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Detailed Schedule

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  • Get ready
    • early September - MMS, admin newsletter with the schedule and plans, Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Newsroom/Suggestions
    • Wed Sep 25 (1 month before) - Discussion with stewards about scrutineering
    • Wed Sep 25 (1 month before) - Run voter list script so we have plenty of time to get community feedback and later send to WMF to put into SecurePoll
    • Wed Sep 25 (1 month before) - Post in phab ticket to help remind WMF T&S about it
  • Call for candidates
    • notifications via watchlist notice, T:CENT, WP:AN, WT:RFA, WT:ORCP, MMS, admin newsletter
    • Tue Oct 8 - Mon Oct 14 (7 days) - call for candidates:
    • Mon Oct 14 - The last day candidates can sign up is Oct 14
    • Tue Oct 15 - Mon Oct 23 (7 days) - intermission to set up SecurePoll with WMF, create candidate pages, etc.
  • Discussion phase
    • create candidate pages
    • notifications via watchlist notice, T:CENT, WP:AN, WT:RFA, WT:ORCP
    • Tue Oct 22 - Thu Oct 24 (3 days) - discussion phase
    • Tue Oct 24 - absolute last day to question candidates on the official talk pages. locked down tight at the end of the day, per the RFC, which states that questions after the discussion phase are discouraged and must go to user talk
  • Voting phase
    • notifications via watchlist notice, T:CENT, WP:AN, WT:RFA, WT:ORCP
    • Fri Oct 25 - Thu Oct 31 (7 days) - SecurePoll voting phase
  • Post voting
    • scrutineering by stewards
    • results posted
    • inform bureaucrats so they can promote

Hashing out details

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@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:

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  • 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]

Nominally, absent any further refinement of the process, the proposal specified that bureaucrats would manage the process, so yes, they would be authorized to make any decisions about the election. isaacl (talk) 22:19, 16 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Regarding bullet #1, @Cyberpower678 sounded willing above. I'm more than happy to serve as a medium between SecurePoll and enwiki admin elections until a better process can be set up. If that ever needs to be handed off, I'd be willing to learn the process and software needed for it, hopefully under C678's tutelage. –Novem Linguae (talk) 11:19, 17 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Voting options

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As Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/2021 review/Proposals/Admin elections didn't specify the voting options, if there is an "abstain from voting on this candidate" option provided, I suggest that it be labeled "Abstain", rather than "Neutral" as in the arbitration committee elections. This would more accurately reflect the effect of that choice. isaacl (talk) 22:17, 16 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

In this 2024 iteration, the part about tallying votes uses the typical formula based only on supports and opposes. Consequently, abstain or neutral would each have no effect. Although my first thought was that the name would make no difference either way (thus making me neutral?), on reflection, I think you are correct, because "abstain" more accurately describes what such a vote would (not) do. So I support this. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:17, 2 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Suffrage rules

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So the suffrage rules at ACE and the repeated version at Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/2021 review/Proposals/Admin elections is apparently a bit different, as Cryptic noted at this diff.

Since the intent was to use an already existing election criterion for simplicity, I suggest we keep to ACE criterion as they currently are, than the version we copied in the proposal. Still, it probably needs to be at least discussed. Soni (talk) 10:46, 17 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I like the idea of using the ACE suffrage criteria exactly. This would make the workflow more efficient for the editor that will generate the suffrage requirements, since they won't need to change any of the requirements compared to ACE. –Novem Linguae (talk) 11:16, 17 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I agree that the wording in the proposal on the Phase 1 page takes precedence over the list of criteria on the 2021 proposal page. isaacl (talk) 16:23, 17 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I also say go with the Phase 1 wording. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:19, 2 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I think it should be ECP, same as RFA. Whether you can weigh in on an admin candidate should not be affected by how they chose to run. QuicoleJR (talk) 13:31, 5 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
+1 Queen of Hearts (🏳️‍⚧️ • 🏳️‍🌈) 21:40, 6 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@QuicoleJR I think you're conflating two different things. Wikipedia:Administrator elections doesn't define who is eligible to run (but it should), but I would imagine it should be Wikipedia:ECP just like RfA, however for voting; RFA allows any Wikipedia:Extended confirmed access which could be easily gamified in an anonymous vote so the 2 month activity requirement and 150 edits acts as a safeguard, in contrast to RfA where such votes would be ranked on their merits and also srutinized. ~ 🦝 Shushugah (he/him • talk) 14:46, 26 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Page protection

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In WP:ADE#Period 2: voting would it be a good idea to add this (in green/blue)?

During this period, discussion is closed, and the page will be full protected.
That way, it would help prevent unwanted discussion from continuing. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:51, 15 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
"Bump", for this, and for the one just below. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:20, 2 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

An edit today did this: [2], but was quickly changed to this: [3]. I think we should discuss it. Personally, I think protection would work better than a template notice, because people don't always pat attention to the latter. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:32, 11 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

We could make a version of Template:Rfap to close the discussion with -- we don't fully protect RfAs once they're over, but the closing template seems to keep nearly everyone out. Giraffer (talk) 20:51, 11 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
That might work, but for the sake of considering all angles, I want to point to this recent discussion: [4]. Given that this trial will be unfamiliar in comparison to "typical" RfAs, there's a greater chance that someone might still misunderstand, and the discussion I linked to notes how it can be WP:BITEy to correct people once they make such a mistake. At least for the first election, it might perhaps be less messy simply to full-protect. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:24, 11 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I'm OK with the possibility that the consensus here may not be in agreement with what I think, but I remain concerned about the BITE-related repercussions. I'm picturing a situation in which somebody poses a question to a candidate after the discussion period is closed, and of course the candidate is unaware of it. But the question asker and maybe other editors decide to vote opposed because "the candidate didn't answer questions". We're talking about real people here, not idealized people who notice everything and don't make mistakes. Maybe some uninvolved editors will have to watch the closed discussion pages, and revert late postings and notify the editors who posted them. But I fear that, in practice, this will become more messy than editors who have faith in a hatnote-like template anticipate. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:00, 12 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
It's not hard to spin similar scenarios about the arbitration committee elections, or the open-viewpoint RfA process: questions go unanswered in those situations, which can just be the candidate overlooking them. Questions can also come through other venues: candidates could be asked questions on their talk pages, via email, on Discord, and so forth. Those could be answered (before, during, or after the official discussion period) or go unanswered. It's difficult to guard against the many hypothetical reasons why someone might choose to oppose a candidate. Someone editing a section that is marked as closed with a different background colour seems to be low risk, in my opinion, and as noted by Giraffer, there's no evidence of a problem with RfA (or the arbitration committee elections, for that matter). isaacl (talk) 22:29, 12 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
It's counter to policy to protect pages in a pre-emptive manner. In addition to the RfA candidate pages, the arbitration committee election pages remain unprotected (much as I'd like to stop people from changing them to the past tense once the election is over). As I recall, there was a discussion not too long ago about protecting the RfA pages. The consensus as always was that there's no history of vandalism, and it would prevent editors from making "just do it" fixes. isaacl (talk) 21:28, 11 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The most recent such discussion that I'm aware of is the one I linked to just above, but it doesn't have such a consensus. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:45, 11 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I wasn't referring to a discussion regarding enforcing the extended-confirmed restriction on supporting or opposing a candidate, but a discussion about fully protecting the RfA candidate pages after the requests have been closed. As there is no inherent reason why editing RfA candidate pages should be limited to administrators, policy doesn't support enacting full protection. isaacl (talk) 06:53, 12 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Voter guides

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In WP:ADE#Period 1: discussion and questions, would it be a good idea to add this?

Personal voter guides are strongly discouraged, and will not be linked to from the RfA page.
My thinking here is that editors are accustomed to using Secure Poll for ArbCom elections, where voter guides are used, and so someone might get the idea of creating a guide for the admin elections too. But this would be contrary to the intention of keeping "support/oppose" off of the public page. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:51, 15 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Noting: [5]. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:27, 11 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Clarification and Amendment § Clarification request: Desysoppings

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 You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Clarification and Amendment § Clarification request: Desysoppings. –Novem Linguae (talk) 09:55, 12 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Phab ticket

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Tracked in Phabricator
Task T371454

As requested by WMF Trust & Safety, I've created phab:T371454 to discuss the technical details of setting up the admin election in SecurePoll. –Novem Linguae (talk) 05:56, 31 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Who can stand?

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I noticed that this page has a "Who can vote?" section but, unless I'm missing something, no information on who can stand for election via this process. Has this been discussed anywhere? – Joe (talk) 07:05, 3 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

As I understand the proposal, it only concerned the selection process, and not the eligibility criteria. Thus the criteria specified in Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/2024 review/Phase I § Proposal 25: Require nominees to be extended confirmed apply, and that proposal explicitly stated that the election process was one of the motivations for the proposal. isaacl (talk) 14:04, 3 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Make sense to me. Any objections to adding this to the page? – Joe (talk) 14:21, 3 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Perhaps a brief statement such as "Anyone meeting the formal prerequisites described in Wikipedia:Requests for adminship § Nomination standards is eligible to be a candidate"? isaacl (talk) 14:30, 3 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I'd just copy it over, for clarity. Changes to RfA come at a glacial place, it won't be hard to keep in sync. – Joe (talk) 18:47, 3 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I boldly added a section in line. Merely linking to Wikipedia:Requests for adminship#Nomination standards which is RfA centric and does not answer the simple question of eligibility. ~ 🦝 Shushugah (he/him • talk) 14:51, 26 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Well, for a one-time trial, either way is fine for now. If this becomes a regular occurrence, then I think both the on-wiki discussion process page (RfA) and the secret ballot elections page (this page) can just point to Wikipedia:Administrators § Becoming an administrator. isaacl (talk) 16:41, 26 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Maybe we can have a criteria like ACE elections:
a) has a registered account and has made at least 500 mainspace edits 1 month before the election
b) is not prevented from submitting their candidacy by a block or ban Just a random Wikipedian(talk) 03:04, 31 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

When does the "accepting candidates" phase start?

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The trail is a month away and we still have no way for candidates to apply. And how will we let those who are interested (not including those currently in the mailing list) know that applications for candidacy are open? Fanfanboy (talk) 18:52, 5 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

In terms of letting potential candidates know, posting notices at WP:AN, WP:CENT, WT:RFA, WT:ORCP, and on the talk pages of anyone you know who might be interested is going to be the best way I think. Thryduulf (talk) 14:08, 6 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Hey @Fanfanboy. Candidates may only apply during the "call for candidates" phase which will be Oct 8 – Oct 14. However you're right that it's almost election time and I should start coming out of hibernation and working on this. I'll go ahead and draft a WP:MMS with the schedule. –Novem Linguae (talk) 05:23, 7 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Draft of MMS (mass message) to send out this week

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Howdy folks. It occurs to me that we should start getting interested folks ready for admin elections, and an MMS with the schedule would probably be a good way to do this. I propose the following MMS. Any feedback before I send?

Administrator Elections | Updates & Schedule
  • Administrator elections are in the WMF Trust & Safety SecurePoll calendar and are all set to proceed.
  • We plan to use the following schedule:
    • Oct 8 – Oct 14: Candidate sign-up
    • Oct 22 – Oct 24: Discussion phase
    • Oct 25 – Oct 31: SecurePoll voting phase
  • If you have any questions, concerns, or thoughts before we get started, please post at Wikipedia talk:Administrator elections.
  • If you are interested in helping out, please post at Wikipedia talk:Administrator elections § Ways to help. There are many redlinked subpages that can be created.
You're receiving this message because you signed up for the mailing list. To opt-out of future mailings, please remove yourself from the list.

This will go out to 66 editors. This can be edited directly at Wikipedia:Administrator elections/MMS/Election schedule. Thanks. –Novem Linguae (talk) 05:47, 7 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I suggest not using all-caps jargon abbreviations. I think it's better just to use the full page names. isaacl (talk) 05:50, 7 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
 Done –Novem Linguae (talk) 06:23, 7 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The opt-out links "here". Can we link "remove yourself from the list" instead for accessibility? Rest looks good. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 19:06, 8 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
 Done. And queued for sending at Wikipedia talk:Mass message senders#Request for mass message delivery: September 9, 2024. –Novem Linguae (talk) 19:24, 9 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
It turns out I'm on your mailing list but this notification was a surprise. How was I so out of the loop that I didn't realize that admin elections were actually a thing that was going to happen? I expect that the editors and admins who aren't signed up will be equally surprised in October. Has there been a story about this process in the Signpost yet? Liz Read! Talk! 01:45, 10 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Great idea. Just now I submitted Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Newsroom/Suggestions#Suggestion by Novem Linguae (2024-09-10). Thanks for the tip. –Novem Linguae (talk) 02:24, 10 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I have already included a summary of all of RFA2024 in next issue's News and Notes. I can highlight the segment with AELECT more if someone suggests what info needs to be added more. Soni (talk) 12:49, 10 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Ways to help

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If you're interested in helping, it'd be really nice if some of the following pages could mysteriously appear mostly written, and then everyone can go through and make adjustments:

I think some of these details might end up needing discussion or adjusting. But I think the quickest way to get these discussions going is to create drafts and then tweak from there. Any help is appreciated. Please feel free to WP:BEBOLD and create some of these pages :) –Novem Linguae (talk) 06:21, 7 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

How do we want to structure the candidate end of things? We could take the ACE route and have the nomination at (hypothetically!) WP:Administrator elections/October 2024/Candidates/Giraffer and discussion at WP:Administrator elections/October 2024/Discussion/Giraffer, or we could go RfA-style and keep it all on the former -- I would prefer to keep it together as much as possible. I like the idea of transcluding all candidate pages (with or without discussion) onto another page, but I'm not sure if I would call it /Discussion phase. Maybe /Candidates/All? It's probably worth working these out before the candidate instructions are created. Giraffer (talk) 18:41, 7 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
My first thought is that people supporting the RFC for elections would have had the ACE elections in mind as their comparison, so unless the discussion specifically and clearly mentioned some kind of divergence from how ACE is run, this trial of "EFA" should probably take "the ACE route" wherever possible. -- asilvering (talk) 19:38, 7 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
No objections from me. Want to adjust Wikipedia:Administrator elections/October 2024/Subpages to create to match your idea? –Novem Linguae (talk) 20:32, 7 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Nice try! But since I know very very little about ACE I shall leave that to the older and wiser. -- asilvering (talk) 20:54, 7 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
You see? All the wiser people have showed up now. -- asilvering (talk) 19:45, 8 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I have the opposite view—I think most people would have had the current RfA process in mind and so would expect that everything except the voting would run much like RfA. isaacl (talk) 21:07, 7 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I completely see where you're coming from, but I don't think one process should be presumed to be the main blueprint over the other. ACE should be the model for the proper election bits (timeline, voting, notifications, suffrage, etc.) but for other things I think we can choose, and in this instance, given the novelty of admin elections, it might be less stressful for candidates to work with the RfA page format they've seen used repeatedly before. Giraffer (talk) 22:25, 7 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Keeping the names of the individual RfA pages the same may furthermore help with scripts analysing historical RfAs? As it shouldn't matter which election somebody becomes an admin in, the ACE naming makes less sense. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 19:03, 8 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Hmm. It's a toss up since we don't have any precedent on what is preferred. The perks of trailblazing . In my super professional opinion, given this, even if not approved, is still a pretty historical thing for enwiki, the simpler we can make it, the better.
I'd say have 1 sub-page to describe how it works (both for candidates and voters) and then another that contains every candidate's templates and full discussion. Having a sub-page for each candidate would be theoretically neater, but we also don't know how many people plan to run, and being able to direct everyone to a single page to participate, when the entire idea of a whole new process to select admins may be inherently overwhelming to the front-facing folks, may be more appealing and garner more participation. To spitball, something like Wikipedia:Administrator elections/October 2024/Candidates/Discussion instructions and then Wikipedia:Administrator elections/October 2024/Candidates/Discussion phase, and then each candidate gets a level 2 heading, kind of like how the RFA2024 P2 proposals worked. —Sirdog (talk) 01:20, 9 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
With the current RfA process, each candidate request is on a separate page, and they are all transcluded onto the RfA page. I think the simplest approach is to do the same. It keeps the discussion history for each candidate separate and reduces some potential for edit conflicts. Since there will be a fixed number of candidates, there won't be any churn in transclusions when the discussion period starts. isaacl (talk) 02:46, 9 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Didn't think about the edit conflict issue, good point. Fully agree with your proposed approach. —Sirdog (talk) 01:50, 11 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
These messages and pages should explain clearer that this is like a regular RFA so being nominated by someone is fine (or expected) even. A lot of the watchlist notices for candidates etc say "nominate yourself" which isn't quite right Soni (talk) 01:06, 10 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
You just answered the exact question I was thinking of asking. fanfanboy block 01:50, 10 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
If you're willing, feel free to adjust the messages by just editing them. These changes sound fine. –Novem Linguae (talk) 02:20, 10 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Regardless of how we want to format discussion, would it not make the most sense to have the candidate nomination pages at /Candidates/XYZ rather than /Discussion phase/XYZ? Added bonus that /Candidates follows the ACE format, for those preferring we stick closely to that. Giraffer (talk) 10:26, 10 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Or perhaps they can be in the same place as now: a subpage of the Wikipedia:Requests for adminship page. isaacl (talk) 18:11, 10 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@Novem Linguae What's the point of Talk page messages and how are they different from the MMS versions? It feels like we can just copy the latter everywhere we need to manually, right? Soni (talk) 12:43, 10 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
You're right. In my mind I thought they needed to be different, but now that you point it out they are redundant. I have deleted the redundant talk page message redlinks. –Novem Linguae (talk) 15:44, 10 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Nominations / nominators

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Some of the MMSs and pages were recently modified to say that nominations are OK. How do we want to handle this? Do we want anyone to be able to nominate anyone else without their consent? I think that'd probably not be good (being able to require someone to go through a possibly toxic/stressful process). So I think we at a minimum need a spot for the candidate to accept the nomination, like how RFA currently works.

I do really like some things about nominations. I think it's very beneficial to allow (with the candidate's consent) nominators who endorse the candidacy with a statement, like how RFA currently works.

Does anyone else have thoughts on this? Is everyone OK with basically copying how RFA does it? (there's spots for noms to put a statement but overall noms are optional, and candidate needs to accept the nomination) –Novem Linguae (talk) 21:59, 10 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

As we discussed previously, I agree with copying the current RfA template. Thus there is a nomination section and a section for accepting the nomination (when not self-nominating). isaacl (talk) 22:10, 10 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I think copying the current RfA format is the best way to do it. Giraffer (talk) 22:31, 10 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah I made those changes, didn't think to clarify the nominee would have to consent to being nominated (just as in RfA as mentioned in the above comments). My lack of experience in this part of Wikipedia shows :). fanfanboy (block) 13:56, 11 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
We certainly should not list anyone on the ballot that has not consented to being nominated. Even being nominated for adminship can put someone under scrutiny they may not want to be exposed to. — xaosflux Talk 15:41, 11 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks all. I added "Nominating candidates is permitted, but in general you should receive the candidate's consent first before nominating them, and there will be a spot on the candidate page for the candidate to accept the nomination." to the page just now. Feel free to tweak it. –Novem Linguae (talk) 18:26, 11 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
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