Wikipedia:RfA reform 2011/Candidates/Report

As part of the RfA reform 2011 process, much investigation has gone in to the profiles of candidates who apply for adminship. The results of the investigation are shown below. Much of the information from this report was put together in the form of a proposal to have a minimum requirement at RfA. The proposal can be found at RfA reform 2011/Minimum requirement

Successful candidates
The analysis of 224 successful candidates included investigation of all editors who pass an RfA between 1 January 2009 and 6 July 2011, effectively an 30 month period. Factors considered were the age of the account in months, the number of consecutive "active" months (50 edits or more) since last break, the total number of edits made at the time of the request and the approximate number of manual edits. The information was based on the edit statistics posted to the talk page of the RfA - where possible. It was assumed that percentage of automatic edits were correct according to this tool - based on the date of the RfA.

The overall averages and medians are shown below, they were grouped in towards the lower end, with significant outliers towards the higher end. In this period there was 1 editor who had an edit count below 3000 (though he had over 1 million edits cross all wikis) and a further 10 editors who had an edit count between 3000 and 4000. It's clear from the averages that number of edits for editors who successfully gain adminship is increasing.

Unsuccessful candidates
The analysis of 85 unsuccessful candidates between 19 August 2010 and 13 August 2011 (the period of one year) has resulted in a a couple of groups emerging. 39 (45%) of the candidates had less than 3000 edits, of which 31 (36%} had less than 2000. Combine this with a minimum tenure of 6 months - you can find that 43 (50%) editors have less than 3000/6m and 38 (45%) have less than 2000/6m.

There are 11 unsuccessful RfAs which ran the full length - all of which had an edit count over 5000 and a significant tenure. This means that all editors mentioned with regard to the 3000/6m and 2000/6m were either closed as SNOW/NOTNOW or else spotted the issue themselves and withdrew. In no case the community "take seriously" a nomination where the editor did not meet these criteria.

It is worth mentioning that even though the concept of WP:NOTNOW is to stop candidates who are clearly going to fail from having a demoralising experience - it is dubious as to how much this helps. Of the 61 editors who had a NOTNOW closure, 27 (44%) have since stopped editing, 10 (16%) of which were for no reason except the RfA.

User essays
A large portion of user essays with regards to adminship criteria were investigated - 125 in all. Many lightly discussed adminship, others went in to detail of the criteria they'd expect. There were many themes running the essays - the majority were looking for unquantifiable measures such as "civility", "maturity" and "policy knowledge". Other slightly more quantifiable factors were "participations in noticeboards", 6 - 12 months without a block (many asked for clean block logs). There was a smattering of editors who looked for admins who had created featured content.

The most popular factors to mention in the essays were "wiki age" and edit count. Editors expected succesful admin candidates to have on average 2850 edits, with the most popular values being 2000 and 3000. They were also expected to have just over 6 months tenure, with 6 months being the most popular value.

Vetted user essays
As many of the user essays were out of date (over a year old) and other were made by banned editors, a subset of the essays were investigaed which did not include these outliers. This reduced the number of essays to 28. Again, similar themes came through - about a third of the essays discussed civility, maturity, policy knowledge and particpation on noticeboards. However, the level of interest in block logs significantly increased - 2/3s of essays mentioned block logs and half of them wanted a clean block log. Also, editors became more interested in where the candidate was editing and their edit summary usage - however there was no clear consensus as to what should be required for either of these factors.

Again, the most popular factors were "wiki age" and edit count. Editors expected succesful admin candidates to have on average 3700 edits, with the most popular values being 2000, 3000 and 5000. They were also expected to have just over 9 months tenure, though 6 months was still the most popular value.