YQueue up "discussion phase" and "voting phase" MMS messages at WT:MMS
set up SecurePoll with WMF
YRun voter list script so we have plenty of time to get community feedback and later send to WMF to put into SecurePoll. WMF T&S needs minimum 2 days lead time.
YSet up a draft of the SecurePoll settings we want to request and run it by WT:AELECT
YSubmit list of candidates to WMF T&S and get it put into SecurePoll
YRemove "don't discuss yet" message boxes from candidate subpages
Discussion phase - Tue Oct 22 - Thu Oct 24 (3 days)
Thu Oct 24 - absolute last day to question candidates on the official talk pages. locked down tight at the end of the day, per the RFC, which states that questions after the discussion phase are discouraged and must go to user talk
insert SecurePoll link into the voting page
make sure SecurePull is fully configured and ready to go (voter roll added, translation messages added)
lower support threshold from 70% to 65%. the candidates in the 65.00%-69.99% range of the October 2024 admin elections were good candidates, whom I mostly voted support for. would have been good for them to pass
put the discussion phase on the weekend, to help out voters with day jobs
alphabetize candidates in SecurePoll. i assume many folks research the candidates before arriving at the vote screen, so might as well make it easier to transfer the votes over.
change voter suffrage to extendedconfirmed, to match RFA and to greatly simplify the SecurePoll voter eligibility workflow
create a subpage that is linked from the main election page where links to voter guides can be added
lessons / other notes
616 votes total,[1] lowest # of support+oppose votes for a candidate was 318. so there are absolutely no concerns about quorum. more scrutiny per candidate than a typical RFA.
candidate with lowest # of opposes was 74. this suggests that 74 of the 616 voters (12%) blanket opposed everyone.
candidate with the highest support percentage received 83.42%. this suggests that there is at least a -16.58% penalty for doing AELECT compared to RFA. judging from ACE, it may be as high as -20%
elections are best pre-scheduled, not spontaneous when a candidate list fills up. we pretty much have to use pre-scheduling until enwiki gets local electionadmins, due to the WMF T&S election calendar not having that many openings and having months waits until the next opening.
needs more thought
how often should admin elections be? Every 6 months? Once a year? - once we get local electionadmins on enwiki, we can do even more often than this. although keep in mind elections are expensive in terms of election commission time, scrutineer time, and WMF T&S time
shorten or eliminate intermission? - won't need as much time to set up SecurePoll once 1) we simplify voter eligibility to extendecconfirmed, 2) we have local enwiki electionadmins
role of bureaucrats?
add "election commissioner" or panel of election commissioners?
MMS all eligible voters (like they do for ACE)?
the stewards have stated they do not want to be responsible for scrutineering this regularly due to bandwidth issues. who will do scrutineering? enwiki checkusers?
early September - MMS, admin newsletter with the schedule and plans, Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Newsroom/Suggestions