Wikipedia:Miniguide to requests for adminship

The following is a very basic guide to Wikipedia:Requests for adminship (RfA). This is intended to be an informal, minimalistic guide. For the full guide to RfA, please see the Guide to requests for adminship. Note: This is not policy. Please do not quote it as such.

For nominees

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• Please be aware RfA is often a harsh, even brutal process. People will look at, and likely criticize, everything and anything you have done (or not done, for that matter).
• People sometimes oppose for no reason at all, or for reasons that may seem silly. People are not required to explain their position. Don't feel bad, it happens to a lot of people.
• If someone nominates you, feel free to decline if you do not think you are ready. Decline politely and keep up the good work. Even after the process starts, you can withdraw at any stage.
• If you are doing a self-nomination, make sure you set up the nomination correctly and don't support yourself. People tend to have higher standards for self-nominations, and messing them up can lead to oppose votes. Perhaps consider requesting a nomination.

What contributors look for in an Admin nominee

These are not required standards. People may have personal standards when considering nominees, but in general, editors are probably looking for:

• A substantial number of non-automated (e.g.: edits not making use of Twinkle, Huggle, AWB, et cetera) edits within a wide variety of namespaces (Most successful nominees have more than 3,000 non-automated edits. See the stats for yourself at this page).
• A reasonable amount of time with the project (Most successful nominees have been at Wikipedia for at least 6 months.)
• A willingness to do "unglamorous, repetitive work"
• A civil manner with no recent personal attacks, POV pushing, vandalism, or edit warring
• No errors or “bad calls” involving AfD's, CSD's, or other deletion matters. (Additionally, conflict resolution issues are a strong minus for most editors.)
• An enabled email address
• Good use of edit summaries

See what happened in some recent successes and failures for a guide.

For RfA contributors

Strictly observe Wikipedia:Civility. Please see the full guide for information on voting directions, decorum, and demeanour.

See also

Category:Matters related to requests for adminship lists many individual users' criteria for admin candidate assessment. See under 'U' (User).