User:The Land/RfA Guide

This guide is meant to help explain the RfA process and what it involves for the candidate.

To become an Administrator there needs to be a clear consensus in the community that you are committed to Wikipedia, and that you can be trusted to uphold Wikipedia policies and guidelines.

For an unprepared user, even a very valuable contributor, the process can be difficult and disheartening. This guide is intended as a guide to current practice on RfA - NOT as a statement of policy.

Should I RfA? (or accept a nomination?

Think carefully before you nominate yourself, or accept a nomination. The standards to be an Admin are different to the standards of a good user, and include some things which you can easily spend a lot of time on Wikipedia without encountering or noticing.

An RfA is a very open voting process where your record will be looked at by experienced (and often very opinionated) users who have already made up their minds about what kinds of people they want as Admins. The RfA is open to everybody, including anyone you may in the past have had disagreements with.

Bear in mind that you need 75-80% support for your RfA to succeed. Some users find the level of scrutiny and frankness very difficult, and some good editors have been lost because of bad RfA results.

There are many good users who would not make good admins!

Very unlikely to succeed

Users with less than 3 months experience on the Wikipedia
Users with less than 1,000 edits

These users are regarded by a significant proportion of users as just not experienced (or committed) enough, even if the candidate cannot be faulted otherwise. If you do not meet these criteria then the RfA discussion will almost certainly say, at best, "Come back later".

If your RfA is likely to be controversial for the reasons below, then it is an even stronger reason for an inexperienced user to wait for longer.

What RfA voters look for

RfA voters want to see a record of involvement and evidence that you can apply Wikipedia policies in a calm, mature and impartial manner. There are a number of important areas that are almost always raised.

Strong edit history with plenty of contributions to Wikipedia articles
Varied experience. RfAs where an editor has mainly contributed on one subject, e.g. Pokemon, have tended to be more controversial than those where the user's contributions have been all across the board.
User interaction. Many RfA voters want to see evidence of you talking to other users, on Article talk or User talk pages. These interactions need to be helpful and polite - see below!
Helping with chores. Also, many RfA voters want to see evidence that you are already engaging in admin-like work and debates. RC Patrol and

AfD are both held up by non-admins.

A developed User Page, as a sign of involvement in the community.
Use of edit summaries. Edit summaries are good practice and some voters take them very seriously.

If you think back over your contributions and any of these are missing, you are strongly recommended to broaden your experience before an RfA rather than afterwards. It can be very disheartening to see ten users vote Oppose on what might seem like very trivial grounds.

And finally:

Complete answers to the questions. One-sentence answers to the stock questions are mildly ofputting for some voters. The best advice is to spend a bit of time preparing your answers.

What they look for and hope not to see

No matter how experienced you are, there are some actions which will cause problems. According to recent RfAs, your record as a wikipedian needs to be near-exemplary. In rough order of seriousness, here are some things which, if seen in your edit history, will be raised and thoroughly discussed:

Vandalism. A serious vandal will never be made an admin- that's what the RfA procedure is there for. Even relatively minor disruption, like ---lthat Harry Potter example---, can cause problems.
Incivility. If you respond to unpleasanet or irritating users by leaving insulting messages, like example, then this will be raised in the RfA.
Edit wars. If you have ever stepped across, or come close to, the three-revert rule then this will mose likely be raised in the RfA process. To most RfA voters it doesn't matter who was right, just the way which you handled yourself during the procedure.

Many RfAs have succeeded despite some of these points being raised. The important factors are:

Time. If you can demonstrate high standards for a period of a few months, the RfA voters will most likely discount any past behaviour that might influence them.
The way you deal with opposing votes. If you respond in a calm, rational and (if you have done something wrong) apologetic manner then that will be to your credit. If you become angry, frustrated or insulting then that will ikely result in more Oppose votes.

Other controversy

If you have been involved in discussions on a very controversial page, like Israel or Palestine, your adminship is likely to be a target for heated, and possibly bad-faith, objections on the basis of your involvement in those pages.

This may adversely affect your chances of becoming an admin, even if your actions have stuck firmly to the letter and spirit of policy.

This is unfair. Regrettably, there is little that can currently be done about it except to go about your admin nomination in a civil manner.

List not exhaustive

Anything else in your Wikipedia record can be raised by an RfA voter.