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This is a guide for how to nominate candidates at Requests for Adminship. This list is not complete or exhaustive, and there is no obligation for nominators to follow it if they think that skipping some or all of the steps would be beneficial. It merely represents what its authors consider to be best practice.
The first step is to find potential candidates. There is no exact science to this, and some great candidates can be found in unexpected places. However, here are some suggestions of where to look.
Once you have found a candidate, you need to make sure that there are no obvious obstacles to them running. You can check their:
Once you have finished the preliminary checks, it is time to start checking your potential candidate's contributions in depth.
By this point you hopefully have a general idea of what kind of candidate they will be. Successful candidates frequently will fall into one, or more, of the following categories:
For the next level of review you will want to give some attention to all areas, but pay particular attention to the areas that most overlap with the categories above.
It can also be helpful to consult other editors, particularly editors who have experience as (co-)nominators, for their opinions.
At some point after the basic checks, you should ask the candidate if they are willing to run. You can ask a candidate on their talk page, which can let others see or send them an email to offer more confidential feedback. It is a good idea to ask them early, as a good editor review takes a significant amount of time. If they are not willing to run, your time would be better spent elsewhere. To do this tactfully you can ask them something like, "Are you interested in running for adminship? I think you would be a good candidate, and if you like I can look through your edits and nominate you if I don't find any problems."
Some editors may need more persuasion than the above approach before accepting your offer. RfA can be a very stressful process, and it is not uncommon for editors to want to have a strong vote of confidence from their nominator before throwing their hat into the ring. In this case it might be worth doing a more detailed review first so that you can say with conviction that you think they are ready to run. Whether you think this would be worth doing is down to your judgement. Do not be surprised or disappointed if many (most!) editors turn you down no matter how qualified you think they are to run.
If you do find any problems that mean you are not willing to nominate, you can let them know tactfully by email. You may also discuss doing a nomination in the future. Many potential problems at RfA can be solved with 3–6 months of productive editing. For instance, if the candidate doesn't have enough content contribution you could suggest doing a GA, or if you observe trouble with a certain kind of CSD you could suggest the editor get more experience tagging with that CSD.
After an editor agrees to accept a nomination, it is best to begin email communication with the candidate. You can discuss with the candidate if you should find another editor to serve as a co-nominator, or even in certain situations as the nominator. A co-nominator can be particularly useful if there is a candidate category that the nominator cannot speak to or cannot speak to credibly; for example, it may be hard for someone who doesn't understand templates to be the only nominator for a technical editor. Having more than one co-nominator is usually unnecessary and that person could often be more helpful as an enthusiastic supporter.
To write a really good nomination statement, you need to find the user's best contributions so that you can highlight them. Returning to the user page is the first stop for this, as editors will often list their editing interests or their best contributions there. You can also find useful hints through the list of most-edited pages in the counter tool, or by looking through their user talk archives to find out what they have collaborated with others on. There are many areas where users can make significant contributions that might go unnoticed, such as the help desk, the Teahouse, OTRS, dispute resolution, copyright cleanup, etc. If you can find things like this, it will make your nomination that much stronger.
It may be helpful to ask the candidate to answer the standard 3 questions before writing a nomination statement, in order to highlight or emphasize certain areas. Offering feedback on the standard 3 questions can also be helpful feedback for the candidate. Reviewing questions from recent RfAs to get a sense of what might be asked is another helpful practice. Finally, it is helpful to have a plan for any issues discovered during the editor review, or pointed out by the candidate. For some issues, it is best addressed in a nominator's statement, while other times the candidate will merely want to be ready to answer any questions if someone should ask them.
You will want to discuss when to run the RfA. You will want to make sure to do it at a time that the candidate has enough time, particularly in the first two days, to answer questions. As discussed above, sometimes you may want to wait to do a nomination so that more time elapses between a problem and the attempted RfA. Normally a nominator should do the technical aspects, such as creating the RfA page and transcluding. This way if something goes wrong, it is not held against the candidate.
During the RfA, the nominator is there to offer support and feedback to the candidate. Sometimes a candidate will want to get help with an answer to a specific question before responding on-wiki, to ensure they don't inadvertently shoot themselves in the foot.
Candidates sometimes will also need a place to let off steam or get support because of how stressful RfA can be. The vast majority of RfAs will have editors opposing, even for very successful nominations. This may be a minority view, concern over one area of contributions or a personal criteria (eg: "Oppose – no GAs"). There are likely to be comments both you and the candidate disagree with, and it is vitally important to resist any temptation to rebuke any opposition, as it can derail an RfA. Experience shows that if an oppose is questionable or without merit, it will be rebuked by an uninvolved editor anyway.
During a difficult RfA, it can be helpful for the nominator to offer an opinion about whether the candidate should continue or withdraw. Withdrawing too early is a mistake, but done at the right time, it can help preserve the candidate's chances at RfA in the future, or ensure that a productive editor doesn't become discouraged by further negative feedback.
This is an
essay. 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 is a guide for how to nominate candidates at Requests for Adminship. This list is not complete or exhaustive, and there is no obligation for nominators to follow it if they think that skipping some or all of the steps would be beneficial. It merely represents what its authors consider to be best practice.
The first step is to find potential candidates. There is no exact science to this, and some great candidates can be found in unexpected places. However, here are some suggestions of where to look.
Once you have found a candidate, you need to make sure that there are no obvious obstacles to them running. You can check their:
Once you have finished the preliminary checks, it is time to start checking your potential candidate's contributions in depth.
By this point you hopefully have a general idea of what kind of candidate they will be. Successful candidates frequently will fall into one, or more, of the following categories:
For the next level of review you will want to give some attention to all areas, but pay particular attention to the areas that most overlap with the categories above.
It can also be helpful to consult other editors, particularly editors who have experience as (co-)nominators, for their opinions.
At some point after the basic checks, you should ask the candidate if they are willing to run. You can ask a candidate on their talk page, which can let others see or send them an email to offer more confidential feedback. It is a good idea to ask them early, as a good editor review takes a significant amount of time. If they are not willing to run, your time would be better spent elsewhere. To do this tactfully you can ask them something like, "Are you interested in running for adminship? I think you would be a good candidate, and if you like I can look through your edits and nominate you if I don't find any problems."
Some editors may need more persuasion than the above approach before accepting your offer. RfA can be a very stressful process, and it is not uncommon for editors to want to have a strong vote of confidence from their nominator before throwing their hat into the ring. In this case it might be worth doing a more detailed review first so that you can say with conviction that you think they are ready to run. Whether you think this would be worth doing is down to your judgement. Do not be surprised or disappointed if many (most!) editors turn you down no matter how qualified you think they are to run.
If you do find any problems that mean you are not willing to nominate, you can let them know tactfully by email. You may also discuss doing a nomination in the future. Many potential problems at RfA can be solved with 3–6 months of productive editing. For instance, if the candidate doesn't have enough content contribution you could suggest doing a GA, or if you observe trouble with a certain kind of CSD you could suggest the editor get more experience tagging with that CSD.
After an editor agrees to accept a nomination, it is best to begin email communication with the candidate. You can discuss with the candidate if you should find another editor to serve as a co-nominator, or even in certain situations as the nominator. A co-nominator can be particularly useful if there is a candidate category that the nominator cannot speak to or cannot speak to credibly; for example, it may be hard for someone who doesn't understand templates to be the only nominator for a technical editor. Having more than one co-nominator is usually unnecessary and that person could often be more helpful as an enthusiastic supporter.
To write a really good nomination statement, you need to find the user's best contributions so that you can highlight them. Returning to the user page is the first stop for this, as editors will often list their editing interests or their best contributions there. You can also find useful hints through the list of most-edited pages in the counter tool, or by looking through their user talk archives to find out what they have collaborated with others on. There are many areas where users can make significant contributions that might go unnoticed, such as the help desk, the Teahouse, OTRS, dispute resolution, copyright cleanup, etc. If you can find things like this, it will make your nomination that much stronger.
It may be helpful to ask the candidate to answer the standard 3 questions before writing a nomination statement, in order to highlight or emphasize certain areas. Offering feedback on the standard 3 questions can also be helpful feedback for the candidate. Reviewing questions from recent RfAs to get a sense of what might be asked is another helpful practice. Finally, it is helpful to have a plan for any issues discovered during the editor review, or pointed out by the candidate. For some issues, it is best addressed in a nominator's statement, while other times the candidate will merely want to be ready to answer any questions if someone should ask them.
You will want to discuss when to run the RfA. You will want to make sure to do it at a time that the candidate has enough time, particularly in the first two days, to answer questions. As discussed above, sometimes you may want to wait to do a nomination so that more time elapses between a problem and the attempted RfA. Normally a nominator should do the technical aspects, such as creating the RfA page and transcluding. This way if something goes wrong, it is not held against the candidate.
During the RfA, the nominator is there to offer support and feedback to the candidate. Sometimes a candidate will want to get help with an answer to a specific question before responding on-wiki, to ensure they don't inadvertently shoot themselves in the foot.
Candidates sometimes will also need a place to let off steam or get support because of how stressful RfA can be. The vast majority of RfAs will have editors opposing, even for very successful nominations. This may be a minority view, concern over one area of contributions or a personal criteria (eg: "Oppose – no GAs"). There are likely to be comments both you and the candidate disagree with, and it is vitally important to resist any temptation to rebuke any opposition, as it can derail an RfA. Experience shows that if an oppose is questionable or without merit, it will be rebuked by an uninvolved editor anyway.
During a difficult RfA, it can be helpful for the nominator to offer an opinion about whether the candidate should continue or withdraw. Withdrawing too early is a mistake, but done at the right time, it can help preserve the candidate's chances at RfA in the future, or ensure that a productive editor doesn't become discouraged by further negative feedback.