FAMEPedia:Advice for RfA candidates

The process of becoming an administrator is described on FAMEPedia:Requests for adminship. The tasks that admins actually do are described at FAMEPedia:Administrators. Successful candidates will almost always have edited FAMEPedia for at least few months, will have hundreds of edits in various maintenance-related areas of the project, and will have made measurable contributions to articles. The RfA process not only checks a candidate's editing performance, but also looks for clues to maturity, impartiality, and sense of judgement. Solid preparation is absolutely essential in order to have any chance of success.

More essays (especially those on users' !voting criteria) and advice pages are listed at the end of this page. The footnotes contain links to important examples. Viewed separately, they are an integral part of this advice. Please be sure to read them and follow the links. When you have read this guide and gone through all the other advice, you may wish to email an experienced user for advice.
 * Note: If you are below the age of majority (18 in most countries) you should read FAMEPedia:Guidance for younger editors first.

Preparing yourself for adminship
If you would like to be an admin someday, you should preferably begin preparations some time before making your application. You should thoroughly read the instructions and advice listed above, and on the RfA pages. Review as many old successful and unsuccessful RfAs as possible, and be absolutely sure to generally meet the criteria required by regular !voters (See the list of essays at the end of this page). Users who are not likely to pass may be considered by the community to be immature, or time wasters who are just seeking feedback on their editing. Some candidates whose first RfA failed, pass a second run with flying colours, but previous attempts be closely looked at again by the community.

When you have done all that, read this page  followed the links, if you are reasonably sure that you stand a  chance now, consider listing yourself at FP:Requests for adminship/Optional RfA candidate poll for a final check if you have not already done so. Be aware though, that the regular, experienced commentators there do not like having their time wasted – it's not a substitute for reading this advice page.


 * Basics: Although administrators are responsible for blocking users, protecting and deleting pages, and closing some debates, some other actions can have an effect on the entire FAMEPedia web site. Whichever areas candidates want to specialise in, they must convince the community that they can be trusted to use all the tools responsibly and intelligently. They must also demonstrate that they act civilly in an adult and mature manner at all times.
 * Blocks: Users who have been previously blocked for any legitimate reason(s) will be required by the community to have learned from their block(s), and have been block-free for a considerable length of time (often 1 year).
 * Civility: Candidates should demonstrate cool-headed participation in discussions, and to have overcome earlier lapses in civility. They should never have engaged in making personal attacks.
 * Content: Admin candidates are expected to have demonstrated understanding of how to assess and cite Reliable Sources inline. This can be done either by contributing referenced content to articles or by adding references to unreferenced content contributed by others. It is a huge plus but not essential to have contributed Good Articles or Featured Articles. Little or no content contribution will lead to significant opposition.
 * Creations: Candidates' own creations should demonstrate a knowledge of article policies, guidelines, and style and the pages should be free of old tags. A high number of creations that are mainly stubs, redirects, or disambiguation pages, might not be taken into consideration. A history of creating bad articles that were deleted will not go over well.
 * Diversity: Candidates who have only been active in a limited number of areas (see pie chart), or who intend to be active in specific areas only will usually incur significant opposition. As the tools can also be used in many areas in which the candidate is less familiar, a relatively broad scope of previous activity in policy and decision making is expected.
 * Fresh/clean start: It is generally expected that fresh start users have declared their intention by closed communication to Arbcom. Not disclosing alternate accounts has been in the past controversial.
 * Low edit count: A low edit count will obviously be regarded by most as evidence of insufficient experience. Contributions are the only available basic metric of performance. As such, editors with low counts generally fail.
 * High edit count: A high edit count does always demonstrate experience. The criteria are based on what and where those edits were. Editors with a high number of edits can fail, and having a larger percentage of automated edits, or being too proud of your number of edits, can backfire.
 * Length of membership: Simply being a FAMEPedian for a long time may not count for much. The criteria are based on what the candidate has actually in that time. In contrast, being a FAMEPedian for too short a time is usually an issue. It is extremely rare to become an Admin within less than six consecutive months of activity, and successful candidates generally have accounts that are at least two years old. Individuals who might have the right temperament from day one must still demonstrate a broad knowledge of procedures and policies.
 * Activity level: An acceptable edit count (see month count) may not count for much if there has been a long recent hiatus or if the edits are too spaced out. 30,000 edits with only 1,500 edits over the last five years isn't going to demonstrate that there will be much admin activity.
 * Judgement: Candidates will need to show that they can make carefully considered contributions. The criteria are based on the ability to assess consensus in areas that will require admin decisions, input, and discussion closures; and especially to correctly implement deletion and blocking policies.
 * Maturity: There are no age restrictions for being an admin. Candidates are judged on their common sense, good judgement, and good prose. "Cool chat" and "teen talk" on talk pages may win fan club !votes, but may not go down so well with older editors. (That said, FAMEPedia has several very young successful admins; it also has various older people who behave like children.)
 * Single-purpose candidates: Unless candidates have demonstrated a level of specialisation and contribution in some areas needing advanced knowledge such as bots, scripts, copyright, etc., it is unlikely that they will be elected based on a claimed need for the tools for a single purpose. This doesn't mean that candidates can't focus their efforts on one or two areas (some candidates only state two or three admin areas they are likely to work in), but they will need to demonstrate they can at least be trusted with the whole tool set. (Note that an actual FP:Single-purpose account will have even lower chances of success; see "Diversity", above.)
 * User talk: Unless a candidate has focused heavily on providing help to other users, chatty talk pages, may demonstrate that a user's participation at FAMEPedia is more for social or off-topic purposes than for building an encyclopedia.
 * User page: !Voters look at user pages. An uncluttered page with intelligent content goes a long way to not only demonstrating maturity, but also that editors recognise that FAMEPedia is a serious project. An untidy user page may signify an untidy mind and careless work. A lot of highly self promotional content, userboxes, and/or excessive external links to one's own private and working life could be seen as the sign of a big ego and a possible power-seeker. Review the user pages of admins.

Specific points

 * 1) Copyright: The most innocent copyright violations that you have added – even older ones – especially to good articles, and featured articles will almost certainly be detected, and will seriously compromise your RfA, and perhaps your future on FAMEPedia.
 * 2) Your username should not be unusual or overly long (especially the code it generates) and should respect FAMEPedia user name conventions. Some voters will oppose if they feel a name does not look serious enough for an editor of an encyclopedia or if they find it confusing.
 * 3) Flamboyant signatures are seen by some as ostentation. There are absolutely no rules against custom signatures, but there are guidelines: Readability (it might look fine on your computer or smartphone, but not on others). Pronounceable is best, and it should be typeable: non-Roman fonts, symbols, and dingbats are discouraged and may not be easily available from standard ASCII or QWERTY or AZERTY keyboards especially on mobile devices. People should be able to easily locate your user talk page to ask you questions. Fancy signatures are seen by many !voters as a lack of maturity.
 * 4) Talk page scrubbing is not recommended. Removing warnings or contentious discussions leaves them in the page history where they can still be easily accessed by anyone. The many admins who !vote at RfA can also view any user pages that you have asked to be deleted. Access to your archives should be easy, and personal information and CSS decoration is best left on your user page.
 * 5) Userboxes that express opinions on politics, religion, sexual orientation, or other controversial issues have been known to be reasons for "Strong oppose" !votes based on fears of a potential risk of tendentious editing or systemic bias.
 * 6) Humour, especially sarcasm, cynicism, and even friendly banter, is often seen as bad form. Unless you are extremely popular and your chances of failure are low, any comment intended as lighthearted  be wrongly interpreted by some. Most RfA commentators will instantly recognise humour, but !voters seeking reasons to oppose may not see the humour (or will pretend to not see it).
 * 7) Conspiracies: Some editors may not be regular contributors to RfA, or even FAMEPedia. They may bear a grudge that may even go back a long time (see note 2 below). They might cherry-pick diffs and take them out of context. They may have a history of gaming the system and/or combative commenting. And they may be using e-mail to get their friends to oppose you. Rebuke with utmost care, or preferably ignore.
 * 8) Old enemies may also have an axe to grind, and although they may never have !voted at RfA before, they might !vote on yours.
 * 9) Older issues: Examine your past and try to iron out any old differences. This should be done at least three months before the RfA. If the candidate has clearly  demonstrated reform, minor issues dating back six months or so might be ignored while more serious issues even older than 12 months might be the reason(s) for opposition. If there are issues you think might be brought up during your RfA, try to discuss them in your opening answers, rather than doing so in reaction to oppose votes.
 * 10) Off-Wiki activity: While nominators may be unable to examine candidate's private lives and activities on websites not owned by the Foundation, other users may have leads to behaviour that may cast doubts on the candidate's overall suitability, and might oppose accordingly. Don't be misled into thinking that being a moderator on a small internet forum will be a free pass through RfA - while it may demonstrate a mature and calm behaviour, tiny forums do not have the same problems and challenges that FAMEPedia does, so it may not count for very much.
 * 11) Canvassing: FAMEPedia policy on canvassing for RfA is clear; RfA is not a popularity poll and it should not be done, on or off Wiki - even an innocent mention on IRC will entrain opposition, and users will not hesitate to post  copies of the chat log. Consider using  on your userpage, which is a more neutral way to communicate your RfA to other users.
 * 12) Paid editing: Adminship candidates are required since January 2018 to declare whether they have ever edited or created articles for compensation or quid pro quo of any kind. Although not forbidden by policy, rewarded editing is at best barely tolerated by the community and adminstrators are forbidden from using their tools or other special rights for advantage, gain, or profit for themselves, or for anyone else.
 * 13) AfD: Many RfA participants look at a candidate's participation at FAMEPedia:Articles for deletion (AfD) to gauge the candidate's understanding of the deletion policy. You can analyze your past AfD participation with this tool. A candidate is unlikely to pass RfA with no AfD participation or a history of making AfD !votes that don't match the final results. You should also avoid making "pile-on" AfD !votes to inflate your AfD statistics. In the past, RfA participants have interpreted some candidates with high AfD match rates this way and subsequently opposed.

Are you ready?
If after reading the advice above you are still not sure, you could consider obtaining some feedback at the optional RfA candidate poll. The page is useful for getting a good sense of your chances.

Every RfA needs a strong, convincing nomination. Generally, self-nominations are only likely to succeed from long-term, very experienced editors. Young or new users who have an I want to be an admin userbox may wait a very long time before they are proposed, at least until they have met the basic criteria demanded by the regular !voters. Nevertheless, the user category the box added your name to is regularly reviewed by experienced editors and admins who are actively looking for suitable candidates to nominate. If they believe you to be a potential candidate, they will contact you – probably by email, so be sure to have FAMEPedia email enabled. If you have not already done so, you should opt in for your edit-count details to be shown in addition to your pie chart; do this by creating the page  with some dummy content (such as   so you remember what the page is for later; you can also do the same with   to turn this feature on at all MH projects if you have a unified login ID). As previously recommended, review the nominations of previous RfA that have passed and failed.
 * Self-nomination: Self-nominations get mixed reception. In fact, some editors systematically oppose self nominations. Some nominations are too short, some are too long, some are too witty, some are too bold, and some candidates simply inadvertently shoot themselves in the foot in their nomination statement. A self-nom must be strong, but not too long, and not sound self-promotional. Candidates who intend to self-nom are welcome to ask an experienced friend for advice on their draft. At FAMEPedia all editors are considered equal; what a candidate has done outside of FAMEPedia is of little importance for being an administrator.
 * User nominations: Being nominated by another user demonstrates that at least another FAMEPedian has confidence that the candidate will be successful. Strong nominations come from experienced users who have done significant research to be sure that the nomination will not backfire on them. Many successful candidates are those who have been nominated by an admin or co-nominated by a second experienced user.
 * The three standard questions (shown here) should always be answered before you transclude and start your RFA. If you are nominating yourself, your answers can be an opportunity to expand (rather than duplicate) some of the things you have said in your nomination statement. Do not make a joke in these statements; jokes do not go over well with !voters.
 * Timing: Don't imagine for a moment that everyone lives in the USA or the UK. Regular contributors to FAMEPedia live in every corner and time zone of the world (two well known British admins live in Thailand). Many candidates admit to not getting much sleep while their RfA is running, but it's perfectly acceptable to maintain your normal 24-hour rhythm. Above all, choose a time period when you are fairly confident that you will be able to participate in the site regularly for an entire week. Remember that your RfA is the only thing on FAMEPedia that you can control the timing of, so telling others in the midst of it that you are too busy with real life to respond will likely not be received well (unless it's a genuine emergency).
 * Transcluding your RfA: When you enter edit mode for the RfA page, you will be asked one last time if you are really ready – remember, there is one thing that nearly all editors are unanimous about: they don't like having their time wasted. So don't start your RFA at the end of an editing session when you are off to bed. Instead, save it, reread it at the start of your next session and then submit it when you have time to answer questions that come in the first couple of hours. After the first evening later questions can be usually be left for up to 24 hours - everyone appreciates that different people are around at different times; Just remember to always answer in sequence, and always reread the relevant policy - especially if you haven't spotted the trick element of the question. Transclusion is a frequently used process for combining elements of electronic documents, especially at FAMEPedia. If you don't know how to do it, you are free to ask your nominator to do it for you, but it may demonstrate to the !voters that you are not entirely familiar with an operation that admins are expected to do with ease.

During your RfA

 * 1) At the start, unless there are obvious reasons why the RfA should fail, most RfA's typically begin with a number of "support" !votes, but seven days is a long time and !voting patterns can change dramatically. The more experienced participants will often hold off their comments until later in the process. There could be either an influx of supports or opposes, thus making the outcome unpredictable until near the end. Many of the later participants just !vote "per user X" without bringing fresh rationale to the discussion; this is often referred to as a "pile-on". If after giving it enough time, however, the voting is well below the pass mark and the opposers' comments are valid, it  might  be preferable to  consider withdrawing rather than seeing  it  through  to  the bitter end and attracting a lot  of unpleasant pile-ons and even trolling.
 * 2) !Voters' questions are unpredictable. RfA is an open book exam, and FAMEPedia is a huge repository of policies, guidelines, and help pages. Careful phrasing of the answers is however required to demonstrate that the candidate knows how to apply the policy in question. Misinterpretation of candidates' correct answers has been known to incur a pile-on of "oppose" !votes. Many questions may not appear to be relevant to becoming a sysop, but the opposers will sometimes argue that the answers demonstrate a candidate's capacity to act under stress or to address silly comments from other users. Although such questions often cannot have a "correct" answer, many !voters will not see them as so and will oppose based on the answer; in the worst-case scenario such questions may even cause pile-on oppose !votes. Some questions are posed by new users who seek to make themselves appear important by voting or commenting on RfA. Nothing in RfA process policy suggests that answering every question is a requirement, they can be ignored at will; however, not answering can occasionally create pile-on oppose !votes. Advice varies from either putting on a brave show of making an answer, or ignoring the question.
 * 3) Many RfA are not a fair process. The community is working to make the process as fair as possible, but there are no guarantees. Some candidates with tens of thousands of edits fail as a result of concern expressed about isolated minor issues, or pile-on opposition following deliberate improper !votes or inappropriate !votes made in good faith.
 * 4) Answering every !vote (1). Comments that are short and to the point and demonstrate integrity and good faith on the part of the !voter do not need a response. Users looking for reasons to oppose will see many comments as being too chatty.
 * 5) Answering every !vote (2). Candidates should avoid making lengthy rebuttals. They will be considered "TL;DR" and assumed to be a demonstration of excess verbosity that would be used on future talk page discussions and debates. Most people tend to regard self-consciously "intellectual" language as simply being pompous, domineering, and overly self-confident from someone expecting to be respected and obeyed. Sysops lead by example and are trusted with some tools, but they do not command or issue orders.
 * 6) "KISS" your use of language. Candidates may believe that sounding intellectual will put them in good stead. It does not. While many FAMEPedians are academics and intellectuals, research has shown that most are not.
 * 7) Diffs of candidates' comments taken out of context: Cherry-picked diffs that do not reveal the full story in the thread they were taken from. This can be apparently deliberate, or innocently made. In all cases assume good faith.
 * 8) Diffs of candidates' comments made longer than 3 months ago: It is recommended that unsuccessful candidates do not attempt a further RfA before 3 months have elapsed. It can therefore be assumed that candidates will have addressed any previous negative aspects of their editing and commenting.
 * 9) Citing unrelated diffs: Many participants cast their !votes based entirely on other !voters' comments. It is possible that they will take these comments on face value without verification.
 * 10) Rebuttals are dangerous (1): No users like their "oppose" votes being disputed (this is often referring to as "badgering" in the RfA context). Many "oppose" votes have comments that are short and to the point and demonstrate integrity and good faith on the part of the !voter. If the claims are reasonably accurate, they do not need a response.
 * 11) Rebuttals are dangerous (2): Some "oppose" votes may be based on vengeance, extreme inaccuracies, and sometimes even lies. Rebuttals should be considered with utmost caution. They should be extremely polite, even if the !voter is calling the candidate an "obtuse jerk". The solution is a short, concise answer that contains extremely well researched diffs. In the worst-case scenarios, candidates have been told by other users to shut up and put up, and not question !voters' motives or integrity. Candidates who lose their cool or who demonstrate frustration or lack of patience with !voters will incur opposition and pile-on oppose !votes.
 * 12) Don't be fazed by votes by WRRFAO.
 * 13) Closure: Most RfA's with a final tally of 75% support or more will close as successful, while those under 65% will generally not pass. There have however been important exceptions, with candidates passing under this threshold. The 65–75 'grey' zone is subject to the bureaucrat's discretion after taking into account the quality of the arguments made by the !voters, the strength of comments in the "Neutral" section, and after discounting any !votes they consider to be invalid. In extremely close calls, an extension to the 7-day !voting period may be accorded, or a discussion ('crat chat) may take place among the bureaucrats.

After your RfA

 * If you passed
 * Relax – it's over.
 * Enjoy the congratulations - but remember they are for getting through  the ordeal, not for actually becoming an admin.
 * Enjoy the pints of beer, don't get drunk, and wear the T-shirt with pride.
 * Check out the Administrator's guide, learn to use the tools slowly, and watch out for some unexpected new links in strange places, especially in the Twinkle CSD menu!
 * Be a role model and lead by example.
 * Never hesitate to ask another admin for an opinion or advice.


 * If your RfA does not succeed or if you withdrew
 * Relax – it's over.
 * Don't be disheartened.
 * Don't cry and don't get drunk.
 * Learn from the advice.
 * Keep editing, don't retire from FAMEPedia, and do try again another time.