Research talk:Wikipedia Administrator Recruitment, Retention, and Attrition

Research Signup

If you're interested in following along this research project, or would like to be contacted as a participant for this research, please leave a reply below. —User:CLo (WMF) (talk) 19:22, 30 July 2024 (UTC)

Prompts on administrator motivations

As part of our scoping work, we'd like to ask you to answer one of these prompts! The replies to this will help us design our future interview and survey guides.

If you are more comfortable leaving comments in a language other than English, please feel welcome to do so. Please note that we may use machine translation in reviewing feedback provided in languages other than English.

• If you are a current administrator: what was your top reason for becoming an administrator?
• If you are not an administrator, but have ever considered becoming one: what has been your top reason for wanting to be an administrator?
• If you have previously been an administrator, but no longer are: what is (or was) your top reason for leaving the administrator role?
• If you have ever actively avoided becoming an administrator, what is (or was) your top reason for not wanting to be an administrator?

—User:CLo (WMF) (talk) 18:56, 1 August 2024 (UTC)

I was actively avoiding becoming an admin because this role on ukwiki requires a lot of conflict solving which I'm not comfortable at.

I am currently an admin and I became one, when someone finally persuaded me that I can stick to the other admin responsibilities I'm OK with. Besides, given the current situation in Ukraine I wanted our community to have a spare admin just in case. Ата ^(talk) 07:21, 9 August 2024 (UTC)

Hi @Ата, thanks for sharing about your experience, it's good to understand what your hesitations/concerns were, and what finally persuaded you to consider performing admin responsibilities. If you're comfortable sharing more (completely optional and up to you), I would be interested to know what specific admin responsibilities you generally prefer for your day-to-day work, as well as what types of examples of conflict solving that initially made you hesitant to become an admin. Now that you're an admin, have you successfully been able to avoid these conflict solving situations that you weren't interested in becoming involved in? Thanks again for sharing about your experience. EAsikingarmager (WMF) (talk) 16:23, 17 September 2024 (UTC)

EAsikingarmager (WMF), so far I have only deleted pages in obvious cases (unused templates, empty categories, test articles), restored maybe one article, blocked five users for inappropriate usernames, protected an article once, and I'll stick to these actions in the future. I have indeed successfully been able to avoid conflict solving situations, which mainly occur on Requests to admins page. Ата ^(talk) 15:05, 19 September 2024 (UTC)

• Thanks for inviting us to comment at Wikimania! I can answer (1) and (3) from my experience:
  • Why did I become an administrator? I was doing curatorial tasks for which getting the delete and protect buttons would be useful, was encouraged by fellow administrators, and was young and wanted to collect an extra hat (such behaviour is officially discouraged by policy but I admit to my former self being like that). Once you become an admin for one project, it's easier to lean on your own experience in deciding whether to ask for adminship on another project.
  • Why did I leave? I have given up some permissions voluntarily because I no longer had the time to help with those projects. I gave up the advanced permission as each unused advanced permission is theoretically a security vulnerability. Deryck C. (talk) 10:33, 9 August 2024 (UTC)

• i became an admin because it gave me access to protected pages which i frequently needed to edit, because of my work with gadgets and templates.
  • I stopped being an admin because i no longer felt supported by the community in the expectations that i had of senior/long term editors and their behavior, as well as enforcement of those expectations that we were setting for new contributors
  • —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 10:33, 10 August 2024 (UTC)

  Hi @TheDJ, thanks for sharing your experience. If you'd be interested and willing to share more (completely optional, of course), I'm curious what types and examples of support might have made you feel more supported? Thanks, EAsikingarmager (WMF) (talk) 16:29, 17 September 2024 (UTC)

I was quite amused that an algorithm picked me out as a possible administrator. Sure, I meet quotas for number of edits and length of editing, and I don't have a history of blocks or anything. But I almost never do admin-like things. And then there's my personality.

I don't like forming judgements and making decisions (I'd really rather collect information until the choice is obvious, which of course often doesn't work), and that decisions seem to me to be most of what admins do. I really don't have a very good idea of what admins do; I've occasionally seen them dealing with problematic social situations, but I'm not even sure of when I ought to contact an admin about a situation, or how best to do it, and it seems like having an official title would be a positive hindrance in a lot of conflicts.

I suppose I could be persuaded to do some adminlike tasks if I saw important ones going undone. It might be good for me, and it's conceivable I could learn to do some of them well, or at least better than no-one. This project and related pages I've just looked up suggests that a lack of admins might actually be a problem, but it's all in terms of declining numbers (and community-capture risk) rather than workload coverage.

But writing content seems like more fun, and it's hard to stick to doing something useful but unpleasant longterm, and if you do too much of that you tend to burn out. I have seen admins burning out. Do we have evidence on whether having more admins, or putting soft limits on per-person admin work, would help with that?

Socially, I've found myself horribly reluctant to write this short reply. It's difficult to write something honest, tactful, and reasonable. It requires me to take positions on things, and admit to ignorance and selfishness. In many ways I'd rather ignore the whole thing. But you need information, so I will answer questions. HLHJ (talk) 22:22, 9 November 2024 (UTC)

I have never been an administrator, but considered becoming one: my top reason for wanting to be an administrator is to go on the next level of wiki proficiency. Sofiemama (talk) 11:22, 10 August 2024 (UTC)

Hi @Sofiemama, thanks for sharing about your top reason. If you're comfortable and open to sharing more, I'd like to understand more about what it means to you to "go to the next level of wiki proficiency". Could you share some more details about what that means to you, and why it's important. Are you still considering becoming an admin? If so, what, if anything, has prevented you from beginning the process. What would encourage you to begin the process? Thanks again for sharing, EAsikingarmager (WMF) (talk) 20:23, 18 September 2024 (UTC)

"Go to the next level of wiki proficiency" is to study the tons of articles on Wikipedia rules and policy. What prevents me from beginning the process of becoming an admin is a doubt that I can manage reading and understanding all the rules. That requires too much time and devotion. Sofiemama (talk) 11:31, 2 November 2024 (UTC)

• I ran at RFA in 2008 after I'd been editing for a couple of years, not so much because I wanted to be an admin (although I thought I could do some good there), but because I wanted to become an oversighter. The Enwiki Arbcom was just starting to accept applications for oversight from community admins (as opposed to doing it all themselves), and I was acutely aware of how terrible the coverage had been to that point; but the first step to getting to oversighter was to become an admin. Ironically, a few months after I passed RFA, I wound up becoming an arbitrator, so I was automatically eligible for the oversight and checkuser permissions (and have retained them since that time). Lots of things have changed with oversight permissions and activities on our project since then, and I know I played a significant role in several of those changes. But...yes, even today, the route to checkuser and oversight permissions on English Wikipedia starts with a successful RFA. Risker (talk) 00:46, 21 October 2024 (UTC)
• I have never been an administrator before but am considering it because, I have been tagging many pages for deletions and and made a lot of requests for admin attention, and I feel I am capable to do so. However, I should wait until someone persuade me to get the mop, after failed adminship rins on enwiki and MediaWiki.org. ToadetteEdit (talk) 06:35, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

Data collected

User:Samwalton9 (WMF) noted that you're collecting data about requests for adminship on Discord. One data point I'd encourage you to collect how RFAs are publicized (at enwiki the watchlist notification is a turn off for many potential admin I've talked to) and (at least for enwiki, don't know about your other studied wikis) the number of questions asked of candidates (even uncontroversial RFAs often require a huge amount of time from candidates because of these questions). Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 15:52, 2 September 2024 (UTC)

Hey @Barkeep49! Yes, one of the things I've been doing for this project is looking at publicly-available data on RFAs across our wiki shortlist, and that of course includes English Wikipedia RFAs. Unfortunately, statistics about number of questions (or even number of comments) per candidate are not generally widely available on Wikipedias aside from English, so we don't have a great comparative basis for that. Nevertheless, I did look broadly at English Wikipedia RFAs, and something that did jump out to us was the high number of comments per RFA.

I collected information from the en:RFAs by year page, and calculated "comments" as the sum of S + O + N. I then categorized each RFA by outcome into two buckets, "successful" or "unsuccessful". Looking purely at the Jan 2018-Jul 2024 period, the mean number of comments per English Wikipedia RFA are as follows:

• Successful RFAs: 223.59
• Unsuccessful RFAs: 87.92
• All RFAs: 175.98

Now from those aggregates, I did not further break down success versus neutral versus objections, and of course these only encompass top-level comments and doesn't necessarily capture the full breadth or length of some of these discussions. But I think it's safe to say, even at a glance, that a successful RFA seems to generate or require an enormous commitment to dialogue with other contributors and functionaries. I would attribute the lower figure for unsuccessful RFAs to the fact that many unsuccessful RFAs are closed faster, due to WP:NOTNOW or WP:SNOW reasons. But an average of ~88 top-level comments per unsuccessful RFA still seems like a lot of time and energy invested into the attempt.

I should note that this jump in number of comments per RFA can be pinned down to a point around 2010/2011, coinciding with the introduction of administrator activity requirements, but I don't know enough about the history of RFAs to paint any causal relationship there. I'm currently working with my colleagues on a plan to release this data (and many more interesting preliminary metrics!) publicly, as part of this project.

Happy to discuss more on the subject! —User:CLo (WMF) (talk) 17:36, 17 September 2024 (UTC)

Claudia - you may be interested in work @Hey man im josh has done on questions. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 18:57, 17 September 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for the tip! —User:CLo (WMF) (talk) 15:43, 19 September 2024 (UTC)

Retention strategy

I am involved in other, real-life leadership roles and I would say that Wikipedia is the only volunteer project which tolerates abusive users to that extent. But that's not news (and shouldn't be) to anyone who is deeply involved in the Wikimedia movement. I think the biggest retention issue is that people don't know how much abuse they will receive after becoming an admin. One part is dealing with on-wiki process like blocking users, dealing with appeals. You will encounter trolls, people threatening violence and occasionally stalkers/doxxers. Another part is dealing with off-wiki, often legal issues. Some examples include: imprisonment, threatened arrest, exerted government pressure on their editing and losing their employment. Essentially, admins are expected to do voluntary work on behalf of their wikis (and WMF in public's eyes) with absolutely no support network, token of appreciation or even a word of thanks on the talk page (unless something is extremely bad and had to get Trust & Safety or Legal involved).

In the past, WMF takes a passive role which allowed these behaviours to fester. And when these behaviours were left unchecked, others saw it as a community dynamics that is tolerated and they themselves would also do it (i.e. broken windows theory). It also made future admins unwilling to enforce on civility rules because they would be viewed as "overly harsh" admins with little precedence to rely on when a behavioral block is warranted. What WMF can do now is taking a more active role on handling and removing harassments. Since Foundation probably can't provide mental health service or assistance program to admins, the Foundation should consider forming support group for admins who encounter abusive behaviour so that there is a safe space and to identify any cross-wiki behavioral abuse. Finally, there should be some sort of admin recognition program to recognize their contributions to the project. OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 18:08, 12 September 2024 (UTC)

Hi @OhanaUnited, thanks for commenting and sharing about your experience. I appreciate that you've identified some specific actions you think would be helpful, including the idea of a support group for admins and admin recognition program. In terms of how you envision those two things, is there any additional detail you'd like to share? (for example, such as how you'd like to see the support groups work, or recognition ideally look like). Thanks, EAsikingarmager (WMF) (talk) 16:59, 17 September 2024 (UTC)

For support group, it could be a dedicated staff or point of contact that admins can informally reach out when admins want resources on dealing with persistent block appeals, "low level" paid editing, inserting hoax/falsify reference and a lot of the cases listed in long-term abuse (in English and Chinese for example), i.e. things that are not serious enough to escalate to T&S. The staff can provide links and resources on where and how to get help. The dedicated staff can also assist with identifying and coordinating a solution for cross-wiki behavioral issues, which are subjected to different community rules, such that the issue can be resolved while following their respective communities' rules. It just so happens that we have an ongoing example this week on a block from ja.wp that the discussion spreads over to en.wp. Volunteers are unlikely to spend time to read up the conversation or rules in another language, often machine translated and missing cultural nuances, and lead to votes & decisions that are not based on full pictures. And when decisions appear to be unjust due to mistranslation, this is how it breeds long-term abusers as they see the system to be unfriendly, unequal enforcement of rules and target admins for continuing to support the system.

Admin T-shirt (text to be edited)

Now that we covered the "push" factors, I'll talk about the "pull" factors. For recognition, the only time I see someone being thanked for their service is when they voluntarily hand in their admin tools because they're quitting or no longer wants to be an admin. I have been an admin on en.wp for 16 years and there was never a note left on my talk page to thank my service on any of my "admin birthday". If the budget is $0, at least have a robot to leave a talk page message on the "admin birthday" to thank them for X years of service and show something like w:Special:Impact for number of admin actions taken in the past year. If there is some budget for this initiative, then providing T-shirt or small lapel pins like these as part of the onboarding experience. There can be different variations of lapel pins for every 5 years of admin service. These merchandise also have the benefit of conversation starters with the public and at outreach events. The benefit of enhanced tracking can also identify admins who just recently became inactive and see whether it was temporary or permanent. OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 20:33, 17 September 2024 (UTC)

Share your experiences with admin support efforts

We recognize that in various ways, there have been past efforts to better support administrators and their work. If you've been involved in any capacity with efforts aimed at better supporting Wikipedia administrators, we'd like to hear from you and learn from your experiences.

• What types of support are most needed for administrators?
• What types of past support efforts (e.g., development of programs, groups, tools, or other) have been effective?
• What types of past support efforts (e.g., development of programs, groups, tools, or other) have not been very effective?

EAsikingarmager (WMF) (talk) 19:49, 18 October 2024 (UTC)

@Risker, @Z1720, @Clovermoss Since today's meetup conversation brought up the topic about adminship being a thankless job (oftentimes open to additional abuse) as all four of us encountered and leading to backlog in various administrative areas, in case you're unaware of this, the foundation is looking for comments on admin recruitment, retention and attrition, as well as identifying the type of support that will be most beneficial. I myself have already shared my thoughts above and hope you can chime in on this initiative. OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 00:20, 21 October 2024 (UTC)

I wasn't previously aware of this initiative. I'll give it a look sometime this week. Feel free to ping me again on the off chance I forget. Clovermoss (talk) 00:33, 21 October 2024 (UTC)

Two issues

It was pretty tough for me to answer a majority of questions.

Firstly, I have become an administrator 17 years ago which I have also stated early in the survey. I was not asked if I could remember anything about that time (which could have been a question for those who became admins in 10+ years, for example). I cannot remember that, nor can I speak of the time before when a couple of activities did not even exist yet (e.g., abuse filters, gadgets). It's simply too far away.

Secondly, although I have responded that I have used my admin bits less than 2 times in the last X (90?) days (actually, I've been pretty inactive as an enwiki admin for the past couple of years because I am covered with my activities in other projects like metawiki here), I was still asked a lot of questions about my recent admin experiences. Obviously, I could only skip these questions in order not to distort the survey. I suggest to change the design for future surveys accordingly so that semi-retired admins who keep the bit for clear-cut cases while remaining trusted users because of their general contributions would also fit into the survey.

Thanks and good luck for the remaining tasks of the research project. Best, —DerHexer (Talk) 22:27, 23 October 2024 (UTC)

I had some of the same issues, I really don't recall how helpful documentation was or wasn't 16 years ago or whether something like rollback existed, or was it Twinkle then? Star Mississippi (talk) 02:27, 24 October 2024 (UTC)

@DerHexer "I suggest to change the design for future surveys accordingly so that semi-retired admins who keep the bit for clear-cut cases while remaining trusted users because of their general contributions would also fit into the survey" – Late to the party because I have been absent from en.Wiki for a while, I understand your concerns. I was not invited but I came across the survey by accident and did it (I was a very active admin for 9 long years and in fact initiated the very first in-depth RfA research). Important to address the issues of admin attrition and de-adminship, former admins could/should have been invited to take part in the survey.

IMO the format and audiences for the survey could have been better researched and with a greater understanding of the huge potential of conditional questions typical of survey software. I think the poor returns and results are possibly due to the research team's lack of prior knowledge of what adminship actually is and what and whom it involves.

@EAsikingarmager: Some of the results of the research confirm what the individual communities already know about their own governance systems, and even if the actual interviews that have been conducted are not representative, it's certainly showing promise.

The gnawing question that remains is: Apart from study[ing] the recruitment, retention, and attrition patterns among long-tenure community members in official moderation and administration roles, what is the final goal of this research project, and how can the communities benefit from it? Perhaps a follow up survey might be useful; I would be glad to help, especially with input on the questions to ask and how to formulate them.Kudpung (talk) 05:03, 14 December 2024 (UTC)

Exit interviews?

I just took a survey which was targeted at active administrators. I was curious, since the project is about retention, if there will also be a survey of people who have quit being administrators, or gone from active to inactive? It may be difficult to get in touch with that demographic...many employers try to gather this information as people quit, which might also be helpful in the long run. Perhaps you've also thought it would also be interesting to have stats on how many people are actively de-sysopped in a disciplinary process vs. actively ask to be de-sysopped vs. passively stop using admin tools vs. passively stop participating on-wiki altogether. Anyway, thanks for working on this project; I hope your quest for actionable improvements succeeds. -- Beland (talk) 15:31, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

Hello @Beland, thanks for your excellent questions. To answer your first question, we came to a similar conclusion as you did regarding the potential difficulty of contacting former administrators. Therefore, rather than reach them using a survey, we decided that in-depth participant interviews were a more appropriate method of trying to understand the experiences of former administrators. To that end, we have been conducting such interviews over the past month.

You can take a look at our Definitions subpage, to get a sense of how we are approaching the topic of "administrators who become inactive". You may also be interested in task T371139, where we are tracking work on quantitative analysis and reporting for the topic.

Regarding the split between those who voluntarily resign, resign due to inactivity or "without cause" (to use English Wikipedia's preferred terminology), and those who involuntarily have their admin rights removed - the difficulty there is getting this data, since in large part, much of the information is unstructured. It's definitely something that we would love to expand upon in future work on this topic.

Thanks for taking the time to finish the survey! —User:CLo (WMF) (talk) 16:53, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

Hi @Clo, @Beland ...resign due to inactivity or "without cause" [...] and those who involuntarily have their admin rights removed: As a former admin I was not on the target survey lists but came across it by coincidence and completed it. For many years until 2020 I was one of en.Wiki's most active admins - my focus was on reforms of RfA and co-developing new page quality control systems and related policies. I can provide some significant in-depth background, and first-hand personal feedback. Kudpung (talk) 20:04, 5 November 2024 (UTC)

Вообще не понял, как заполнять

Не смог ответить даже на первый вопрос. "Введите слово Wiki" - ввожу "русская" - неправильно. Ввожу "ru" - неправильно. Как заполнять то???? Vulpo (talk) 17:21, 8 November 2024 (UTC)

+1 Оранге (talk) 17:31, 8 November 2024 (UTC)

Dear @Vulpo and @Оранге,

Sorry about the issue you are having. We will resolve this as soon as possible.

Thank you for the notification, and for your patience. UOzurumba (WMF) (talk) 19:01, 8 November 2024 (UTC)

@Vulpo and @Оранге, this has been fixed. Please relaunch the survey. Thank you for your patience. UOzurumba (WMF) (talk) 19:36, 8 November 2024 (UTC)

Нет, всё равно ничего не работает. Слово "Wiki" не подходит. Равно как и другие.

(The questionnaire still not work. Answer "Wiki" is invalid and other answers too). Рулин (talk) 19:41, 8 November 2024 (UTC)

Введи "ruwiki". Оранге (talk) 19:43, 8 November 2024 (UTC)

Тебе пришёл администраторский вариант опроса (который ещё сломан). По идее, он должен приходить только бывшим и нынешним администраторам. Возможно, дело в ПИ или в работе в АК. Оранге (talk) 19:58, 8 November 2024 (UTC)

ruwiki тоже не принимает. Lesless (talk) 05:27, 9 November 2024 (UTC)

Though the problem for non-administrator survey has been fixed, administrators in our Discord chat say that they still have this problem with their survey. Also in Ruwiki we have a user group called "Подводящие итоги" ("talk closers" or just "closers") which have some of the administrators abilities (such as page deletion) but aren't considered administrators. Рулин (topic starter here) is one of them, so he shouldn't have gotten the admin survey. Оранге (talk) 19:54, 8 November 2024 (UTC)

https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%A4%D0%B0%D0%B9%D0%BB:Wki_(3795).png У меня то же самое. Lesless (talk) 05:25, 9 November 2024 (UTC)

@Рулин @Оранге@Lesless Thank you for the clarification. This has been fixed. If you're still encountering the error, are you able to relaunch your browser and/or clear cache? That should help. Thank you for providing the details of the problem, and thank you very much for your patience. CMyrick-WMF (talk) 02:25, 10 November 2024 (UTC)

The form is broken

I can't proceed even step 0 (here), the suggested answer is not accepted. You should check everything before launch. Maksa (talk) 17:29, 8 November 2024 (UTC)

Also an error occured on the English submission, typed "enwiki" and "English Wikipedia" but got wrong. I got a pass last time but not it didn't. Cc @UOzurumba (WMF). ToadetteEdit (talk) 17:33, 8 November 2024 (UTC)

Dear @Maksa and @ToadetteEdit,

Sorry about the issue you are having. We will resolve this as soon as possible.

Thank you for the notification, and for your patience. UOzurumba (WMF) (talk) 19:03, 8 November 2024 (UTC)

@Maksa and @ToadetteEdit, this has been fixed. Please relaunch the survey. Thank you for your patience. UOzurumba (WMF) (talk) 19:37, 8 November 2024 (UTC)

I can't get through either. It doesn't accept the word "Wiki". Lesless (talk) 05:18, 9 November 2024 (UTC)

https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%A4%D0%B0%D0%B9%D0%BB:Wki_(3795).png Lesless (talk) 05:25, 9 November 2024 (UTC)

Same here. I have tried both russian and english user interface. DR (talk) 11:37, 9 November 2024 (UTC)

@Lesless and @DR, this has been fixed. If you're still encountering the error, are you able to relaunch your browser and/or clear cache? That should help. Thank you very much for your patience. CMyrick-WMF (talk) 02:14, 10 November 2024 (UTC)

The same problem

I have the same problem as the people above with filling out the first form. I don't know what the acceptable answer is. Nutuzh (talk) 17:36, 8 November 2024 (UTC)

Dear @Nutuzh,

Sorry about the issue you are having. We will resolve this as soon as possible.

Thank you for the notification, and for your patience. UOzurumba (WMF) (talk) 19:04, 8 November 2024 (UTC)

@Nutuzh, this has been fixed. Please relaunch the survey. Thank you for your patience. UOzurumba (WMF) (talk) 19:37, 8 November 2024 (UTC)

Polish translation of the survey

Polish Wiki specific terminology, so I'm switching to Polish language:

W ankiecie używany jest angielski skrót RFA zamiast PUA, może to być dla niektórych mylące. IOIOI (talk) 22:08, 8 November 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for sharing this feedback and suggested change, we appreciate it. EAsikingarmager (WMF) (talk) 15:30, 14 November 2024 (UTC)

A day has passed, the survey is still broken

A day has already passed, the problem has not been solved. At the same time, messages were sent to more than a thousand users. Lesless (talk) 14:32, 9 November 2024 (UTC)

@Lesless (I replied above but I am replying here, too, to be certain you see my response.) The problem has been fixed. If you're still encountering the error, are you able to relaunch your browser and/or clear cache? That should help. Thank you very much for your patience. CMyrick-WMF (talk) 02:19, 10 November 2024 (UTC)

Discrimination

This "survey" propagates age discrimination - question 2. The one who added this is not welcome on Wikimedia and on the world. Wargo (talk) 19:42, 12 November 2024 (UTC)

Hi @Wargo, so I can better understand, may I ask if you can expand upon this comment to explain how it propagates age discrimination? Thank you, EAsikingarmager (WMF) (talk) 15:32, 14 November 2024 (UTC)

Look at the second question. It's dehumanization. Wargo (talk) 16:11, 14 November 2024 (UTC)

Ok, so my assumption is that you mean the fact that those under age 18 are unable to participate. I appreciate that you're making a point here about the implications of that limitation. I do want to acknowledge that individuals under age 18 play an important role in the creation and maintenance of content on various language versions of Wikipedia, as well as have a role in administration of projects; moreover, they're an important group when we consider the future. Unfortunately, this limitation in survey response collection is due to the various legal systems that we have to operate within and restrictions they impose. I will try to flag this upwards and see what types of options we can explore for future surveys. EAsikingarmager (WMF) (talk) 08:31, 16 November 2024 (UTC)

@EAsikingarmager (WMF), @Wargo. I strongly disagree with 'this limitation in survey response collection is due to the various legal systems that we have to operate within and restrictions they impose.' I would like to see a clear text of such a policy that governs a survey aimed at anonymous, non-identifiable respondents. I already ran a successful survey on Wikipedia which was green-lighted by the WMF legal team; it did not have an age limitation clause.

Such a limitation is powerless because the age of an admin is not normally known anyway; those who are bold enough will provide an untrue response, but some potential respondents may well have been been excluded by that question. Furthermore, as Wargo points out, it could be interpreted as 'If you're under 18 you're not mature enough to participate' .

In many other instances the design of the survey is already flawed. To justify the expense of this research and for it to have any credible basis for conclusions about adminship, I would politely suggest the research team redesign the survey by:

• enlisting the participation of individuals who already know what adminship is all about
• including staff who have proven professional experience in using survey software
• taking into account empirical and statistical knowledge that is already available

and run the poll again in the new year. There is no urgency for this research and there is time to get it right. Kudpung (talk) 01:25, 17 December 2024 (UTC)

The first Administrator elections on the English Wikipedia were conducted during the survey

See en:Wikipedia:Administrator elections

11 administrators were elected. This new process significantly changes things on this language edition. It will be easier to become an administrator. Whether a candidate had a nominator and how the candidate was rated in voter guides (see en:User:Novem Linguae/Essays/2024 administrator election voter guide#See also) probably had a large influence. Another change on enwiki is the introduction of en:Wikipedia:Administrator recall (recall by the community). The survey is not cognizant of these changes of historical magnitude (which is completely understandable, just stating). Alalch E. (talk) 12:16, 14 November 2024 (UTC)

@Alalch E., thanks for your comment and sharing these details. I can appreciate the point you're making. Best, EAsikingarmager (WMF) (talk) 15:33, 14 November 2024 (UTC)

@Alalch E.,@EAsikingarmager (WMF): It is unlikely that the the new Admin Election system will make it 'easier' to become an admin; that was not its aim. It's aim is to provide a system of RfA (Request for Adminship) that is more humane than the traditional ultra-toxic venue which Jimmy Wales himself already branded as a 'horrible and broken process' 13 years ago and which was the catalist for the first in-depth RfA research at RfA_reform_2011 which I initiated. Over the years others have since tried many attempts at solutions of which the multi-candidate secure poll version recently trialled is the only one that has resonated with the en.Wiki community. There is a wealth of comment and other research on en.Wiki that could/should be drawn into this current WMF project. See also, which I informed @BGerdemann of:

• 1. Has the Wind Gone out of The Adminship's Sails?
• 2. What do Admins Actually Do?
• 3. The last leg of the Admin Ship's current cruise

Once you cut through the comic relief in the intro of episode 1 there's a wealth of background and interviews with admins in the research for those articles that better address adminship from admins' points of view than the questions in this project's recent survey. I hope it helps your research. Nothing has changed much for RfA, but we'll see how the new election format works out; the trial left some points to be fine tuned. Reworkshopping is ongoing. Kudpung (talk) 04:28, 14 December 2024 (UTC)

Asking uninvolved strangers... maybe, but why?

I'm most active at Commons (which is my "home wiki") and WD, and was contacted via my ru-wiki talk page. But all the questions focused on adminship in en-wiki, which to me is a rarely visited distant fifth. My memories of en-wiki administration issues are too stale... 2010s if not 2000s. I can't see the point of asking uninvolved strangers about life on other planets. Retired electrician (talk) 20:25, 22 November 2024 (UTC)

Candidates short list summary table

I have boldly updated the table concerning the en.Wiki. Neither the Guide to Requests for Adminship, nor Advice for RfA Candidates (which I wrote in 2011 and is regularly updated and improved by others) provide any official indication of the number of edits required. There are informal suggestions only and many admins have passed with well below the number that was stated in the table. Email is recommended but not required. Kudpung (talk) 04:32, 17 December 2024 (UTC)

Hi @Kudpung, thanks for your message and interest in the project. I responded to your message on my talk page about this topic; unfortunately, I must have missed that you posted here as well, excuse the delay. Thanks for your edits to the project page to improve accuracy, much appreciated. Thanks, EAsikingarmager (WMF) (talk) 00:36, 20 December 2024 (UTC)