Wikipedia:Administrator elections/2025

A second administrator election will be held in mid- or late- 2025.

Schedule

Further information: Wikipedia:Administrator elections/2025/Detailed schedule

• TBD - Create electionclerk user group on English Wikipedia (we are here)
• TBD - Election prep: pick election clerk(s), pick scrutineers, run some test elections, copy subpages, set dates
• TBD – Call for candidates
• TBD – SecurePoll setup phase
• TBD – Discussion phase
• TBD – SecurePoll voting phase
• TBD – Scrutineering phase
• Results
• 5 months after voting phase - Third election

Eligible candidates

The only formal prerequisite for adminship is having an extended confirmed account on Wikipedia (500 edits and 30 days of experience). 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

Administrator elections use the RfA suffrage requirements. To vote, an editor must:

• have an extended confirmed account (500 edits and 30 days of tenure)
• not be sitewide blocked during the election
• 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.

Note when programming SecurePoll: both sysop and extendedconfirmed should be programmed in as eligible.

Procedure

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.

While the trial election was held on VoteWiki, subsequent polls will be hosted on enwiki using SecurePoll. Polls will be created and managed by Election clerks - a new user group introduced in May 2025 for this purpose.

The election clerk(s) for this election are under discussion at Wikipedia talk:Administrator elections#Election clerk(s).

Period 1: Candidates sign up

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.

Period 2: Discussion and questions

During the 5-day discussion period, the community can ask questions, raise issues, and provide positive 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.

Period 3: Voting

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 on SecurePoll in alphabetical order.

Tallying and results

After voting has ended, the election will be scrutinised by three English Wikipedia CheckUsers. Stewards are also allowed to scrutineer, 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, results are announced, and new admins are granted administrative privileges. 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.

Scrutineering takes a few days or weeks. In the October 2024 administrator elections, scrutineering took 4 days. Successful candidates will be given the administrator permission by a bureaucrat. 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.

The 3 scrutineers for this election are 0xDeadbeef, RoySmith, and Zzuuzz. If any scrutineers are unavailable and drop out, the alternate is Dreamy Jazz.

Withdrawing

If a candidate wants to withdraw from the election before the discussion period, they should remove themselves from the candidate 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. 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

A link to a category containing unofficial voter guides will be provided on the main election subpage. Voter guides may be mentioned in passing and directly linked from candidate pages and talk pages. There will be no official voter guide.

Rationale

The number of requests for adminship (RfA) has declined from a peak of 920 in 2007 to just 36 in 2016, and has since averaged around 23 per year. This suggests problems with the RFA process, particularly that RFA may have become a process that is unfriendly to candidates. This might be mitigated with a more candidate-friendly process, such as administrator elections. Ways that administrator elections might improve the candidate experience include:

• 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 result of the 2024 RFA review admin election RFC was The community supports trying this proposal for 1 election, after which it will be reviewed in Phase II. While there are concerns regarding the implementation details of this proposal, given this is a trial run, there is sufficient support to run the election as written. Accordingly, one election was held, with implementation details (such as scrutineering) worked out based on discussions on this page's talk page. After the trial, requests for comment (RfCs) are being held to discuss how to proceed. The first RfC allowed the community to alter the process if desired. A second RfC, to determine whether more administrator elections should be held in the future, was successful.

Comparison with requests for adminship

Comparison between processes

	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%	70%
Suffrage	Extended confirmed account
When it can happen	Any time	Every 5 months

Newsletter

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.

See also

• Wikipedia:Administrator elections/2025/Subpages