Adminship is not something for new users. We generally expect people to have amassed at least 8,000/10,000 edits and 1/1.5 years of experience at a very minimum. Fortunately, most things you can do on Wikipedia do not require adminship :).
—Femke 🐦 (
talk)
16:11, 30 August 2023 (UTC)reply
Femke is being very lenient with those numbers – 10,000 edits and 2 years is the norm these days barring a slam-dunk nom. Find your passion on here, wait about 2 years, read
WP:RFAADVICE, and then come back when you have something to show to the community. –
John M Wolfson (
talk •
contribs)
16:38, 30 August 2023 (UTC)reply
I think it's important to spell out an exact edit count, so that folks don't waste their time and ours with ORCPs that won't go anywhere. There's been a couple of these recently. OK to make this change to the edit notice? –
Novem Linguae (
talk)
20:00, 4 December 2023 (UTC)reply
Hmm, maybe. But going a bit lower than the de facto minimum to pass lately of 8,000 gives us a cushion if someone is posting a few months before their RFA. –
Novem Linguae (
talk)
20:13, 4 December 2023 (UTC)reply
The lowest to pass in recent years was 0xDeadbeef at 8,000, and imo even at 5,000 most users are still learning the ropes. Besides, that 5,000 that could have been gained by countervandalism or tinkering with categories and would not be a good measure of experience.
The Night Watch(talk)20:15, 4 December 2023 (UTC)reply
I support including a minimum edit count, but I think we can make this a bit friendlier.
What about:
While edit count isn't a perfect measure, the reality is you need at least 8,000–10,000 edits to have a realistic chance of passing an RfA. If you're not close to that amount of experience, please do not post here.
—Femke 🐦 (
talk)
20:24, 4 December 2023 (UTC)reply
Oppose per
WP:EDITCOUNTITIS. Quality is more important than quantity, especially for prospective admin candidates. Just because you have some arbitrary number of edits does not mean that you necessarily even have a ghost of chance of passing RFA. Likewise, someone who has a relatively smaller number edits that are of exceptional quality shouldn't be turned off by such an in-your-face message. Let's not make the issue of edit count being a de facto criteria for adminship even worse than it already is.
Taking Out The Trash (
talk)
20:26, 4 December 2023 (UTC)reply
It's a tradeoff, of course. Maybe there's an editor with 4,999 edits out there somewhere that is an amazing content creator and has written all FAs and would pass RFA, but read the new ORCP edit notice and decided that they were going to give up their RFA aspirations because of it. But for each of them that we're catering to by not having an edit count warning, we're probably also
biting 100 folks that get their hopes up, post here, then have a fairly unpleasant experience as they're told that they posted here way too early, and are weak in X Y Z A B and C areas, and they absolutely would not pass RFA. The idea is to avoid the bitey-ness of the second scenario, and also to reduce workload for experienced editors. –
Novem Linguae (
talk)
20:52, 4 December 2023 (UTC)reply
Responders can tailor their responses to have a desired level of encouragement, or they can ignore the poll (which is in itself feedback). Unfortunately, I feel that editors who ignore the instructions to read about the qualifications expected of new administrators are likely to ignore the edit notice.
isaacl (
talk)
20:58, 4 December 2023 (UTC)reply
Editors starting polls have been ignoring the advice since the beginning. Personally I feel the edit notice is more effective if it remains brief, and without a large font size. In the past I have simply provided a short response to editors with clearly insufficient levels of activity and after a small delay, closed the poll. For better or worse, one of the informal purposes of this poll is to act as a lightning rod to draw off requests for administrative privileges being made from editors without a chance of passing.
isaacl (
talk)
20:33, 4 December 2023 (UTC)reply
Adminship is not something for new users. We generally expect people to have amassed at least 8,000/10,000 edits and 1/1.5 years of experience at a very minimum. Fortunately, most things you can do on Wikipedia do not require adminship :).
—Femke 🐦 (
talk)
16:11, 30 August 2023 (UTC)reply
Femke is being very lenient with those numbers – 10,000 edits and 2 years is the norm these days barring a slam-dunk nom. Find your passion on here, wait about 2 years, read
WP:RFAADVICE, and then come back when you have something to show to the community. –
John M Wolfson (
talk •
contribs)
16:38, 30 August 2023 (UTC)reply
I think it's important to spell out an exact edit count, so that folks don't waste their time and ours with ORCPs that won't go anywhere. There's been a couple of these recently. OK to make this change to the edit notice? –
Novem Linguae (
talk)
20:00, 4 December 2023 (UTC)reply
Hmm, maybe. But going a bit lower than the de facto minimum to pass lately of 8,000 gives us a cushion if someone is posting a few months before their RFA. –
Novem Linguae (
talk)
20:13, 4 December 2023 (UTC)reply
The lowest to pass in recent years was 0xDeadbeef at 8,000, and imo even at 5,000 most users are still learning the ropes. Besides, that 5,000 that could have been gained by countervandalism or tinkering with categories and would not be a good measure of experience.
The Night Watch(talk)20:15, 4 December 2023 (UTC)reply
I support including a minimum edit count, but I think we can make this a bit friendlier.
What about:
While edit count isn't a perfect measure, the reality is you need at least 8,000–10,000 edits to have a realistic chance of passing an RfA. If you're not close to that amount of experience, please do not post here.
—Femke 🐦 (
talk)
20:24, 4 December 2023 (UTC)reply
Oppose per
WP:EDITCOUNTITIS. Quality is more important than quantity, especially for prospective admin candidates. Just because you have some arbitrary number of edits does not mean that you necessarily even have a ghost of chance of passing RFA. Likewise, someone who has a relatively smaller number edits that are of exceptional quality shouldn't be turned off by such an in-your-face message. Let's not make the issue of edit count being a de facto criteria for adminship even worse than it already is.
Taking Out The Trash (
talk)
20:26, 4 December 2023 (UTC)reply
It's a tradeoff, of course. Maybe there's an editor with 4,999 edits out there somewhere that is an amazing content creator and has written all FAs and would pass RFA, but read the new ORCP edit notice and decided that they were going to give up their RFA aspirations because of it. But for each of them that we're catering to by not having an edit count warning, we're probably also
biting 100 folks that get their hopes up, post here, then have a fairly unpleasant experience as they're told that they posted here way too early, and are weak in X Y Z A B and C areas, and they absolutely would not pass RFA. The idea is to avoid the bitey-ness of the second scenario, and also to reduce workload for experienced editors. –
Novem Linguae (
talk)
20:52, 4 December 2023 (UTC)reply
Responders can tailor their responses to have a desired level of encouragement, or they can ignore the poll (which is in itself feedback). Unfortunately, I feel that editors who ignore the instructions to read about the qualifications expected of new administrators are likely to ignore the edit notice.
isaacl (
talk)
20:58, 4 December 2023 (UTC)reply
Editors starting polls have been ignoring the advice since the beginning. Personally I feel the edit notice is more effective if it remains brief, and without a large font size. In the past I have simply provided a short response to editors with clearly insufficient levels of activity and after a small delay, closed the poll. For better or worse, one of the informal purposes of this poll is to act as a lightning rod to draw off requests for administrative privileges being made from editors without a chance of passing.
isaacl (
talk)
20:33, 4 December 2023 (UTC)reply