Wikipedia:Should you ask a question at RfA?

The rules for Requests for Adminship say anyone can ask up to two questions, and questions at RfA can be helpful both to the candidate and to other commenters. Does that mean you might want to try to come up with a question to ask?

In general, you should ask a question only if you have a reasonable concern specific to this candidate, and you need to deal with that concern before you can decide to support or oppose the candidate. Asking an irrelevant question is harmful to the RfA process, can be stressful for the candidate, and will make you look clueless.

What makes a good question

Questions at RfA should be relevant: they should help you or others decide whether to support or oppose a candidate. If your question doesn't address some valid concern that a candidate would not be a good admin, it is an irrelevant question. If you don't need that question answered in order to support or oppose, it's irrelevant.

Unless you have experience with the candidate or their edits that worries you, and the answer to your question will clarify your understanding of their thinking and possibly affect your or anyone else's opinion on the candidate's suitability, it probably isn't a relevant question. See examples from 2020–2024.

Why irrelevant questions are seen as harmful

RfA is very stressful for candidates. Every question means they have to think on it, maybe to research, and to compose a response, all knowing their answers will often get closely scrutinized and criticized. If you ask an irrelevant question, you're going to be seen as making that stress worse, and also as making RfA in general seem more stressful than it needs to be, which can discourage other potential candidates. Irrelevant questions are seen by many experienced editors as actually harmful to Wikipedia.

Questions at RfA are highly visible to some of the community's most-engaged members. Asking an irrelevant question will draw attention, and not in a good way. How sure are you that this question will be seen as relevant?

Questions asked for purposes of making a point

RFA is not a place to change policy, and questions asked to make a point about current policy are likely to be seen as irrelevant and even disruptive. There are other venues where you can discuss policy and even launch requests for comments (community discussions) to change that policy. Using an RFA question to challenge the policy that a candidate is following or to make some other point about Wikipedia policy is a form of soapboxing that adds heat but not light to RFAs. RFA voters expect an RFA to be about the candidate and their edits, whether they're following current policy, and whether they understand policy in the areas in which they immediately intend to be active.

How to tell if your question is irrelevant

1. Most RfAs get questions from fewer than 10% of the participants. Asking a question in more than 10% of the RfAs you participate in may be seen as excessive and likely irrelevant.
2. Are you providing a diff? If not, many experienced editors may perceive this as a canned question – one that isn't tailored to any specific concern you have about this particular candidate – which are often considered irrelevant.
3. If you couldn't get this question answered, would you still support the candidate? If so, the question is probably irrelevant.
4. Administrative tasks include a variety of niche roles, some more obscure than others, and a candidate isn't expected to be an expert on all of them. For example, if a candidate hasn't expressed any interest in file uploading, asking them about file copyright issues is going to be seen as irrelevant and make you look clueless.

First-time questioners

If you're considering asking a question for the first time, read the last several RfAs. Read them thoroughly – read the questions, read the supports, read the opposes, read the general comments, read the talk page, and read any pertinent discussion at Wikipedia talk:Requests for Adminship, such as this discussion from a July 2020 RfA. Read the essays at Category:Wikipedia RfA debriefings. Yes, it's a ton of reading. Asking questions at RfA is serious stuff, grasshopper.

Above all, read the specific advice at: Advice for RfA voters.

If you want to run an RfA yourself and hope asking questions at RfA will get you noticed

Asking irrelevant questions at RfA makes you look clueless, which is not helpful to eventually running an RfA yourself. Providing thoughtful reasoning for your support or oppose statement at RfA and in other discussions is far more effective for showing other editors you have a clue.

If someone has pointed you at this essay in response to a question you asked at RfA

Try not to go automatically to defending your question. A single irrelevant question is much less important than your willingness to learn. Think on it, for as long as it takes. Being able to take criticism on board is much, much more important than always being right the first time.

And especially for experienced RfA participants

If you typically ask no questions and simply support based on some criteria such as "Not a jerk, has a clue" or "Sufficient content creation, trusted user", and the candidate meets your normal standard but is different in some way from the typical candidate – that is, they've revealed themselves to be something other than a cisgender heterosexual white male of voting age – and you're considering asking a question, also consider whether you might, completely subconsciously, be scrutinizing this candidate more closely.