Wikipedia:Administrator elections/October 2024

In October 2024, the first administrator elections were held as a trial process. The community voted on 32 candidates, 11 of whom were successful.

Schedule

October 8–14 – Call for candidates
October 15–21 – SecurePoll setup phase
October 22–24 – Discussion phase
October 25–31 – SecurePoll voting phase
November 1–5 – Scrutineering phase
Results
Debrief phase - to collect feedback
Workshop phase - to draft mini RFCs
Mini-RFC phase - many little RFCs to improve the process for a hypothetical next election
Renewal RFC phase - one RFC to get permission to do additional election(s)

Voter eligibility

The trial election used the Arbitration Committee Election suffrage requirements. To vote, an editor must have met the following criteria:

created their account over 2 months before the election
have 150 mainspace edits by 1 month before the election
have 10 live edits in the year running up to 1 month before the election
not be sitewide blocked during the election
not be vanished
not be a bot
not have already voted with this or another account

Procedure

The overall process lasted 10 days: an initial 3-day period for discussion and questions, and a 7-day period for a secret ballot vote. Election cycles were advertised in advance, including watchlist notices.

Period 1: Candidates sign up

Candidates signed up by a specified date prior to the discussion and questions period. Just like RFA, candidates could be nominated by other editors. During this phase and the SecurePoll setup phase, candidates and nominators could adjust their candidate subpage as they saw fit.

Period 2: Discussion and questions

During this 3-day period, the community asked questions and raised issues, as well as providing positive feedback. Candidates were encouraged to participate in the discussion period, answering questions and responding to feedback.

During this discussion-only time, participants were discouraged from posting messages of support/opposition that lack points for discussion. This phase was for sharing thoughts on the candidate or any other topic that may relate to the candidate's applicability – not for indicating personal voting intentions.

The monitors for this phase were Theleekycauldron and Pickersgill-Cunliffe. Discussion for all candidates can be found at Wikipedia:Administrator elections/October 2024/Discussion phase.

Period 3: Voting

Once the discussion period is complete, a secret ballot was held for 7 days, using SecurePoll. During this period, discussion was closed. The ballot contained multiple candidates; however, this was not a competitive election. Voters were asked to evaluate each candidate individually, and all candidates who met the pass threshold were selected to become administrators. Thus all, some, or even no candidates could have been selected.

Tallying and results

After voting has ended, the election was scrutinised by three stewards whose home wiki is not the English Wikipedia. They checked for any duplicate, ineligible, or sockpuppeteer votes, and struck them as necessary. Once scrutineering was complete, votes were tallied, results were announced, and new admins were granted administrative privileges. The pass threshold was 70% or greater. The vote tally was calculated by Support / (Support + Oppose) for each candidate. The scrutineers for the October 2024 election were Johannnes89, EPIC, and Yahya. In the October 2024 administrator elections, scrutineering took 4 days.

The results of the October 2024 Administrator Elections are as follows:

659 votes were cast, of which 43 were determined to be duplicates, leading to a total of 616 valid votes.^{[note 1]}

Candidate	Support	Abstain^{[note 2]}	Oppose	Net^{[note 3]}	Percentage^{[note 4]}	Result
Queen of Hearts (talk · contribs)	389	122	105	284	78.74%	Elected
SilverLocust (talk · contribs)	347	195	74	273	82.42%	Elected
ThadeusOfNazereth (talk · contribs)	321	207	88	233	78.48%	Elected
Rsjaffe (talk · contribs)	319	208	89	230	78.19%	Elected
Dr vulpes (talk · contribs)	322	195	99	223	76.48%	Elected
Ahecht (talk · contribs)	303	219	94	209	76.32%	Elected
SD0001 (talk · contribs)	306	209	101	205	75.18%	Elected
DoubleGrazing (talk · contribs)	306	206	104	202	74.63%	Elected
Sohom Datta (talk · contribs)	298	210	108	190	73.40%	Elected
Peaceray (talk · contribs)	270	239	107	163	71.62%	Elected
FOARP (talk · contribs)	268	242	106	162	71.66%	Elected
MarcGarver (talk · contribs)	266	230	120	146	68.91%	Not elected
Pbritti (talk · contribs)	254	239	123	131	67.37%	Not elected
The Squirrel Conspiracy (talk · contribs)	264	207	145	119	64.55%	Not elected
Valenciano (talk · contribs)	221	293	102	119	68.42%	Not elected
LindsayH (talk · contribs)	240	255	121	119	66.48%	Not elected
AntiDionysius (talk · contribs)	248	233	135	113	64.75%	Not elected
Mdewman6 (talk · contribs)	195	290	131	64	59.82%	Not elected
Robert McClenon (talk · contribs)	259	151	206	53	55.70%	Not elected
Starship.paint (talk · contribs)	219	213	184	35	54.34%	Not elected
Sable232 (talk · contribs)	175	298	143	32	55.03%	Not elected
Bastun (talk · contribs)	186	253	177	9	51.24%	Not elected
Velella (talk · contribs)	157	297	162	-5	49.22%	Not elected
SWinxy (talk · contribs)	168	271	177	-9	48.70%	Not elected
Hawkeye7 (talk · contribs)	199	165	252	-53	44.12%	Not elected
Spy-cicle (talk · contribs)	131	283	202	-71	39.34%	Not elected
Pharaoh of the Wizards (talk · contribs)	154	236	226	-72	40.53%	Not elected
EggRoll97 (talk · contribs)	146	250	220	-74	39.89%	Not elected
Frost (talk · contribs)	102	246	268	-166	27.57%	Not elected
Leonidlednev (talk · contribs)	89	262	265	-176	25.14%	Not elected
Knightoftheswords281 (talk · contribs)	59	249	308	-249	16.08%	Not elected
Zippybonzo (talk · contribs)	75	194	347	-272	17.77%	Not elected

^ Link to vote records page, with the count included: [1]
^ All voters were required to register a preference of either "Support", "Abstain", or "Oppose" for each candidate. The "Abstain" column is simply the total votes for which voters did not select the Support or Oppose option.
^ Net = Support − Oppose
^ Percentage = (Support / (Support + Oppose)) * 100 (rounded to 2 decimal places)

Scrutineer ratification

EPIC (talk) 19:23, 4 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
—Yahya (talk • contribs.) 19:25, 4 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
--Johannnes89 (talk) 22:50, 4 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

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, which might be mitigated with a different process, such as administrator elections. Ways that administrator elections might help 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 avoids unnecessary direct confrontation of opposers, or of the candidate.
Shorter discussion period - The discussion period is limited to three days, instead of seven.
No possibility of a bureaucrat chat
Many candidates - So less pressure on individual candidates.

Reasoning for holding the trial

The result of the request for comment discussion regarding running a trial election 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, the trial election was held, with implementation details (such as scrutineering) worked out based on discussions on the Admin Election talk page.

After the trial, further request for comment discussions were held to discuss how to proceed, thus allowing the community to alter the process if desired, or choose not to continue.

Comparison with requests for adminship

The trial election differed from WP:RFA in several ways. Some of these aspects were unique to the trial, and were later revised at RFC.

Comparison between processes
	Requests for adminship	Trial administrator election
Discussion period	7 days (overlapping)	3 days
Voting period	7 days (overlapping)	7 days
Ballot	Open	Secret (using SecurePoll)
Success criterion	Consensus	Supermajority
Success threshold	65–75%^[1]	70%
Suffrage	Extended confirmed account	See § Voter eligibility
When it can happen	Any time	October 2024

If you'd like to receive a user talk message about administrator election milestones, please add yourself to the mailing list.

References

^ 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.

[voteCountLink-1] Link to vote records page, with the count included: [1]

[nbNoVote-2] All voters were required to register a preference of either "Support", "Abstain", or "Oppose" for each candidate. The "Abstain" column is simply the total votes for which voters did not select the Support or Oppose option.

[nbNet-3] Net = Support − Oppose

[nbPercentage-4] Percentage = (Support / (Support + Oppose)) * 100 (rounded to 2 decimal places)

[9] 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.

[note 1]

[note 2]

[note 3]

[note 4]

[1]