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RfA drought worsens in 2010—wikigeneration gulf emerging

WereSpielChequers is an editor on the English Wikipedia, the Strategy Process, and occasionally various other projects. He has been active at RfA for more than two years, and has researched its history back into the first year of Wikipedia.

The drought in RfA (Requests for Adminship) has now run for 28 months and is worsening. The number of admins promoted in 2009 was very low compared to previous years, and each of the past six months since has seen even fewer successful RfAs than the same month in 2009. The number of active admins has fallen from the peak of 1,021 in February 2009 to 802 on August 1, 2010.

Requirements have been increasing at RfA in various ways, and since the unbundling of rollback in early 2008 (see Signpost coverage) it has been difficult for candidates to succeed simply as "good vandal fighters". One result of this is that there is now a gulf growing between admins and non admins in terms of "Wiki generations". Over 90% of our admins first edited more than three and a half years ago. It is probably no surprise that there are no admins who first edited in 2010, but only nine started editing in 2009 and thirty-eight in 2008. Even the Wikipedians who joined us in 2007 are still under-represented in the admin cadre.

Successful requests for adminship on the English Wikipedia
Month\Year 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 Totals
January 2 13 14 44 23 36 6 6
February 2 14 9 28 35 27 9 7
March 8 31 16 34 31 22 13 2
April 6 20 25 36 30 12 14 8
May 10 23 17 30 54 16 12 8
June [1] 24 13 28 28 35 18 12 6
July 3 11 17 31 26 31 16 10 7
August 4 9 12 39 26 18 12 11
September 0 17 29 32 22 34 6 8
October 0 10 16 67 27 27 16 7
November 3 9 27 41 33 56 11 13
December 1 15 24 68 19 34 9 6
Total promoted
n/a
44
123
239
387
353
408
201
121
44
1920
Total unsuccessful
n/a
n/a
n/a
63
213
543
512
392
234
99
2056 [2]
Total RfAs including by email
n/a
44
123
302
600
896
920
593
355
143
3976 [3]
Percentage promoted n/a n/a n/a 79.1% 64.5% 39.4% 44.3% 33.9% 34.1% 30.8% 44.1%[4]
Admins by wikigeneration
Year 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 Totals
Year admins started editing[5]
32
109
223
404
481
328
107
38
9
0
1731
Year active admins started editing[6]
14
34
71
163
221
183
69
29
9
0
793
Admins still active %
43.8%
31.2%
31.8%
40.3%
45.9%
55.8%
64.5%
76.3%
100%
45.8%
Active Admins
Year 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 Today
Active admins at end of year [7]
n/a
n/a
143
360
722
979
1,005
943
870
802
Inactive or desysopped (net)
n/a
n/a
24[8]
22
25
96
382
263
194
Inactive or desysopped (net)%
n/a
n/a
14%<ref>Over three years not one
6%
3%
9%
28%
22%
18%

Notes

  0–5 successful RFAs
  6–10 successful RFAs
  11–15 successful RFAs
  16–20 successful RFAs
  21–25 successful RFAs
  26–30 successful RFAs
  31–35 successful RFAs
  36–40 successful RFAs
  41–50 successful RFAs
  51–60 successful RFAs
  More than 60 successful RFAs


About one new admin per day was promoted from mid-2005 to mid-March 2008; this pattern oscillated between half and a fifth of that rate until late 2009, and since then the promotion rate has dropped to one every five days.

Originally sourced from User:NoSeptember/Admin stats#Year to year comparison of promotions by months, copied here and colour-coded. Updates from Wikipedia:Unsuccessful adminship candidacies (Chronological) and active admins from User:NoSeptember/Admin stats and Revision history of Wikipedia:List of administrators

On the counting of admins

Nobody really knows how many admin accounts there have been on the English Wikipedia, or how many actual people they represent. Some stats include admin bots, others do not. If an admin has their account renamed they are still one admin, but if they leave and return with a new account and have that sysoped then some stats count them as two admins. Nowadays developers and other staff members have a "staff" flag, but some early staff members were simply made admins, and at least one measure of our number of admins would include them if they made an admin action. If a protected page is moved, the automated moving of the protection settings is counted as a page protection and is listed under the username of the person who moved the page, whether or not they are actually an admin. Also, stewards can act as admins on enwiki. Records for the early days are incomplete. We have had 1,920 admins appointed (not including bots), we currently have 1,741 accounts with an admin flag (including bots), of whom 802 are active as editors, and as of August 2, 2010, 2,019 editors are recorded as carrying out admin actions on the English Wikipedia, but see the note above.


  1. ^ 33 had been appointed in 2001 and early 2002
  2. ^ 2004–2010
  3. ^ unsuccessful 2003 are n/a; the earliest phase was done by email and there is no record of the people who were turned down
  4. ^ This percentage represents all years from 2004 onwards.
  5. ^ last calculated Aug 2010 – this only includes current accounts of people who are still admins, but includes inactives.
  6. ^ User CBM
  7. ^ active admins peaked at 1021 on 28/2/2009
  8. ^ Over three years not one