User:Novem Linguae/Essays/Thoughts on RFA

An RFA is a public comment on the personality of an editor and the quality of a user's editing, for one week, by around 200 other editors. It has qualities of both a job interview and an election.

Thoughts

General thoughts

• Is adminship "no big deal"?
  • The idea behind adminship is "no big deal" is to emphasize the Wikipedian cultural value of egalitarianism, that we all should be treated equally and that no special status should be afforded to admins. But sadly, that is not how it works in practice. Adminship is a very big deal. Here's why: 1) Although Wikipedians strive to be egalitarian, in reality admins have higher social status in discussions, especially to newer editors. 2) Admins rarely sanction other admins, so sanctions towards admins need to go through the arbcom process, which is harder to start and longer to get a resolution than other bad-behavior-reporting processes. 3) Admins are also the "Wiki police", the ones who enforce our cultural norms, have access to the block button, have the ability to pass out CTOP sanctions, and have the ability to comment in the admin section at WP:AE where consensus for sanctions against experienced users is built. An admin who uses poor judgment and incorrectly or harshly sanctions users will very quickly drive them away from the encyclopedia, and cause a lot of drama.
• Is RFA a vote?
  • If the RFA ends the week outside the discretionary range of 65-75%, yes, it is a straight up vote. This makes it unique as one of the only processes on enwiki that is a vote, since enwiki has a culture of strongly disliking votes. If it ends the week in the discretionary range, triggering a crat chat, then no, it is more like an RFC, where closers weigh the strength of each !vote.
• Are there voting blocks at RFA?
  • Yes, absolutely. RFA resembles an election in some ways, and this is one of the ways. The most obvious voting block is the content creators, who will oppose if the candidate does not have any content work such as a good article. But there are arguably other voting blocks too, such as folks that review pages (NPP, AFC), admins, new users, anti-vandalism editors, and technical editors.

Thoughts for voters

• Should I vote oppose in RFAs?
  • Only if the RFA is close and your vote will matter. It burns a lot of relationship capital to oppose someone. They'll remember. And if your oppose rationale is poor, spectators will also dislike your oppose and will badger you with questions, with the goal of shaming you into withdrawing your vote.
• Should I ask a question?
  • Only if you don't like a candidate. Questions stress out the candidate, create work for them, and increase their surface area of attack. If you like a candidate, give them the gift of your silence in the questions section of their RFA.
• Should I badger the opposers?
  • Nah. Everyone (except sockpuppets) has a right to their opinion. If an oppose rationale is poor, others will be able to see it without folks pointing it out.
• Should I suggest that the bureaucrats discard a poor oppose vote?
  • No. This is very un-democratic, and likely won't make a difference anyway.

Thoughts for candidates

• Is it OK to be privately coached by someone before and during your RFA?
  • Absolutely. A bad RFA is an unpleasant process that can cause good editors to quit the encyclopedia. Good coaching can prevent editors from running too early, or from saying something silly. The candidate's nominators should do the coaching, and should do it privately.
• Should nominators be admins?
  • Yes. Both for social capital reasons and because they've been through the process themselves, so will be able to offer good advice to the candidate.
• What's the ideal number of nominators?
  • Two admin nominators. Too many nominators risks slowing down your RFA's launch as you wait for nomination statements. Too few nominators is a missed opportunity to tap into the social capital of multiple good nominators.

• Should a candidate use ORCP?
  • Some folks say this is a bad idea, but I love ORCP. ORCP is like a mini-RFA, where you can run your candidacy by around 5 experienced folks, who will chime in with what you need to work on. Because multiple experienced people are participating, they may spot something that one or two nominators background checking you miss. Also, if you are a strong candidate, doing an ORCP is a great way to get nominators, since the folks opining there will see you are a strong candidate and will offer to nominate you.

• Should you start posting a lot at admin boards such as AN and ANI before becoming an admin?
  • Definitely not. The community does not like "clerking ANI" and hanging out at the "drama boards". Taking sides in disputes about sanctioning and blocking experienced editors is a great way to burn a lot of bridges.
• Should you email random admins and bureaucrats in order to find a nominator?
  • I tried this and didn't have good luck with it. I don't recommend it. You should let your nominators come to you and not the other way around. This way, you find folks that are passionate about you and your candidacy and are willing to put in the time to coach you. I'd recommend ORCP for finding nominators, as mentioned above.
• Are there different "types" of admins?
  • Yes. One of the RFA guides suggests that there are 4 different kinds of admins: projectspace admins (CSD, PROD, AFD, refunds), content creator admins (DYK, ITN, main page stuff), technical admins (template protected edit requests, interface admin edit requests, gadgets, MediaWiki namespace), and anti-vandalism admins (AIV, RFPP, blocking). This sounds correct to me. Think about what type of admin you are likely to be, based on your interests and experience. Also, the admin toolkit contains a lot of good anti-vandalism tools, so it is common for vandal fighting to increase after becoming an admin.
• If my RFA goes down in flames, can I ever run again? Do I stand a chance?
  • Sure. Make sure to wait 6–12 months though, and to genuinely address the concerns of the voters from your previous RFA. If you have a good attitude about it, and take the opposes as feedback, and calibrate yourself to this feedback, you will become a better Wikipedian and a stronger RFA candidate. If you need inspiration, theleekycauldron is a great example of a poor first RFA and a swimmingly easy second RFA. Paine Ellsworth is a great example of a healthy attitude to have after an unsuccessful RFA.
• What do you think of crat chats?
  • From a candidate's perspective, crat chats are a disaster. They drag out a very stressful week for an indeterminate amount of additional time. Better to avoid RFAing if it isn't likely to be a slam dunk. Wait to RFA for a couple months, work on your weak spots, and then RFA when your candidacy is rock solid.
• Should I reply anywhere outside the question section during my RFA? Should I respond to opposes, post on the talk page, talk about my RFA on Discord or IRC, etc?
  • Nope. Please go completely silent during your RFA, to avoid a vibe of bludgeoning/badgering, to avoid accusations of canvassing, and to give you time to really think about and polish your answers.
• Should I continue editing as normal during my RFA?
  • Yes. Non-controversial editing only though. The top of your contributions will be thoroughly checked during RFA.
• Do I need to answer every question? What's the longest I should wait to post an answer?
  • In my opinion, it is ideal to answer every question. If the question is poor, it's OK to give a shallow answer or say you're not comfortable answering a question (this in my opinion is better than no answer). I think it is ideal to answer questions sequentially, and ideally no answer should take more than 24 hours. Folks have been dinged during RFA before for not following these tips.

Criteria

My criteria

None. I will vote how I wish. There is no need to create some rigid system and obligate myself to follow it. Unlike something like AFD, where one's votes are tracked and you are expected to vote "correctly".

De facto criteria

These seem to be the de facto minimum criteria as of 2023. Follow this to avoid RFAing too early.

✅ >8,000 edits. ✅ Account age >2 years. ✅ High activity for >1 year (check XTools). ✅ Good article (check SD0001's tool). ✅ No blocks ever. ✅ User talk page has no red flags (snippy replies, warnings, sanctions, deleting instead of archiving). ✅ "Need for the tools" / Q1 should match the admin's strengths and experience. ✅ Admin nominator.

Version for easy copy/pasting into WP:ORCP:

* ✅ >8,000 edits. ✅ Account age >2 years. ✅ High activity for >1 year. ✅ Good article. ✅ No blocks ever. ✅ User talk page has no red flags. ✅ "Need for the tools". ❌ ❓ 🤷 ~~~~

During your RFA

Most stressful things about RFA

• Waiting for all your nominators to be ready at the same time (you might be very excited to launch but be encountering delays)
• Answering the RFA questions

Timeline

• The week before your RFA - Figure out how to make your RFA page. Mess something up because the instructions are unclear and out of date. Start bugging your nominators to leave their statements.
• Launch RFA
• Days 1–2 - All your friends and folks that already have a favorable impression of you drop a quick support. This feels amazing since you get this huge flood of supports and almost no opposes. It is very humbling. Especially when people you don't even know start writing effusive supports. Clearly you have been doing good work after all, and it's nice to have it acknowledged.
• Days 3–4 - The folks that are undecided on you start digging into your background and asking tough questions. The folks that don't like you may also ask tough questions in preparation for dropping an oppose, or may just oppose outright. This is the toughest time in the RFA.
• Days 5–7
  • Scenario A - If you answered the questions satisfactorily, this will be the most boring part of your RFA. !votes and new questions will slow to a trickle (10 per day) since most people have already !voted. Now you're just counting down the clock.
  • Scenario B - If you answered some of the questions poorly, the "oppose chains" will start. That is, one person will drop a persuasive oppose, and many others will also !vote oppose because of that reasoning. A really bad oppose chain can contain 30 opposes. An RFA can perhaps survive one oppose chain.
    • Multiple oppose chains (each chain with a different reasoning or fundamental problem) is the kiss of death for an RFA.
    • Supports switching to oppose due to a convincing oppose chain is basically a double oppose, because subtracting the support and then adding an oppose changes the percent pass rate more than just leaving an oppose. If this is happening, it can be a pretty bad sign.
    • Sometimes opposers wait until the very last day or two before chiming in, wanting to see how you'll answer questions and wanting to see what way the wind is blowing, so a large group of opposes may arrive as a big group towards the end of an RFA.
    • Days 5–7 in this scenario will be very stressful as you consult with your nominators, decide whether or not to backpedal and how much, and stress about the RFA going to a bureaucrat chat.
    • A crat chat is a terrible outcome, as it extends the RFA and all the stress associated with the recent opposes, with an unclear outcome. An RFA between 64.0% and 75.9% is likely to end in a crat chat.
• The week after your RFA - Your talk page is very busy and is filled with congratulations, batons, and t-shirts. Your number of talk page watchers increases by 15. Your talk page will stay busy, and in general will be much busier than before you were an admin. The Signpost may reach out to you and ask you to do an interview. You may end up writing an RFA debrief somewhere.