Wikipedia talk:Administrator elections: Difference between revisions

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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)[reply]

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)[reply]

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)[reply]

I have moved the implementation notes to this talk page (with a section for discussions so we can keep "implementation overview" and "discusions about implementation" separate). Soni (talk) 10:52, 15 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

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)[reply]

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)[reply]

I've got a fair bit of experience on SecurePoll given my tenure as an ACE Electcom member. I'm more than happy to serve as a medium between SecurePoll and enwiki admin elections until a better process can be set up. —CYBERPOWER (Around) 00:46, 29 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Awesome. Thank you for offering to help, @Cyberpower678. Just to double check, are voter lists using the ACE suffrage requirements a pain for your script to generate, or is it a non issue? –Novem Linguae (talk) 01:30, 29 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

It’s a somewhat computationally expensive process that can take up to 3 hours to generate, but it’s pretty much optimized as much as could be and usually gets a list produced in about 45 minutes. I just run it and wait. —CYBERPOWER (Message) 02:11, 29 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I assume phab:T35644 is a typo and should be phab:T356442. –Novem Linguae (talk) 00:56, 29 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for these initial thoughts Joe. Very helpful. I'll email ca@wikimedia.org as suggested to get a conversation started. Enjoy your sabbatical. –Novem Linguae (talk) 01:31, 29 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Notes from ACE: manual electoral roll creation using bespoke parameters should not have a bus factor of 1, and needs an ongoing process for managing overrides. The first could be resolved if WMF will commit staff to the process. — xaosflux ^Talk 17:19, 29 March 2024 (UTC)`[reply]
The community can help maintain continuity by documenting the steps on a project page, including any scripts used (or links to the corresponding code repositories). Then the person generating the list can be staffed either from the community or the WMF. Community members can practise the process and double-check their results against each other. isaacl (talk) 23:16, 29 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
A recurring problem we run in to is surely someone else will do this thing that blocks other people from doing something - we see it all the time such as OMG BOT-X ISNT RUNNING!!! or OMG SOMEONES LABS PROJECT IS DOWN!!!. Even "here is a procedure to do this thing" (however it is a thing that 99% of people don't have the capability to actually do) is a poor solution for any critical process. Having dealt with ACE for years, manual electoral roll generation is complicated, poorly accessible to general volunteers, and error prone. — xaosflux ^Talk 10:30, 30 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I totally agree that having a written procedure is no guarantee for something getting done. (I've completely documented some procedures and yet found no takers for doing them. In this case, there is a higher level of technical adeptness and setup that is needed, which is why I did discuss the need for any potential volunteers to practise ahead of time.) But it seems to me that it's a basic starting point for finding volunteers. I agree in the longer term it would be beneficial to move to criteria that can be validated by SecurePoll automatically. In the immediate term, though, I think the community would appreciate a process that it can execute on its own, without relying on the WMF approving the allocation of staff time. isaacl (talk) 15:50, 30 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

It was only error prone in the first few years, and mainly due to bugs resulting from policy change implementations. We haven't had any in recent years and no errors were produced in the lists as a result. Unless I'm mistaken, we didn't need to make any overrides this year in ACE. The script I use is simple enough to convert to a bot job that users can submit to be run. —CYBERPOWER (Happy Easter) 02:39, 31 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@Cyberpower678 more and more layers of abstraction--- requiring a bot, that is relies on a dump process, that relies on hosting infrastructure (that is not high-priority for support) is what is lacking in reliability. My primary argument for repeatable processes is to not have to rely on all those layers. For example, if you stop volunteering tomorrow having User:SomeRandomEditorWhoWantsToHelp just step right in is far from an accessible process. — xaosflux ^Talk 17:03, 31 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
To be fair, if I stop volunteering, I would announce it in advance to make sure somebody else can assume the tasks that many rely on before I go away. —CYBERPOWER (Happy Easter) 17:07, 31 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
It's called a "bus factor" for a reason :D — xaosflux ^Talk 14:32, 16 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
One of my friends has told me off-wiki that I'm moving too fast on this, and should wait for the formal close of Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/2024 review/Phase I#Proposal 13: Admin elections. I apologize for moving too fast. I will try not to edit this page again until we have a formal close of proposal 13. I don't want the community to feel like I am pushing this through without consensus. –Novem Linguae (talk) 21:18, 29 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think you've done anything wrong. It's blatantly obvious that there's a consensus there and it's a week overdue a close. I suspect there just aren't so that potential closers that haven't participated in one way or another. Anyway, it never hurts to plan. – Joe (talk) 06:30, 30 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

It certainly looks like "elections" are going to be approved - and the mechanics of using Securepoll requires lots of planning - so it's not a bad idea to start talking about this! (The ACE elections run for months from start up to shut down -- though a good month is rule-change-rfc, but the coordinators are working on parts of it throughout). — xaosflux ^Talk 10:34, 30 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I do wonder if a special UI can be made to let approved users on enwiki, push a button and an election admin bot on SecurePoll prepares a new poll automatically. It would then segregate the technical stuff from the procedural stuff and insulate these users from seeing checkuser data when the polls open. Once again, happy to volunteer some time into developing something, if other users want to join in on the work as well. —CYBERPOWER (Happy Easter) 02:43, 31 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The things that likely need to be solved there are (a) The privacy stuff that has been argued about for years, (b) details about the private key management process. Fixing those is well beyond the scope of enwiki-specifics. — xaosflux ^Talk 17:05, 31 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Second email to WMF

I think Joe Sutherland answered most of the questions in the above section, so that's great. Here are the follow up questions I will be asking Trust & Safety.

Is T&S willing to set up one enwiki admin election for us using SecurePoll software?
Who will be our point of contact on the T&S team while Joe is out of office?
Keeping in mind that we want it to run for a week, what dates / date ranges fit into the T&S calendar for running the elections? We can work with the T&S schedule to find a good date for the election.
Any other configuration you need from us besides the eligible voters list?

Thanks a lot. Looking forward to your feedback. –Novem Linguae (talk) 08:41, 15 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Scrutineering

The RFC has closed with a consensus to do one trial, without a requirement for further pre-trial RFCs. So talk page consensus regarding any unclear details should probably be sufficient.

It seems to me the last major detail left to work out is how scrutineering will work.

Anyone have any suggestions for this? I know WP:ACE has 3 stewards do the scrutineering, but this can be a cause of major delays and also of workload for the stewards. Some alternative options to explore might be to have enwiki checkusers do the scrutineering, or to have less thorough scrutineering (maybe only newer users or suspicious users) or no scrutineering.
By the way, how exactly does scrutineering work anyway? According to phab:T356442, it does look like some kind of checkuser tool is built into SecurePoll. Does this tool show the exact same data as Special:CheckUser, or less data?

–Novem Linguae (talk) 08:28, 15 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Novem Linguae it is very similar to a checkuser output on a user; the securepoll scrutineering step basically provides all of the client information (username, IP address, user agent data) for every single vote entry. (File:SecurePollSample-2019-11-26.PNG is a decent example). — xaosflux ^Talk 14:43, 16 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Todo list

Reach out to WMF to get SecurePoll software set up. Doing...
Inform WP:BN of the plan. Make sure we have bureaucrat buyoff / willingness for bureaucrats to promote whoever wins the elections.
- In fact, the proposal says The process would be managed by the bureaucrats. Start a discussion with them on how involved they want to be in the process.
Set dates for 1st election
- last day to sign up
- day that discussion closes, day that SecurePoll opens (+3 days)
- day that SecurePoll closes (+10 days)
Create subpages for each candidate's questions and answers. Probably just copy the RFA process. Have nomination statements, then optional questions and answers. Maximum two questions per !voter?
Watchlist notice
Do it!

Areas that may need more discussion -

Is 3 days too short for pre-vote discussion?
How will SecurePoll scrutineering work?

Later phases -

Mention this in the policy WP:ADMIN

Discussion of Todo List

For candidate pages, how about creating the equivalent of an RfA page for each candidate, just without any support/opppose/neutral sections (e.g. something like this mockup)? Because we aren't filling any positions, the cross-comparison candidate statement and question pages from ACE probably aren't needed, and we could just a central election page with each candidate's subpage linked. Borrowing question limits, candidate eligibility, and crat clerking from RfA is also likely to be the least controversial way forward – for this first election, I would think the more we can reuse from RfA procedure, the better. Giraffer (talk) 16:00, 16 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Hashing out details

@Novem Linguae (cc @Sirdog) re [1], I see where you're coming from with making judgement calls on implementations, but I interpreted the close as meaning that there was consensus to run the election on the timeline specified in the proposal, and also that it did not preclude sorting out other final details (e.g. page structures, scrutineering, crat involvement) through Phase II. I'm probably being overly cautious, but I worry slightly about making decisions about important things like scrutineering without consensus, and whether it would be better to have a supplemental RfC in Phase II establishing a few additional important details (but not altering anything from Phase I, per the close). Thanks, Giraffer (talk) 17:56, 15 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Howdy! I'm reading the close a bit differently. To me it seems the timeline is run trial election first -> tweak with additional RFCs second. The text I'm looking at is The community supports trying this proposal for 1 election, after which it will be reviewed in Phase II (note the order of the two events), and there is sufficient support to run the election as written.

A pre-election RFC or two may still happen organically as we discuss more on this talk page, but in my opinion pre-trial RFCs are not required by this close. Hope that sounds reasonable. –Novem Linguae (talk) 10:57, 16 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Yep, I agree that a pre-trial RfC isn't required, but were there to be any details not covered by the initial RfC which get disputed, I think it wouldn't hurt to have one to clarify. Giraffer (talk) 15:29, 16 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Some things to iron out

Is there a volunteer ready to build the electoral rolls using the bespoke criteria? (The electoral roll is an explicit whitelist of voters) - C678 possibly (this will be a critical blocker/failure step)
Who will be authorized to resolve discrepancies in the electoral roll ("Overrides")? - (As there is no "electoral commission" - perhaps any crat?)
Especially if this is for one election, with plenty of notice, getting steward scrutineers shouldn't be a problem - just ask over at meta:SN, have the date and number of volunteers needed ready for the request. (Ideally, 30 days lead time+).

— xaosflux ^Talk 14:39, 16 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@@ Line 91: / Line 91: @@
 === Discussion of Todo List ===
+* For candidate pages, how about creating the equivalent of an RfA page for each candidate, just without any support/opppose/neutral sections (e.g. [[Special:Permalink/1219245051#Example|something like this mockup]])? Because we aren't filling any positions, the cross-comparison candidate statement and question pages from ACE probably aren't needed, and we could just a central election page with each candidate's subpage linked. Borrowing question limits, candidate eligibility, and crat clerking from RfA is also likely to be the least controversial way forward{{snd}}for this first election, I would think the more we can reuse from RfA procedure, the better. [[User:Giraffer|Giraffer]] ([[User talk:Giraffer|talk]]) 16:00, 16 April 2024 (UTC)
 == Hashing out details ==