The arbitration committee election has a fallow period between the end of nominations and the start of voting. There is no gap, though, between the end of nominations and the start of when questions can be asked. (Questions used to be asked as soon as a nomination was announced; the current start time was added to the process in 2022.) isaacl (talk) 23:02, 26 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Circling back to this, did the two-day housekeeping period come in useful for you this year, Novem Linguae? I was thinking about proposing to get rid of it if we have an RfC (since no one seems to be using it to find nominators, answer standard questions, or write voter guides), but obviously I wouldn't want to do that if it's important for behind-the-scenes stuff. Extraordinary Writ (talk) 00:59, 9 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Hey there. Yes, I found it useful and would be in favor of keeping it. It takes some of the pressure off of me / election clerks. Thanks for checking. –Novem Linguae (talk) 01:19, 9 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I also wonder if the candidates find it useful in the situation where a candidate signs up an hour before the end of the call for candidates, then has two days to answer Q1-Q3 and to get their nominators to post their statements. Instead of being thrown straight into the discussion phase. –Novem Linguae (talk) 03:28, 9 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
It's halfway through the call for candidates phase, and only 3 candidates are signed up so far. In the last election, it seems there were around 16 candidates. Why have so few candidates signed up so far? Wikieditor662 (talk) 02:29, 29 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Yes I think that is right. I tried in October 2024 and failed, and would rather not try RfA. And not much point running again if the community has made up their mind. Spy-cicle💥 Talk?17:54, 29 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
not much point running again if the community has made up their mind. but usually they tell you what you need to improve on, and many people later get elected after losing, no? Wikieditor662 (talk) 18:34, 29 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I mean pretty much anything could get reversed once you've improved yourself -- civility, behavior, competence etc, it just takes different amounts of time... or am I missing something? Wikieditor662 (talk) 21:54, 29 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Perhaps all those who were interested in such a process have all tried and been elected or tried and failed. It does get a lot more people through than go through RfA. ~Darth StabroTalk • Contribs02:43, 29 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I agree, a lot of people are quite busy this time of year, and the next election will be in just five months. April could be better for lots of candidates and nominators. Valereee (talk) 15:19, 30 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
As the only twice-failed AELECT candidate (so far!), I think it's a mix of factors. Most of the editors who should have run have already, and many of those who thought they may as well have also run. The pools of candidates should be slimmer going forward. However, the American Thanksgiving holiday means a lot of travel. AELECT candidates are going to be disproportionately younger, which means many are home with parents right now and may not be thinking about Wikipedia—how dare they?! Also, I think the process is still a bit intimidating. With how many have not been elected, I think we're bound to miss out on a few candidates who don't wish to be subject to ANI/Wikipediocracy/Discord scrutiny, all of which happened in the last election. I hope more candidate run, but I don't envy them. Best, ~ Pbritti (talk) 04:49, 29 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for all the answers everyone! To be honest, I did not expect to see so many different reasons given out.
Despite the causes, I suppose it's kind of unfortunate, since a bureaucrat told me that Wikipedia needs more admins. On the bright side though, they also said there would be talks in the future to lower the percentage required to pass, which might (among other factors) motivate more people to join. But if the holiday season isn't the biggest reason, then we could end up in a situation where elections have 0-1 candidates each time, which would be kind of funny. Wikieditor662 (talk) 04:56, 29 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
There have so far been two attempts to lower the pass percentage for AELECT, both of which have failed.
One small contribution is that I've not been scouting in the last few months due to illness. And the bus factor is high in scouting for new candidates. If you know someone who would be a good fit, so nudge them to run! —Femke 🐦 (talk) 08:26, 29 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I too have been busy with, ahem, other things, and @Hey man im josh has been in a period of lower activity as well. The bus factor is indeed very small. Between the three of us I believe we were responsible for nominating 7 candidates in the last election. -- asilvering (talk) 18:30, 29 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, but that would mean there is trend downward of support. We need to give this process a few more cycles to be able to actually get some data that supports the benefits of lowering the pass percentage, otherwise, we would just annoy people by asking the same question a million times. fanfanboy(blocktalk)16:38, 29 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
That's true. Perhaps it's the reason the Bureaucrat told me these would happen in the future (I don't remember when exactly) rather than immediately. But if such thing does happen, perhaps there should be fewer options and have it just asked whether it should be lowered or not; if lowered then a second RfC to determine the new percentage. Wikieditor662 (talk) 16:42, 29 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
That's another option, although the point of the RfC would be about whether it should be lowered, so asking if it should be raised might be redundant. Wikieditor662 (talk) 05:16, 1 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
It's not redundant. The point of opening an RfC should not be to get one's favored solution implemented. When you ask someone "would you like coffee or tea?", you're implicitly telling them the diet coke they see on the counter isn't on offer. I don't think we should be asking this question at all at this point -- we don't have enough data points, and there are risks associated with lowering it, then later after more data, discovering we're wrong and trying to raise it again -- but if we are going to ask it, we need to ask it in an unbiased manner that doesn't take one possible answer off the table. Valereee (talk) 12:02, 1 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I completely agree with this. The only reason we should be lowering the pass rate is if there are a significant number of candidates scoring just below the pass mark who unambiguously and unquestionably would pass RFA (not just one or two editors subjectively thinking they should be admins) and no candidates scoring in the same range who definitely would not pass RFA, similarly the only justification for raising it is if we are promoting people who definitely would not pass RFA with all candidates who would pass that process scoring above a higher threshold. There is insufficient data at present to make any sort of even semi-objective determination at this point on whether either of those are true, so the only thing opinions can be based on is a subjective feeling regarding specific individual candidates, which is unfair to everybody. Thryduulf (talk) 12:14, 1 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Logically, I don't think a lower pass threshold is necessarily going to result in more candidates standing. (It will result in more candidates being elected, specifically near the lower boundary of the accepted range, but that's different.)
I'm trying to think of a downside of having 'too few' candidates, but haven't come up with one yet. If we were filling a certain number of seats, like in the ArbCom election, then clearly the number of candidates would need to be sufficiently high to provide for a meaningful election, but that's not the case here. Is there some bit of election science that says a small number of candidates in our specific type of election is disadvantageous? -- DoubleGrazing (talk) 10:15, 29 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
One downside is that elections use like 7 election officials and around 500 voters, so ideally, to make their time worth it, having a decent size candidate pool is ideal. –Novem Linguae (talk) 10:44, 29 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Absolutely fair point. I was thinking more in terms of quality of elected admins, legitimacy of the outcome, etc. But you're right, I should have thought more widely. -- DoubleGrazing (talk) 10:54, 29 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
There are some candidates in the pipeline it seems, I assume we are going to see additions on the final day if the candidate pool hasn't already been cleaned up. As for the RfCs on pass rate, I think if there are many less candidates it'll be reasonable to revisit and a workshop can address that. The main issue in the archived discussion is not including higher percentages in the RfC along with lower if not mistaken, so if anything there is more reason to run another RfC in future after this election, even if that'd be heading in the other direction. Generaly I'm seeing too many candidates specifically between 65-69% that would probably breeze through an RfA, which is always a bit disheartening. There are still some abstains I made in the past that I regret knowing we've probably lost the potential for a decent admin either permanently or for a long while. That said self-noms is more like going to the casino when it comes to the outcome, so a lot of all this simply comes down to admin willingness to scout and nominate etc. Also I imagine many potential candidates recognise that the elections are evidently more difficult for many candidates than an RfA would be (based on higher % of opposition). The mental processing of not wanting to do an RfA, considering aelect as alternative, realising it's likely more difficult to pass, not wanting to do an RfA. CNC (talk) 09:13, 29 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
If you're going to pass at RfA with >95% you almost certainly don't need to run the gauntlet of RfA which is going to be more intense and full-on process. Elections are generally easier going for candidates, you are one of many without all of the attention, which is partially why it's more difficult to pass. I can't speak for candidates why they chose one over the other, but I think the pro and cons are quite obvious to see already. CNC (talk) 16:31, 29 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
So if we get to a point where future elections get 0-1 candidates, the attention would still be all on them, so would there still be pros to elections if that happens? Wikieditor662 (talk) 16:36, 29 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
If elections get to 0-1 candidates in the future, I will propose increasing the amount of time between elections, which might help to get candidate numbers up, and will definitely save election official and voter time. –Novem Linguae (talk) 00:44, 30 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Not all, but some. To me it seems voters are less likely to oppose (publicly) when they see the amount of support, as well as rationale for support etc. Being unaware of support generates a lot of abstentions or outright opposes for those who base votes on gaging community sentiment (which is also a rationale way to vote, even if can lead to herd mentality). I imagine there's psychological studies on the difference in public/private voting, not that I know of them, but I think they'd apply here. CNC (talk) 18:32, 29 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
But the converse is true, @CommunityNotesContributor - when people are outright stating their reasons for opposing, it allows other participants to see why and agree. Because RFA is a discussion and many people write substantial rationales along with their !votes, an oppose that would otherwise have been silent and affected no other voters in EFA will be instead read and considered in an RFA and can have a more pronounced effect. Not to mention it's harder on the candidate to read them. I certainly think it's theoretically possible that folks in the 65-69% range at EFA could have made it through RFA. But breeze through? Not a chance. -- asilvering (talk) 21:12, 29 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The inverse is surely true, those with the equivalent amount of opposition at an election would likely see opposition exacerbated at RfA no? Say users with 65% opposition at aelect suffering a lot worse at RfA, because of the dynamic you are describing (which I completely agree with), along with other factors such as editors not wanting to put their heads above the sand (social dynamics I guess). My point is any majority is likely to be extended at RfA compared to aelect. I'm not saying it'd be clear cut, there are obviously cases where majority support turns to oppose in RfAs, which is something unlikely to be documented during an election (imo at least), a lot of this being speculative granted. A breeze might not be the right term, more like 65-69% extended to 70-85%, for reasons that are impossible to prove. And sure 15-25% opposition isn't exactly a breeze either, at least it'd be preferable not to know about it as a candidate. CNC (talk) 21:52, 29 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I would say that, while it's a good point that RfA is more transparent regarding having oppose !voters write out their reasons for opposing, it's also much easier for someone to oppose at AELECT. At RfA, weak oppose !votes get many pile-on comments. At AELECT, there's nothing stopping someone from voting "oppose" for no stated reason other than, for example, not liking the candidate, since voters no longer have to give a reason for their vote (which remains private). – Epicgenius (talk) 04:27, 30 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
My current hypothesis is that the difference between AELECT and RFA is about 20% supports. So I would predict that a candidate that got 65-69% at AELECT would get 85-89% at RFA. I could be completely wrong, but this is my impression. And this is why I have sometimes in the past been in favor of lowering the AELECT pass threshold below 70% (although in the last round of RFCs, I decided to abstain due to some good arguments from the other side). –Novem Linguae (talk) 00:46, 30 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Outcomes I don't think election candidates are less likely to pass if they have a nominator. In the July 2025 election, all but one of those with nominators succeeded. Of the nine who self-nominated, only two succeeded, and one came close to failing. In the October 2024 election, all candidates who had a nominator succeeded, and 80% of those who self-nominated failed. Valereee (talk) 15:26, 30 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Not sure if this is a reply to me, but this is the chart I referenced per "self-noms is more like going to the casino". CNC (talk) 16:14, 30 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I think the reply tool (or I) got confused...I think I was intending to reply to Wikieditor (Why would someone join the elections in the first place then, if RFAs are more likely to pass?) Valereee (talk) 18:35, 30 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
There are so many reasons why such a young process could have fluctuations in participation, so personally I think it would be good to run the process for a few cycles to gain more experience with it, before making major changes. We run the risk of perpetually keeping potential candidates off-balance by constantly changing the rules. isaacl (talk) 16:34, 29 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The first EFA had a considerable number of candidates with longer tenure and higher edit count than your typical successful first time RFA candidate. I imagine a good many experienced editors who were unwilling to go through an RFA chose to put their names forward when a different process was created. I would fully expect that pool of editors to be exhausted within the first few cycles. But the second EFA, and the candidacies created thus far for this one, include several editors who would not have been ready in October '24. To me this indicates the process is able to attract editors newly recruited to maintenance work, and I would consider it a success even though the number of candidacies has declined somewhat. Vanamonde93 (talk) 18:30, 29 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
We currently have two candidates in this election. There are probably going to be more by the deadline, but with just two candidates at this stage, I would be surprised if we had as many candidates at the deadline as we had in either of the last two. Whether this is down to lack of nominators, the exhaustion of the supply of potential candidates who want a less aggressive process than RFA, or the USA having its thanksgiving holiday, is not currently clear. But if we do have an election with few candidates then I think no one has an excuse to !vote on all the candidates they had time to assess, and then !vote no on the rest. I don't know how many !voted that way in the last two elections, but an election with few candidates would be an opportunity to test that. Just to give this context, we had 240 new admins in 2004, from a smaller community than we have now. Its late November, we have only had 15 new admins so far this year. ϢereSpielChequers16:08, 30 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I was thinking another reason for this is because of the fact that we just had an ArbCom election running immediately before this one. The first election was huge because its a trail and also because of the fact it might have been the only one that will run. The second one was quite huge considering its been 9 months since the previous one. and now, were doing it every 5 months JuniperChill (talk) 00:39, 1 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
My opinion for what it is worth: Suggested above are several possible reasons for the small number of candidates. Most or all could be factors this time. The combination of the factors, especially, might lead to fewer candidates this time. I would not downplay the possibility that the end of November and into December would not be a good time for users in the United States to focus on this, or anything else that might take considerable time over several consecutive days. I have been an active editor for more than 15 years and am active in several areas, including especially military history. I have considered asking for a nominator here or at RfA, or perhaps asking for opinions at the optional candidate poll. In short, I am not sure about venturing a candidacy for a few reasons, including that I am busy with other tasks and contributions here. It is best to end this here and not continue with a few other comments that I had thought to add. Thanks to all who have been active with this project and who have made some apt comments above. Donner60 (talk) 02:37, 1 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Your stats look good. You've got more than 1000 edits this year, lots of GAs, plenty of total edits, and your one block is a decade old. I'd encourage you to post at WP:ORCP if you'd like to gather more information. That can also be a good place to find nominators. Even if you post at ORCP today, you don't have to do AELECT3 (this AELECT cycle) if that's too short a timetable -- can always run in the future :) –Novem Linguae (talk) 03:29, 1 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks. My block lasted only 49 seconds because the administrator made a mistake and blocked the wrong party. I had reported the problem. The administrator quickly realized the mistake and immediately reverted the block. So it really should not enter into consideration. I think I would probably need to make that clear. Yes, the timetable is now too short for me to get a good statement in under the wire. I also agree that a self-nomination is not the best approach. If a candidate can't find a nominator or two from the many who are willing to be nominators and have made nominations in recent years, perhaps the user should think about at least deferring becoming a candidate. Donner60 (talk) 23:59, 1 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks. Good to know. I won't be looking into this more for myself until some time after the beginning of the new year. Good for other potential candidates who might look here in the near future to know as well. Glad to see you are more active again and back as administrator. Donner60 (talk) 00:56, 3 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@Valereee, you'll notice also that every one of them has nominators. That might be what's mostly behind the lower numbers this time around. We had seven candidates with admin noms last time, and this time we again have seven candidates with admin noms. In that regard, there's been no drop in numbers at all. -- asilvering (talk) 01:07, 2 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
35 in the first run, 17 in the second, 8 in the third. If we get about four next time we have a definite trend. I suspect that depends on whether the first two runs cleared a backlog, or whether people are responding to the greater number of opposes you get when you run in an election. ϢereSpielChequers09:28, 2 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I think the basic shape of the graph was expected due to pent-up demand, although I don't think anyone expected 35 in the first election! And then the second election was over 10 months later, so longer than this cycle, so still a bit of pent up demand from those who waited until they'd seen how the first election played out. So this time it's only been the 5 months between cycles, the pent-up demand is probably gone. And during that time, 3 candidates decided to RfA. So 11 good candidates in a 5-month cycle seems pretty reasonable.
FWIW, I'm not sure we could even draw a conclusion from 4 next time as to a definite trend. There have just been too many variables changing still.
Do you think number of opposes causes people to decide against election? I would think for most, seeing that literally everyone gets opposes in an anonymous vote makes it less personal. And we don't even know what those opposes mean, they could mean anything from "I'd voice an oppose even at RfA" to "I'd never say it at RfA, but I've considered thoughtfully and on balance I'm an oppose" to "no nominator? Oppose" to "oppose all, all admins are bad". Valereee (talk) 12:34, 2 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I wanted to expect that at least 12 Wikipedians are granted admin status every year (or once every month). 2021 had the lowest number of RfA nominations (where AE wasn't available at the time) at just 7. 2022 and 2023 had 14 and 12 respectively. 2024 had 13 RfAs and 11 AEs. If the trend had continued on from 2021, then we wouldn't have an admin nomination by 2025, but we were thankful 2022 saw a (partial) revival of RfA which had double the number of candidates. Before 2010, there were years where we had one RfA every day, but it got to as low as 0.5 per month in 2021. JuniperChill (talk) 14:30, 2 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I don't know why people are more likely to vote oppose in elections than normal RFAs, but so far we have had 20 admins elected in two batches, and only 3 got between 80-85% support, the other 17 successes were all in the 70s. By contrast the last 20 successful RFAs include 1 at 77%, 2 in the mid 80s and 17 over 90%, several at or near 100%. I rather suspect that most of the last twenty admins elected would have done at least as well if they had run a normal RFA, and if any potential candidate would ask my advice at the moment I would suggest going the RFA route rather than the election route. But maybe not start whilst an election is in progress. Of course if this is some people voting support or oppose on all the candidates they have time to assess, and oppose on the ones they don't have time to assess, then the reduced number of candidates should show a further increase in support per candidate. ϢereSpielChequers00:27, 3 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@WereSpielChequers, I think this leaves out a very important difference: at RFA, you will probably end up reading every single oppose !vote. At EFA, you barely know they exist. Getting through RFA with an 85% support looks like success but can be a very stressful experience. A 85% at EFA, however, is pretty unstressful. -- asilvering (talk) 00:36, 3 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
That maybe true for some people, but 85% is the best result in the first two elections among 20 who passed; The equivalent in the last 20 successful RFAs isn't 85%, it is 100% or very close. I suspect the people who get 100% in a conventional RFA have a fairly unstressful time. But back to knowing why people opposed. In both my RFAs and my RFB I knew why most of the opposers were opposing, and I could engage some, and run my second RFA in ways that didn't provoke most of the opposition I had in my first. My worry about the election system is that you get far more opposes, and if you lose you don't know what you need to change to pass in the future. I suspect that the two routes to adminship will appeal to different people, and just because a candidate who would have been unopposed in a classic RFA gets 15% opposes doesn't necessarily mean that a candidate who would have narrowly passed an RFA will likely fail an election. But it is interesting to try and compare the processes. ϢereSpielChequers09:36, 4 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I'd say it would be reasonable to consider whether to run elections every 7 months rather than five, then revisit after another couple iterations. I would think it would still be good to have this pathway, but we want to balance it with the cost of running elections. Valereee (talk) 18:56, 2 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
My guess is this is roughly where we'll stabilise. No pent-up demand, and the biggest bottleneck being experienced users scouting candidates. If anyone reading would like to help out there, but isn't quite sure where to start, always happy to chat. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 18:59, 2 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Personally, I think we should establish a regular cadence in the election cycle, to get everyone accustomed to it and know when the next few elections are coming, and to gather information based the same process running during multiple points in the calendar year. The more we change things, the harder it is to evaluate the effect of each change. isaacl (talk) 19:52, 2 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I agree, was just commenting on what happens if the next few elections get so few candidates that we're left to balance the cost vs. the benefit of a particular cadence. Valereee (talk) 22:14, 2 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
At the top of the page it says Nominations for the December 2025 administrator elections are now open to extended-confirmed editors on the candidates page until 23:59, 30 November 2025 (UTC), but further down it says The call for candidates will close on December 1, 2025 at 23:59 UTC. RoySmith(talk)13:49, 30 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Unfortunately this is kind of a hack. The proper fix would be to have the calling template calculate +1 to the end date automatically. Would anyone like to take a stab at fixing the calling template? (When you're done fixing the calling template, revert my changes to the data template, then purge the AELECT3 page.) –Novem Linguae (talk) 14:37, 30 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The reason why 2359 is used instead of 00:00 is to prevent the confusion on whether it means midnight the start of day, or midnight the end of day. At least the 24 hour clock is used so that we wouldn't also have to deal with the confusion at 12 noon. Its the reason why UK trains can be timetabled to leave at 12:00, but not 00:00. The disadvantage is mainly for people who don't live in the UK, Ireland, Iceland and Portugal (where the time zone is GMT/UTC in winter, same as what computers (and Wikipedia) use) where its odd to have a clock ending in 59, other than 23:59. JuniperChill (talk) 00:25, 1 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The reason why 2359 is used instead of 00:00 is to prevent the confusion on whether it means midnight the start of day, or midnight the end of day. Yes, that's what I said. isaacl (talk) 01:32, 1 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Though of course we could define dates indicating the end of a date range in {{Administrator elections status/data}} to be 23:59-based, my personal preference is to define all dates in this template the same way, indicating a date at midnight. For clarity, when this template is used, the displayed date and time for dates ending a range is the previous date at 23:59. isaacl (talk) 17:14, 1 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
We now have 1 December at the top, but "The call for candidates phase for the December 2025 administrator elections has opened. The call for candidates phase will be open from 25 November 2025 00:00 UTC until 2 December 2025, 23:59 UTC." lower down. Whatever hacks are used should perhaps be replaced with hardcoded text instead, as this doesn't work and creates uncertainty for whoever wants to run or otherwise follow this. Fram (talk) 14:08, 1 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Looks like we're currently in a situation where {{Administrator elections status/data|{{#titleparts:{{PAGENAME}}|1|2}}|nomend}}, 23:59 UTC-style code wants a 23:59 date (for example the candidates page) and the header end dates want a 0:00 style date. So something is always broken. I would like to reiterate my original request for someone to do the following, which I think will fix everything with the least amount of code changes: Unfortunately this is kind of a hack. The proper fix would be to have the calling template calculate +1 to the end date automatically. Would anyone like to take a stab at fixing the calling template? (When you're done fixing the calling template, revert my changes to the data template, then purge the AELECT3 page.). In addition, we now need to add an extra step of reverting this edit. Hope that makes sense. –Novem Linguae (talk) 15:45, 1 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Icem4k said on their user talk that they withdrew, so no action needed there.
I've got a question though. What do we want to do with the candidate pages for the 3 candidates that are not participating? Leave them alone, blank, userfy, or delete? If we can come to a consensus, maybe I'll add a sentence about this in the documentation so we know how to handle it in the future. –Novem Linguae (talk) 10:53, 2 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I'd suggest that they are userfied, at which point the editor in question can choose whether to keep or delete them. I wouldn't consider them part of the historical record of a particular election. Cheers, SunloungerFrog (talk) 11:14, 2 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I think userification would be a good idea. Looking at the last election, at least one candidate did that here. I'm not sure if the resulting redirect from the page move should stay around though. 45dogs (they/them) (talk page)17:10, 2 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I'm currently not opposed to either option, slightly leaning towards not leaving a redirect, largely due to cleanup concerns. Mainly, if the pages are moved into userspace, and they are then nominated for U1 deletion, it would then just leave a redirect without purpose, which is just messy. If consensus decides that there should be a redirect, I believe the message should explicitly note that there is a redirect left. 45dogs (they/them) (talk page)04:04, 3 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I would also say no redirect on the basis of tidyness. Also, one of the reasons I suggested userfying was that candidates who decided not to stand might well want to use a partially completed nomination in a future election, and it would be a bit peculiar to have a redirect from a nomination page within Election 3 to a nomination page within Election 6. Cheers, SunloungerFrog (talk) 06:20, 3 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
This sounds fine. Can I get an admin or page mover to help me with this? Procedure is to move the page without leaving a redirect to User:Name/AELECT2, then leave a message on their user talk letting them know about it (example message). Thanks! –Novem Linguae (talk) 11:41, 5 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@ThadeusOfNazereth and Chaotic Enby:. Hello awesome monitors. The discussion phase has officially opened and it's your time to shine! Please keep an eye on things for the next 5 days. You probably don't even need this ping since I know you talked off-wiki a bit already, but just wanted to remind you just in case. Thanks! –Novem Linguae (talk) 00:18, 4 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
On December 9, we will start the voting phase. The candidate subpages will close to public questions and discussion, and everyone will have a week to use the SecurePoll software to vote, which uses a secret ballot. You can see who voted, but not who they voted for. Please note that the vote totals cannot be made public until after voting has ended and as such, it will not be possible for you to see an individual candidate's totals during the election. You must be extended confirmed to vote.
Once voting concludes, we will begin the scrutineering phase, which typically lasts between a couple days and a week. Once everything is certified, the results will be posted on the results page (you may want to watchlist this page) and transcluded to the main election page. In order to be granted adminship, a candidate who has not been recalled must have received at least 70.0% support, calculated as Support / (Support + Oppose), and must also have received a minimum of 20 support votes. A candidate that has been recalled must have at least 55.0% support. Because this is a vote and not a consensus, there are no bureaucrat discussions ("crat chats").
Any questions or issues can be asked on the election talk page. Thank you for your participation. Happy electing.
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It works for me so I don't particularly know what to say. Have you tried using the "use wiki default (UTC)" option? Or making it a global preference, and then saving when done? 45dogs (they/them) (talk page)06:20, 4 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Oh sorry for the confusion, I meant mostly I can't understand my own timezone based on these, even though I did change the preferences. It seems that it shows in some areas but not others, which might make things even more confusing. Wikieditor662 (talk) 21:18, 5 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
But if you meant switch to default to see when they wrote it, you're probably right. My true problem is finding my own timezone based on here, not UTC. Wikieditor662 (talk) 21:18, 5 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
With respect to your original question, you don't have to know the time in your current time zone to know if someone's submission met the deadline. The deadline is in UTC, so you just need to look at the UTC timestamp of the submission. isaacl (talk) 23:05, 5 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I usually set the time to my timezone and do a mental calculation back to UTC. If I am travelling for an extended time far away from my timezone, I would set the timezone to my destination timezone and do the mental calculation again. – robertsky (talk) 06:53, 4 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
For me, I just use UTC because my country is on that time zone for half the year. Its more commonly called GMT however, which is practically the same as UTC except for the fact GMT is not used in computers. There's a reason why English Wikipedia uses UTC (because we have people editing across the globe) while French Wikipedia uses CET/CEST (because most French speakers reside in that time zone). If only France, Belgium, Netherlands and Spain) all use GMT because their geographical position says otherwise. JuniperChill (talk) 10:23, 4 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Do we really need to moderate questions like here? The admin elections page says about moderation "the discussion phase will have monitors who are administrators who will moderate any comments that are too rude, and may refactor and reorganize comments if they get disorganized." Questions like the above one aren't "too rude" and aren't disorganized, so it feels to me as if such moderation is going too far. This removal is probably more debatable, but still seems too strict to me. There is a clear question there, and the longish intro is necessary background to the question. And frankly, an admin who can't deal with the tone and contents of either of these two questions probably shouldn't be an admin anyway. Fram (talk) 10:25, 4 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I'm inclined to agree about the first question. I think the second removal was correct; most of that belonged in the Discussion section, with only the last sentence actually being a question. Courtesy ping: @Chaotic Enby. Toadspike[Talk]10:51, 4 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the feedback! My issue with these two questions was that their contents were much more suitable for the Discussion section, as they focused on presenting new evidence rather than asking a concrete, specific question. I did in fact invite both commenters to present their evidence there, as I still believed it was relevant for the conversation. Since then, I have gotten more feedback (beside yours) that this approach of removing questions was pretty heavy-handed: I've added @Tenshi Hinanawi's question back, and I'll be more cautious about moderating moving forward. Again, thanks a lot, comments like this are more than welcome to help us calibrate! Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 10:58, 4 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Is there a way in which I can receive a notification on my user talk page for start dates of discussion and voting phases for admin elections, much like there are already notifications for ArbCom elections and meetup events? — AP 499D25(talk)08:09, 7 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
In the voting phase, the candidate subpages close to public questions and discussion, and everyone who qualifies to vote has a week to use the SecurePoll software to vote, which uses a secret ballot. You can see who voted, but not who they voted for. Please note that the vote totals cannot be made public until after voting has ended and as such, it will not be possible for you to see an individual candidate's vote total during the election. The suffrage requirements are similar to those at RFA.
Once voting concludes, we will begin the scrutineering phase, which will last for a few days, perhaps longer. Once everything is certified, the results will be posted on the results page (this is a good page to watchlist), and transcluded to the main election page. In order to be granted adminship, a non-recall candidate must have received at least 70.0% support, calculated as Support / (Support + Oppose), and a minimum of 20 support votes. Recall candidates must achieve 55.0% support. Because this is a vote and not a consensus, there are no bureaucrat discussions ("crat chats").
Any questions or issues can be asked on the election talk page. Thank you for your participation. Happy electing.
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What does The suffrage requirements are similar to those at RFA mean? Are they identical? In which case just say "identical" instead of "similar", which implies that they're not quite identical. And if they are indeed not identical, you should say how they differ. RoySmith(talk)03:50, 9 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the ping. It's a fair point which I didn't manage to fully resolve last time around. This page (WP:AELECT) gives 3 criteria: have an extended confirmed account; not be sitewide blocked; not be a bot. The last of these is not an RfA requirement. Additionally, scrutineers will manually remove any duplicate votes, sockpuppet votes, and vanished account votes. The first two are de facto policy at RfA. The latter is not. Additionally, RfA will remove sockpuppet votes; AELECT will remove both sockmaster and sockpuppet votes. That's how I think they differ - it's a lot to fit into a MMS message. -- zzuuzz(talk)09:33, 9 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I see. For my part I really see no difficulty with saying they're identical. There's no need to promulgate potential carve outs for people voting as sockpuppets or heaven forbid their bot account. I think it's pretty obvious that's not welcome at either venue. Local Variable (talk) 12:22, 9 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Now you see I know at least one person who sometimes edits with a bot account, and have never seen a sockmaster had their RfA vote removed. The criteria for voting in the two venues are simply not identical. To me the word 'identical' is possibly one of the stronger forms of saying that two things are about the same. Maybe, I'd suggest, the message should just say that voters need to be extended confirmed. That's probably all that most people would be interested in. -- zzuuzz(talk)14:58, 9 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Done. Please double check my work. Diff. –Novem Linguae (talk) 15:54, 1 December 2025 (UTC)