User:Asilvering/2024 EFA notes on AFDs
Currently still working on this, mind the dust.
Participation in Articles for deletion discussions often comes up in requests for adminship, because participation there can be a good yardstick for someone's general cluefulness, knowledge of policies, ability to engage with people they disagree with, ability to gracefully accept being wrong, and, unfortunately often, ability to remain calm while being accused of being an idiot, a fifth columnist, out to destroy the encyclopedia, or whatever. Also, there's a link to the AfD stats tool next to each candidate's name, and that's tempting to click on.
But people tend to just look at the match rate. That's bad! So I made this chart. Blah blah here are some things that might be a sign of hijinks:
- like, in a list form
I hope this helps you make decisions about who to support in the admin elections! If you have questions or want to argue with me about the table, please use this talk page. If you want to argue about the comments, please use the candidate discussion page!
Table
[edit]I forked this from Femke's guide, leaving in the two right-hand columns as useful context. The comments are copied over from the candidate discussion pages, but I've also added a column for my overall impression and the usefulness of this information.
For some candidates, their AfD record will be more useful to understand their suitability for adminship than others. Many of the candidates haven't taken part in a lot of AfDs, or the ones they did take part in were years ago; in this case, their record doesn't say much about their current abilities. For admin candidates with an interest in taking part in article deletion processes, their AfD record is really quite important to consider, even if the data isn't very good. (Yes, I think it's important for all article deletion processes, even CSD and PROD.)
Overall impression legend:
- this AfD record reflects particularly well on this candidate.- - this AfD record checks out; nothing particularly grabbed me as worthy of note.
- this is not a good AfD record, but AfD isn't everything.
- this AfD record reflects poorly on the candidate in a significant way.
Usefulness of record legend (note that this is all my opinion):
- this is important for evaluating the candidate (they want to work in deletion and the results are helpful)
- this is useful for evaluating the candidate (the results say something about their temperament, judgment, or understanding of policies/guidelines)
- eh, whatever (typically because these results don't say much)
- this is not useful for evaluating the candidate (typically because data is too stale)
- using this to evaluate the candidate would be a particularly bad idea
| Name | AfD stats link | AfD record overall impression | Usefulness of AfD record for evaluating candidate | Evaluative comment | Extra comments about deletion from me | Extra comments from others? | High-trust perms - notes by Femke | Wants to help with (experience) - notes by Femke | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Ahecht | 
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88.70% match rate, n of 291. 30 keep !votes to 256 delete !votes. Mildly subjective comment: these are good numbers, especially for someone who says they aren't particularly interested in working in deletion. The high proportion of deletes in the total is overwhelmingly due to nominations (214 in total). Stats are somewhat stale, with only 4 AfDs in the past year; no red flags in the recent ones. | Fun fact: Ahecht maintains the AfD stats tool: [1] | AP, NPP, PM, TE | fully protected pages, G6 | ||
| 2 | AntiDionysius, |
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100% match rate, n of 10. 1 keep !votes to 10 delete !votes. Mildly subjective comment: candidate's Q6 says they're not very experienced with AfD, which is true, but I don't see any red or even pinkish flags in here. I looked at all the ones from the last year. | CSD noms: I've been turning down many of this candidate's G11 nominations, particularly in draftspace (where I think it's important to delete only the most egregious cases). Since I'm aware I'm lighter on the G11 trigger than many others, I think it would be better for someone who isn't me to look into this and give an opinion. | - | Blocking vandals ([1])
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| 3 | Bastun, |
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since Asilvering hasn't gotten around to analyzing AfD stats here yet, I'll do it: 83.9% match rate, n of 124. 47 keep, 105 delete (plus 6 merge and 2 redir). Of their nominations, 69% were deleted, but this is skewed by 6 no consensus/other closes and 9 unclosed AfDs. These stats seem decent to me. Toadspike [Talk] 16:49, 23 October 2024 (UTC)
from me: 40 of those are nominations, which brings their delete !vote % down even more. Some recent noms where an obvious WP:ATD isn't considered beforehand, eg [1] (imo not a huge concern, but worth a reminder that we should consider alternatives that preserve page history when possible); I'm confused by the wording of this recent nom [2], since that Guardian review wasn't hiding; but these are pretty small potatoes and I'd say their AfD participation and rationales is good overall - explains when necessary, writes shorter comments/rationales when it's not. (fwiw, I don't think it was necessary on this one [3], but you're not going to make 40 AfD noms without getting accused of a failure to WP:BEFORE at least once.) I think you'd have to be pretty picky to say this record doesn't reflect well on the candidate in general. |
Boy oh boy have I ever gone back and forth about writing this comment at all. Here's the shortest thing I can come up with: I think in a regular RFA bits and pieces of this AfD record are the kind of thing that would have people saying "come back in six months". I think that would be bs to say during an RFA, and I think it's even more bs to say now, when we're trialling an election system we may never repeat (let alone in six months) that was created in large part because people felt RFA was too much of a meatgrinder. If this nonspecific vibes comment makes you want to vote oppose on this candidate, well, I can't stop you, but I think you're missing the point and I wish you wouldn't. It's worth looking at the candidate's XTools here: for the past several years, they've had a combined user talk and project-space edit proportion of <15%. This year, so far it's at 28%. That's in large part due to getting more active in stuff like AfD and NPP. So this is what the candidate looks like when they're learning the ropes of something new - and my conclusion is that they're doing perfectly fine. If they're even marginally more careful with the admin tools, they'll continue to be fine. | NPP | PROD, CSD, AIV | ||
| 4 | DoubleGrazing |
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89.50% match rate, n of 447. 14 keep !votes to 431 delete !votes. Mildly subjective comment: only one result hasn't gone their way in 2024, and it was a "draftify" instead of the voted-for "delete"; many of these deletes (226!) are nominations from doing NPP work; this is a very good AfD record. | the delete % is extremely high, even if the nominations are removed, but they're extremely accurate delete !votes and I'm not worried about this; I have to go back a full year to find the first AfD where the candidate !voted delete and the outcome was keep. | Thread on CSD, incl. comment from cand.: [2] | AP, NPP, PM | SPI, AfD, copyvio | |
| 5 | Dr vulpes |
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89.50% match rate, n of 275. 71 keep !votes to 157 delete !votes. Mildly subjective comment: these are great numbers; I don't suspect vote-stacking |
his AfD !votes are a "no flags, red or otherwise" imo, but the noms are consistently clear and helpful, and he's happy to change his mind when presented with new information. Some samples: [1], [2], [3], [4]. | Many comments about this on discussion page | NPP, PM | Redirect CSD, RfPP, PERM | |
| 6 | EggRoll97 | 
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50.00% match rate, n of 18. 5 keep !votes to 14 delete !votes. Mildly subjective comment: Well, it's not terribly subjective to call this a "poor" AfD record. But most of these are from a while ago - the two that were in the last year both matched the result. The candidate also hasn't expressed any interest in deletion processes. So while this AfD record obviously isn't cause to recommend the candidate, it doesn't really seem like a reason for concern either. | Edit filter manager, global edit filter helper, NPP, PM | AIV, view deleted content for edit filters | |||
| 7 | FOARP, |
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89.40% match rate, n of 404. 77 keep !votes to 321 delete !votes. Mildly subjective comment: lots of consistently good participation, and I see a lot of "working together to find consensus" rather than "fighting the other side" in here. | PM | RM, AfD | |||
| 8 | Frost, |
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88.20% match rate, n of 17. 1 keep !votes to 16 delete !votes. Mildly subjective comment: most of this is nominations, all but one of which matched; the one that didn't isn't a real miss, in my opinion (it ended in merge but just as easily could have been to redirect, which would count as a match). I participated in the other miss, so no further comment there. | PM | Vandal fighting without burdening admins | |||
| 9 | Hawkeye7, | /?
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90.20% match rate, n of 427. 204 keep !votes to 219 delete !votes. Mildly subjective comment: obviously, these are very good numbers, and there's plenty of participation over the past year. | Fram has a much more negative opinion [3]; I didn't look particularly deeply here because it seemed a bit silly (I didn't think there was any way that Hawkeye7's AfD participation was going to be important to the final result), but in light of this comment |
Former admin, AP, MMS, NPP, PM | DYK, RfPP, RM | ||
| 11 | Knightoftheswords281 |
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72.70% match rate, n of 22. 16 keep !votes to 2 delete !votes. Mildly subjective comment: the match % is on the low side compared to the other candidates in this election but I don't recommend putting much stock into it as the candidate does not participate in AfD often and evidently mostly joins in when they see something that they think shouldn't be deleted. There are a couple vote-stacky ones like this but I don't think it's a real concern. Here are some more substantial ones: [53], [54]. In short, nothing much to go by here. | AP | ITN | |||
| 12 | Leonidlednev, |
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no experience with AfD whatsoever; his only edits to AfD pages are reverts of vandalism. He maintains CSD logs, here and here, which I have not investigated. | Global rollbacker | AIV, UAA, XfD, CSD G3/G11 | |||
| 13 | LindsayH, |
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88.70% match rate, n of 62. 5 keep !votes to 56 delete !votes. Mildly subjective comment: only 5 AfDs in the last year (all matched, nothing remarkable), so these numbers aren't terribly useful. | CSD etc: [4] | NPP | Clear backlogs | ||
| 14 | MarcGarver, |
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98.20% match rate, n of 55. 1 keep !votes to 58 delete !votes. Mildly subjective comment: these stats are great but they're stale - most of the participation is from years and years ago. Obvious tendency to deletion, but almost all of these are nominations, and here the % match rate speaks for itself. | Steward, Wikibooks sysop & checkuser, AP, NPP | Clear backlogs | |||
| 15 | Mdewman6, |
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86.50% match rate, n of 37. 11 keep !votes to 21 delete !votes. Mildly subjective comment: only five AfDs in the past year, and the candidate doesn't express an interest in deletion except via RM/RfD, so the stats are less relevant here. From some recent ones: [31], [32], [33]. These are good, clear AfD rationales, which indicate to me a desire for discussion and consensus rather than simply deletion. | NPP, PM | Close RfDs, RM | |||
| 17 | Pbritti, |
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78.80% match rate, n of 203. 69 keep !votes to 116 delete !votes. Mildly subjective comment: 38 of those deletes are noms, which leaves the keep:delete rate pretty even; also a good handful of WP:ATDs. Some samples: a gracious withdrawal [47]; a clear and unopposed nom [48]; a nom where he's responded to a keep [49]; explaining his work and changing his mind [50]; another full nom (this one ending in merge) [51]. This one [52] is nearly a year old at this point but illustrates well the candidate's approach to collaboration and dialogue in AfDs. Anyone tempted to compare match rates when evaluating candidates will notice that Pbritti's is lower than most others; I find Pbritti's AfD participation better than most and would strongly warn against using the numbers as criteria for evaluation here. | I think this AfD record speaks really well of the candidate in general, beyond the bounds of simply understanding the related policies. Not afraid to disagree with others or to call for some WP:TNT where warranted; collaborative with others and happy to explain his thinking; makes a good honest effort to find sources before giving up, and points out where other sources might still be found. | AP, NPP | AfD, PROD | ||
| 18 | Peaceray, |
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88.20% match rate, n of 17. 15 keep !votes to 4 delete !votes. Mildly subjective comment: these numbers go all the way back to 2011 and there are none from the past year, so they're of limited value for assessing the candidate, who in any case has not expressed an interest in deletion processes. | AP, MMS, PM, TE | Vandal fighting & helping | |||
| 19 | Pharaoh of the Wizards, nomination, Xtools | 
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97.70% match rate, n of 459. 87 keep !votes to 302 delete !votes. Mildly subjective comment: this is clear vote-stacking. Pharaoh's comments tend to be late or the very last in a discussion, very brief, and would not change the outcome: [55], [56], [57], [58], [59], [60], etc. Many of their votes are as the third delete !voter (eg [61]), which as a closer I usually appreciate, since it helps avoid soft deletion or no consensus closes for lack of participation - but there's still an expectation that participants aren't just agreeing with the nom without doing any further checks. For someone who says AfD is their best contribution, I'd like to see some substantial deletion rationales, but I didn't find any. | AP | AIV, AfD, UAA | |||
| 20 | Queen of Hearts, | /
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85.70% match rate, n of 49. 14 keep !votes to 23 delete !votes. Mildly subjective comment: well, I'm writing one of these since I'm writing one for everybody, but QoH is more interested in the other XfDs so I hope someone else can fill in some more detail there. As for AfDs, her stats are good; maybe the low overall participation would give someone pause since she's interested in closing XfDs, but for that I'd refer folks back to the candidate's answer to Q2. Concerning the !votes themselves, I spot-checked many and wouldn't call any of the ones I saw "vote stacking", though I didn't find any that were in depth or any that turned the discussion. tl;dr: look at QoH's other stuff. | About other XfDs: [5] | NPP, PM | XfD | ||
| 21 | Robert McClenon, |
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26 keep !votes to 374 delete !votes. Mildly subjective comment: many of the mismatches are because he frequently votes for draftification and the article is kept; some pretty strange ones like this one [40] that don't show any evidence for deletion, just gives a condition for WP:HEY, which isn't really how AfD is supposed to work; here [41] is another example of that, which leaves all the other voters somewhat confused. Here [42] is another strange one, where Robert McClenon votes delete explicitly without checking for sources, because In my opinion, the burden of checking for sources is on article authors even before it is on nominators. Article authors should wait until the sources exist before moving the article into article space in the expectation that there will be reviews. A film article with no reviews is a film article that should have stayed in draft space or user space until the reviews were published. |
At that point I had to stop, since I wasn't going to be able to maintain a tone worthy of a section I intended to keep only "mildly subjective". I am really concerned about these results. A common refrain at AfD is that AfD is WP:NOTCLEANUP, but that's more or less explicitly what Robert McClenon's intent is in these examples. In the third, his was the sole !delete vote remaining, preventing the nomination from being withdrawn. (This is not a case of someone not noticing the later comments.) | AP, NPP, PM | MfD, Deletion review, G6/G11 | ||
| 22 | Rsjaffe, |
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84.20% match rate, n of 272. 12 keep !votes to 250 delete !votes. Mildly subjective comment: most participation is from 2022 and earlier; in all 10 of the AfDs he participated in over the past year, his !vote matched the result. Some might find his !votes a bit curt but I don't see any red flags. Of the deletes in this data, 107/272 were from nominations. Most of these numbers are from 2022 and 2021. |
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by candidate: [6] | NPP | SPI ([2]), vandals, UPE
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| 23 | Sable232, |
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92.70% match rate, n of 124. 9 keep !votes to 92 delete !votes. Mildly subjective comment: most of this participation is from ages ago; only 7 in the past year (all matches); these are all in their area of editing interest (cars) and have extensive, helpful rationales, eg [29], [30]. | I wrote this before the discussion period opened and am very amused to see the answer to Q6. fwiw, it looks like your experience with AfD is just fine! | - | SPI, RfPP ([3]), AIV
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| 24 | SD0001, |
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85.70% match rate, n of 63. 34 keep !votes to 42 delete !votes. Mildly subjective comment: a good record, especially for someone who says they're not interested in deletion-related areas; only one in the last year. | BAG, NPP, PM, TE | Editing protected modules etc, backlogs | |||
| 25 | SilverLocust, |
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92.30% match rate, n of 13. 1 keep !votes to 8 delete !votes. Mildly subjective comment: great match rate, most of the data is recent, no red flags here at all; no cause for concern, and candidate has not expressed an interest in deletion processes. | MMS, NPP, PM, TE | RM, work as arb clerk | |||
| 26 | Sohom Datta, |
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81.70% match rate, n of 82. 9 keep !votes to 76 delete !votes. Mildly subjective comment: 64 of these delete !votes are nominations, which leaves their !votes pretty balanced. In this AfD, they show that they are happy to reconsider when they appear to be wrong (more subjective comment: I'm not sure you were wrong, Sohom); in this one, they make good arguments that don't ultimately prevail (more subjective comment: I think this is a poor WP:NAC). Typical participation looks like this. I was surprised to find this much participation and this match rate given the candidate's stated interests, actually, so I think the main takeaway to be had here is "not jerk, has clues even outside of their regular interest". | AP, NPP, TE, Global Interface Editor | Technical stuff, start slowly DYK | |||
| 27 | Spy-cicle, |
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84.30% match rate, n of 108. 36 keep !votes to 57 delete !votes. Mildly subjective comment: these are good numbers, but only 6 are from the last year; there is nothing unusual to mention about their participation in the six recent ones. | - | AIV, RfPP, AfD | |||
| 28 | Starship.paint, |
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89.10% match rate, n of 138. 42 keep !votes to 80 delete !votes. Mildly subjective comment: these are good numbers but they go back more than a decade so they're not a strong basis for any conclusion about the candidate. He participated in 7 AfDs in the past year, all related to I/P; the !votes here are typically short and, obviously, given the topic area, the AfDs are well-attended and no one vote is likely to sway the discussion by itself. I spot-checked a few older AfDs and found only very brief !votes; if they were more recent I might have looked harder to see if it was evidence of vote-stacking, but since it's from more than a year ago I don't think it's a big issue. tl;dr, ignore the numbers, and evaluate the candidate on other things. | AP | AN(I), AE, ITN | |||
| 29 | SWinxy, |
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71.9%% match rate, n of 309. 32 keep !votes to 156 delete !votes, 31 of which are nominations. Subjective comment: He does not tend to pile-on !votes and will attempt to add sources (e.g., here and here) and/or provide decent reasoning for !vote (e.g., here and here). Significa liberdade (she/her) (talk) 03:42, 23 October 2024 (UTC) (stepping in for asilvering) | All I'd add to this is that there are only 12 in the last year, so the numbers are of limited use. His match rate in the past year is 100%, with the technical exception of this one, but I'd hardly call that a flub. | TE | RfPP ([4]), view deleted, edit fully protected
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| 30 | ThadeusOfNazereth, |
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83.90% match rate, n of 137. 21 keep !votes to 111 delete !votes. Mildly subjective comment: 54 of those deletes are nominations; not in the stats are a number of redirect !votes as well. Participation goes back a few years, 20 in the past year, most of those in the past month. Plenty of green flags in the last year: a gracious withdraw [17]; a clear nom [18]; clear WP:BEFORE and a good WP:ATD [19]; clear keep rationales [20], [21]. | Personal comment: I wish more AfD participants were like this. | AP, NPP | XfD, AIV, RfPP, DYK, RSN | ||
| 31 | The Squirrel Conspiracy, |
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77.40% match rate, n of 53. 2 keep !votes to 53 delete !votes. Mildly subjective comment: only 9 in the last year; most of this data is from 2020. Given the candidate's stated reasons for running I don't think any of this is terribly relevant (in particular, I think anyone worried about high delete !vote ratios shouldn't be, given their emphasis on cleaning up cross-wiki spam). More relevant is the approach, so here are his two noms from the past year: [34], [35]. Both successful, and both appropriately open to discussion ("appears to" fail GNG, etc). No real flags, red or otherwise. | Wikidata sysop, Commons sysop, AP, NPP | cross-wiki spam/vandals | |||
| 32 | Valenciano, |
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93.70% match rate, n of 277. 51 keep !votes to 238 delete !votes. Mildly subjective comment: these stats are great but they're very stale - only 1 AfD in the past year, and only 9 in the past five years. | AP, NPP | AIV, UAA, RFPP | |||
| 33 | Velella, |
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77.80% match rate, n of 450. 9 keep !votes to 475 delete !votes. Mildly subjective comment: 292 of the deletes are nominations; the keep rate on !votes only is still very low after the noms are removed. Candidate has been participating at AfD for a long time. Some recent-ish flubs ([36], [37]), but I don't see anything really concerning. Here are some typical noms: [38], [39]. | Highly accurate at CSD: [7] | AP, NPP | vandalism, UPE, AfD | ||
| 34 | Zippybonzo, |
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80.00% match rate, n of 25. 3 keep !votes to 24 delete !votes. Mildly subjective comment: they have only participated in 3 AfDs in the past year, but they express an interest in deletion process (CSD and PROD) | Personal comment: I'm concerned about a candidate who expresses interest in deletion processes but has so little experience in them. These two recent AfDs [6], [7], which are 2/3 of the AfDs they've !voted in in the past year, don't inspire confidence. Their PROD log only has four items, but may have been turned off? (Nothing wrong with not keeping a log.) Their CSD log has not been turned off, but there are only ten items in the last year.
important correction: Page curation deletion logs. – DreamRimmer (talk) 07:49, 22 October 2024 (UTC) |
short conversation, incl. response from cand.: [8] | NPP, PM | CSD, PROD, AIV, UAA |
Other guides
[edit]- User:Novem Linguae/Essays/2024 administrator election voter guide
- User:Femke/2024 admin election notes
- User:Guerillero/Admin Elections 2024 Guide
- User:Bugghost/Admin election notes
Notes
[edit]- ^ Admin score shows experience at AIV/RfPP
- ^ Looked at 10 reports. All led to blocks.
- ^ Of the last 18 requests here, 16 were honoured, 1 seemed an accidental part of a list, 1 was reasonable request which was resolved with a block
- ^ All requests since 2022 were honoured. 34 requests total, with some misses before that (when to block/when to protect)