This is an
essay on the
Requests for adminship guideline, and the
Requests for adminship process page. It contains the advice or opinions of one or more Wikipedia contributors. This page is not an encyclopedia article, nor is it one of
Wikipedia's policies or guidelines, as it has not been
thoroughly vetted by the community. Some essays represent widespread norms; others only represent minority viewpoints. |
This page in a nutshell: This advice is based on hundreds of previous RfAs. Being a Wikipedia administrator is not the same as being a moderator on an Internet forum. The tasks are many and varied and require a high degree of competency and judgement. In particular, see: What adminship is not |
This advice makes becoming an admin sound complex but being an admin is complex. Your RfA will be an opportunity to demonstrate your skills in conflict resolution. Read also the linked pages at the end of this essay, and if you meet the criteria, don't let any of it put you off – for a well prepared candidate who fulfills the general criteria and has no skeletons in the cupboard, becoming an admin is easy. |
Most people only need about 20–25 minutes to read this page. If you are truly ready for adminship, your request will pass. Unfortunately, most requests that fail do so because they did not read these instructions and advice pages.
The administrator role on Wikipedia is a senior-level permission that is only granted to editors who can demonstrate to the community that their level of knowledge, judgment, experience, and behavior merit the level of trust, respect, and care from the community where consensus shows that the user will perform the duties and responsibilities of that role to their level of expectations. It is not a user right that is given to new, novice, or even established users on Wikipedia.
The process of becoming an administrator is explained at Wikipedia:Requests for adminship. The tasks that administrators actually perform on a regular basis are described at Wikipedia:Administrators. Successful RFA candidates will almost always have edited Wikipedia on a consistent basis for at least one year, will have thousands of edits demonstrating proficiency and a high level of knowledge in various maintenance-related areas of the project as well as policy-related areas, and will also have made measurable contributions to articles that demonstrate knowledge of important Wikipedia policies and processes involving article and content creation and expansion. The RfA process not only checks a candidate's editing performance, but also allows for the community to review the candidate's maturity, impartiality, interactions and behaviors toward other community members, and overall sense of judgement and decision-making. Solid preparation, proficiency with Wikipedia processes, and knowledge of Wikipedia's policies and guidelines is absolutely critical in order to have any chance of their RFA request being successful.
More essays (especially those on users' !voting criteria) and advice pages are listed at the end of this page. The footnotes contain links to important examples. Viewed separately, they are an integral part of this advice. Please be sure to read them and follow the links. When you have read this guide and gone through all the other advice, you may wish to start a request at the Optional RfA candidate poll as the last thing you do before making up your mind, but you may also wish to email an experienced user for advice.
The takeaway is: don’t run for RFA unless you’ve really done your research on what it takes to pass, and even then assume you will do at least 10% worse than you would reasonably think you would. RFA is hard, and it can be very stressful for the candidate. Some users have failed at RFA and just left forever. Others took it so bad they decided to become trolls and/or long-term abusers (thus proving their unfitness for the position). In 2001–2007 it was more or less a cakewalk. Not so much anymore.
— Just Step Sideways, formerly Beeblebrox
Wikipedia is not going to be the only place on the internet where people who hate one another treat each other with perfect kindness like you'd expect in Utopia. If you come in expecting to create that, you're going to either burn yourself out or chase good people away, or most likely do both. Utopia doesn't exist anywhere, and certainly not on the internet. It matters to learn to enforce our behavioural norms with an understanding of human nature. There's usually a reason policies and norms are what they are, and many of the people who have been around forever remember the why.
Before I ran for RFA, I felt extremely confident with policies in regards to blocking vandals and handling other reports at administrative noticeboards – I'd been doing it for years. I thought that the administrator role would be a piece of cake! Let me tell you, my fellow editors – it isn't. My RFA barely passed when I ran, and after passing my RFA, I instantly caught myself checking, double-checking, and even triple-checking policy before I proceeded to take on any administrative actions – even though I had confidently performed thousands of these tasks on the non-administrative side for years. An administrator's actions and responsibilities are a completely different ballgame; being an administrator means that you take on much more difficult and complex tasks, and with the expectation that a very high level of thought and reserve is demonstrated – much more than what you did before you became one. There are many situations and times where you will leave groups of people unhappy – and sometimes everybody unhappy – because of an administrative decision you made, and the subsequent actions that followed. Your decision could be completely level-headed and reasonable, within compliance of Wikipedia's policies, and executed because you're following the proper process outlined by community consensus – you'll still have users up in arms about it. There are times where you'll find yourself unable to win the hearts and happiness of everyone, regardless of the decision you make. You need to be okay with this; you need to have thick skin, an over-abundant amount of policy knowledge, an extreme amount of patience toward other users (especially new ones), a very seasoned and rational level of confidence that what you're doing is the right thing to do, and a very high amount of collective community trust and respect towards you if you want to be successful and excel in this role.
— Oshwah
If you want to easily pass an RfA, avoid doing anything that shows that you have the slightest interest in or skill at the sort of things Wikipedia administrators do. Just create a lot of good content with good citations, and if you see someone putting something in an article claiming that, say, drinking bleach cures coronavirus, silently walk away and let them have their way, hoping that someone else will deal with it. Sorry to say this, but that's clearly what the !voters want.
Wikipedia is not 'just another website', it's a serious encyclopedia that just happens to use web technology for its publication. If you would like to be an admin someday, you should preferably begin preparations some time before making your application, but avoid making it appear as if your end goal here is to become an admin – first and foremost we are here to build an encyclopedia, not to administer it or control the behaviour of its participants. You should thoroughly read the instructions and advice listed and linked above, and on the RfA pages. Review as many old successful and unsuccessful RfAs as possible, and be absolutely sure to generally meet the criteria required by regular !voters (See the list of essays at the end of this page). Users who are not likely to pass may be considered by the community to be immature, or time wasters who are just seeking feedback on their editing. Some candidates whose first RfA failed, pass a second run with flying colours, [1] [2] but previous attempts will be closely looked at again by the community.
Do bear in mind that long absences from editing may not convince the community that you will be here to stay for a while. It would be extremely rare to pass RfA with less than 12 consecutive months of recent activity that include the kind of participation in maintenance areas that demonstrate an intention for admin activity.
When you have done all that, and read this page and followed the links, if you are reasonably sure that you stand a good chance now, consider listing yourself at WP:Requests for adminship/Optional RfA candidate poll for a final check if you have not already done so. Check out some of the previous polls in the archives for the kind comments and advice you can expect. Be aware though, that the regular, experienced commentators there do not like having their time wasted – it's not a substitute for reading this advice page.
{{
RFA-notice}}
on your userpage, which is a more neutral way to communicate your RfA to other users.
[20]
[21]Just as a further reminder: If after reading the advice above you are still not sure, do consider obtaining some feedback at the optional RfA candidate poll. The comments from the experienced users there are very useful for getting a good sense of your chances – but do not start a poll if you have no intention of applying for adminship in the very near future.
Every RfA needs a strong, convincing nomination. Generally, self-nominations are only likely to succeed from long-term, very experienced editors. New users who have an
I want to be an admin userbox may
wait a very long time before they are proposed, at least until they have met the basic criteria demanded by the regular !voters. Nevertheless, the user category the box added your name to is regularly reviewed by experienced editors and admins who are actively looking for suitable candidates to nominate. If they believe you to be a potential candidate, they will contact you – probably by email, so be sure to have Wikipedia email enabled. If you have not already done so, you should opt in for your edit-count details to be shown in addition to your pie chart; do this by creating the page
Special:MyPage/EditCounterOptIn.js
with some dummy content (such as //
https://xtools.readthedocs.io/en/stable/opt-in.html
so you remember what the page is for later; you can also do the same with
Special:MyPage/EditCounterGlobalOptIn.js
to turn this feature on at all WMF projects if you have a
unified login ID). As previously recommended, review the nominations of previous RfA that have passed and failed.
The Signpost (2018): from a survey of what other admins have said about their RfA and adminship
Project pages
RFA candidates experience User essays and voting criteria
|
Individual editors' criteria for supporting candidates
Individual editors' criteria for nominating candidates
Older pages
Wikiversity has learning resources about
How to be a Wikimedia sysop
|
This is an
essay on the
Requests for adminship guideline, and the
Requests for adminship process page. It contains the advice or opinions of one or more Wikipedia contributors. This page is not an encyclopedia article, nor is it one of
Wikipedia's policies or guidelines, as it has not been
thoroughly vetted by the community. Some essays represent widespread norms; others only represent minority viewpoints. |
This page in a nutshell: This advice is based on hundreds of previous RfAs. Being a Wikipedia administrator is not the same as being a moderator on an Internet forum. The tasks are many and varied and require a high degree of competency and judgement. In particular, see: What adminship is not |
This advice makes becoming an admin sound complex but being an admin is complex. Your RfA will be an opportunity to demonstrate your skills in conflict resolution. Read also the linked pages at the end of this essay, and if you meet the criteria, don't let any of it put you off – for a well prepared candidate who fulfills the general criteria and has no skeletons in the cupboard, becoming an admin is easy. |
Most people only need about 20–25 minutes to read this page. If you are truly ready for adminship, your request will pass. Unfortunately, most requests that fail do so because they did not read these instructions and advice pages.
The administrator role on Wikipedia is a senior-level permission that is only granted to editors who can demonstrate to the community that their level of knowledge, judgment, experience, and behavior merit the level of trust, respect, and care from the community where consensus shows that the user will perform the duties and responsibilities of that role to their level of expectations. It is not a user right that is given to new, novice, or even established users on Wikipedia.
The process of becoming an administrator is explained at Wikipedia:Requests for adminship. The tasks that administrators actually perform on a regular basis are described at Wikipedia:Administrators. Successful RFA candidates will almost always have edited Wikipedia on a consistent basis for at least one year, will have thousands of edits demonstrating proficiency and a high level of knowledge in various maintenance-related areas of the project as well as policy-related areas, and will also have made measurable contributions to articles that demonstrate knowledge of important Wikipedia policies and processes involving article and content creation and expansion. The RfA process not only checks a candidate's editing performance, but also allows for the community to review the candidate's maturity, impartiality, interactions and behaviors toward other community members, and overall sense of judgement and decision-making. Solid preparation, proficiency with Wikipedia processes, and knowledge of Wikipedia's policies and guidelines is absolutely critical in order to have any chance of their RFA request being successful.
More essays (especially those on users' !voting criteria) and advice pages are listed at the end of this page. The footnotes contain links to important examples. Viewed separately, they are an integral part of this advice. Please be sure to read them and follow the links. When you have read this guide and gone through all the other advice, you may wish to start a request at the Optional RfA candidate poll as the last thing you do before making up your mind, but you may also wish to email an experienced user for advice.
The takeaway is: don’t run for RFA unless you’ve really done your research on what it takes to pass, and even then assume you will do at least 10% worse than you would reasonably think you would. RFA is hard, and it can be very stressful for the candidate. Some users have failed at RFA and just left forever. Others took it so bad they decided to become trolls and/or long-term abusers (thus proving their unfitness for the position). In 2001–2007 it was more or less a cakewalk. Not so much anymore.
— Just Step Sideways, formerly Beeblebrox
Wikipedia is not going to be the only place on the internet where people who hate one another treat each other with perfect kindness like you'd expect in Utopia. If you come in expecting to create that, you're going to either burn yourself out or chase good people away, or most likely do both. Utopia doesn't exist anywhere, and certainly not on the internet. It matters to learn to enforce our behavioural norms with an understanding of human nature. There's usually a reason policies and norms are what they are, and many of the people who have been around forever remember the why.
Before I ran for RFA, I felt extremely confident with policies in regards to blocking vandals and handling other reports at administrative noticeboards – I'd been doing it for years. I thought that the administrator role would be a piece of cake! Let me tell you, my fellow editors – it isn't. My RFA barely passed when I ran, and after passing my RFA, I instantly caught myself checking, double-checking, and even triple-checking policy before I proceeded to take on any administrative actions – even though I had confidently performed thousands of these tasks on the non-administrative side for years. An administrator's actions and responsibilities are a completely different ballgame; being an administrator means that you take on much more difficult and complex tasks, and with the expectation that a very high level of thought and reserve is demonstrated – much more than what you did before you became one. There are many situations and times where you will leave groups of people unhappy – and sometimes everybody unhappy – because of an administrative decision you made, and the subsequent actions that followed. Your decision could be completely level-headed and reasonable, within compliance of Wikipedia's policies, and executed because you're following the proper process outlined by community consensus – you'll still have users up in arms about it. There are times where you'll find yourself unable to win the hearts and happiness of everyone, regardless of the decision you make. You need to be okay with this; you need to have thick skin, an over-abundant amount of policy knowledge, an extreme amount of patience toward other users (especially new ones), a very seasoned and rational level of confidence that what you're doing is the right thing to do, and a very high amount of collective community trust and respect towards you if you want to be successful and excel in this role.
— Oshwah
If you want to easily pass an RfA, avoid doing anything that shows that you have the slightest interest in or skill at the sort of things Wikipedia administrators do. Just create a lot of good content with good citations, and if you see someone putting something in an article claiming that, say, drinking bleach cures coronavirus, silently walk away and let them have their way, hoping that someone else will deal with it. Sorry to say this, but that's clearly what the !voters want.
Wikipedia is not 'just another website', it's a serious encyclopedia that just happens to use web technology for its publication. If you would like to be an admin someday, you should preferably begin preparations some time before making your application, but avoid making it appear as if your end goal here is to become an admin – first and foremost we are here to build an encyclopedia, not to administer it or control the behaviour of its participants. You should thoroughly read the instructions and advice listed and linked above, and on the RfA pages. Review as many old successful and unsuccessful RfAs as possible, and be absolutely sure to generally meet the criteria required by regular !voters (See the list of essays at the end of this page). Users who are not likely to pass may be considered by the community to be immature, or time wasters who are just seeking feedback on their editing. Some candidates whose first RfA failed, pass a second run with flying colours, [1] [2] but previous attempts will be closely looked at again by the community.
Do bear in mind that long absences from editing may not convince the community that you will be here to stay for a while. It would be extremely rare to pass RfA with less than 12 consecutive months of recent activity that include the kind of participation in maintenance areas that demonstrate an intention for admin activity.
When you have done all that, and read this page and followed the links, if you are reasonably sure that you stand a good chance now, consider listing yourself at WP:Requests for adminship/Optional RfA candidate poll for a final check if you have not already done so. Check out some of the previous polls in the archives for the kind comments and advice you can expect. Be aware though, that the regular, experienced commentators there do not like having their time wasted – it's not a substitute for reading this advice page.
{{
RFA-notice}}
on your userpage, which is a more neutral way to communicate your RfA to other users.
[20]
[21]Just as a further reminder: If after reading the advice above you are still not sure, do consider obtaining some feedback at the optional RfA candidate poll. The comments from the experienced users there are very useful for getting a good sense of your chances – but do not start a poll if you have no intention of applying for adminship in the very near future.
Every RfA needs a strong, convincing nomination. Generally, self-nominations are only likely to succeed from long-term, very experienced editors. New users who have an
I want to be an admin userbox may
wait a very long time before they are proposed, at least until they have met the basic criteria demanded by the regular !voters. Nevertheless, the user category the box added your name to is regularly reviewed by experienced editors and admins who are actively looking for suitable candidates to nominate. If they believe you to be a potential candidate, they will contact you – probably by email, so be sure to have Wikipedia email enabled. If you have not already done so, you should opt in for your edit-count details to be shown in addition to your pie chart; do this by creating the page
Special:MyPage/EditCounterOptIn.js
with some dummy content (such as //
https://xtools.readthedocs.io/en/stable/opt-in.html
so you remember what the page is for later; you can also do the same with
Special:MyPage/EditCounterGlobalOptIn.js
to turn this feature on at all WMF projects if you have a
unified login ID). As previously recommended, review the nominations of previous RfA that have passed and failed.
The Signpost (2018): from a survey of what other admins have said about their RfA and adminship
Project pages
RFA candidates experience User essays and voting criteria
|
Individual editors' criteria for supporting candidates
Individual editors' criteria for nominating candidates
Older pages
Wikiversity has learning resources about
How to be a Wikimedia sysop
|