User talk:Canadianpoliticaljunkie

🗳️ My Votes – July 2025 RfA Elections

After reviewing candidate statements, answers, editing histories, and community feedback, I cast the following votes in the July 2025 Administrator Elections. I based my decisions on collaboration, temperament, respect for consensus, and real contributions to content and community.

✅ Support

I supported the following candidates, all of whom I believe will strengthen the admin corps through steady, policy-compliant, and community-minded behavior:

• User:CoconutOctopus – Excellent AfC reviewer, calm demeanor, strong track record of mentorship.
• User:Curbon7 – Experienced article writer and AfD participant with a balanced, inclusionist approach.
• User:Darth Stabro – Steady hand in contentious areas (e.g., papal conclave), collaborative and trusted.
• User:Jlwoodwa – Vigilant patroller and helpful presence at the Teahouse; excellent at SPI and NPP.
• User:Kj cheetham – Thoughtful deletion reviewer with a constructive attitude and attention to feedback.
• User:KylieTastic – Powerhouse behind-the-scenes contributor; patient, policy-savvy, and highly trusted.
• User:Pbritti – Content creator with principled editorial standards; some bluntness but always policy-driven.
• User:Ser! – Calm, consensus-oriented, and active in both content and cleanup.
• User:Smasongarrison – Exceptional at categorization, style, and bias reduction in medical/disability content.
• User:UndercoverClassicist – Scholarly, policy-respecting editor with clear signs of growth from past mistakes.

🟡 Abstain

I abstained on the following candidates due to either limited visibility in community discussion spaces or lack of sufficient information to confidently support:

• User:Hilst
• User:Hinnk
• User:Patient Zero

❌ Oppose

I opposed the following candidates based on conduct history, recent rule adherence issues, or temperament concerns:

• User:North8000 – Long history of ideological battleground behavior, past topic bans, and accountability concerns.
• User:Usernamekiran – Rigid rule enforcement combined with past interpersonal issues and misjudgments.
• User:Vestrian24Bio – Too inexperienced; recent edit-warring and past promotional editing raise readiness concerns.

🗳️ July 2025 RfA Results: Analysis and Reflections

I followed this year’s RfA elections closely and cast votes for every candidate. Out of the ten candidates I supported, nine were successfully elected — the only one who didn’t make it was User:Pbritti, who came just under the threshold with ~66.5% support. I also opposed three candidates — User:North8000, User:Usernamekiran, and User:Vestrian24Bio — all of whom failed, and in two cases (North and Vestrian) with extremely low percentages. Overall, my ballot lined up pretty closely with community consensus, but there were some interesting patterns worth noting.

📈 What Worked This Year

The strongest correlation with support was steady, policy-compliant backlog work — particularly in:

• Articles for Creation (AfC)
• New Page Patrol
• Category cleanup
• Anti-vandalism and SPI

The highest vote-getters — User:KylieTastic, User:Kj cheetham, User:Ser!, User:Curbon7 — are all contributors with long records of low-drama, high-volume maintenance work and consistently accurate decision-making. They also answered questions clearly and with humility. Even candidates with less visibility in drama or noticeboards (like User:CoconutOctopus and User:Hinnk) did well when they had a solid track record of thoughtful edits and good judgment.

Temperament clearly mattered too. Candidates who were calm, open to feedback, and collaborative — especially when responding to critical or nuanced questions — performed much better than those who were evasive or combative. In particular, I think User:UndercoverClassicist deserves credit for overcoming a past behavioral issue and showing clear signs of growth; the community rewarded that with election, and rightly so.

⚠️ What Hurt Candidates

The biggest vote-killers were:

• Recent or unresolved conduct issues
• Evasive or defensive answers in Q&A
• Battleground history, especially on politicized topics

User:North8000 was the clearest example: despite being active for 16 years and having some content credentials, his long record of topic bans, battleground behavior, and a tendency to deflect responsibility led to just 25% support — and even some of that felt charitable. User:Vestrian24Bio had a more recent but similar story: a 2025 block for edit-warring on a culturally sensitive infobox, coupled with an earlier paid-editing COI issue, left him with under 15% support. In both cases, voters made it clear that lack of policy judgment and self-awareness are non-starters.

Even borderline candidates like User:Usernamekiran and User:Patient Zero struggled with tone and perceived rigidity — they weren't outright disruptive, but concerns about bluntness or overly template-driven enforcement likely kept them below the line. User:Darth Stabro, despite having some collaborative experience, came across as too passive and underwhelming in his answers, which probably explains his steep 44.9% result.

🧠 Takeaways

• The community heavily favors high-volume, accurate, and policy-literate contributors who work behind the scenes.
• Temperament and tone still matter — being helpful, reflective, and humble in Q&A made a clear difference.
• Past mistakes can be forgiven, but only when there's clear evidence of growth and accountability.
• Editors with a pattern of battleground behavior or blame-shifting are still decisively rejected, even if they've been around forever.

The final elected cohort is solid — policy-abiding, non-controversial, and likely to use the tools responsibly. This was a good election, with clear community signals about what kinds of admin behavior are (and aren't) acceptable. Canadianpoliticaljunkie (talk) 02:18, 1 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]