is part of the job after all. Alanscottwalker (talk) 18:47, 18 October 2024 (UTC)

I don't think that's reasonable at this stage in the process in my opinion. Candidates have been prepping, whether just mentally or actually setting time aside to be ready to answer questions, and it would be unreasonable to change the schedule on short notice. Voters have also been preparing questions, comments, and doing their research to be ready and able to vote appropriately. Though I do think the port-mortem for the process will find consensus to split candidates up into staggered groups if we continue with admin elections. Hey man im josh (talk) 18:51, 18 October 2024 (UTC)

There is also the issue that (as I understand it) voting is held on a separate wiki (votewiki) and communities holding elections need to be allocated slots on votewiki in which to hold the election. This is why the election is being held now - I believe August or September would have been the first choice of those doing the initial organising. If I've stood the comments at WP:VPWMF correctly then this might change in the future, but the "if" in this sentence is substantial. Thryduulf (talk) 19:08, 18 October 2024 (UTC)

@Thryduulf SecurePoll can support multiple elections at once and multiple languages at once. The only limitation is that it cannot simultaneously hold an election for a left-to-right language and a right-to-left language. See Special:Diff/1059611454. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 20:00, 18 October 2024 (UTC)

Agree. At this point, we're in or heading into the weekend, so I doubt we can get the WMF staff who set up the Secure Poll to change it for us. And I think it would only be appropriate to move some candidates into a later set if they specifically agreed to be moved into one (cf @DoubleGrazing above). Though if @Novem Linguae is confident that the relevant WMF staff would be able to attend to a last-minute change of plans on Monday, maybe this is still technically possible...? -- asilvering (talk) 19:13, 18 October 2024 (UTC)

Using SecurePoll is expensive in terms of time (of WMF Trust & Safety who administer vote.wikimedia.org and who have a SecurePoll calendar that they use to try to keep polls from other wikis from overlapping, and of the stewards who do the scrutineering). I don't think we can convince those stakeholders to have 4 SecurePoll votes in a short timespan. In fact the stewards have already stated that they probably can't scrutineer for us in the future. This would also be a big change which would disrupt the schedule and candidate expectations, and an 11th hour change. In conclusion, I don't think this is a possibility for this election, but I imagine we can certainly make changes to address this after the election in the debrief. Perhaps capping future elections to 10 candidates, or elongating the discussion phase, or allowing voter guides, or whatever we want to do to mitigate the problems that come with having a lot of candidates. –Novem Linguae (talk) 19:39, 18 October 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for the thorough response. I personally think the shorter discussion period is one of the strong benefits of this system (it just becomes difficult when there are so many candidates), so I hope we don't end up extending it. Based on your experience with setting up SecurePoll, do you have a sense of how often we could run these admin elections? Would quarterly be too much? Twice-yearly? -- asilvering (talk) 19:58, 18 October 2024 (UTC)

Maybe yearly? WMF T&S didn't respond very quickly to my original emails, suggesting to me they are a bit busy and don't have a lot of bandwidth for elections. (Although they've been great this week with the election setup on Phab.) Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)#Enabling SecurePoll elections with the electionadmin right is probably the long-term solution to being able to hold multiple elections a year. –Novem Linguae (talk) 20:03, 18 October 2024 (UTC)

Running elections more frequently on a sustainable scale will require them to be run locally. We've known that it was in the WMF plans, and the discussion to which Novem Linguae linked gives hope that it will come sooner rather than later. How often the community can run elections will probably come down to what decisions it wants to make on the requirements for scrutineering, as I think that will be the first bottleneck. isaacl (talk) 21:28, 18 October 2024 (UTC)

Going off on that thread, is there a historical reason we always use stewards instead of local enwiki CU folks for scrutineering ? Sohom (talk) 14:43, 19 October 2024 (UTC)

The idea for using stewards who don't regularly contribute to en.wp to scrutineer arbcom elections has historically been because they are not part of the community. CUs are appointed by and often work closely with the arbitration committee so there is a much greater potential for conflicts of interest, especially if they were also permitted to vote. Whether that degree of independence is needed for admin elections is not something that I can recall being discussed. Thryduulf (talk) 14:50, 19 October 2024 (UTC)

Whether that degree of independence is needed for admin elections is not something that I can recall being discussed. - That might be a useful point to bring up when WP:AELEC goes up for a vote after the trial period. I don't see stewards being any more impartial than local CUs in the context of admin elections. And choosing local CUs will probably allow us to increase the frequency in which we conduct these elections in general without overburdening our stewards (who already have a lot on their plates). Sohom (talk) 15:08, 19 October 2024 (UTC)

Maybe to avoid WP:NOTFISHING? Checkusers (stewards) that don't know as many enwiki people are less likely to violate WP:NOTFISHING during their checks of enwiki voters. –Novem Linguae (talk) 20:04, 19 October 2024 (UTC)

• The number of candidates indicates that this initiative has been hugely successful in encouraging folks to come forward. We've yet to see how it will work out - if the candidates will feel the experience has been positive, if the community will feel the process has not been too exhausting, and the real test will be how everyone responds when this is next done (will a similar number of candidates come forward, will sufficient community members get involved in discussion and voting). It might be a little early to propose improvements when we haven't yet gone through the process, though I was also somewhat daunted when I started to read the questions and answers, then scrolled down to see how many candidates there are. My thought was that staggering the applicants might be helpful, and it seems inevitable that it has already been suggested. Staggering, at the moment, seems to make sense - we could have a system of holding an admin election every xxx (say, a month), limit each election to 10 candidates, so any over ten go into the next election slot. If we find that a month is too frequent because there's too few candidates, then move to every three months, conversely if a month is not frequent enough, move it to every fortnight. Anyhow - I really like that so many have stepped forward, and I will endeavour to read though the info on each candidate and make a vote on everyone. SilkTork (talk) 18:01, 23 October 2024 (UTC)

  We could have tentatively scheduled elections which run according to dynamic rules:

  1. The voting phase will run starting 0:00 UTC the first Sunday of each month and last for exactly one week.
  2. The nomination and discussion deadlines will be some predetermined number of days before voting begins.
  3. Any number of candidates may nominate themselves / be nominated for adminship. If, however, the number of eligible candidates should exceed 10 as of the nomination deadline, only the first 10 nominations (chronologically) will proceed to that month's election; the rest will be postponed until the next election.
  4. If the number of eligible candidates in a given month is less than 5, an election will not be run that month. Notwithstanding the above, elections will be held no less frequently as once every 3 months, even if there are fewer than 5 candidates.

  This ensures that there are 5-10 candidates each round, in all probability. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 21:51, 23 October 2024 (UTC)

It's not too late to put in a minimum level of support

Sorry folks....but really, we need to put in a minimum level of support for successful candidates; percentage is not enough. We have created a scenario where it would be possible to get adminship with fewer than 15 support votes, and that's just not okay.

I propose the following:

• Successful candidates will have a minimum of 70 voters either supporting or opposing. Of those votes, 70% must be support votes.

Really, it's not too late. Please let's do this. I really hate that we've created a system - even a trial system - where we have so many candidates that nobody can effectively evaluate them, and thus poorly vetted candidates get adminship. Risker (talk) 03:22, 20 October 2024 (UTC)

It's 100% too late to change the rules or format. You're also nuts if you think anybody would actually get less than 15 supports and somehow still pass here, that's an absurd assumption of low participation. Let's be realistic here. Hey man im josh (talk) 03:43, 20 October 2024 (UTC)

I strongly suspect that we will have much higher levels of participation than on any normal RFA. But in case we don't, and someone truly unvetted and horribly destructive gets through, we can deal with that when it happens. -- asilvering (talk) 03:50, 20 October 2024 (UTC)

If every one of them gets through, we will still have no more admins than we had last year. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 04:42, 20 October 2024 (UTC)

My sense is also that it's very unlikely that there'll be such a low turnout. If that or something else wildly expected happens, I think we have to rely on the bureaucrats to exercise common sense and not flip the bits if this process has failed to produce a sensible result. – Joe (talk) 07:50, 20 October 2024 (UTC)

I agree with the above that it's too late to change the rules here - if there is a low turnout (which, based on the surprise number of candidates, I doubt will happen), then we'll just have to deal with that. The best thing to do here is to vet candidates in advance. I recommend checking out User:Novem Linguae/Essays/2024 administrator election voter guide for a rough overview of the candidates. BugGhost🦗👻 10:05, 20 October 2024 (UTC)

Having a minimum makes sense as otherwise, the risk is that voters become very defensive in voting and vote no by defaut even where they have spent no time on the candidate, as they might be concerned that low-participation candidates could slip through. Even a 50 de-minimus would be pretty uncontroversial imho and useful for both candidates and voters. Aszx5000 (talk) 10:14, 20 October 2024 (UTC)

(edit conflict) While I agree this would have been desirable, the time to raise this point was during the initial RFC, or during the subsequent discussions, or during the preparation, or (in extremis) during the candidate signup. It is definitely too late to change the rules now. The only thing you can do about this now is to encourage those eligible to vote to do so. You can vote to oppose those you have not evaluated if you are worried they might be appointed with a low number of support votes, but evaluating them is preferable. Thryduulf (talk) 10:21, 20 October 2024 (UTC)

I really hope people do not vote oppose just because they ran out of time to assess some candidates. We're a big community, and it's good to put some trust in each other. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 10:27, 20 October 2024 (UTC)

That is why a de-minimus might be helpful (although it would be a late rule-change which is not ideal per the feedback above), and even more importantly, why getting admins to co-nominate (and candidates to accept such co-nominatation) could also be very helpful in encouraging voters to take more risk with this exciting new process. Aszx5000 (talk) 10:32, 20 October 2024 (UTC)

It would certainly not be ideal, especially for the candidates, but it is an option that is open to voters. Thryduulf (talk) 12:13, 20 October 2024 (UTC)

Yes, please don't vote all oppose. That would be damaging to the trial. Please just vote abstain if you're unsure about a candidate. –Novem Linguae (talk) 18:42, 20 October 2024 (UTC)

Those who oppose the process should not be voting all oppose as a protest, that's just inappropriate and disruptive. It's fine to disagree with the process, but the candidates shouldn't feel it as a result. Hey man im josh (talk) 19:23, 20 October 2024 (UTC)

People can literally vote oppose for any reason. Sounds like the process is working as designed. -Fastily 05:05, 21 October 2024 (UTC)

Indeed being able to oppose without having to justify (and potentially be badgered about) your reasoning was one of the reasons proponents gave for having secret voting. Not being convinced of a candidate's suitability for adminship (for whatever reason) is a perfectly legitimate reason to oppose. While the candidate (and others) would likely prefer voters to abstain when that reason is due to not having evaluated the candidate in as much depth as the voter would like, there is nothing in the rules or guidance that requires this. Thryduulf (talk) 10:58, 21 October 2024 (UTC)

I agree that a candidate getting low absolute support numbers but passing due to a high support percentage is a theoretical problem but one which shouldn't happen in practice. The number of candidates putting their name forward is already much, much higher than expected and I think the total voting numbers for each candidate in the admin election will follow suit. Gizza (talk) 08:10, 21 October 2024 (UTC)

• I've just had a quick skim through the 2007 crop of admins. 2007 averaged more than one RFA a day, and obviously at times when there were lots of candidates some RFAs had few participants. A 70 participants threshold would have lost us a significant proportion of them, including a current admin who was unanimously appointed by 22 participants that year. Not only that but it would have the perverse effect that voting oppose could result in one admin being appointed by 50 supports to 20 while others were narrowly rejected by 50 supports to 19 opposes and clearly rejected by 65 supports to zero opposes. If after this round of elections we decide on a minimum threshold for the future, I suggest either a minimum support threshold (perhaps 20?), or a minimum majority (perhaps 15?) but not a minimum participation level. ϢereSpielChequers 09:09, 21 October 2024 (UTC)
• I've already commented on the other version of this over at WT:RFA, but the specific threshold proposed here is unworkable. If 69-0 shouldn't pass, 49-21 definitely shouldn't, but the reverse would be true. If we do this, it should be a minimum number of support votes. —Cryptic 03:19, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

• It would be useful if those voting oppose had to put down a reason ("not enough experience" "poor answer to Q5" "no time to fully evaluate" etc), and those reasons were anonymously made public after the RfA was over - so what we get is the reasons for the opposes, but not who said what. Oppose reasons are valuable to the candidates if they pass or not, revealing to them the concerns that folks have. It would also help show possible weaknesses in the scheme if too many people were saying that they opposed because they had no time to evaluate. SilkTork (talk) 18:15, 23 October 2024 (UTC)

  I've often said that if candidates can stand failing at RfA once, that the first would hold all of the answers they needed. If you improve based on feedback, and upon the reasons for voters' opposes, you'll stand a great shot at a second RfA. Theleekycauldron did exactly that between her first and second RfA and she came out with the fourth most supports ever a year and a half after her first RfA. Hey man im josh (talk) 18:23, 23 October 2024 (UTC)

  Exactly! She cleaned house. Took advice. Admitted errors. Got better. Theleekycauldron's high activity level at a highly visible board (WP:DYK) between the two processes did tend to paint her as trusted and having an obvious need of tools. Not everyone is as energetic as TLC, but she responded directly to the previous feedback, won over her opposers, and made new friends. All while graduating college. She's a good adult, and we rewarded her with all this responsibility. BusterD (talk) 03:36, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

  One of the original issues with leek was that she was very young. Now she can always look back at crashing THAT glass ceiling, but not in the way she might have liked. BusterD (talk) 03:49, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

  Reasons I've opposed candidates in this election include too great an error rate/volume at CSD, apparently not understanding most admin actions, not having enough experience, inappropriate draftifications, and not participating in areas they want to work in. Reasons I've supported include being demonstrably competent in the areas they want to work in (or more generally competent), and demonstrating an awareness of their strengths and weaknesses (I opposed for a much wider variety of reasons than I supported - three candidates I support have identical comments in my notes, no two of those I opposed do).

  One of the reasons I opposed the election in the initial RFC was because there is no way for the candidates to know why people opposed them and so no easy way to know what they need to improve on in the future, and equally there is no way to learn what people are seeing in the successful candidates that the unsuccessful (and future candidates) can learn from. I could leave 40 individual comments/emails but (a) that's not in keeping with a secret vote and (b) if even a 10th of voters did that candidates would be overwhelmed. Thryduulf (talk) 03:57, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

Planning for the debrief phase

I won't go into too much detail yet since we're busy with other phases right now, but my initial thoughts for the debrief phase are 1) do it after the results of the election are posted, so that everyone has a complete picture. 2) Host it on this talk page or a subpage. 3) Divide it into two major sections: feedback from voters and feedback from candidates. 4) Debrief first, RFCs later. –Novem Linguae (talk) 06:09, 23 October 2024 (UTC)

Makes sense. I think hosting it on a subpage (and advertising it widely of course), makes the most sense as this talk page may be too busy. I wonder if we need to structure it further, as I imagine there might be a lot of commentary. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 07:18, 23 October 2024 (UTC)

First, I want to say thanks to NL for all the careful work you have been doing on this. I also agree with that general approach. A closely related thing that occurs to me is that, given all the expressed concern about whether there are "too many" candidates, and what kind of effect that will have on who does or does not get elected, is that we should not rush into an RfC, because there may be knee-jerk reactions that might not hold up with the passage of time. For example, I expect that there will be some quick reactions like "some users got elected as admins, but most of us didn't have enough time to vet them". Maybe in the first months after this trial, we will have some new admins who crash and burn – or maybe in that time we will be very happy with the work of the new admins. That quick reaction that I posited would look very different depending on which of those two possible scenarios might happen. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:52, 23 October 2024 (UTC)

There's some wisdom here, and I want to second your thanks to Novem Linguae. —Ganesha811 (talk) 04:53, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

I will second you on the wisdom, and third you on the thanks to Novem. With all the other election fireworks going on right now (to which we have no choice but to respond speedily), let's give the air time to clear before we start RFCing. BusterD (talk) 14:16, 31 October 2024 (UTC)

I agree with Femke that it should be a subpage. If done on the talk page it could cluttered up with other stuff not necessarily part of the debrief. I also agree that RFCs should come later. Lastly, I thank you Novem for making this process possible. fanfanboy (block talk) 14:25, 31 October 2024 (UTC)

Is a centralized debrief subpage for voters set up yet? I'm certain we'll get different commentary AFTER results are posted. BusterD (talk) 14:16, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

Do you mean, to misquote Sir Humphrey, no one will want to change a system that got them elected. Whereas if you failed to get through? Iz coz the system sucks! :) -- DoubleGrazing (talk) 14:22, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

Planning for the end of the discussion phase

We will need a way to close the 34 candidate subpages on October 24 at 23:59 UTC. I think RFA uses an auto close template for this. Should we go look at what RFA does, copy their template, add it to Wikipedia:Administrator elections/October 2024/Candidate subpage template so we can see it in a sandbox, then use AWB/JWB to add it to all the candidate subpages? Does someone want to make the edits to Wikipedia:Administrator elections/October 2024/Candidate subpage template and post the diff here for review? –Novem Linguae (talk) 06:14, 23 October 2024 (UTC)

Nudge. Do we have a gameplan for this? –Novem Linguae (talk) 22:15, 24 October 2024 (UTC)

I think this means the answer is "let NL do it", I'm afraid. -- asilvering (talk) 22:29, 24 October 2024 (UTC)

I can do this – are we just adding {{atop}} or do we have a fancy template (example)? I'd imagine eventually we want to show whether the EFA was successful or not, but we obviously don't know that now. For the future, autohold was implemented after a discussion of its own for RFA. I would strongly support applying that consensus to EFA, and can probably implement something for the future. Best, HouseBlaster (talk • he/they) 22:51, 24 October 2024 (UTC)

I'm thinking we copy paste the autohold template code from RFA, get it working at Wikipedia:Administrator elections/October 2024/Candidate subpage template, then JWB it into all the candidate pages right now. Then the autohold triggers on its own in 57 minutes. You comfortable taking the lead on that @HouseBlaster? –Novem Linguae (talk) 23:03, 24 October 2024 (UTC)

 Doing... HouseBlaster (talk • he/they) 23:22, 24 October 2024 (UTC)

Prototype is live at Wikipedia:Administrator elections/October 2024/Candidate subpage template (edit the date in {{hide until}} to see what it looks like when closed). Thoughts/comments, Novem Linguae? HouseBlaster (talk • he/they) 23:32, 24 October 2024 (UTC)

Note that RfAs now have a template {{RfA/autohold}} that wraps the {{hide until}} template, which re-hides the text after a week. It's a hack so someone looking at older versions of the page won't see the discussion closed (starting from a week after the actual closing time). isaacl (talk) 23:37, 24 October 2024 (UTC)

This sounds like a good idea to implement. If you know how to do it, feel free to mock it up at Wikipedia:Administrator elections/October 2024/Candidate subpage template, and then we can go edit the candidate pages at our leisure. –Novem Linguae (talk) 23:56, 24 October 2024 (UTC)

@Novem Linguae: I think you misunderstood what isaacl said. {{Hide until}} uses the time you are looking at the revision, not the time the revision was made. Because the autohold is present from the very beginning of RfAs, when looking at old revisions, you used to see the yellow "this is on hold" text because the date given has passed. (See, for instance, the revision after you substed your own RfA.) I created {{RfA/autohold}} to fix that problem – it hides the autohold after an additional week has passed, so previous revisions are broken only for a week after the RfA has ended. Only the revisions made between when they were placed and a few minutes ago will display incorrectly, and it is too late to fix that (very minor) problem. HouseBlaster (talk • he/they) 00:08, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

Ah got it. Still might be a good idea to add it to the template then (so we can copy paste it for next election), but no need to go editing this election's pages with it, it sounds like. –Novem Linguae (talk) 00:10, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

Thanks! I adjusted the message. If it looks good, let's ship it. –Novem Linguae (talk) 23:39, 24 October 2024 (UTC)

 Shipping... HouseBlaster (talk • he/they) 23:40, 24 October 2024 (UTC)

 Shipped. HouseBlaster (talk • he/they) 23:47, 24 October 2024 (UTC)

Fantastic. Thank you. –Novem Linguae (talk) 23:55, 24 October 2024 (UTC)

checking

Just wanted to say how much I appreciate the editors who are going through a single aspect of assessment and reporting back. This is extremely helpful. I appreciate your work. Valereee (talk) 19:32, 23 October 2024 (UTC)

I think everyone who is helping does indeed deserve thanks. But as I read through the candidate pages, I'm also noticing a potential issue with these "single aspect" data. At the time that I write this, deletion discussion stats and records of participation in GA and FA processes have become prominently visible features across all candidate pages, and they are also things that come up in some voter guides that rely heavily on statistical measures. These are all things that have a history of being interesting to some RfA !voters, but they are far from what is typically decisive. For example, I can think of many conventional RfAs where a few editors oppose based on not enough GA/FAs, while other editors support, saying that this isn't the right criterion. An editor may be a very accomplished content editor, and be very accomplished at navigating content disputes, without doing many, or any, GA/FA reviews. However, there's a possibility that this trial system is minimizing that, in favor of things that can quickly be quantified. "You treasure what you can measure." With a lot of voters making quick decisions about candidates that they might not have crossed paths with before, we may find that results reflect criteria very different from traditional RfAs. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:33, 23 October 2024 (UTC)

I've been going over the list to see which candidates have so far gotten less scrutiny/commentary and tried to tackle something (such as accuracy and experience in the specific areas they want to work in, or demeanor at AN(I)). There is feedback going above those key stats for a majority of candidates, but not for all. This may be useful for those wanting to help out further in our last day of discussions. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 23:22, 23 October 2024 (UTC)

Speaking as one of the editors who added some of the quantitative data, I agree with Tryptofish that it's not as informative as some of the commentary that emerges in a typical RfA, and that we may get results that don't reflect the usual criteria. However, I've also noticed that I'm paying far more attention than I usually do to RfAs. I often skip voting at a regular RfA if I don't know the candidate and don't see anything decisive in the comments I read. Here I feel like my investment of attention has a much higher payoff for the project, both in electing the right people and not electing the wrong people, because there are so many candidates. I expect to cast a non-neutral vote in all or nearly all of these RfAs, though I agree more discussion and comments would be helpful. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 02:12, 24 October 2024 (UTC)

My aim with writing something more substantial for the AfD stats was in significant part to try to push people away from just looking at the numbers, since I was worried people would just start saying "match rate 84%, that's good", out of a lack of time. I hope it was successful - I've made this chart out of all those comments. Discussion will close soon, but if you find any of those too quantitative please let me know (I can at least update the chart). I was also hoping some others would be inspired to pitch in with other kinds of analysis, like Mike Christie on the GA/FAs. That was evidently less successful. I really wish that all those CSD declines hadn't just been dumped on the discussion pages with no context. -- asilvering (talk) 22:38, 24 October 2024 (UTC)

As I also said above, I think everyone who has been trying to help with this trial deserves a lot of thanks, so what I'm saying here isn't meant to find fault with anyone's work. As someone who has, for a long time, done voter guides for ArbCom elections, I have opinions about what does or does not work, and I've been thinking about that for this admin election as well. I spent some time looking at all the guides, including asilvering's, and I noted your indications of how to interpret some of the symbols. But I also found it difficult to figure out whether or not I would agree with it, especially when I would have to do so for so many candidates. I find the most useful kind of information can be provided in the form of summary text (something that Bugghost is trying to do), rather than in stats that may be very relevant for one candidate, but irrelevant for another. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:49, 24 October 2024 (UTC)

Drat, I was hoping the "usefulness of AfD record" bit would help on that front. Any suggestions? -- asilvering (talk) 22:58, 24 October 2024 (UTC)

I wish I could suggest something easy, but the only thing I can think of, offhand, is explanatory text for each candidate individually. (I'll add that I'm coming at this as someone who does not put much emphasis on deletion match rates when I evaluate RfA candidates.) --Tryptofish (talk) 23:04, 24 October 2024 (UTC)

Length of discussion phase vs. number of candidates

So, I don't want to be egotistic, but I've been busy for a few days. As a result, I've completely missed the discussion phase of this election. Of course nobody will miss my participation specifically, but I imagine I'm not the only person who was busy this week, and there it starts to become a problem. Swathes of people missing the odd RfA is no big deal but missing the opportunity to weigh in on adding up to thirty five new admins to our community (doubling the number of active admins, by some measures) feels a bit unfair, considering this is the same community that regularly spends months discussing minor changes to its internal guidelines.

In future, I think it would be good idea to have a mechanism that links the length of the discussion phase to the number of candidates, so we ensure broad enough participation relative the potential impact of the election. – Joe (talk) 08:56, 24 October 2024 (UTC)

I've managed to review four of them, and found (what I consider to be) acute issues with two of those. I really can't do any more than four given it's the middle of the work week. I totally second what Joe says, although rather than linking discussion to number of candidates, I support capping the number of candidates (10-12) and extending the discussion phase to take in both 3 weekdays and 2 weekend days (5 total). We have editors who predominantly edit during the week, others that predominantly edit on the weekends, and this makes it hard being a weekday-only operation. Daniel (talk) 09:11, 24 October 2024 (UTC)

I agree that a longer 4 or 5 day discussion phase is an improvement for next time, including at least a weekend day. But playing devil's advocate: we did have a week after the closure of the call for candidates to vet before the discussion phase started. I created my questions/comments mostly the weekend before. There are still a small number of candidates with very little analysis, for which I'll likely vote neutral if that does not change today. We're now down to 32 after a few withdrawals, making the process easier too. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 10:25, 24 October 2024 (UTC)

To add to that, normally, some 70% of candidates make it. If we have similar numbers, we'd add some 21 admins here, not 35. Even if it were 35, I don't see how this would double the number of admins in the table you linked, which says there's around 450 active admins. It will require some higher-intensity mentoring probably, but I think we have the capacity to do this. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 16:06, 24 October 2024 (UTC)

"Up to" 35 admins. We don't know if the RfA success rate will transfer, though obviously yes it's very unlikely that it'll be 100%. In comparing to the number of active admins I was looking at the yearly figure, which was 30 last year. I may not be a great mathematician, but even I couldn't divide 450 by two and get 35! – Joe (talk) 07:08, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

That 30 in the table means there was a decline of 30 active admins compared to 2022, not that we only have 30 fortunately :). —Femke 🐦 (talk) 07:12, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

Good idea having the discussion phase on a weekend next time. If you're still interested in participating, the discussion phase will be open for another 13 hours. –Novem Linguae (talk) 10:44, 24 October 2024 (UTC)

Wait hold on, the discussion phase ends?

You can't discuss the candidates during the actual election? What's the reasoning behind that? What if some major failing comes up on 26 October: you just keep it to yourself?? ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 12:02, 24 October 2024 (UTC)

You bring it up at the talk page of the candidate (not ideal, but no appetite to change rules after the start). It might then become reflected in candidate overviews, so more people see it. The reasoning is to decrease pressure on the candidates, making sure they don't have to be online over the entire 10 days. I imagine if there is something truly disqualifying, we may need to start involving bureaucrats into the process. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 12:55, 24 October 2024 (UTC)

User:AirshipJungleman29 has made an essential point: the discussion over candidates won't necessarily end when the formal discussion period ends. Only the centralized discussion will end. Other than WP:FORUM, there's nothing but social norms stopping users, groups, or projects from creating their own de-centralized discussions during the voting period. BusterD (talk) 13:33, 24 October 2024 (UTC)

Ironically, considering what's currently going on at ArbCom, WPO might end up being the best place to disseminate information without getting scolded for avoiding these fairly terrible rules. Everyone's going to be reading it over the next few days anyway. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 13:43, 24 October 2024 (UTC)

Yeah, Timbo's thread on WPO is likely to be the one thing most people voting (no exclamation mark!) look at. I also tend to second Beeblebrox's recent comment on that thread - not that I want to drag this process out unnecessarily obviously. FOARP (talk) 13:53, 24 October 2024 (UTC)

While you are free to describe the rules as fairly terrible, it's worth remembering that they exist because they were the consensus arrived at in the proposal and they've done a much better job of attracting candidates than RFA has (the 37th most recent RFA was in 2021). Thryduulf (talk) 14:06, 24 October 2024 (UTC)

I don't know if it's reasonable to attribute the gathering of 30+ candidates solely to a three-day discussion period. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 14:13, 24 October 2024 (UTC)

If you read the answers to the question I asked every candidate, the format of the elections, including discussion period, played a significant role in many of them choosing to stand. It's not the only reason of course, but it's not something that can just be dismissed as "terrible" either. Thryduulf (talk) 14:44, 24 October 2024 (UTC)

As a one-off experiment, I look forward to seeing how the community responded. I'm overjoyed at the number of high-quality candidates who took this opportunity to grab a mop. I'm glad more overt campaigning hasn't take place yet. On the other hand, I've developed a thick stack of post-it notes about the risks such a scheduled voting system runs long term, just based on what has happened to date. BusterD (talk) 14:56, 24 October 2024 (UTC)

^ this. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 14:57, 24 October 2024 (UTC)

Yes, @Thryduulf, I did notice that, and appreciated your very neutral question that got at it. I haven't done a count, but it felt to me that many of these candidates chose this format at least in part because it minimized the expected awfulness of RfA. Valereee (talk) 15:11, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

Another side-effect of the discussion phase ending is that editors could place some (on the face of it) pretty damning material on a candidate's discussion phase in the last couple of hours, and the candidate or others will have no chance to respond before the page is frozen out. While obviously it could be rsponded to elsewhere, it will stand as a matter of public record unresponded and/or unchallenged. Our own sort of October surprise, if you will. I hope this doesn't happen, but it is a risk from my perspective — unless I've missed a procedure which prevents this? Daniel (talk) 16:35, 24 October 2024 (UTC)

Daniel - you mean like this with ~20 minutes left? starship.paint (talk / cont) 02:13, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

Pretty much exactly that...not great. Daniel (talk) 03:22, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

I went ahead and deleted the comment and Starship.paint's response. It's an obvious sockpuppet. Maybe not enough for a WP:NOTHERE block yet though since the comment was pretty tame. If you disagree Starship.paint feel free to revert. –Novem Linguae (talk) 03:45, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

Will not be reverting. Thank you Novem Linguae. starship.paint (talk / cont) 04:14, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

"Declined speedies" script

As some of you have seen, I ran a script User:Ritchie333/badspeedies list.py which is a variant of a script User:Ritchie333/badspeedies.py that I wrote some time back. This simply looks through a users contributions to find a 'Requesting speedy deletion' Twinkle-generated edit summary, with the logic that if it's still there, it probably means there's a CSD tag that was declined.

Normally, I run this script during each RfA, analyse the results, and if any look problematic, bring them up for discussion. However, since the discussion period is ending today, I needed to act fast, and simply dumped the script output on each page in the hope that people could help do the analysis for me, and follow up on anything that looks problematic, or is a non-issue. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 16:26, 24 October 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for doing this. As I said in an edit summary, I think this makes it more difficult to scroll through the large number of candidates, given that some candidates have a lot of (old) declined CSDs or just an incredible volumes where a low error rate gives a lot of hits. Does the script give an indication of % declined? I'm seeing a relatively high rate of false positives. Might be best to collapse this on all the discussion pages, allowing for analysis but hiding the data dump? —Femke 🐦 (talk) 16:30, 24 October 2024 (UTC)

I'm sure I can add more features to the script if it's of interest to people, such as checking the diffs more closely and throwing away false positives such as reverting a Twinkle / CSD tag on user space. I can't remember mentioning the script before, though it's been linked to my user page for years. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 16:34, 24 October 2024 (UTC)

I think it would be really helpful to leave a note about this on each discussion page with the output, so that people are aware it's a bot dump and not a list of certified failures. If there's any way to add the number of CSD noms a candidate made also, that would be really helpful. But for that maybe we're out of time. -- asilvering (talk) 22:45, 24 October 2024 (UTC)

Wording of the "Voting Phase" page

I added some details to the Wikipedia:Administrator elections/October 2024/Voting phase page. Now's the time to copy edit the wording or make changes. Voting starts in 72 minutes.

I added a bullet discouraging people from blanket opposing. If there's major objection to that we can take it out but I hope we can keep it in. –Novem Linguae (talk) 22:49, 24 October 2024 (UTC)

I imagine that's more likely to give people ideas than to actually dissuade anyone from voting how they wish. SilverLocust 💬 23:38, 24 October 2024 (UTC)

WP:BEANS. Better to take it out, imo. You've already got in the bit about abstaining being the default. -- asilvering (talk) 00:06, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

Sounds like there's not much support for it. Removed. –Novem Linguae (talk) 01:00, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

"Sorry, you are not in the predetermined list of users authorized to vote in this election"

If you try to vote at Special:SecurePoll/vote/812 and you receive the message Sorry, you are not in the predetermined list of users authorized to vote in this election" and you think you meet the eligible voter criteria at Wikipedia:Administrator elections#Who can vote, please add your name to the list below so that we can troubleshoot. –Novem Linguae (talk) 22:54, 24 October 2024 (UTC)

• User:Novem Linguae - no this isn't a typo/example, I can't vote :(

  Is that simply because voting hasn't started yet? --Tryptofish (talk) 22:57, 24 October 2024 (UTC)

  Nope. There's a bug. We're troubleshooting on Phabricator. –Novem Linguae (talk) 23:01, 24 October 2024 (UTC)

   Fixed. Root cause: The voter rolls accidentally had people that opted out of WP:ACE messages excluded. –Novem Linguae (talk) 00:58, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

For me it's saying "This election has not yet started. It is scheduled to start on 25 October 2024 at 00:00.", which I assume is the expected message (?) BugGhost🦗👻 23:28, 24 October 2024 (UTC)

That is the error you want to see :) HouseBlaster (talk • he/they) 23:33, 24 October 2024 (UTC)

I assumed as much - either way looks like cyberpower on the phab ticket has fixed it [1] BugGhost🦗👻 23:57, 24 October 2024 (UTC)

• One reason to not use a whitelist if these go forward, it requires manual work (also a reason why for ACE we normally publish the whitelist in advance for public scrutiny). — xaosflux ^Talk 23:36, 24 October 2024 (UTC)

The Blue Rider

I still can't vote and I meet all the requirements. The Blue Rider 17:36, 29 October 2024 (UTC)

Probably because of your recent name change. —Cryptic 17:47, 29 October 2024 (UTC)

More likely because there were blocked at the time the voter roll was created. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 18:20, 29 October 2024 (UTC)

And the block was still in affect at the start of voting. Suffrage requires "not be sitewide blocked during the election"... As this user isn't blocked any more, seems like they may qualify now. As this is a whitelist roll - this would require getting WMF to add to the override list, if there is support for letting this person vote. — xaosflux ^Talk 18:51, 29 October 2024 (UTC)

I believe that they currently qualify? Espresso Addict (talk) 01:29, 30 October 2024 (UTC)

not be sitewide blocked during the election is ambiguous, it could mean:

1. There is no point during the election at which they are subject to a site-wide block
2. There is at least one point during the election when they are not subject to a site-wide block
3. No site-wide blocks are placed on them during the election.

I don't think 3 is a reasonable interpretation given that it would allow those blocked before the election to vote but not those blocked during it. Both 1 and 2 are reasonable positions on the face of it, but looking further 1 has issues:

• It makes scrutineering much harder, given one would need to check every voter's block log to see whether they were blocked at any point during the election period
• It would disqualify editors for being the subject of bad (overturned), accidental (e.g. the wrong account was blocked by mistake), precautionary (e.g. potentially compromised accounts are blocked until it is established they are not or the owner has regained control) or test blocks.
  • These could be excluded from consideration, but if so I would expect language explicitly stating that (and defining the terms)
  • It would allow an admin acting bad-faith to disqualify voters by blocking them for a short period. e.g. if someone were to block me for 5 minutes around ~05:00 UTC it's unlikely I would notice until I next had cause to look at my block log (please don't try this!). The admin making such blocks should be sanctioned, but the victim should not be penalised by being disenfranchised.
• It (and #3) would be incompatible with the apparently uncontroversial interpretation at #What happens if a candidate had very little votes entirely that Lightburst's vote should stand if he voted before he was blocked.

This brings me to think that #2 is the most reasonable interpretation of the intent, and thus The Blue Rider should be allowed to cast a vote now they are no longer blocked. Thryduulf (talk) 02:11, 30 October 2024 (UTC)

If this is the interpretation we go with, it could be clarified for subsequent elections by changing "during the election" to something like "at the time of casting their vote". Thryduulf (talk) 02:24, 30 October 2024 (UTC)

@Novem Linguae: Is it possible to add someone to the voter roll mid-election? HouseBlaster (talk • he/they) 02:44, 30 October 2024 (UTC)

It's technically possible, and was done with Wikipedia_talk:Arbitration_Committee_Elections_December_2019/Coordination/Archive_1#Eligible_with_former_account/current_account?_(RAGentry). But you'd have to convince someone who has access on votewiki to do it. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 02:51, 30 October 2024 (UTC)

Requested at phab:T371454#10275537. –Novem Linguae (talk) 03:58, 30 October 2024 (UTC)

 Done. @The Blue Rider, you can go vote now :) –Novem Linguae (talk) 04:08, 30 October 2024 (UTC)

Thank you! The Blue Rider 04:11, 30 October 2024 (UTC)

Good luck, candidates!

It feels too silly to go to everyone's talk page individually and wish them luck. So, to everyone in general: thanks for running! I really appreciate all of you for throwing yourselves into this experiment. -- asilvering (talk) 00:09, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

• Thank you Asilvering, I appreciate this! starship.paint (talk / cont) 02:02, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

Thank you! AntiDionysius (talk) 18:39, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

thank you, @Asilvering! Charlotte (Queen of Hearts • talk) 20:18, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

Thanks! EggRoll97 ^(talk) 22:16, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

Subpage

WP:Administrator elections/October 2024 was expanded from a redirect a couple days ago (cc @Aaron Liu), but contains nothing meaningfully different from the main AELECT page. I think this needlessly overcomplicates things, and we'd be better off keeping everything on the main page and redirecting the subpage to this one for now, to avoid confusing people. (We could potentially move this page to /October 2024 later if there is consensus to repeat the process). Thoughts? Giraffer (talk) 00:32, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

Support. –Novem Linguae (talk) 00:38, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

I don't see why it is a problem. Aaron Liu (talk) 01:03, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

It duplicates what is written at WP:AELECT. Double the maintenance, and dangers of things getting out of sync. I'd be in favor of it getting its own page after the election. Will wait for some others to weigh in though. –Novem Linguae (talk) 01:16, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

The only thing that I like that is different is the expanded eligibility requirements, which can easily just be moved because I don't see why it's just for this election and not for any future ones (if there are any). But, it would've been nice to have a discussion beforehand if we should split the pages. Cowboygilbert - (talk) ♥ 01:27, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

@Novem Linguae It does not duplicate. The parent page transcludes the schedule and @Cowboygilbert the subpage transcludes the eligibility.
My original vision was for the fancy header to be a template transcluded everywhere. Aaron Liu (talk) 01:31, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

Scrutineer list is copy paste duplicated, discussion phase monitors are copy paste duplicated. All content is duplicated in general, saying the same thing as the main page. –Novem Linguae (talk) 01:36, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

I don't think monitor and scrutinner lists specific to this election should be duplicated on the page about the system. Aaron Liu (talk) 01:48, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

Then why is the header not in its own subpage or in template space if you wanted it to be transcluded everywhere. Unless you had {{subst:}} it, I can't find it anywhere else except on that page. Cowboygilbert - (talk) ♥ 01:39, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

Because I got sleepy and lazy 🫠 you can do the templating thing at WP:Administrator elections/October 2024/Header if you wanna Aaron Liu (talk) 01:47, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

YKW, I'm not sleepy anymore. I just did that. Aaron Liu (talk) 01:56, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

Good job, I guess. Cowboygilbert - (talk) ♥ 01:58, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

Good idea. I like the /Header page idea since it simplifies maintenance and reduces duplication.

But the banner on the header page is big and complicated. I think having a non-graphical, one or two sentence ombox might be better. –Novem Linguae (talk) 03:47, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

I ended up redirecting the subpage just now, and simplifying the header just now. It is the middle of an election and I don't feel comfortable having tidbit A and B on one page and tidbit A and C on another page. We should have single, centralized pages so we present the same information to each voter.

Basically, I want to avoid Wikipedia:Administrator elections having slightly different information than Wikipedia:Administrator elections/October 2024, and Wikipedia:Administrator elections/October 2024/Header having slightly different information than Wikipedia:Administrator elections/October 2024/Voting phase.

After the election, I think we should copy paste the contents of Wikipedia:Administrator elections to Wikipedia:Administrator elections/October 2024 to create a good historical record. –Novem Linguae (talk) 05:32, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

In my opinion, the ADE page should just be the system itself, i.e. move everything specific to this election (list of monitors, list of scrutineers, the schedule, "Are additional RFCs required before the trial?") to this election's specific page. I do not see any reason why the ADE page should have all this stuff. Also, we're gonna need a results section on the ADE2024 page anyway. Aaron Liu (talk) 11:20, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

If we do this: make the ADE page just the policy and systems and the ADE2024 page everything specific to this election, then there is no duplication. Aaron Liu (talk) 11:25, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

In my opinion, the ADE page should just be the system itself. I think we should do this after the election, not during.

@Aaron Liu. Also, you have reverted me and turned Wikipedia:Administrator elections/October 2024/Header into a mini-voting page, letting people skip the main voting page where all the voting information is. All of our other communications (T:CENT, MMS, watchlist notice, RFA header, etc.) are directing folks to the main voting page except for this header. Please self revert. –Novem Linguae (talk) 21:32, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

Self-reverted the voting thing, sorry.

I think we should do this after the election, not during.

I don't see a difference or why-not. Aaron Liu (talk) 21:36, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

Since the process has started, I think it's better not to shift pages around and potentially confuse those who aren't following every single change being made. I prefer waiting until the results of the election are announced and then restructuring pages. (On a side note, I appreciate many like abbreviations. I suggest striving to use non-jargon as much as possible, nonetheless, to make the discussions more accessible to everyone.) isaacl (talk) 21:47, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

I still don't see how it would cause damage, but I do see that I'm in the minority here. Aaron Liu (talk) 22:59, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

I feel like we should wait until the election ends because having a subpage can form to not work because this election is still in it's testing phase and this is a test run to see if the election works. I say that it's too soon to decide if the election will pass or fail community consensus. Cowboygilbert - (talk) ♥ 02:14, 26 October 2024 (UTC)

I dunno what you mean by "form to not work". To me it's just less confusing to organize these pages how every other project page is organized, but hey, I'm not most people. Aaron Liu (talk) 03:33, 26 October 2024 (UTC)

Well, I didn't say it would; I explained why I thought it could create unnecessary confusion. There's no urgency to restructure the page during the voting process. isaacl (talk) 02:32, 26 October 2024 (UTC)

Yeah, unnecessary confusion is what I meant by damage. Aaron Liu (talk) 03:33, 26 October 2024 (UTC)

Diff. Why has the vote link been made so complicated? I wish people would stop tweaking things during the voting phase. This is frustrating me. And I still see a mini voting page at Wikipedia:Administrator elections/October 2024/Header. –Novem Linguae (talk) 21:56, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

It's not just complication, it's centralization of the vote link ID so we only need to change it in one place.
I don't see why you'd object to the current version of the header. Having a short version just improves the chances that people will take in these instructions, especially when the voting page has a big blue "vote" button in the middle. At least for the Arb elections, short introductions to voting have proven to work well. Aaron Liu (talk) 23:02, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

Having the vote button just seems worthless when we already have Wikipedia:Administrator elections/October 2024/Voting phase which explain the voting phase in depth and has a vote button already. As well as a link to the voting page on the main page. So having multiple Vote buttons seems worthless and repetitive imo. Also, the changes to /Voting phase are complex because why make something harder when there is an easier way? You are just making the editing hard on yourself and other editors... Cowboygilbert - (talk) ♥ 02:15, 26 October 2024 (UTC)

I'm not proposing adding a vote button; I was saying that a lot of people would probably just go to the voting page, ignore a lot of stuff because it's all too long, and smash the big blue button in the middle; thus, it's probably worth it to give a "mini-voting" sentence for a quick glean of information.
This way is better because it'll automatically switch text when each phase concludes. Aaron Liu (talk) 03:31, 26 October 2024 (UTC)

Having 3 bolds in the /Header message is ridiculous. Makes it hard to find the voting page wikilink. That /Header is way too complcated. Clicking "edit page" on the header is also very complicated. Takes way too much brainpower to read and understand that wikicode. I do not agree with creating a complex thing here that has a bus factor and is hard to maintain. Did you get consensus for your edits? –Novem Linguae (talk) 17:48, 27 October 2024 (UTC)

Only one of the bolds is a link, so I don't see the issue. Since it's the same format as the ArbCom election's header, the bus factor is also low (see said header's 8 editors). That header also features 3 bolds in the same layout as this header, and I don't think I've seen anyone get confused by it. As this header has worked in that place, I think there is some very shaky consensus for it. Aaron Liu (talk) 19:48, 27 October 2024 (UTC)

"Choose your most active wiki" doesn't list en.wp?

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T373950

Right now, my only option for "Choose your most active wiki" is "en.wikibooks.org". I did create my account on Wikibooks but I'm most active on Wikipedia now. Is this a bug that needs to go to Phab? ~ Matthewrb ^{Talk to me · Changes I've made} 00:40, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

Going to ping @Novem Linguae just in case he doesn't see this. Cowboygilbert - (talk) ♥ 00:50, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

I think this a case of misleading messages, the drop down allows you to choose your home-wiki if you have multiple home wikis. Folks who registered post SUL unification tend to only have one home wiki which generally is the wiki where they created their first account and so have only option in the dropdown (my homewiki is mediawiki.org even tho enwiki is the one to which I have the most contributions) -- Sohom (talk) 00:56, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

Interesting. I only have 3 contributions to Wikibooks, while I have 13,000 to Wikipedia. My concern is that my vote gets rejected based on these tallies. Though from the below, it doesn't appear to be a concern. ~ Matthewrb ^{Talk to me · Changes I've made} 01:02, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

Yeah, CentralAuth still shows up as your home wiki being enwikibooks. Here is the central auth link. Cowboygilbert - (talk) ♥ 01:05, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

It shouldn't be rejected, and you shouldn't need to care about it. The only place it shows up is here when you vote. Sohom (talk) 01:07, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

Thank you both! Sounds good, I'll go cast my vote. ~ Matthewrb ^{Talk to me · Changes I've made} 01:10, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for reporting this. I am not sure how this combo box got included in our poll. It was not in the plan. I think we can safely ignore it / pick anything. I have mentioned it on Phabricator. –Novem Linguae (talk) 00:56, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

Got it, thanks! ~ Matthewrb ^{Talk to me · Changes I've made} 01:02, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

@Novem Linguae My understanding is that is included in every poll by default. I remember joking about my affiliation to mediawiki.org last Arbcom elections :) Sohom (talk) 01:10, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

Facing the same thing, the box only letting me pick frwiki even though I am way more active on enwiki. From the discussion above I presume it is because my account was created as an frwiki account before I made it a global one, but I figured I would report it as well; I will disregard the box and vote anyway. Choucas Bleu (T·C) 15:01, 26 October 2024 (UTC)

Voting interface; order

The voting interface tripped me up a little, since usually the "support" option goes on the left. The instructions at the top of the page even say indicate your preference for each candidate with "Support", "Oppose", or “Abstain”., in a different order than the actual voting table. This may introduce confusion. Ca ^{talk to me!} 01:15, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

+1, I expected Support & Oppose to be flipped and had to check to make sure I wasn't inverting the results of my research. Another very important issue in the grand scheme of the encyclopedia... but then again, fixing smaller problems is easier than bigger ones. Happy editing, Perfect4th (talk) 06:03, 26 October 2024 (UTC)

Discussion phase

Well, I've been kinda swamped in IRL things, and as it happens I missed the entirety of the discussion phase. I will say, my intention was to ask every candidate "why did they join the election instead of starting an RfA at the same time" and "is there anything that you would like to call attention to that might be overlooked over a 3-day discussion period". Thankfully the first question was asked to everyone, but ah well.

It's in the past, so there's nothing to be done re: this. But as a future note I'm lamenting that this went by in a blink. (Some of my concerns, even if small, are unaddressed, so I'm forced to oppose in those instances). Even if I made it to my computer and asked my questions on the third day, such questions would not be likely to receive an answer in time. The onus of timestress, it seems, has been placed onto the questioners, forcing one to be lined up out of the gate as the only way to have an in-the-moment discussion about a candidate. Perhaps this was the intention. Seems to be. I can't say I'm a fan of it though, having seen it occur in this moment. Ah well. Utopes _{(talk / cont)} 01:47, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

(Re: "only way to have a discussion", = one'd be lucky to have a discussion that started on day 2. Starting a discussion on day 3 is likely a no; not enough time to process and weigh in. This could be a wrong assessment though. I have not particularly read the entire discussion phase page yet.) Utopes _{(talk / cont)} 01:51, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

@Utopes Some of my concerns, even if small, are unaddressed, so I'm forced to oppose in those instances To be clear, you're still allowed to reach out to individual candidates on their user talk if you have specific concerns to discuss. The discussion phase is mainly closed to reduce drawn out public discussion. Candidates are not "expected" to answer anything right now, but I imagine at least some might prefer reasonable questions than uninformed opposes. Soni (talk) 20:49, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

I'm so hyped

Made a point of at least glancing at each candidate so I wouldn't have to abstain, ended up at 31 supports to 3 opposes. Really hope we can end up with 20+ elected by the end of this. Mach61 03:31, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

it's exciting! I ended up swinging to neutral on a couple last-minute, but still ended up with 20 supports. Definitely some kinks to be worked out, but this process has the potential to reinvigorate the admin corps in a substantial way. —Ganesha811 (talk) 04:55, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

Tallying

In the Tallying section it says

• "After voting has ended, the election will be scrutinised by three stewards whose home wiki is not the English Wikipedia. They will check for any duplicate, ineligible, or sockpuppeteer votes, and strike them as necessary."

How is the check for sockpuppeteer votes carried out given that none of the scrutineers have checkuser privilege? Sean.hoyland (talk) 04:34, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

Stewards are asked to be scrutineers precisely because they have checkuser privilege. –FlyingAce^✈hello 04:37, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

What happens for the ArbCom elections is that ArbCom passes a motion to grant them CheckUser privleges. Presumably they will do the same here.

Stewards by convention don't use their rights where local users have the ability to, although they have complete access to everything. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 04:58, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

On the technical side, I think all that data is stored on vote.wikimedia.org which is its own wiki, and the 3 selected stewards were made electionadmins over there of our election, which lets them see everything they need to see related to our election's voters for scrutineering. @Xaosflux might be able to double check me on this. –Novem Linguae (talk) 05:13, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

Thanks. That makes much more sense. So, I learned that 'steward' includes the checkuser privilege. I suppose I could have discovered that by looking at m:Stewards had I thought of that completely obvious solution. Sean.hoyland (talk) 05:14, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

Securepoll collects checkuser-like personal identifying information (PII) on each voter, this is collected in the poll system. The election administrators ("the scrutineers") are Johannnes89, EPIC, and Yahya. These users can see the PII for each person that casts a ballot. In ACE, we generally additionally grant the election workers local checkuser access, so they may additionally look up PII collected here on en.wiki. The stewards are not technically able to run the checkuser tool on-wiki, because they don't have access. They do have the access to give themselves the access, but such is restrained by policies. I suspect for this specific election, if some user irregularities were found that needed additional local PII the stewards would confer with the local checkuser team. — xaosflux ^Talk 09:03, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

I apologise if I have missed something obvious (I will admit that I have paid almost no attention to the process of setting up these elections) but where was it decided that the scrutineers needed to be non-enWiki users? Is this because ACE has a similar requirement and it was simply copied over, or is there a consensus that this is desired? (please do not ping on reply) Primefac (talk) 15:43, 26 October 2024 (UTC)

I copied ACE, and the stewards say yes. We can change this in the future. In fact we'll have to. The stewards have said they don't have enough bandwidth to scrutineer enwiki admin elections in the future. –Novem Linguae (talk) 17:47, 26 October 2024 (UTC)

SeucrePoll vote ID numbers

Just for my own education, does anyone know why the SecurePoll ID numbers on enwiki and votewiki are different? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:SecurePoll/vote/812 and https://vote.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:SecurePoll/vote/1691. I'd ask on Phab but every time I make a post in that ticket it emails like 20 people, and we already spammed that ticket a lot today, so will start here instead. Thanks. –Novem Linguae (talk) 05:20, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

Enwiki's list includes on elections with a relationship to enwiki. Votewiki's list includes all elections, including things like Chinese Wikipedia's admin election. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 05:25, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

I wouldn't be worried about the different ids. I'd be more worried that, if you go to the local Special:SecurePoll, it has a legitimate-looking list of polls, and a handy link to Special:SecurePoll/list/812. Which shows zero votes cast. —Cryptic 05:28, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

Maybe the enwiki poll is some kind of dummy poll that just has a link to the votewiki poll in its header, and the rest of the vote form is hidden on enwiki. –Novem Linguae (talk) 05:37, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

looks like it shows that for all of them. might have to be an election admin to see the number of votes casted? Cowboygilbert - (talk) ♥ 05:45, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

The actual list of voters is at https://vote.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:SecurePoll/list/1691. Novem Linquae is right.

Someone should file a Phabricator ticket for "don't show list on stub elections". * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 06:41, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

It is just because they are sequential and the local one is just a shell, all it does is link to the central voting server, but is used to authenticate the user because our users don't log on to the central voting server. — xaosflux ^Talk 09:06, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

Thanks! Some follow up questions, if someone knows. Mainly because I want to understand how SecurePoll works on the technical side. I've written patches for it and plan to write more.

Do these local shell SecurePolls auto create or does someone have to create them? Who created the one for our election? How does one look up logs for SecurePoll if they are not an electionadmin? (The "Logs" link is disabled for me, there's nothing in Special:Log, and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SecurePoll:812 doesn't work.) What poll type does one choose to set up a shell poll? How exactly does enwiki SecurePoll authenticate a user for votewiki SecurePoll? Is there some service running in our server farm that helps the two communicate on the back end? –Novem Linguae (talk) 21:39, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

Voting first impressions

Just voted now and took me circa 30 mins, and I supported just over 2/3 rds of the 32 candidates and didn't need to abstain on any.

1. The Fenke and Novem Linguae guides are very helpful (amongst others), and the Fenke is a little more detailed in terms of past offers of support / co-nom which is helpful in terms of third-party validation and getting through the list.

2. The "Discussion" part at the end of each RfA where some admins (and other experiecned editors) have some analysis on each candidates activity and record is also extremely helpful, and really helps to build an impression imho.

Overall, an easier process to navigate than I expected, and hats off again to all who have built and ran this. Hopefully if my voting is any guide, we are going to have a lot more admins in Wikipedia shortly :) Aszx5000 (talk) 10:33, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

I voted support for 15 candidates, neutral for 8 and oppose for 9. The discussion and stats that other editors put up helped; I also went and looked at XTools' edit count for all of them and did the basic cursory check I'd do for anybody. All in all, it took about 45 minutes. I'm not sure that everyone else is going to dedicate that much time, though.

I don't want to say who exactly I voted for, but I noticed that of all the candidates that had a nominator behind them, I supported, except for one when I was neutral. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 10:38, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

I, too, took into account the fact a candidate had nominators. I think the learning for future candidates: if a well-regarded experienced editor has offered to nominate you, take them up on it even for elections. Valereee (talk) 15:29, 31 October 2024 (UTC)

Nominators are definitely helping me when I'm undecided on a candidate. They give a little push in the direction of support. Also, the admin elections format seems to have greatly reduced the number of support comments, so a glowing nomination helps take the place of some of these missing support comments.

Another mistake for candidates to avoid is short (1-2 sentence) answers to questions. It's hard to get to know a candidate and their thought process if the questions are not answered in enough detail. I think about a paragraph per answer is the ideal length for an answer. –Novem Linguae (talk) 20:57, 31 October 2024 (UTC)

I didn't check the time I took, but it was well over two hours. I relied heavily on Novem Linguae and Fenke's guides as both a starting point and an anchor - so thanks for those! I supported more people than I thought I would considering there was so little information to work on. I usually read through people's comments during an RFA, and use those as a source for where to look in a candidate's history; in this scheme some candidates had few comments. I took that as a positive for the candidate - few comments suggests few concerns, though lack of comments meant there was little clue as to where to look in a candidate's history.

I like the confidence of folks who self-nominate, though in this experiment I found I was counting a nomination as a positive point, largely because nominations (or co-nominations) stood out from the crowd. I also counted encouragement to become an admin as a positive, unless such support was private, and so not traceable. I have given all these candidate's less scrutiny than I would normally give - a quick look at given examples of good work, a look at user and usertalk pages is the most I felt I could do in the circumstances. I feel the most dubious candidates were identified during the process, and dropped themselves out; so, all in all, more scrutiny was probably not needed, and anyway we have probably become too suspicious of candidates over the years. It's time we were more welcoming and trusting. I support this process moving forward, though with a limit of ten candidates per session. SilkTork (talk) 11:13, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

It took me close to an hour to go through and make decisions. That was less than it would have been, but I'd read about half the nomination pages in some detail over the discussion period, and glanced at the rest. I ended up supporting more than you did, erring on the side of "adminship is no big deal" where uncertain, but I did have a handful of opposes and some abstains. I agree that having a nominator is a big plus. The quantitative data presented (e.g. AfD, CSD analysis) wasn't always helpful in itself, but in some cases it led to discussions that I did find helpful. Seeing (positive or negative) commentary from other editors whose opinion I trust was also helpful. The discussion phase should be a little longer, I'd say. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 11:22, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

In terms of the quantitive data, perhaps it would be useful in future to have an agreed set of statistics compiled for each candidate prior to the start of the discussion so they could be presented at the same time and in the same format for each. Working this out in advance would enable it to be as objective, relevant and contextually aware as possible (e.g. for declined CSD stats, pages recreated after deletion are not relevant and both absolute number and proportion of all noms are more useful than just absolute number). Thryduulf (talk) 11:56, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

I think this will prove harder than it sounds. F'rex, I looked at the summary of articles created for all candidates who met my basic criteria; the tool often shows many deleted articles which often turn out to be redirects, sometimes appear to be articles tagged for deletion (there's a bug here), or articles split where the split was not perceived to be viable alone. Some editors create hundreds of mainly very short articles, others lavish time on a smaller number of creations. Imo with all these stats, as Mike Christie wrote above, by far the most interesting thing is the discussion that they generate, which in this election round was curiously truncated. Espresso Addict (talk) 01:45, 26 October 2024 (UTC)

I was greatly impressed with the breadth and quality of the candidates. Agreed that most dubious candidates dropped out during the process, the length of the process felt more than sufficient. It was an easier review process than I expected. A regular process like this in batches of 10-15, with some of the data from guide tables autogenerated, would be welcome. – SJ + 23:56, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

+1 for your suggestion of having smaller batches; this was almost painful to read through. I wonder if there could be a defined period every 4-6 methods where 10-12 people could run for administrator? That would keep it regular, hopefully help keep sysop numbers up, while preventing reader fatigue.

JuxtaposedJacob (talk) | :) | he/him | 10:40, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

I would like to second the suggestions above for considering smaller batches of candidates for any future elections. I found the full list daunting and ended up giving less thorough evaluation of each candidate than I would have at a traditional RfA. I ultimately abstained on 14 candidates, mostly because of concerns that didn't rise to the level of a full oppose in my mind, or a focus on areas of Wikipedia I am less familiar with and a feeling that I couldn't really evaluate their potential as an admin. Eluchil404 (talk) 01:35, 29 October 2024 (UTC)

Smaller batches are needed. It took me some time spread over a couple of days to go through these. This resulted in technical glitches regarding securepoll, which does not work if left open for awhile, and of course each new load sees all 32 names re-randomized. There are ways around this, but it's inconvenient. If it was less than 10 names say being chucked about that would be easier to manage. CMD (talk) 13:38, 29 October 2024 (UTC)

I just voted, and I supported 18 candidates and opposed 14. I did not abstain on any. I tried to judge the candidates the same way I would have done at a conventional RfA, and I judged them only in their own right, not against one another. I didn't do my research all at once, but I spent a fair amount of time on it. It definitely would have been a lot easier with a smaller pool of candidates, but I was not overwhelmed by this number. There were some where I knew how I would vote immediately upon seeing their usernames, because I was already familiar with them, but I would say that a majority were new to me. I started by reading the entire discussions at every candidate's candidate page. This was where I found the most useful information. I also looked at all the voter guides and vote lists that I could find, and used them largely for those candidates where I was having trouble making up my mind. If after reading the guides I was still uncertain, I went back to that candidate's candidate page and read it again, and then I was able to make up my mind. For the most part, I found comments about a candidate's strengths and weaknesses far more helpful than the reams of statistics that were posted. I also noticed that quite a few voter guides simply repeated, in tabular form, what was already available to see on the candidate pages, which did not strike me as useful; some of the other voter guides were not finished in time (which somewhat undermines the argument that guides would be useful to editors when there were so many candidates: even some of the guide writers ran into the problem of there being so many candidates). Perhaps in future iterations we will have fewer candidates, more substantive discussion, and fewer statistics. But I feel, cautiously, like this may have been a successful venture, because it may be a way to get good candidates who find this process less stressful than the old system. --Tryptofish (talk) 00:26, 30 October 2024 (UTC)

I did it over several days, too, taking notes for myself on those who were easy supports and those which I needed to continue reading on until the end of the discussion phase. By the end I had a list which probably took me a few hours to compile, and voting took maybe 10 minutes. I didn't find it overwhelming, but that was mostly due to the fact so many editors had chipped in with analyses they'd done on particular aspects, sort of like an FA review. I also did read voter guides, which in general were also helpful. Definitely let's set a limit on the number of candidates in future, although I kind of wonder if this first explosion was due to pent up demand for something other than RfA. Valereee (talk) 15:35, 31 October 2024 (UTC)

Not sure if a bug, but...

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T378159

After casting my votes, the "Summary of your vote" page displayed the markup of text (as though there was a nowiki tag around it), rather than the text in markup. Not sure if this has happened for anyone else or it's just a thing on my end but I said I'd mention just in case. — ser! ^{(chat to me - see my edits)} 12:34, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

It is happening to everyone and is a bug. It was mentioned on the phrabricator ticket for the election and someone mentioned opening a ticket for it, but if they've done that I can't find it. Thryduulf (talk) 12:37, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

No worries, cheers for the update. ser! ^{(chat to me - see my edits)} 12:40, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

• phab:T378159 is the request to add that. It's because they made the usernames on the list "clickable". — xaosflux ^Talk 12:49, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

Notification bug

I have absolutely no idea why, but I'm receiving notifications (blue pings) from all of the "Voting phase" subsections on the candidate's individual talk pages. For example I just got one because someone else made a comment on LindsayH's talk page, even though I've never commented there myself or even looked at that page. Is anyone else experiencing this? —Ganesha811 (talk) 04:55, 26 October 2024 (UTC)

Try clicking unsubscribe. The notification system uses the name and timestamp of the first comment when subscribing. If you subscribe to something like an MMS, you may accidentally subscribe to dozens or hundreds of them. –Novem Linguae (talk) 05:25, 26 October 2024 (UTC)

Maybe I'm being dumb

I should meet the voting requirements, but I'm having issues. I click "vote now" which takes me here, and when I click "go to the voting server" I get a message saying that I must logged in to vote in this election". Which I am. Tried a couple of times the last few days, editing on mobile. Any suggestions? Scribolt (talk) 13:34, 26 October 2024 (UTC)

I had the same, if you click the 'Desktop' at the bottom of the page then you should hopefully see the voting page. JP (Talk) 16:09, 26 October 2024 (UTC)

Thank you! Scribolt (talk) 06:41, 27 October 2024 (UTC)

URLs

Is it necessary to have the URLs for each candidacy include the month/year?

Throughout my time on Wikipedia and on other WMF projects, I have occasionally – not often, but more than once – interacted with people about whom I had a bad feeling. Nothing that would merit blocking, or even a report to a noticeboard, but... just in case, I watchlisted their putative RfA's. I've also watchlisted the RfA's of a few people who I felt had potential but weren't ready yet. I'm sure I'm not the only one to have done this – I'm positive I didn't think of this on my own – and, well, "every change breaks someone's workflow", right? DS (talk) 16:43, 26 October 2024 (UTC)

We also created the corresponding WP:RFA/* subpages, and redirected them to the AELECT subpages. So watchlisting the RFA page should still work. –Novem Linguae (talk) 17:48, 26 October 2024 (UTC)

My votes

For anyone tracking data or who otherwise cares, I've disclosed my votes and basic info about my process/impressions on my talk page. Cheers, Sdkb ^talk 05:33, 27 October 2024 (UTC)

I know you said this in good faith, but we had a consensus that this sort of thing, which is essentially equivalent to a personal voter guide, should not be linked to from "this page". I'd argue that linking in this way from the talk page is also not a good thing. I really feel like we have gotten very far from the original intention that candidates should be able to stop watching once the voting phase has begun, without having to worry about additional opposition to them being posted in public. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:35, 27 October 2024 (UTC)

I hadn't been following the discussion about voter guides, but it appears you're referring to this. On a technical level, from the clarification the closer made, this page refers to the subject page, not this talk page. On a non-technical level, I don't think that having a secret ballot should mean that we are not allowed to disclose how we voted, which is basically all my thread is. I hope that it doesn't cause any stress to candidates. I would put more weight in that fear had I offered rationales, and particularly had the rationales included information from my own vetting that had not already been aired elsewhere. But absent that, there isn't anything to which a candidate could be expected to have any response. Best, Sdkb ^talk 23:53, 27 October 2024 (UTC)

"Choose your most active wiki" Fails to list enwiki

I don't know but it just only gives me jawiki as an option. Is this a glitch? ABG (Talk/Report any mistakes here) 13:22, 27 October 2024 (UTC)

@AlphaBetaGamma see #"Choose your most active wiki" doesn't list en.wp? above. The question isn't relevant to this election and so the answer is ignored. Thryduulf (talk) 13:27, 27 October 2024 (UTC)

Count of Main Namespace Edits for Voter Eligibility

Hello, I went to determine my eligibility to vote in these elections by visiting the eligibility checking page. There I am told that my account "does not have at least 150 edits in the main namespace (including deleted) as of 24 September 2024 at 23:59 UTC (has 138)." Can someone please explain how this number is calculated? The number of user contributions I have is 289, of which 9 are after 24 September. Is it that Talk and/or Draft page edits are not included in this calculation? More broadly, can someone please explain why Talk edits are not viewed as valuable considerations for voter eligibility in this election, especially given that many interactions with Administrators are via Talk pages? Other Wikipedia elections do not make this "main namespace" distinction when counting contributions. Thank you in advance for any insight that others provide. Coining (talk) 14:32, 27 October 2024 (UTC)

You have as of now 142 mainspace edits. These are edits directly to articles, not to talk, user talk, draft, etc. Pickersgill-Cunliffe (talk) 14:35, 27 October 2024 (UTC)

I appreciate the explanation. I suppose my follow-up question is why is "main namespace" used as a voting criteria here, when other elections, such as the Wikimedia Foundation elections are based on total edits? Coining (talk) 14:40, 27 October 2024 (UTC)

We copied the voting criteria from WP:ACE. I'm not sure why they picked that. In the debrief I am going to suggest simplifying the criteria to WP:EXTENDEDCONFIRMED, which sadly will probably make it harder for you in particular to vote, but will greatly simplify the process of generating the list of eligible voters, and will bring us into alignment with WP:RFA. –Novem Linguae (talk) 15:41, 27 October 2024 (UTC)

It might be helpful to understand the implications of such a switch for the democratic validity of the elections. There are 72,434 extended confirmed users, based on WP:EXTENDEDCONFIRMED. Is there any way to calculate the number of users with 150+ edits in the main namespace? Again, the Wikimedia Foundation elections are simply based on a set number of total edits; jumping up to the 500 edits required for Extended Confirmed status may be overkill. It could be better to choose a number of total edits that produces roughly the same number of eligible voters as the current criteria, but does so in a more transparent and logical way. Coining (talk) 19:00, 27 October 2024 (UTC)

You can see the breakdown of your edits by namespace here. -- DoubleGrazing (talk) 14:37, 27 October 2024 (UTC)

Thank you, @DoubleGrazing. It seems even odder to rely on "main namespace" criteria if a user has to go to an external (non-Wikipedia) website to find its calculation. (The Wikipedia contributions search -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/ -- doesn't even refer to a "main" namespace.) I think my point above, in reply to @Pickersgill-Cunliffe, is the primary one though. Coining (talk) 14:57, 27 October 2024 (UTC)

Coining, you can also use the filters on Special:Contributions to see just your edits in the main namespace; it's referred to as "(Article)" in the dropdown there. For example, this lists your qualifying edits for this election. 50.223.140.130 (talk) 16:04, 27 October 2024 (UTC)

Toolforge (and Wikimedia Cloud Services) are not external sites per-se, it is owned by Wikimedia and used by technical members of the community host tools that supplement and help with everyday editing. Sohom (talk) 16:05, 27 October 2024 (UTC)

That link may list the "qualifying edits", but it doesn't total them up. It still says at the top "A user with 292 edits." Coining (talk) 18:38, 27 October 2024 (UTC)

As the comment above yours mentions, Toolforge is owned by Wikimedia, and as such can be trusted for information about edits. fanfanboy (block) 18:52, 27 October 2024 (UTC)

I wasn't asserting that it couldn't be trusted; I was pointing out that it is not a particularly clear/obvious way for users to understand what thresholds they need to meet to participate in Wikipedia elections. It is probably a pretty low percentage of Wikipedia editors that even know that Toolforge exists. There isn't even a dedicated Wikipedia page for Toolforge. Coining (talk) 19:05, 27 October 2024 (UTC)

I agree with Coining on this - 150 mainspace edits is a bit of an arbitrary line in the sand, and its not particularly obvious to the user if they've crossed it. Coining is right that by searching only on (Article) namespace for your contributions doesn't actually show you how many results there are (in Coinings case, it says "295 edits", but only 3 pages of 50 results). If this voting criteria remains the same we need some easier way of displaying voter eligibility (like how it shows on the user rights page); or we need to simplify the criteria (eg. to just Extended Confirmed). BugGhost🦗👻 23:21, 27 October 2024 (UTC)

• As a general point, I'm not sure what an editor who does not know what mainspace edits are, how to find out how many of them they have made, what the toolforge tools are, & the like, is actually going to contribute to assessing admin candidates? Espresso Addict (talk) 00:02, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

  How about we make a rule that Administrators not have any authority over the hundreds of thousands or millions of relatively new Wikipedia editors (especially those who have hundreds of edits, but haven’t been blessed to eat from the Tree of Knowledge), and in exchange I’ll agree that we shouldn’t have any say over who the Administrators are? Coining (talk) 01:12, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

  Note that your comment above could be considered an ad-hominem personal attack on administrators and can lead to you being blocked from Wikipedia altogether, so I suggest you edit to remove it. Raladic (talk) 01:43, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

  Respectfully, my comment isn't a personal attack. As WP:NPA makes clear, editors should "Comment on content, not on the contributor," and that is exactly what my comment does -- it makes an argument that the reason less informed editors might be worthy of "contribut[ing] to assessing admin candidates" is because they are regulated by Administrators. It is a similar argument to "No taxation without representation". If anything, the assertion that editors like me don't have anything "to contribute to assessing admin candidates" could be construed as a personal attack. Still, I accept @Espresso Addict's comment as a genuine effort to make a point, though I disagree with it. And at the very least, I give @Espresso Addict the benefit of the doubt, which is totally consistent with WP:NPA's discussion of first offenses and isolated incidents. Indeed, the threat to block me is contrary to WP:NPA, which says "Blocking for personal attacks should only be done for prevention, not punishment." Coining (talk) 02:39, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

  Indeed, sorry Coining, what I said was a bit overly pointed. I genuinely did intend to point to the general case.

  I've made it abundantly clear on this talk page and elsewhere that I think this trial of admin elections is not working; one of the principal reasons it (imo) isn't working is that the discussion phase has been unnaturally truncated -- which is what normally allows IP editors and editors with a low edit count to comment about their impressions of the candidate, which can significantly sway the vote. Espresso Addict (talk) 06:01, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

  Thank you, @Espresso Addict, for accepting the conversation in the constructive fashion in which it was intended. Coining (talk) 13:33, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

Include link to nomination page alongside transclusion.

When reading through all the candidates pages, I read all them all through the transclusions for convenience. However, whenever I wanted to open a candidates nomination page, I would have to scroll all the way up to get the link from the box containing all the candidates. This was inconvenient as I would also still have to scroll back down and find where I was at. I suggest we add links to the candidates subpages alongside the transclude page.

An example would be:

Example

The candidates subpage can be found here

(transcluded page here)

or

Example

(transcluded page here)

I feel these would be more convenient. fanfanboy (block) 18:37, 27 October 2024 (UTC)

Sure! If you can figure out a way to do this in an automated way using mw:Help:Magic words, go ahead and edit this into Wikipedia:Administrator elections/October 2024/Candidate subpage template so that it helps in the possible next election. –Novem Linguae (talk) 18:59, 27 October 2024 (UTC)

With a small note that hiding a link behind the word "here" isn't great design and bad for accessibly. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 19:02, 27 October 2024 (UTC)

Noted. fanfanboy (block) 14:11, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

Done, guess we'll have to wait to see if it works or not. I think it does, but I was well out of my comfort zone when trying so I hope I didn't break anything. fanfanboy (block) 16:13, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

Seeing as we're talking about accessibility - a dark-blue username on a black background is illegible for many people, who then have to hover over your signature to be able to find out your name. Bastun^{Ėġáḍβáś₮ŭŃ!} 12:58, 29 October 2024 (UTC)

I was already asked about this and modified it accordingly. fanfanboy (block talk) 13:23, 29 October 2024 (UTC)

wouldn't just adding in : The candidates subpage can be found at [[{{FULLPAGENAME}}]] below the nomination header work? or would there need to be some sort of wikiwizarding needed. Cowboygilbert - (talk) ♥ 01:34, 30 October 2024 (UTC)

I think I tried something like that and it didn't work. fanfanboy (block talk) 12:21, 30 October 2024 (UTC)

{{FULLPAGENAME}} isn't preserved during transclusion. Instead, it can use {{subst:FULLPAGENAME}} (which doesn't change if the page is later moved) or {{#invoke:TEMPLATENAME|main}} (which does). SilverLocust 💬 18:28, 30 October 2024 (UTC)

Very helpful, but what if I also only want the subpage name? fanfanboy (block talk) 18:43, 30 October 2024 (UTC)

{{subst:SUBPAGENAME}} or {{SUBPAGENAME:{{#invoke:TEMPLATENAME|main}}}}. SilverLocust 💬 18:53, 30 October 2024 (UTC)

That's perfect, thanks! I've updated Wikipedia:Administrator_elections/October_2024/Candidate_subpage_template to use the later. fanfanboy (block talk) 19:20, 30 October 2024 (UTC)

Instead of making a whole new thread, I will be saying this here. I've fixed the subpage as well and added language to make sure that editors abide by the manual of style in terms of MOS:PSEUDOHEAD. While it may look like it's an acceptable way to use bold face when making a pseudo-header, it's not to be used that way. It's meant to be used if sub-sub-sub-headers can't be hidden using {{TOC limit}}, which in our case it can be hidden. I also changed the levels of the headers as it has to follow the levels and shouldn't skip. Cowboygilbert - (talk) ♥ 03:16, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

What happens if a candidate had very little votes entirely

Obviously, it's a little bit late to make any changes to the ongoing process and we don't know yet if the concern is even relevant.

While obviously the whole experiment of the Admin elections are there with trying to reduce the burden than RFA seemed to have had with the gradual reduction of candidacy thereof, I could imagine that some candidates may not have many votes and abstentions instead. Eespecially with this election having had 40 candidates, which honestly was too many to evaluate at once, so I can imagine many people having abstained on voting on candidates they didn't evaluate.

So, I'm curious how the community would feel if it happens that some candidate(s) got very little actual votes in term of, if the outcome for someone was based on say just 50 votes (15 oppose, 35 support would yield a 70% pass threshold), would we feel that the community actually had confidence in that candidate to hold the mop, or just that not enough people knew the candidate to evaluate them (e.g. abstained)? The flip of this could be, that many candidates may not have had many votes entirely, since the rules of Wikipedia:Administrator_elections#Tallying specify that the vote count is just "supports/(objections+supports)". Typically RFA candidates that have succeeded had at least 150 support votes, more often 200+ looking at Wikipedia:Requests for adminship by year with very in-depth commentary by editors participating in it, which while of course having been very arduous as well as a process, has meant that those given the mop at least feel that they were supported by the community.

Obviously I could be off base here and maybe it's a non issue and all the candidates actually will have a reasonable amount of counting votes, but somehow it just swirled around my head as I placed my votes, so I was curious what others are thinking about it? Raladic (talk) 02:04, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

This has been discussed above, with various thresholds proposed. I think everyone agrees the current sitution is a bug, but also that it can't be changed for this pilot run. [Afaik, a candidate could pass on a single support vote, which might even be for themselves (I don't believe self-voting is prohibited?)]. I'd note however that the recent trend of RfAs getting hundreds of comments originated when the watchlist notice was implemented; for years before that, ~40–70 participants was quite common. Espresso Addict (talk) 02:12, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

Ah I see it was touched on in Wikipedia talk:Administrator elections#It's not too late to put in a minimum level of support, though no real discussion on what do we do if it does happen?

Like if someone becomes admin because of the (probably unlikely, but possible) just a single support vote - do we feel confident that that person would suddenly have sysop permissions, or, especially for this first-time experiment, should there be an emergency handbrake?

Since the new WP:ADMINRECALL procedure was written (pinging @Maddy from Celeste), but only takes gaining of adminship via RFA into account (and calls out that admins gained via RFA can't be recalled within 12 months), it doesn't currently have a procedure for admins gained by this election, so would we assume that such an admin would be subject to potential immediate recall if someone so challenges it? Raladic (talk) 02:33, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

There are currently 409 ballots cast. I'm confident that everyone will have many more than 50 non-abstain votes. SilverLocust 💬 02:30, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

I'm not so sure. Of those votes, some will be struck. As I glanced over the list, I spotted at least one blocked editor who voted. It also looks like most of those votes were on the first day (291, vs 73 yesterday and 64 today) and glancing over the list, it's a whos-who of fairly active editors.

Personally, I abstained on the majority of candidates and only voted on a few who's names I recognized and read their candidacy and felt I could judge fairly. I imagine many others may be in a similar position. Raladic (talk) 02:36, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

Only one account that has voted so far is now blocked (LB). More broadly, the number of votes that tend to get struck is negligible. 8/6001 were struck in the Wikimedia Foundation election last month. 6/1597 in the 2023 Arbitration Committee election; 7/1570 in 2022; 2/1572 in 2021.

Some people have been saying on this page how many people they supported/opposed/abstained, and what I have seen has mostly just been supports and opposes, even if just based on the discussion page and impressions and unofficial voter guides. I would find it very unusual if there are candidates for which 90% of voters abstained. SilverLocust 💬 06:22, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

If a voter met the criteria at the time we generated the voter lists, even if they get blocked later, their vote will probably still count. I am not aware of any plans to look for blocked users and discard their votes. –Novem Linguae (talk) 09:07, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

Assuming we use the same criteria for striking as arbcom elections, then only those who people blocked for sockpuppetry who voted with more than one account will have their votes struck. For everyone else their vote stands if they were eligible to cast it at the time they voted. Lightburst was blocked at 08:43 UTC on 25 October, the public voter log doesn't give more precision than the day one which someone cast their vote but they were the ~54th voter and their time card suggests it is most probable they voted before 05:00 UTC meaning their vote would still stand. Thryduulf (talk) 11:49, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

This isn't working

I've been mostly away for a bit and missed all of the build up and discussion to this, but I think being an admin is a relatively big deal. There are far too many people running, the vetting for most users is close to the bare minimum, and discussions appear to have closed so I can't flag any concerns. I get RfAs aren't working either, but I'm really unsure how this process is improving the community. SportingFlyer T·C 02:45, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

I'm not saying the ongoing process is perfect, but I would have thought the potential for improving the community is obvious - new admins join the corps and contribute their time to helping Wikipedia function. Wherever you fall on the WP:NOBIGDEAL spectrum, we as a community need to be more willing to try new things. We won't know for certain whether we've succeeded until we see the elected admins out on the Wiki doing work, but isn't it worth a shot? Or are we so sclerotic that we will let the encyclopedia's cogs and gears clog and stall while we spend hundreds of hours arguing over which grease to use, where to apply it, and precisely how many miligrams are needed? —Ganesha811 (talk) 04:50, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

This. Let's vote, wait, and see. If you have a better idea, out with it, but if not, this is what we've got. TOADSPIKE [Talk] 21:08, 29 October 2024 (UTC)

• Speaking as someone standing I share some of SportingFlyer's concerns. This is especially when you compare the page-views for the most recent traditional RFA to the candidate pages in this process - it's clear this process so far just hasn't had many eyes on it compared to the traditional RFA (at least on a per-candidate basis) and that the candidates with the most views are those higher up in the list (so people are just clicking on the first few). You also see this in some of the abortive voter-guides where people have apparently gotten part-way through the list and just given up (e.g., this, this, this). Kudos to the ones who did it all the way to the end (e.g., Femke's guide, Asilvering's, Novem Linguae's, Significa liberdade's and Timbo's over at WPO).
  If I had to guess as to why, I'd say it's because there have been a lot of talk-page notifications related to these elections, over a long period, and so some users have mentally tuned them out.
  On the plus side there's been more than 400 votes (no "!") cast, and I have to assume most of those won't be abstains. That's more than we would see in any single high-engagement RFA.
  For me personally, if I pass I can only assume it's because few have a problem with my candidature. But also, if I don't pass then I won't have the first clue as to why not because no-one has raised any objections at all. Keep thinking positive I guess. FOARP (talk) 09:00, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

  Yeah I agree with the above concerns about this - there were too many candidates for this election - as you pointed out, I couldn't finish my public notes in time, "only" reviewing 16 candidates (this was partially due to IRL concerns as well). But this is a trial run, and this is a very useful thing to learn, and a easy problem to mitigate next time - eg. we could stagger the discussion phases so no more than 5 candidates are being discussed at once, or we could make WP:ORCP's a mandatory requirement for candidates (to weed out NOTYET candidates and to get some initial due dilligence prior to the election, and to make running less of a "why not toss my hat in the ring and see what happens" decision). It was definitely a problem this election but it doesn't have to be for the next one. BugGhost🦗👻 09:30, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

  To clarify: I don't agree with the sentiment that "This isn't working" - regardless of the number of candidates and the fact it was difficult to review them all thoroughly this time round, I think the actual election process was successful in its aims of getting more candidates to step forward and to reduce contention during discussion. BugGhost🦗👻 09:44, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

  I think it can be improved from where it is, primarily by cutting down the number of candidates for any single election, and maybe extending the discussion period at least over a weekend. At least in the numbers that count (candidates, votes-cast) it may be called a success already. I'm also not sold on a secret ballot system, since I expect there will be opposing votes without any explanation of what they were based on, but I guess that boat has probably sailed already.

  I'm not sure drama will be avoided in the long run. Based on the people who are saying who they are voting for, it looks like anyone who any doubts at all were raised about in the discussion phase may have a hard time passing - the essential issue of people not getting through because minor long-ago issues serve as a catalyst for oppose-voting is still there. FOARP (talk) 11:00, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

  I expect there will be opposing votes without any explanation of what they were based on - this is true, but this is a natural consequence of a new system that attempts to shield candidates from harsh criticism. If you look at the "should voter guides be allowed" discussion from a couple of weeks ago there's a significant amount of people who want this system to prioritise candidate welfare at the expense of more thorough/public vetting. I understand the motive behind that thought but I agree that it might make it harder for candidates in the long run if they are unsuccessful the first time. BugGhost🦗👻 11:58, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

  I agree this particular point is not a big deal, especially since a candidate can always opt for the traditional process instead. —Compassionate727 ^(T·C) 21:05, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

  I've finally finished my voter guide. However, I can say one thing about this process: We need to extend the discussion phase from 3 days to 5, because it is not at all worth exhausting myself just to find relevant information in such a short time. Mox Eden (talk) 20:51, 30 October 2024 (UTC)

I'm really unsure how this process is improving the community. The premise behind admin elections is the RFA process is too toxic/difficult, so we needed a process that is more candidate friendly. By that metric, admin elections has been a success. We had 32 candidates make it to the voting phase, which is more admin candidates than the entire rest of this year. Not saying this to preach. This process has plenty of problems too. But hopefully that answers your puzzlement about how a process like this is expected to help the community. –Novem Linguae (talk) 09:12, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

I'm not puzzled. I'm actively saying that I don't think this new process is very good. SportingFlyer T·C 17:04, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

Do you think the concept is irredeemable? I feel like with a few parameter tweaks (eg. discussion length, candidate number caps) a lot of your criticisms would be mitigated. BugGhost🦗👻 18:16, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

With your tweaks it would just become multiple RfAs at once with a ballot instead of a list of votes. I don't think it is irredeemable, but if we're holding the concept of being an administrator to a high standard, I think it might be. SportingFlyer T·C 21:25, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

That's the whole point though. The vast majority of active admins became admins at the time where there were far fewer eyeballs, less vetting, questioning and toxicity in the process. The reason why this proposal achieved consensus in the first place was because maintaining the status quo and excessively high standards which didn't exist in the past was considered to be a not-so-good idea among a big section of the community. Gizza (talk) 00:05, 29 October 2024 (UTC)

Even if all 32 get the mop, we will still be down on admin numbers. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 02:32, 29 October 2024 (UTC)

I understand why we're trying it. I'm not against trying it. I'm just saying the current format is too much work given that I'm someone who takes voting in an RfA fairly seriously. Perhaps others don't, and that's fine. SportingFlyer T·C 15:49, 29 October 2024 (UTC)

• I have to agree that there are too many candidates running. It's overwhelming to look at all of them and most people aren't putting in the effort. Honestly: I opposed any candidate whose name I didn't recognize and only glanced at the other dozen before making my decision. I hope this many candidates is a first-time one-off; if not, there may be a need to limit the number of them. —Compassionate727 ^(T·C) 21:02, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

  The way I approached voting was to vote neutral in the four cases where the discussion was insufficient to determine anything and I was unfamiliar with the folks. I don't see much evidence of people supporting whilly nilly, and believe this blind opposing will lead to a worse outcome. The candidates I'm voting neutral on are all active in admin-adjacent areas, which means there will be people out there who can judge them fairly. In terms of voter effort, I can recommend reading User:Significa liberdade/EFA, which has a good summary of strenghts and weaknesses of the candidates, synthesizing the key parts of the discussion and other candidate overviews. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 08:14, 29 October 2024 (UTC)

  (ec) I rather hope that's a rare response. But large numbers of oppose votes from people who haven't the time to assess the candidates would be an unfortunate result of this trial, and would leave a number of candidates wondering why people had opposed their RFAs. I have limited time/internet access this week and either may not vote at all, or just support a couple of candidates who I know from multiple interactions, and oppose any where a cursory glance throws up things that are red flags to me. Abstain is an option and I may use it on more than two dozen who I don't have the time to properly assess but who don't have any obvious downside. ϢereSpielChequers 08:27, 29 October 2024 (UTC)

  I hope very few people default to oppose (or to support); either would be quite unfair, I think, and I agree with Femke and WereSpielChequers that blind opposing would harm this trial for no good reason. I agree that we should limit the size of the pool in future elections, if there are any. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 10:37, 29 October 2024 (UTC)

  Why did you oppose rather than abstain? A lot of people spent a long time vetting all the candidates and people just opposing everyone they don't immediately recognise reverses that effort. A "don't recognise the name, didn't have time to vet properly" oppose !vote at a traditional RfA would be correctly ridiculed. BugGhost🦗👻 11:39, 29 October 2024 (UTC)

  I'm a little surprised there aren't more people who are doing the same thing. My primary concern when reviewing admin candidates is their temperament, because an admin with the wrong temperament can create tons of drama and additional work. Unfortunately, the optional questions are a poor way of determining someone's temperament. There's really only two options: either you can do a deep dive into their talk and Wikipedia namespace participation, or wait for someone who has had a bad experience with the candidate to appear and say so. In a traditional RfA, there's plenty of time for the former, and the latter seems to happen inevitably. This election has not provided adequate opportunity for either. I'm concerned by that lack of scrutiny. Under the circumstances, I would rather see tons of people fail (which, if it did happen, I think would be blamed on the experiment and not meaningfully hinder their future prospects for adminship) than tons of people pass whose temperament will cause problems later. —Compassionate727 ^(T·C) 20:14, 30 October 2024 (UTC)

  I read at least a few AN(I) threads for all the candidates (all of them where they were mentioned by name in a heading), and did not have any concerns that weren't brought up eventually during the discussion phase. I'm not too concerned with temperament for the cohort in general. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 21:01, 30 October 2024 (UTC)

  Seriously. I really hope "oppose because I haven't looked into them" isn't a common refrain in this election. PhotogenicScientist (talk) 18:10, 31 October 2024 (UTC)

First, the only way anyone will think this process "worked" is if we get a bunch of admins out of it, so let's see what happens. If we do, let's separate the number of candidates from the process itself in the post-mortem. I agree there were too many to properly consider, but let's say we did a coordinated push where we got the same number of candidates to do a full RfA. We'd still get complaints about the number of candidates, but we wouldn't be saying "RfA doesn't work" (well, we would, but for other reasons). If there's consensus after this that there were too many candidates, here's a fix: limit the number of candidates, then figure out a sensible interval for elections.
What I find most awkward about the process itself is the difficulty of raising potential issues and finding out about them. In a full RfA we typically learn about potential problems (and other perspectives on said problems) after someone posts an "oppose per such and such pattern of behavior via these diffs". Without such a format, it seems awkward for someone to drop a big quasi-"oppose" statement in a discussion section or frame it as a question. Further, as pointed out, it's not even clear people paid attention to the candidate pages. When the first two candidate pages I clicked on only included routine questions and afdstats, with little to no discussion, I didn't even bother opening the rest and instead relied entirely on my own [often cursory] research. I think I had about the same number of supports and abstains, with just a handful of opposes, but in some cases I came across things that I might've commented on if it wouldn't have been the only real comment on the candidate page, and if it weren't already too late to do so. Also worth noting that what I'm complaining about will be seen as a feature, not a bug, to some others.
Last thing: while I was ambivalent about "voter guides" this time (and at every arbcom election), I kind of wished I knew about some here. Spread the effort of getting to know so many users, you know? I think if voter guides came back up, I'd say we should support them/collect them, but create some guidelines/criteria, e.g. "clearly explained criteria/methodology", "not under any topic ban", or "more than a thousand edits". FWIW. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 12:40, 29 October 2024 (UTC)

At ACE we have the official stats-only voter guide, and user-mostly-opinions-guides. Do you think the prior would have helped? — xaosflux ^Talk 13:49, 29 October 2024 (UTC)

2023's: Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee Elections December 2023/Candidates/Guide. — xaosflux ^Talk 13:50, 29 October 2024 (UTC)

I feel like a guide like Femke's would work better instead of a guide that is provided at ACE. One that shows edit count, activity, blocks/bans, any big noticeboard mentions about them, permissions, and area of focus. I feel like leaving out quality content because that's not what being an admin is all about. Cowboygilbert - (talk) ♥ 01:21, 30 October 2024 (UTC)

I'm concerned that would create a situation where whoever gets to create a voter guide would become a "gatekeeper." Perhaps this is a one-off and there is pent up demand from users who want to be admins and the next time we do this there will be fewer users running, but I'm concerned about how this would work in practice. SportingFlyer T·C 05:15, 30 October 2024 (UTC)

I think candidate pages without much activity are good. That means that some folks went digging and didn't find anything negative worth commenting about. If you sample a few more candidate pages, I'm sure you'll notice the busier candidate pages too, and notice why they are so busy.

Personally if I found something negative about a candidate, I asked a question about it. I think certain questions and certain comments took the place of a traditional RFA's "oppose" votes. Although in one case the answer to my question was so satisfactory I changed my planned oppose to support. So that's a nice thing about asking questions. –Novem Linguae (talk) 20:11, 29 October 2024 (UTC)

I don't think this is necessarily the case. I investigated every candidate in moderate detail and was only able to support a few, yet I personally found it too intimidating to write my rationales on the candidate page in the face of the perceived 'wall' of being nice to the candidate. Espresso Addict (talk) 01:22, 30 October 2024 (UTC)

That's not necessarily the case - the page view analysis suggests there was fatigue. SportingFlyer T·C 05:16, 30 October 2024 (UTC)

Page view analysis

Here's pageview analysis for the first ten candidate nomination pages. Three groups stand out:

1) "First in the list" (QoH).

2) "Drama" (Hawkeye7, ZippyBonzo).

3) "The peleton" (the rest) which all received similar numbers of page-visits, with visitor numbers falling slightly on average with how high they were listed in the original candidates list.

Obviously the process isn't fully over, and I'm only looking at the first ten. FOARP (talk) 11:43, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

To be fair, when I did my review of the candidates I read Wikipedia:Administrator elections/October 2024/Discussion phase, which transcludes all the candidate nomination pages; that would not have counted as a "view" for all individual nomination pages, would it? –FlyingAce^✈hello 17:12, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

That's how I viewed them too. Schazjmd (talk) 17:20, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

Ditto. fanfanboy (block) 17:24, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

That's the method I used as well. I'm pretty sure that @FlyingAce is correct about page views - on the 22nd Queen of Heart's discussion page for example got 426 views, but Wikipedia:Administrator elections/October 2024/Discussion phase, on which it was transcluded, got 1838 views the same day. Thryduulf (talk) 17:24, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

These are the pageviews for all 35: massviews analysis. (There are 36 titles listed because "/Rsjaffe" was originally at "/rsjaffe".) SilverLocust 💬 18:25, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

Scrutineers for future elections

The arbitration committee issued the following statement regarding a need for the community to approve CheckUser access for administrator election scrutineers: Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/Noticeboard § CheckUser access for administrator election scrutineers (permalink). The subsequent discussion is at Wikipedia talk:Arbitration Committee/Noticeboard § CheckUser access for administrator election scrutineers (comment thread permalink). In any case, with the plans to move towards running SecurePoll elections under local community control, establishing a consensus for CheckUser access will be covered by discussions arising out of Wikipedia:Village pump (idea lab) § Determining who should be an electionadmin (comment thread permalink). isaacl (talk) 17:27, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

Voting incorrectly marked as closed for several hours

For a considerable period today—probably the 5.5 hours after the UTC date rolled over to October 31—the status of the election on this page and at Wikipedia:Administrator elections/October 2024/Candidates was marked as closed due to the transclusion of Wikipedia:Administrator elections/October 2024/Header, which calls Template:Administrator elections candidate/data. On the template, the ending date for the election had been set to October 31, but the template appears to read this as meaning the beginning of October 31 rather than the end of it. Since no one working on these pages caught this ahead of time, as a temporary fix I have switched the end date listed in the template to November 1 and edited the header to read "00:00 on November 1", since that is the best option I am technically capable of performing quickly myself. On the one hand, the header and template syntax should be fixed again to correctly read "23:59 on October 31", so please help with that if possible. On the other hand, there is the possibility that some editors did not proceed to vote because the top of these pages told them that the election had already ended. It's impossible to tell what effect this might have on the makeup of the participants, but editors in some time zones may have been more misled than others. Presumably the use of SecurePoll does not allow for the extension of the deadline to accommodate these editors. If integrity of results is important, more scrutiny of such things ahead of time is needed. Dekimasuよ! 05:45, 31 October 2024 (UTC)

I have also updated the contents of Wikipedia:Administrator elections/October 2024/Voting phase for the same reason. It is possible there are other similar problems. Dekimasuよ! 05:49, 31 October 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for catching this. I've reverted to the simple versions I originally wrote, that don't have any complex template wikicode that can get messed up. Another editor wanted to make things more complex in the section Wikipedia talk:Administrator elections#Subpage above, which was driving me nuts, but I didn't want to be too pushy so I backed down. But apparently that was a mistake on my part, since it led to this error. Let's keep everything simple and hard-coded so there are no more errors. Thanks. –Novem Linguae (talk) 06:40, 31 October 2024 (UTC)

My bad on this. I misinterpreted the schedule. Aaron Liu (talk) 11:42, 31 October 2024 (UTC)

So if it was shown as closed from 00.00 to 05.30 UTC, that was e.g. 17.00 to 22.30 PDT and potentially could have denied people in the western hemisphere a vote if they were planning to do it at the last minute their time. I think there's a case for prolonging the vote an extra 12 hours, so ending 12.00 UTC on 1 November so that people in those timezones get another evening. – Joe (talk) 06:58, 31 October 2024 (UTC)

I'm not sure it'd really help: people who think voting is already closed aren't likely to ever check again. Extraordinary Writ (talk) 07:16, 31 October 2024 (UTC)

Good point. – Joe (talk) 07:29, 31 October 2024 (UTC)

I changed the text, adding the word "still". BusterD (talk) 14:24, 31 October 2024 (UTC)

It's a moot point now, but it appears SecurePoll doesn't allow changing the end date of a poll once it starts. I filed phab:T378817 about this. – SD0001 (talk) 14:25, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

3 hours until voting phase closes

If you haven't voted yet and want to, make sure to get it done soon. I'll be putting my vote in during this time. Happy electing! –Novem Linguae (talk) 21:07, 31 October 2024 (UTC)

Putting all that work into one of the most comprehensive voter guides, and coming up to the wire on casting your own vote, eh? Bold haha.

In all seriousness, that was a great guide. It really helped me inform myself much more painlessly, and vote on candidates I might've otherwise had to abstain on. PhotogenicScientist (talk) 21:43, 31 October 2024 (UTC)

one of the most comprehensive voter guides. Thanks!

My voter guide was mainly just stats. I still needed to read the discussions a bit to make an informed decision. Between making the voter guide, reading the discussion phase when it was open, then re-reading it when it was closed, even just skimming some things, still totaled about 10 hours I think. Properly vetting 32 candidates is a lot of work.

I cast my vote just now. 12 oppose, 3 abstain, 17 support. I think this batch of candidates was pretty high caliber, which is awesome.

Another fun fact: eliminating duplicates there's 605 total voters so far. So very good electorate participation. –Novem Linguae (talk) 23:03, 31 October 2024 (UTC)

616 total voters after voting has finished. Now time to see which ones are socks and which ones aren't! Cowboygilbert - (talk) ♥ 03:23, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

@Cowboygilbert: Please sign in to your Original Account. Thank you. SerialNumber54129 13:54, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

@Serial Number 54129, i genuinely cant tell if this is a joke or not Cowboygilbert - (talk) ♥ 13:57, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

Thank you

As the polls are about to close, I really wanted to say thank you to all the candidates who made it possible to try out the new system! This seems to me like it’s been a really worthwhile experiment and a much more humane option (not only because multiple candidates dispersed attention on any one, but also because of shifted policies on what kinds of comments could be made) and we only need to balance it with some limit on how many people can stand at once so everyone can get the amount of attention they deserve—I reviewed candidates over several days and still couldn’t properly get through all 30+, so I’m afraid I may have missed supporting some deserving folks. So if it doesn’t work out in this first slightly chaotic run, please know that for me at least it didn’t necessarily mean I thought you shouldn’t be an admin, only that I ran out of time for reviewing, and thank you again for volunteering to be the ones we worked out those kinks on! Innisfree987 (talk) 21:51, 31 October 2024 (UTC)

+1, agreed. Particular thanks to Novem Linguae for pushing to make this happen throughout this year! I wonder if in the future, there could be an open call for candidates, at any time, and whenever the number of candidates reaches, say, a dozen, an election will be scheduled for, say, 3 weeks later. And the discussion period should be over weekend. And voting should open with discussion. Leijurv (talk) 22:29, 31 October 2024 (UTC)

It's a feature to start discussion before voting opens. That way, people vote with information available. I would support an overlapping period (5 day discussion, and voting starts on day 3 or 4), so that we keep benefits of both options. The open call is interesting. Would we be able to pull this off if voting is hosted locally? —Femke 🐦 (talk) 08:31, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

Noindexed admin elections subpages

After editing MediaWiki:Robots.txt to block all administrator recall subpages from search engines, I realised that since requests for adminship pages are noindexed, admin election pages should be as well, so I've added them to Robots.txt too. These elections went relatively well but this may or may not be the case for future iterations of this process. As I said at Wikipedia talk:Administrator recall, I've been blocking pages from search engines since 2008. Graham87 (talk) 13:36, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

Voter guides should've been linked from the project page like ACE does

Voting closed yesterday, and it is only today that I learned about the existence of Category:Wikipedia administrator elections 2024 voter guides. Definitely would've saved some time and effort, had I known about it. —CX Zoom[he/him] ^{(let's talk • {C•X})} 14:12, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

There was a discussion at Wikipedia_talk:Administrator_elections/Archive_3#What_should_the_page_say_on_voting_guides? regarding this. Voter guides were originally discouraged and would not be linked within official pages. But after this election, I'm sure many people (including myself) have changed their minds. fanfanboy (block talk) 14:23, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

Voter guides (and worse) are inevitable. BTW, I was in my county's early voting line last night so I ended up last minute voting for admin elections using my phone (the voting interface worked great). Fortunately I'd done some voter digestion early. Looking forward to the announcement. I hope we get a bunch. I voted for a dozen of the candidates. And then I voted in the US general election. So a productive hour. BusterD (talk) 14:25, 1 November 2024 (UTC)