Wikipedia talk:Administrator elections

Suggest isolating implementation notes

I suggest isolating all implementation notes on setting up the process to one section. This would include things like "Will there be another RfC before implementing this?", portions of "To do list" (some of it can transition to a "how to setup and run the election" section), and "How many Administrator Elections will be held?" (at least in its current form, which is focused on the current RfC in process and the potential for future RfCs). That way the rest of the page can be written as a process description, and the implementation notes can be easily archived once implementation is complete. Alternatively, the implementation notes can be moved now to this talk page or a subpage. isaacl (talk) 21:31, 19 March 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for your feedback. I was thinking I'd just delete implementation notes as things were implemented and things became clearer, eventually leaving us with a normal-looking Wikipedia process page as all details are ironed out. –Novem Linguae (talk) 23:04, 27 March 2024 (UTC)

Right now it kind of reads like a stream of consciousness. If most people prefer it that way, so be it. isaacl (talk) 00:40, 28 March 2024 (UTC)

Consultation with WMF

Hey JSutherland (WMF). How are you? I hope you're having a great week.

It's looking like enwiki is interested in starting a process similar to WP:ACE where they elect administrators via SecurePoll twice a year. Are you the correct person to contact about this, and if not can you help direct me to the correct person?

Some questions that would inform our decisions going forward:

• Is WMF willing to set up admin elections for us via mw:Extension:SecurePoll software at a cadence of twice a year (once every 6 months)?
• What is the most laborious part of the SecurePoll process on the WMF side? How can we help streamline the process / reduce the workload of whichever WMF person assists us?
• Right now we plan to copy the ACE suffrage requirements. Does this make the list of eligible voters difficult to generate? If so, are there any suffrage requirement bullets we can delete to make generating these lists easier?
• Right now we are unsure how we will handle scrutineering. If we copy ACE, we may burden the stewards and encounter the same delays that ACE does. What are your thoughts on this? Why is ACE scrutineered so heavily, and is it really necessary to checkuser everyone that votes? What's a happy medium between lowering workload and keeping the election secure?

Thank you for your time. Looking forward to your feedback. –Novem Linguae (talk) 23:02, 27 March 2024 (UTC)

Hi there, unfortunately I'm going on a two-month sabbatical starting next week, but I did speak with others from enwiki about this and let them know this was probably possible. Especially if phab:T209892 is fixed, which would potentially allow enwiki to run the election locally themselves.

The most laborious part of the SecurePoll process on the WMF side is traditionally the translation (not an issue for English Wikipedia) and the voter list generation, which also is not really an issue. For ACE that's done through Cyberpower678's script usually and I assume it'll be a similar process. I would probably work with him on that since he has the most experience putting that together.

As for scrutiny, I think that's up to you. Scrutineers can see that data immediately (for which I filed phab:T35644). I don't think you can turn that off, but I'm not sure about that.

Anyway, since I'm about to leave for two months I think the best thing to do here would be to send this via email to ca@wikimedia.org where one of my colleagues can respond more fully. Joe Sutherland (WMF) (talk) 00:41, 29 March 2024 (UTC)