User:WereSpielChequers/RFA criteria
Hi this is my RFA criteria page. Its primary purpose is to clarify and explain my thinking process when I decide to !vote at WP:RFA as opposed to what I think of the RFA process. If you want to know my background at RFA, I've run twice, so I know what it is to fail at RFA, and what it is to succeed. I also nominate candidates at RFA, and as a crat I get to close RFAs or take part in cratchats so these standards are diverging into three sets, as I don't nominate candidates unless in my view they have an excellent chance of a successful RFA, but I will support candidates who I think will make good admins.
Strong v Weak
Voting at RFAs has three major and four minor levels ranging from Strong Oppose to Strong Support. My default is support providing you meet these criteria, I'm not sure that putting "strong" in front of a !vote is really helpful, but will vote "weak" if in my view it is a close call.
As a crat I do give less weight to !votes that are marked as weak or moral, but I don't discount strong votes, I just try to ignore the word strong.
My voting record
How you vote in RFAs is public knowledge, my voting record is here, your own and anyone else's can be derived in the same way.
I'm more tolerant of young editors, gnomes and people who are unlikely to use the tools than some !voters.
I try to target my opposes at poor judgement at blocking or deletion. Especially patterns of errors in deletion tagging.
Edit counting is "evil"
Most editors agree that edit count is not very meaningful, but many RFAs snow quickly for a lack of it, and most RFA !voters have a minimums threshold before they will support a candidate. [1] tells you my current stats. My threshold for support is relatively low, though I do believe that some level of experience is necessary for new admins. However I am unlikely to assess anyone who has fewer than two thousand edits, not because that isn't enough in my view to be a serious candidate but because if you have fewer than two thousand edits then by the time I've finished assessing you, your candidacy has probably already closed per snow. As for nominating people, sadly I don't believe there has been a successful candidate with fewer than 2,370 manual edits since April 2017, and candidates with less than 5,000 are likely to have a tough time at RFA. So due to rampant wp:editcountitis at RFA I am unlikely to nominate anyone who has less than 5,000 manual edits. I am not concerned about your percentage of automated edits. If you have 10,000 manual edits I don't think it should count against you if you also have 90,000 automated ones. That isn't to say I regard automated edits as being of equal value to manual ones, I have some vague rules of thumb in my head as to how many accurate huggle edits would be equivalent to an hours worth of manual vandal fighting, and I'm willing to treat a small proportion of a candidate's automated edits as a substitute for some of those five thousand manual edits. Also I'm more than happy to judge a candidate's ability to identify vandalism by their huggling and their understanding of deletion policy by their twinkle edits. Thankfully the fad for opposing candidates because of excessive automated edits has fallen out of fashion.
If I have opposed you
Or for that matter voted neutral, please feel free to read these criteria to better understand what sort of answers or evidence I'm looking for when reviewing my vote. If I've asked a question, voted oppose or indicated that I will be reviewing my vote then I intend to revisit your RFA and review my vote before the 7 days are up. If when I review my vote there is a response below my vote or question that includes diffs showing examples of your behaviour from before this RFA, and they demonstrate meeting the criteria below then I'm very open to changing my vote. However if the result of your RFA has become a foregone conclusion (over 50 votes with you below 50% or above 90%) then sorry, but I may not return.
I have not yet nominated a candidate who I have previously opposed, and would welcome an email from someone volunteering to be the first. But please read this first and check that you meet my standards for a nomination.
If you have run before
I don't understand why, but the community is less and less tolerant of RFA candidates running again, and I would advise against anyone rerunning within four months of a failed RFA, and add a month for any other previous failed RFAs. My own criteria are far more relaxed, I don't see the relevance of any earlier RFAs than your last one, and will generally be happy to reconsider you after three months extra activity if the oppose reasons were about your knowledge or wiki experience. If the opposes were about attitude, ethics or judgement then I'd suggest waiting rather longer.
If you are under 18
I accept that life moves faster in your teens and values are still shifting — so I will be more easily convinced that you have changed your views and values and therefore may be more tolerant of past blocks, misjudgements and so forth. However, I'm aware that a significant minority at RFA will oppose teenagers on sight, so I'm unlikely to nominate anyone who isn't yet 18, though I might vote for one. I do think it important that every admin is in control of their own account, so if you aren't yet old enough for your parents or guardians to trust you with a password that you can't share with them, then please don't run for RFA yet. (Update in 2021, I doubt that our youngest current admin is still in their teens and would suggest that any teenager considering a run wait for their 18th birthday) (Further update in 2022, apparently we get at least one new admin a year who is under 18, I'm just pants at spotting them. If you are under 18 but behave like an adult it likely won't come up in your RFA).
Do you need the tools?
Some RFA regulars care about this and I've seen many opposes along the lines of "no need for the tools", so please make sure that your answer to question 1 includes between 1 and 3 areas where you would use the tools, ideally with examples as to why you are ready. For example I have x reports to WP:AIV and feel ready to block similar vandals, or I have tagged many articles for deletion and consider I am ready to delete similar articles in future. I think that the mop involves taking on a set of chores and am happy to support editors who are willing to take them on. So I will happily !vote for a candidate who I think would make a good admin even if they have no stated need for he tools. But I won't nominate such candidates because they probably won't pass. Also if you express an intent to get heavily involved as an admin in an area you haven't worked in I will wonder why.
Tenure
Very few editors succeed at RFA with less than a year's tenure, and I am unlikely to nominate candidates unless they have been active here in twelve different months (not necessarily consecutive ones). If you have less than two years tenure you are likely to get some opposes at RFA for lack of tenure, but on its own it is unlikely to cause an RFA to fail. I have supported candidates who have been here as little as six months, but I will be particularly watchful for signs that they have picked up the unwritten rules of this place.
Blocks
I'm not too concerned about blocks from more than a year ago, though I may well check that you seem to have learned from the incident concerned. I don't think I've yet supported a candidate who has been blocked in the last 12 months, unless the block was very well explained.
Edit Summary usage
I'm unlikely to oppose an RFA candidate over a lack of edit summaries. But I'm aware that many others do, so I'm making it one of those things that I look for as a nominator. In principle I would nominate someone with a history of poor edit summary usage provided they go to the editing section of their user preferences and opt in to "Prompt me when entering a blank edit summary (or the default undo summary)". Then in the RFA note that they only recently came to understand that this was part of the track record of communication one expects of an admin and that they use edit summaries now and in the future.
Speedy deletion
I'm quite active at speedy deletion and deleted contributions are one of the first things I check when assessing a candidate. Good CSD tagging combined with newbie helping such as rescuing articles, cleanup and categorisation makes me happy and supportive, over enthusiastic speedy tagging and tagging newbies pages for deletion without even warning them annoys me. See User:WereSpielChequers#We're Spiel Checkers - thoughts on deletion for more detail.
If you have not been involved in deletion then I'm happy to support or oppose based on other things.
What I'm looking for:
This is an encyclopaedia
Now that might sound like a statement of the obvious, but we sometimes find people at RFA who haven't actually added anything to the pedia at all. I don't expect you to have to have written large chunks of big articles (though I'm seriously impressed if you have FAs or GAs), if like me you make a lot of small changes that's OK (some of us are editors rather than authors). But I do expect RFA candidates to have added content that has inline cites to reliable sources.
Good Judgement
This can be learned, but not I fear by everyone. If you have contributed thousands of edits since your last block, made few mistakes and learned from those you have made then I'm happy to trust your judgement unless someone comes up with some diffs that show serious or frequent lapses.
SoFixIT
Since 2007 the community has drifted from the SoFixIt culture that built the pedia to a SoTemplateitForHypotheticalOthersToFix culture that in my view is corrosive to the community. I prefer admin candidates who've learned enough about the place that they are removing more templates from articles than they add.
Tolerance
Wikipedia is a global encyclopaedia which can sometimes be a battleground for advocates of all sorts of views, and whatever your personal views are, there will be editors out there pushing views that you fundamentally disagree with. We rely on our admins to be neutral in those battles, and if you can't be neutral at least try to achieve consensus and show signs of being willing to compromise; And when that also fails remember the fire engine runs on petrol and jets water on the fire, please don't get them the wrong way round.
In my opinion this is the most important test because I see the lack of this is a shortcut to desysopping. I also think this is one of the slowest things to change so am capable of voting oppose for quite an old example of intolerance. But I would be willing to reassess if you can point to things you have subsequently done on Wikipedia to "reach across the aisle" and work with those whose views you strongly disagree with.
Civility
I consider that admins should be more polite than editors have to be, and much more polite than wp:vested contributors can sometimes be..
Communication
Admins have to communicate clearly and patiently to people who've been reverted or blocked or had stuff deleted as to why that happened and what they need to change to avoid that recurring. I believe that if you have spotted a flaw in a candidate sufficient to merit an oppose !vote then your oppose needs to explain that flaw clearly, Diffs and links also help.
Skill
Do you know what you would be doing as an admin? Especially in areas you have indicated you would be working in. I am far less concerned about this than some other voters as I take the view that skill can be learned and a cautious editor who has used other tools judiciously is unlikely to worry me. Also a week is a long time. If I've opposed because I think you don't know a particular policy feel free to read that policy, practice/demonstrate what you've learned and ask me to review my !vote.
WP:CLUE
Difficult to put a finger on this but sometimes I'll see something a candidate has done, think ah so that's how to handle that, and vote support.
Humour
Is welcome, to me at any rate. However it's usually fatal in an RFA and almost invariably a mistake, I am waiting for the opportunity to vote "Moral Support due to excessive but non-malicious use of humour, please count this vote as an oppose in the unlikely event of anyone else supporting this candidate on this occasion", sadly I doubt If I will be waiting long. In particular humour targeted at others goes down very badly at RFA and not just with me. If you think an individual is being ridiculous in asking a hobbyhorse question that everyone else ignores then raise this with them on their talk page, don't parody their question in your Nom.
Health warning
These are the criteria of one lone editor who is moderately active at wp:rfa, many other editors have very different criteria to me.
PS this is a Wiki - feel free to update (telepathic access to my brain might be required there) or more realistically comment on the talk page.
Nominations
I've now nominated eleven successful candidates, and am actively looking for potential admins. If you think you meet the criteria I've detailed here then please feel free to email me for a confidential chat.
Advice for anyone running at RFA
However good an admin you'd be, may I suggest:
- Review your user page and make sure that any barnstars and suchlike bling are there or on a prominently linked subpage (if you don't care for such things it can always be deleted later).
- Now is a good time to cull or update any userboxen that no longer reflect you or your activities.
- Make it easy to find articles you've done most work and other good things you've done, list them on your userpage and link them there and in your answers. However British you are in normal circumstances, RFA is a time to present yourself to the community and blow your own trumpet.
- Answer all three questions before you transclude. They are:
- What administrative work do you intend to take part in?
- What are your best contributions to Wikipedia, and why?
- Have you been in any conflicts over editing in the past or have other users caused you stress? How have you dealt with it and how will you deal with it in the future?
- In your acceptance make a short statement about alt accounts, IP editing and so forth. Ideally the community expects you to disclose any and all alt accounts that you have edited with.
- If you have a nominator read the nomination and make sure you think it is true, and if it misses out an aspect of your editing that you think helps qualify you for adminship then make sure you cover that yourself. The answer to question 1 is ideal for "from my experience in doing x I think I'm now ready to do y" statements.
- Find a 7 day slot in your diary where you expect to be available for an editing session every day. If you have to compromise on that, the last three days often don't really need the candidate's daily participation
- Don't transclude when you've finished your RFA and think it is ready, save it for the start of an editing session, ideally one that begins the 7 days, then read it through again before submitting it. That way you have an opportunity to answer some of the early questions fairly quickly, whilst avoiding the sort of 3am editing marathon I experienced on my second RFA.
- Answer all questions in the order they are asked
- Remember it is an open book exam, this is actually a better system than closed book exams for testing how well people will perform in real life, except of course for things like driving where you need to take instant decisions and don't have time to look things up. We want admins who will check the policy when they are unsure or unfamiliar with it, so take the time to reread the policy before answering each question; Especially ones where you haven't spotted the trick part.