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 | This essay contains the advice or opinions of one or more Wikipedia users. Essays may represent common ideas, or ideas that many users would not support. They are not rules. Think carefully about what they say before following them. |
 | This page in a nutshell: Experienced editors sometimes close a Request for adminship if they see that this request will probably fail. They do this before the date when the request is supposed to end. This is not a bad judgment of the candidate and should not be taken personally. It does not change their chances of passing an RfA at a later date. |
Most Requests for adminship run for seven days after being added onto the main RfA page. However, sometimes they are closed early. If you are reading this page it is likely that this has happened to your RfA.
Reasons for early closure
Although RfA has no exact minimum needs, the community requires a certain quality of changing pages. Without this, an RfA is certain to fail. When a candidate fails to meet a number of community-accepted criteria, sometimes everyone begins to give opposing comments. This can be discouraging for the candidate and stop them from more good contributions. This is clearly not good for Wikipedia. Also, an RfA that is clearly going to fail will often provoke a number of calls for early closure and related discussion.
Any editor in good standing may close a clearly failing RfA. However this should be done carefully and wisely. If there is any doubt, posting to the candidate's talkpage and asking them about their RfA is often a better choice than suddenly closing their good faith attempt at adminship.
Any candidate who sees that their RfA is failing may make a request for it to be closed early. Simply strike through your acceptance of the RfA and note that you withdraw.
Things to note if your RfA was closed early
- You will be welcome to reapply when you have more experience and have addressed the concerns brought up by opposers.
- Comments made on an RfA are not personal. Other editors are commenting on your suitability to be an administrator today, not on you as a person, or even your general contributions.
- Many experienced and highly respected administrators have failed one or more RfAs before being granted the tools. Do not think that a failed RfA is bad or humiliating to you, or that it may cause problems in a future RfA, because it certainly does not.
What you should do if your RfA gets closed early
- If you think that there was no chance of being made an administrator at that time, then you don't need to do anything. The editor that closed your RfA will have made you aware and probably pointed you at this essay. They will have taken care of the technical parts of the closure.
- If you do not think that the early closure was a good thing, please ask the editor who closed it to undo their actions. In general, assuming a good faith nomination or self-nomination, if a candidate wishes the RfA to run for the full time then this is acceptable. However, please consider editor review as an alternative method for getting feedback on your contributions.
What you should not do if your RfA was closed early
- Worry about it. Many good administrators have failed RfAs in the past.
- Quit Wikipedia. You would not want to be an administrator if you hated Wikipedia. An early-closed RfA is not a good reason to start hating it. Go back to what you were doing that made you enjoy it, or even take a Wikibreak.
- Refuse help. There are many editors who would be happy to help you learn as a Wikipedian. Asking for help is a good thing.