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! A high match rate might mean that the candidate is just vote-stacking, meaning they're joining in once consensus is already clear and no further input is necessary, just to raise their stats. And a lower match rate might signify that they only tend to get involved in discussions where the outcome is genuinely unclear. So, in the 2024 pilot elections, I made an elections guide to contextualize the numbers. This time around, I'm going to leave even most of those numbers out. If you want 'em, you can click on the report yourself, but don't say I didn't warn you.

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!

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:

• YY - this AfD record reflects particularly well on this candidate.
• Y - this AfD record checks out; nothing particularly grabbed me as worthy of note.
• Y - this is not a good AfD record, but AfD isn't everything.
• N - this AfD record reflects poorly on the candidate in a significant way.

Usefulness of record legend (note that this is all my opinion):

• Y - this is important for evaluating the candidate (they want to work in deletion and the results are helpful)
• Yg - 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 or the data is too stale)
• Ng - 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?
The4lines	[1]	Y	Ng	n=26, only 1 in the past year. The4lines only rarely participates in AfD, and does not make particularly substantial !votes when they do. But it would be a mistake to factor this into a decision about whether to support them for adminship, as AfD has very little to do with copyright investigation.
UtherSRG	[2]	see note	Ng	Has been involved in over 1500 AfDs. But that's really not relevant for this one, which is a recall EFA.	This is a RRFA. Vote according to whether you think they should keep the tools, based on allegations of misuse.
LEvalyn	[3]	YY	Y	n=189. LEvalyn's !votes are always extremely well-considered and useful. Helpful even when brief: [4]. Patience in the face of LLM-generated tendentiousness: [5]. Kind even when arguing for deletion: [6]. Treats AfD as a discussion, not a fight: [7]. Willing to put in the work in the event of WP:ATDs: [8]. A valiant search for sourcing: [9]. I'm not even mad about this one, where he !voted against me. An excellent record. I'd say something about how I wish he spent more time at AfD, but I guess he's busy writing all those GAs and I'll have to be content with what I can get.
Yue	[10]	YY	Y	n=265. Most of this participation is over the past year. And it's consistently excellent. Let's get this oops out of the way quickly: [11]. Alright, moving on, even their shorter !votes are helpful and clear: [12], [13]. Their deletion rationales are well-argued and thorough: [14], [15], [16]. If there's anything to complain about here, it's that they're too receptive to feedback. I think both of these should have been allowed to continue: [17], [18]. Again, an excellent record.
Left guide	[19]	see note	see note	Most of Left guide's recent AfD participation is as a closer, not a !voter, so EFA voters may be interested in reviewing this instead: [20]. Example !votes: [21], [22], [23]. These are solid and helpful !votes; as a closer, I particularly appreciate when participants explain why one redirect target is preferable to another, as redirect !votes often appear to be tossed out without much thought behind them.	Disclosure: I nominated this candidate.
Bunnypranav	[24]	N	Yg	n=82. Their only recent !vote is this brief one: [25]. Otherwise, we're looking at 6 months back or earlier. But these raise some real WP:BEFORE concerns: [26], [27], and, most astonishingly, [28]. They do have other nominations that are brief and uncontroversial: [29], [30]. Their !votes are not substantial, even amidst substantial discussion: [31], [32]. They have only ever argued for keep once, in October 2024: [33].	I'm really sorry to say this, but this is not an encouraging record, especially not for an admin candidate coming from NPP.
Epicgenius	[34]	YY	Yg	n=386. Usually participates in his topics of interest (architecture, NYC), but not always ([35]). Clear, thorough keep !votes: [36], [37]. Deletes are thorough and helpful; discusses where relevant: [38].	I assume it doesn't surprise anyone that a guy with 500 GAs knows how to write a good keep !vote.
MPGuy2824	[39]	Y	=	n=295, over a period of several years. Recently, these are mostly nominations, via WP:NPP work. Some flubs from several months ago, where some more care would have helped: [40], [41]; in both of these MPGuy was immediately willing to change their mind when presented with the information they'd overlooked. A typical nom statement looks like: [42]. Explaining notability criteria to an editor whose article was up for AfD: [43].	Normally I'd be saying it's pretty important to look at a NPR's AfD contributions when they're running for adminship, but in this case I don't think they say much.