Wikipedia talk:RFA study

Thank you for this. I expect it took a lot of time to compile. Some further extrapolatiuons that would make some more objective observations would be:

Of the sucessful candidates,

• What percentage had 30,000 or more edits ?
• What percentage had 15,001 to 29,999 edits?
• What percentage had 10,001 - 15,000 edits?
• What percentage had less than 10,000 edits?

Now that you have the raw data, there are also many more extrapolations that would help put the table in perspective But of course one could go on forever. The main issue with RfA is not the baggage the candidates bring with them, but the totally different voters that turn up for each RfA, their criteria, and the total number of voters. We went into his at WP:RFA2011 and the results were very interesting. The table we made there should be updated to reflect all RfAs up to now, but I'm fairly sure the overall picture won't have changed even if the voters are no longer the same people. I believe I'm the only editor who has regularly voted on almost all RfA since 2010. If you want to find out more why the problem with RfA is the voters and not the candidates, this is what you might like to be looking at Wikipedia:RfA reform (continued)/Voter profiles, section: How they voted. To update it you would need a script I believe Scott's computer was running for several hours to compile this table. I made an appeal a short while for an update, but there were only snide remarks. This is because everyone knows already that to fix RfA you need to fix the voters, but the voters (at least those who speak longest and loudest at WT:RfA without really doing anything are the nbes who most resist change! --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 01:21, 2 September 2015 (UTC)

Care needs to be taken when quoting averages because they may not in fact represent the actual reality. If one editor had made 1,000,000 edits and 100 editors had made 100 edits each, the total users is 101, the total number of edits is 1,010,000 and the average might be around 10,000 edits each but in actual fact around 99.0099% of editors (vast majority) have only 100 edits each. Now that looks very different, and this is what we call extrapolation. I'm no mathematician at all (I'm a linguist) so I may of course be wrong! Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 02:57, 2 September 2015 (UTC)

• Well, because of the concerns raised above and elsewhere about averages I have added the medians as well. I'll work on the other stuff proposed above on this page too. Everymorning (talk) 13:30, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

• It seems that of the 15 successful candidates this year 9 had edit counts of 30,000 or more at the time of their RFA. Everymorning (talk) 13:32, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

• Here's the breakdown:

  67% had 30,000 or more edits

  20% had 15,001 to 29,999 edits

  0% had 10,001 – 15,000 edits

  13% had less than 10,000 edits

• Also considering the medians and averages showed here, this rather plainly shows that the vast majority of candidates these days have over 30,000 edits. --Biblioworm 15:13, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

Thank you for this. What we now need to avoid is for new and/or inexperienced users who vote at RfA to be applying very high edit counts as rationales for oppose/support. I am fairly sure that if the same exercise were applied to all successful RfA since 2007 the picture would be very different. If it then transpires that there is a growing trend towards higher edit counts, it would be good to display it on a line graph. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 08:43, 4 September 2015 (UTC)

Thanks & Comments

@Everymorning: this is just the sort of data analytics I enjoy! Good work! A couple of interesting thoughts considering your somewhat focus on edit counts. I wonder what the results would look like when you compare automated edits to non-automated edits. What role has editcountitis played in RfA's and how does CVA play a role in this? I know there are some editors who have "legitimately" earned 5 and 6 figure edit counts by raw edits, without tools, and generally from contribute efforts. Where in there seems to be a good number of editors who have high edit counts purely from their anti-vandal work. While certainly one of the biggest attractors to the tools of an admin is for counter-vandalism, it is not the only legitimate use of the tool. Tiggerjay (talk) 16:31, 12 February 2016 (UTC)

Account age display

Everymorning, what do you think about displaying account age using only number of years, as a decimal? The current system looks a bit confusing, and sorting would be much better if account age were a decimal. Enterprisey (talk!) _{(formerly APerson)} 03:45, 12 July 2016 (UTC)

• Sure, that sounds fine, and I agree it would be less confusing. Everymorning (talk) 04:00, 12 July 2016 (UTC)

Color coding

Everymorning, I was thinking of applying some very subtle color coding to the "Successful" column, like  #D0F9D0  for a pass and  #F9D0D0  for a fail. What do you think? Enterprisey (talk!) 23:39, 4 September 2016 (UTC)

Adding more stats to the "Successful" column

Everymorning, what do you think about adding (Support #/Oppose #/Neutral #) after the "Yes" or "No" in the "Successful?" column? If yes, what about also adding in a percentage? A resulting row might look like this:

Candidate name	Edit count (total, incl. deleted)	Years editing	First RFA?	Self-nomination?	Successful?	Years since last block	Content contributions
TheMagnificentist	4756	0.96	Yes	Yes	No (0/10/0/0%)	0.19	38 articles (C-class to disambigs)

Enterprisey (talk!) 20:35, 3 January 2017 (UTC)

• Sure, that seems good, although I'm not sure if it's necessary to add that instead of just adding whether the RFA was successful or not. But if you want to do it, be my guest. Everymorning (talk) 21:13, 3 January 2017 (UTC)

Self-nomination

@Everymorning: Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Godsy originated as a self-nomination. The co-nomination occurred about a day into the rfa, and several participants there mentioned self-nomination before and after it. Just bringing it up in case you weren't aware as not to let it unintentionally skew statistics of the study. Best Regards, — Godsy ^(TALK_CONT) 04:53, 22 February 2017 (UTC)

• Thanks for letting me know. Everymorning (talk) 05:00, 22 February 2017 (UTC)