Wikipedia:Administrator elections
Current status
- The December 2025 administrator elections are currently in the set up phase.
- Call for candidates (November 25–December 1)
- Discussion phase (December 4–8)
- Voting phase (December 9–15)
- Results
Administrator elections are a process for selecting administrators – users with access to additional technical features that aid in maintenance. It is an alternative to requests for adminship (RfA), which was the only way to become an administrator on the English Wikipedia between 2003 and 2024.[1] Administrator elections do not replace RfA, and prospective administrators may freely choose which process to use. A trial election was held in October 2024. Administrator elections were authorized permanently on a five-month schedule in an RfC held in early 2025.
Eligibility
[edit]The following policies for eligibility will be in effect for the December 2025 elections. Past elections may have been held under different policies, and eligibility may be modified in the future via RfC.
Candidate eligibility
[edit]The only formal prerequisite for adminship is having an extended confirmed account on Wikipedia (which typically means 500 edits and 30 days of experience).[2] To learn about community expectations for RfA candidates, please review past successful and unsuccessful RfAs. You may also review past optional RfA candidate polls or initiate one if you are interested.
Voter eligibility
[edit]Administrator elections use the RfA suffrage requirements. To vote, an editor must:
- have an extended confirmed account (which typically means 500 edits and 30 days of experience)
- not be sitewide blocked
- not be a bot
These criteria will be programmed into the SecurePoll software and automatically checked. Additionally, scrutineers will manually remove any duplicate votes, sockpuppet votes, and vanished account votes.
Procedure
[edit]The following procedures will be in effect for the December 2025 elections. Past elections may have been held with different procedures, and procedures may be modified in the future via RfC.
Administrator elections will be held approximately every 5 months. Excluding the pre-election windows for candidate nominations and ballot setup, the process lasts 12 days: a 5-day period for discussion and questions, followed by a 7-day period for a secret ballot vote. Election cycles and the timeframes for each window and period will be advertised in advance, including by watchlist notices.
Call for candidates
[edit]Candidates may only sign up during a nominations window to be specified for each election. Just like RfA, candidates may either self-nominate or be nominated by other editors with the candidate's consent. Only candidates who accept their nomination will proceed to the next period. Before the discussion period begins, candidates and nominators may adjust their candidate subpage as they see fit. Candidates will be listed in alphabetical order on election pages. For advice to candidates, see Wikipedia:Advice for admin elections candidates.
Discussion phase
[edit]During the 5-day discussion period, the community can ask questions, raise issues, and provide constructive feedback. Candidates are encouraged to participate in the discussion period by answering questions.
Participants are discouraged from posting messages of support/opposition that lack points for discussion. This phase is for sharing thoughts on the candidate or any other topic that may relate to the candidate's suitability for adminship – not for indicating personal voting intentions.
Similar to RfA, the discussion phase will have monitors who are administrators who will moderate any comments that are too rude, and may refactor and reorganize comments if they get disorganized. Monitors may not nominate candidates, publicly state an opinion about candidates, create a voter guide, or ask official questions on the discussion page. Monitors may vote.
Voting phase
[edit]Once the discussion period ends, voting is open for 7 days by secret ballot (SecurePoll). During this period, discussion is closed, and the page will be marked with a template indicating that discussion is closed. Candidates may be asked direct questions on their user talk pages, but they are not expected to watch their discussion page, nor the election page for the full period, to allow them a respite from community vetting.
The ballot may contain multiple candidates; however, this is not a competitive election. Voters are asked to evaluate each candidate individually, and all candidates who meet the pass threshold are selected to become administrators. Thus all, some, or even no candidates may be selected. Candidates will be listed in alphabetical order.
What data does SecurePoll collect?
[edit]To prevent sockpuppetry, SecurePoll logs each voter's IP address, user agent, and X-Forwarded-For header. This data is only viewable by this particular election's scrutineers and alternate scrutineers (see next section), who are English Wikipedia CheckUsers. CheckUsers are trusted by the English Wikipedia community to keep editor personal information private, have been vetted by the Arbitration Committee, and have signed a legally binding non-disclosure agreement that is on file with the Wikimedia Foundation. Voter IP addresses, user agents, and X-Forwarded-For headers are retained until 60 days after the election ends, when it is automatically deleted.
The fact that you voted and what date you voted will be displayed publicly. Who you voted for is encrypted and the software keeps it completely confidential, even to election clerks and scrutineers. A list of votes is available to election clerks and scrutineers after the election ends, via the "dump" feature. This list of votes is in random order and has all identifiable information about the voter and vote stripped out. A total count of all votes is available to election clerks and scrutineers via the "tally" feature. When tallying, the software will decrypt the votes and add them together. The tally is then formatted by an election clerk and posted on the results page. No one can view the totals during the election, only at the very end once the "tally" button is pressed and decryption occurs.
Scrutineering and tallying
[edit]After voting has ended, the election will be scrutinised by three English Wikipedia CheckUsers.[3] Stewards are also allowed to scrutineer,[3] but require special permission from the English Wikipedia Arbitration Committee, so for this reason and to not impose on their time, English Wikipedia CheckUsers are preferred. Scrutineers will check for any duplicate, ineligible, or sockpuppeteer votes, and strike them as necessary. Once scrutineering is complete, votes are tallied and results are posted by the election clerk, then signed by the scrutineers. After that process is complete, new admins are granted administrative privileges by a bureaucrat. Scrutineering typically takes 2–4 days, although could take longer. There is no formal deadline.
To be successful, a candidate must receive a support percentage of 70% or more and a quorum of at least 20 support votes. The vote tally is calculated by Support / (Support + Oppose) for each candidate. Unsuccessful candidates may run in a future administrator election or request for adminship – there are no restrictions on the number of times you can run.
Withdrawing
[edit]If a candidate wants to withdraw from the election before the discussion period, they should remove themselves from the candidate list (without adding themselves to the withdrawn list) and nominate their candidate subpage for speedy deletion. They will not be listed as a candidate during the SecurePoll vote.
If a candidate wishes to withdraw during the discussion period or voting period, they should edit the list of candidates to move themselves to the withdrawn section. For transparency, their candidate subpage shall not be deleted and will remain transcluded on the discussion period page. The candidate subpage will be closed using the template {{subst:Rfaf|aelect=yes}}/{{subst:Rfab|aelect=yes}} to stop further discussion. An attempt will be made to remove the candidate from the SecurePoll ballot, but this is not guaranteed. If the candidate ends up on the SecurePoll ballot, whatever result they achieve will be considered invalid, and election organizers will attempt to keep the result unpublished.
Voter guides
[edit]A list of unofficial voter guides may be found at Category:Wikipedia administrator elections voter guides. Voter guides may be mentioned in passing and directly linked from candidate pages and talk pages. There will be no official voter guide, nor should voter guides be linked from the election's header template.
Comparison with requests for adminship
[edit]| Requests for adminship | Administrator elections | |
|---|---|---|
| Discussion period | 7 days (overlapping) | 5 days |
| Voting period | 7 days | |
| Ballot | Open | Secret (using SecurePoll) |
| Success criterion | Consensus | Supermajority |
| Success threshold | 65–75%[4] | 70% |
| Suffrage | Extended confirmed account | |
| When it can happen | Any time | Every 5 months |
List of elections
[edit]| Election | Timeline | Candidates | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Call for candidates | Discussion | Voting | Results | Total | Elected | Not elected | Withdrawn | |
| Oct 2024 | Oct 8–14 (7 days) |
Oct 22–24 (3 days) |
Oct 25–31 (7 days) |
Nov 4 | 35 | 11 | 21 | 3 |
| Jul 2025 | Jul 9–15 (7 days) |
Jul 18–22 (5 days) |
Jul 23–29 (7 days) |
Jul 31 | 17 | 9 | 7 | 1 |
| Dec 2025 | Nov 25–Dec 1 (7 days) |
Dec 4–8 (5 days) |
Dec 9–15 (7 days) |
TBA | ||||
Newsletter
[edit]If you'd like to receive a user talk message when important administrator election events occur, such as when a date is chosen and when the Call for Candidates phase opens, please add yourself to the mailing list.
History
[edit]Administrator elections were first held as a result of the 2024 RFA review admin election RFC, which reached a consensus for a trial election.
The background to this decision was that the number of requests for adminship (RfA) had declined from a peak of 920 in 2007 to just 36 in 2016, after which it averaged around 23 per year. This suggested problems with the RFA process, particularly that RFA may had become a process that is unfriendly to candidates. Administrator elections were proposed as an alternative that could improved the candidate experience by, for example:
- Reducing contention via secret voting - Reduces the opportunity for contentious discussion amongst participants. For example, voters do not have to disclose their vote, nor give an explanation for it. This reduces direct confrontation with the candidate and with opposers.
- Shorter discussion period - The discussion period is limited to five days, instead of seven.
- No possibility of a bureaucrat chat - Bureaucrat chats add ambiguity about the outcome and the duration, which adds stress.
- Many candidates running at once leads to less pressure on each candidate.
The trial election was held in October 2024, with implementation details (such as scrutineering) worked out based on discussions on this page's talk page. After the trial, requests for comment (RfCs) were held to discuss how to proceed. The first RfC asked the community a series of questions to change many small parts of the administrator election process (see #Post-trial RFCs below). A second RfC, to determine whether more administrator elections should be held in the future, was successful.
See also
[edit]- Proposals
- RFCs
- Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/2021 review/Proposals § Closed: 8B Admin elections – no consensus for admin elections
- Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/2024 review/Phase I § Proposal 13: Admin elections – consensus for a trial admin election
- Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/2024 review/Phase II/Administrator elections – 22 RFCs making adjustments to the process
- Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/2024 review/Phase III/Administrator elections – consensus to make admin elections a regular, recurring process, to be held approximately every 5 months
References
[edit]- ^ Before June 2003, it was possible to request adminship on a mailing list and some admins were appointed directly by Jimmy Wales.
- ^ Consensus for this requirement was reached at Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/2024 review/Phase I § Proposal 25: Require nominees to be extended confirmed.
- ^ a b Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/2024 review/Phase II/Administrator elections#Q5: Scrutineering (who will scrutineer)
- ^ As RfA is a consensus-based process, there is no exact threshold for success, but in practice a candidate with below 65% support is almost always unsuccessful, and above 75% almost always successful. Candidates with between 65 and 75% support are typically subject to a bureaucrat discussion about the consensus for their request, and outcomes vary on a case-to-case basis.