Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Optional RfA candidate poll

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This optional polling page is for experienced editors who intend to request administrative privileges (RfA) in the near future and wish to receive feedback on their chances of succeeding in their request.

This page is not intended to provide general reviews of editors. To seek feedback on what you can do to improve your contributions to Wikipedia, ask a friendly, experienced editor on the editor's talk page for help.

Disclaimer: Before proceeding, please read advice pages such as Advice for RfA candidates. The result of a poll may differ greatly from an actual RfA, so before proceeding, you should evaluate your contributions based on this advice as well as recent successful and failed requests. Look at past polls in the archives and consider the risk of having a similar list of shortcomings about yourself to which anyone can refer. You may want to consider asking an editor experienced at RfA, such as those listed at Wikipedia:Request an RfA nomination, their thoughts privately.

Instructions

Potential candidates

To request an evaluation of your chances of passing a request for adminship in the next 3 to 6 months, add your name below and wait for feedback. Please read Wikipedia:Not now before adding your name to this list.

Responders

Responders, please provide feedback on the potential candidate's likelihood of passing an RfA at this time. Please be understanding of those who volunteer without fully appreciating what is expected of an administrator, and always phrase your comments in an encouraging manner. You can optionally express the probability of passing as a score from 0 to 10; a helper script is available to let you give a one-click rating. For more detailed or strongly critical feedback, please consider contacting the editor directly.

Closure

Potential candidates may opt to close or withdraw their ORCP assessment request at any time. Polls are normally closed without any closing statement after seven days (and are archived seven days after being closed). They may be closed earlier if there is unanimous agreement that the candidate has no chance at being granted administrative privileges.

Sample entry

==Example==
{{User-orcp|Example}}
*5/10 - Edit count seems okay, but there will be opposers saying you need more AfD participation. ~~~~

Start a poll on your chances of passing RfA

Starship.paint: May 1, 2025

Starship.paint (talk · contribs · logs · block log · page moves · count · edit summaries · non-automated edits · articles created · BLP edits · AfD votes · XfD votes · admin score (beta) · previous RfAs)

Hello! I am looking for potential nominators and feedback. Last year, I ran in the admin elections but did not succeed. My rationale for running is in that link. During and after the elections, I received feedback to work on my AfD record and also articles that I have started. I have worked on both, but more can be done. I will only run again after I further improve in those aspects. After the elections, I have also started reviewing Good Article nominations which I had never done before. Do let me know whatever else I can improve on! :) starship.paint (talk / cont) 09:41, 1 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

If I look at the screenshot I made back when I voted in the elections, I voted support for you. Looking at the candidate page, I wasn't exactly sure what aspects of the candidacy were the most significant so as to cause a 54.34% support rate.

If I had to guess, here are some points I would make:

[..] start editing in [..] the contentious topics of recent American politics, gender-related controversies, abortion, and the Arab-Israeli conflict. [..] per WP:INVOLVED, I will not use the tools in all of the above topics' disputes (except against blatant vandalism) that's not really nice. People agree to topic bans in unblock requests not when they get adminship. Just editing in those topics does not make you involved, so preferably showing more understanding of what involved really means would be helpful.

If elected, I’ll start by hanging around AN and ANI to gain some experience, and after that I will also try to help out at AE This will also look bad to any voters passing by. These three initialisms give the connotation of drama, and to say that on the very first line of Q1 will discourage a lot of editors. I'd suggest either avoid mentioning specific areas of interest or focus on areas that you have shown a lot of experience in that do not have the drama-like impressions editors usually get. (P.S. To say that you want to help out at AE yet will not act in USPOL/GENSEX/PIA in an administrative manner, to me, is an odd combination) 0xDeadbeef→∞ (talk to me) 10:07, 1 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@0xDeadbeef: - thanks for your quick response. Just a quick clarification regarding your remark agree to topic bans - I’m saying that I won’t administrate in this topic areas. I intend to continue regular editing in those topic areas, which is not a topic ban in my view? Just want to make sure there is no misunderstanding before I respond fully. starship.paint (talk / cont) 10:23, 1 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, but saying you won't act in administrative capacity in those areas just looks like a "admin topic ban" to me. I don't really like it when people ask questions like will you agree to not work on administrative area X if you get sysop? and similar, and I don't really like it when admins voluntarily give up their ability to work on administrative area X either. 0xDeadbeef→∞ (talk to me) 10:27, 1 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for providing me your point of view, 0xDeadbeef. I have reviewed WP:INVOLVED again, and will be sticking closely to it if I run again. You've given me much to ponder on regarding the other part of your review. I may have to try my hand at more areas of Wikipedia. That will take time, but then again, I am not rushing into another run yet. Greatly appreciate your help. starship.paint (talk / cont) 12:39, 1 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I had you down as a pretty weak support at EfA. (Of course, there is no option on the ballot for that—I ticked the support box—but it was a weak support.) I think my unease came chiefly from Q3. Not really that you were involved in FRAMGATE: It was almost six years ago, and emotions were running high for everyone involved. However, I think your reflection missed something important. Your emotions are absolutely valid. They matter. But that's not the first thing to talk about; the first thing to talk about is the fact you asked a WMF staffer—a real, living, breathing, human who was presumably trying (and perhaps failing) to do the right thing—to connect an outside profile to a Wikimedia account. How do you think the staffers felt about it? I think it was said best by TonyBallioni (ping for courtesy): These staffers are private persons, many of whom have had Twitters since they were minors. They don't need to have to worry about strangers stalking them on social media and finding things they said a decade ago and using it to embarrass them. That's the main problem, and talking about how the block affected you misses the pain which triggered a block in the first place.

I still supported because the block was a huge part of your editing career (it thus makes sense you would focus on it), you do excellent work in other areas of Wikipedia, and the actions were over five years in the past. But that was my main concern going into the metaphorical voting booth. Best, House Blaster (talk • he/they) 20:07, 1 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for your feedback, HouseBlaster. Admittedly, I did not think of the matter the way TonyBallioni described it, as you quoted. I certainly did not have any knowledge about Twitter habits of WMF staffers. Nevertheless, you are right that I should have considered more on how the staffers would react to my actions. I did not mean to do harm, but perhaps, from the staffers point of view, I had. This is something that certainly I will have to reflect more on, on how to minimize any further occurrence. starship.paint (talk / cont) 00:22, 2 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I can't give a number (maybe later). But, given you were well below the threshold, there's got to be larger concerns. Not meaning to hijack this request to complain, but wanting to shed light; the lack of feedback on the election request is decidedly unhelpful for future runs. Just three editors provided feedback, despite over 400 people voting on your candidacy is virtual silence. A standard RfA would have garnered far more feedback on why it failed. I would advise looking over everything in the standard guides, and carefully consider each aspect of them. It would be inappropriate to try to build your RfA resume, but to find places where you can improve in general would be good. --Hammersoft (talk) 20:39, 1 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you, Hammersoft. Indeed, I felt similarly regarding lack of feedback, and thus I sought post-election feedback (and did receive some). I will be looking over the guides before I run again. starship.paint (talk / cont) 00:22, 2 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

(I'm being deliberately mean now – please don't take anything personally.) I strongly second everything 0xDeadbeef said. AELECT doesn't provide a ton of feedback, but it's glaringly obvious to me why people voted against you: your nomination and answers reeked of drama. You are a great example of a candidate who would likely do a lot better at RfA, where voters have to explain their oppose votes, than at AELECT, where people can oppose simply because an editor in these topic areas must be guilty by association.

But even so, please try to make your nomination statement and answers to questions less of a laundry list of the most toxic areas of the project. What could be seen as an admission of leftist bias was also not ideal. The "involved" disclaimer looks like an admission of guilt and is contradictory to the purported intent to work AE, which consists mostly of reports in those topic areas.

Question 1 was by far your weakest and I strongly encourage you to find more areas you would like to work in as an admin. Perhaps you could rephrase your interest as something like "I am most interested in working on user conduct issues", which is a broader category that includes AIV, ANEW, unblock requests, RfPP, etc. (which I assume you are also interested in – it would be very weird if your sole purpose as an admin were reading ANI reports).

At a brief glance, your recent AfD participation looks decent. It seems you haven't closed any AfDs since 2022 [1], so I encourage you to do some NACDs to reinforce that you're familiar with the deletion process (this script will help). Your content work is very solid, so really the main area where you can improve is writing/getting a nomination statement and answering the questions with fewer red flags.

After all this, you might be surprised to read that I voted for you in AELECT: My notes were "very experienced, has a clue, even in CTOPs". I encourage you to do your best to convey that impression to everyone else at your RfA, which I hope to see sooner rather than later. Toadspike [Talk] 17:15, 2 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, this is absolutely it. I have no doubt whatsoever that the reason for your comparatively low support % was the drama flags (and perhaps drama opponents coming in to vote oppose). I don't think EFA is the way forward for you - you need RFA. Get the drama concerns out in the light. -- asilvering (talk) 17:46, 2 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Toadspike and Asilvering: - I detect no meanness whatsoever, thank you both. I hear you two loud and clear on RFA > EFA. Indeed that is what I have already decided. There will not be any future EFA for me. I will have to significantly overhaul my answer to Question 1. Thanks for your recommendation on WP:NACD, I will certainly explore that. I’ve started considering other areas of adminship and right now one of them that I am thinking of is unblock requests. Of course, I will also think about the areas you have raised. starship.paint (talk / cont) 21:49, 2 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

There's a lot of good a sensible, patient non-admin can do at unblocks. The spam/promo blocks in particular often need a lot of hand-holding that really does not require admins specifically to do it. There are of course also a lot of ways to embarrass the hell out of yourself, so I'd advise lurking the category for a little while before dipping your toes in. Using Template:NAcmt is a good idea. -- asilvering (talk) 01:42, 3 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I would recommend against NACs at AFD. I don't think that's usually a good idea. That seems to be an area where admins are expected to do most of the closing. Instead I would recommend policy-based !votes. –Novem Linguae (talk) 22:32, 2 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Novem Linguae: - thank you! I will keep that in mind. starship.paint (talk / cont) 23:52, 2 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Well, I'll just throw a wrench in there and say that it's fine to do NACs; I did plenty. There are some obvious pitfalls to avoid: don't relist too early (not necessary, plus this drives everyone crazy); don't relist if you think there's even a marginal possibility an admin might be able to close it (this drives admin closers crazy); don't close if you think there's even the slightest hint of supervoting (write a really clear !vote instead). -- asilvering (talk) 01:33, 3 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]