Wikipedia:Administrator elections/October 2024/Discussion phase

The discussion phase for the October 2024 administrator elections is now closed. This page transcludes each candidate subpage for convenience.

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Queen of Hearts

The following discussion is preserved as an archive of a successful administrator election candidacy. Please do not modify it.
Not to be confused with King of Hearts (no relation), who is already an admin!

Final (389/105/122); See official results (non-admin closure) – DreamRimmer (talk) 13:01, 10 November 2024 (UTC)

Nomination

Queen of Hearts (talk · contribs · she/her) – Hello, I'm Charlotte, known here as Queen of Hearts. I joined in March 2022 as ClydeFranklin and started off as a vandal fighter. I later shifted towards closing XfDs, which is mainly what I do nowadays. I have had several people encouraging me to run for the last few months, including receiving an "admin without tools" award in February. I have three alternative accounts: Diverging Diamond (formerly had pending changes reviewer rights, which I resigned for lack of need), an AWB account, and a doppelgänger of my old username. I have never edited for pay. Charlotte (Queen of Hearts • talk) 00:58, 8 October 2024 (UTC)

Questions for the candidate

Dear candidate, thank you for offering to serve Wikipedia as an administrator. Please answer these questions to provide guidance for participants:

1. Why are you interested in becoming an administrator?
A: I would mainly use the mop at the "lesser" XfDs – categories, redirects, and some miscellany – the former two of which are often backlogged. I would also process non-admin requests at Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Working, which is currently under control, but only has a handful of admins.
2. What are your best contributions to Wikipedia, and why?
A: I am admittedly not as big on "content" as some others – I believe "gnomes" and other people who don't write can make a similar impact to Wikipedia as those who do, even if their work is less visible. That said, I have done some content, including three good articles – Richard Worley (police officer), Murders of Keona Holley and Justin Johnson, and Michael S. Harrison – and nine "Did you know?"s, but I am arguably more proud of my backend work, including closing over 2,000 XfDs and around 500 merge proposals according to edit summary searches, although the latter is harder to measure. I also helped found WikiProject AI Cleanup, which garnered me a mention in the press.
3. Have you been in any conflicts over editing in the past or have other users caused you stress? How have you dealt with it and how will you deal with it in the future?
A: I generally try (and think I'm pretty good at) avoiding high-stress areas and situations, but disagreement is inevitable. When someone indicates disagreement, I try to take a step back and politely and rationally explain my view.

You may ask optional questions below. There is a limit of two questions per editor. Multi-part questions are disallowed, but you are allowed to ask follow-up questions related to previous questions.
Optional question from Thryduulf

4. Why did you choose to seek adminship via election rather than via a standard RFA?
A: @Thryduulf: I found the idea of being in a platoon of candidates an appealing way to reduce drama (although I didn't think there'd be this many!) and wanted to test out an experimental process. QoH 01:32, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

Optional question from Conyo14

5. What topics do you enjoy editing the most (i.e. sports, politics, BLPs, science, etc.)?
A: @Conyo14: law enforcement (which all of my GAs are about) and BLPs (2/3 of my GAs) are probably my main areas. I also like to sometimes edit about politics. QoH 01:32, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

Optional question from Ganesha811

6. Are there any areas of adminship you do not plan to participate in, due to unfamiliarity or lack of technical knowledge? If you later decided you wanted to help in these areas, what would be your plan to become an effective admin in those areas?
A: @Ganesha811: I know little about the more technical areas of the mop, requests for permissions, or responding to protection requests, to name a few. I do not currently plan on entering these areas, but if I did I would try to enter slowly by avoiding controversial situations and consulting trusted people in the area. (reping Thryduulf and Conyo14 since it doesn't seem like Echo liked my pseudo-signature.) Charlotte (Queen of Hearts • talk) 01:44, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

Optional question from CFA

7. Can you provide an example of a conflict that you were recently involved in?
A: Hello, @CFA: one example that comes to mind is User talk:Queen of Hearts/Archive 9#Talk:Zog I of Albania#Requested move 14 March 2024, a contest of one of my RM closes. In this case, I agreed my close was inadequate and reverted it for someone else to close. Thanks, Charlotte (Queen of Hearts • talk) 20:36, 24 October 2024 (UTC)

Discussion

Please keep discussion constructive and civil. If you are unfamiliar with the nominee, please thoroughly review her contributions before commenting.

QoH is very active on the discord server and always helpful. somehow she has some kind of photographic memory and is usually one of the first people to answer questions from both new and old hats. ... sawyer * he/they * talk 14:41, 22 October 2024 (UTC)
I'd be more frustrated and mad that they seem to almost always beat me to providing helpful links and advice if they weren't so kind and helpful lol. Hey man im josh (talk) 16:54, 22 October 2024 (UTC)
30,676 edits according to xTools, good mix of areas including 42.8% mainspace edits over the last three years. Also a mix of topics. Seems to be a lot of anti-vandal work. <silly>But no significant plant editing! So disrespectful to the most important of all Wikipedia projects. Four edits to List of hot dogs and only three edits to the Knotweed disambiguation page? And just reverts at that. I dunno. Going to be hard for the obsessive plant editor block to support this candidate.</silly> 🌿MtBotany (talk) 17:56, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

AfD record: 85.70% match rate, n of 49. 14 keep !votes to 23 delete !votes. Mildly subjective comment: well, I'm writing one of these since I'm writing one for everybody, but QoH is more interested in the other XfDs so I hope someone else can fill in some more detail there. As for AfDs, her stats are good; maybe the low overall participation would give someone pause since she's interested in closing XfDs, but for that I'd refer folks back to the candidate's answer to Q2. Concerning the !votes themselves, I spot-checked many and wouldn't call any of the ones I saw "vote stacking", though I didn't find any that were in depth or any that turned the discussion. tl;dr: look at QoH's other stuff. -- asilvering (talk) 18:47, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

I have often seen Queen of Hearts at the RM backlog, and from what I can tell, she is an excellent closer. I also think more closers for some of the less popular XfDs would be helpful, considering things like CfD and RfD often end up at WP:CR. -- Maddy from Celeste (WAVEDASH) 20:35, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

GAN & FAC notes. I took a look at QoH's GA record; they have five nominations and five reviews -- nice to see as many reviews as nominations. Some inactivity led to a fail of two of their noms, and they have a pending GA review which has been open for three months -- would be nice to see that closed, though GAN has slowed down a lot and that's not that unusual. The reviews I looked at seem reasonably thoughtful. A couple of minor comments at FAC, again making them a (very minor) net contributor. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 22:47, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

"Contributors of WikiProject AI Cleanup also remove AI-generated images that are anatomically incorrect, intentionally misleading, or an inaccurate portrayal of the information in the article. "While I'd like to think Wikipedians are decent at detecting and removing AI content, there is undoubtedly a lot that slips through the cracks and we're all volunteers," added Queen of Hearts, another founding member of WikiProject AI Cleanup." ← from an article about editors who volunteer their time to hunt down AI-generated hallucinations and hoaxes, Rjjiii (talk) 05:08, 23 October 2024 (UTC)

Declined speedies

Ritchie333 (talk) (cont) 10:54, 24 October 2024 (UTC)

@Ritchie333: did someone actually decline a U1 on a user's own subpages?! How is this possible? SerialNumber54129 11:31, 24 October 2024 (UTC)
The script picked up this edit Ritchie333 (talk) (cont) 11:35, 24 October 2024 (UTC)
@Ritchie333: Seems a misnomer to call those declined. Entries at RFUD show that two of those pages were deleted and then refunded (Diff/1181940955, Diff/1151256067) and the other is just a test edit for salting, hardly declined. UpTheOctave! (8va?) 11:42, 24 October 2024 (UTC)
I run this script on every RfA candidate, and have for years. However, I don't have time to evaluate nearly 35 candidates, so I thought I would just put up the script output without comment, and let other people evaluate it on their own merits. As you have correctly concluded, the three entries here are nothing to worry about. Ritchie333 (talk) (cont) 11:48, 24 October 2024 (UTC)
What script? Is it picking up on blue pages that were once tagged? SerialNumber54129 11:52, 24 October 2024 (UTC)
User:Ritchie333/badspeedies list.py I assume ? (So basically a script that displays all speedies that are viewable by non-admins) :) Sohom (talk) 12:30, 24 October 2024 (UTC)
@Sohom Datta: cool, could you run it me? Looking for false positives. SerialNumber54129 12:41, 24 October 2024 (UTC)
@Serial Number 54129 Unsure if you meant "for me" or "on me", User:SodiumBot/badspeedies is what it gave for your account and User:SodiumBot/badspeedies 2 is what it gave for all candidates :) Sohom (talk) 13:22, 24 October 2024 (UTC)
@Theleekycauldron: In the interest of collegiality for those who deserve it (i.e. the candidate and every other commentator here bar one), please remove this trolling as a [Monitor action], thanks! SerialNumber54129 21:19, 24 October 2024 (UTC)
@Serial Number 54129: I'm WP:INVOLVED with Lightburst, as I filed an AE thread against them last year. Hopefully, Pickersgill-Cunliffe is around to do something? theleekycauldron (talk • she/her) 23:40, 24 October 2024 (UTC)
  • I see no issue here. If you don't know which administrator to contact, why not go to the board full of them? It's a perfect valid reading of the instructions at WP:PERM. GreenLipstickLesbian (talk) 21:17, 24 October 2024 (UTC)
    Are you misremembering? The first conversation you mentioned happened in July, so not that recent. In it, QOH supported blocking AndyTheGrump, weak supported a CBAN on you, and opposed removing your autopatrolled right. I do not see how taking a stance at ANI (a reasonable one) against you reflects your conclusion.
    And what the hell is with your skepticism against her asking to remove rights due to a temporary decision in personal life?? Some gal goes down to the point where they need to take a break off everything and goes to ANI for a quick solution, and you somehow call that an "attention-seeking" drama now?? I hope that you simply do not understand that people like to take enforced wikibreaks indefinitely sometimes. Not every decision needs to be examined with dragging out narcissism in mind. Aaron Liu (talk) 21:17, 24 October 2024 (UTC)
    I'm convinced this person sees the absolute worst moment in someone' day, and decides this is the moment that makes them not worthy of a candidacy. Conyo14 (talk) 21:35, 24 October 2024 (UTC)
The above adminship discussion is preserved as an archive of the discussion. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the talk page of the nominated user). No further edits should be made to this page.

EggRoll97

The following discussion is preserved as an archive of an administrator election candidacy that did not succeed. Please do not modify it.

Final (146/220/250); See official results (non-admin closure) – DreamRimmer Alt (talk) 17:06, 10 November 2024 (UTC)

Nomination

EggRoll97 (talk · contribs · they/them) – Hey everyone! I'm EggRoll97, and I joined in 2018. My activity back then was somewhat sparse, dropping off somewhat due to current world events and simply being busy outside of Wikipedia. I've made something of a comeback since about 2023 or so, and have been gnoming in the background since, finding myself doing a variety of different things, including editing filters here as an edit filter manager since April and helping out with false positives globally with the global version of EFH since a few months ago, and am fairly active in the ACC process as well. I have no alternative accounts, have never edited while logged out, and I have never edited for pay. EggRoll97 (talk) 04:59, 8 October 2024 (UTC)

Questions for the candidate

Dear candidate, thank you for offering to serve Wikipedia as an administrator. Please answer these questions to provide guidance for participants:

1. Why are you interested in becoming an administrator?
A: I'm mainly asking for the mop to view deleted revisions. Within edit filters, some vandalism is in deleted revisions, and being able to access that without needing to ask an administrator to email a copy would be helpful. I also plan to help in the AIV queue and continue doing what I'm already doing as an editor without the mop.
2. What are your best contributions to Wikipedia, and why?
A: I would say I'm particularly proud of being able to establish WP:EFM as policy, which of course was always a collaborative effort, but I'm proud to say I took part in it.
3. Have you been in any conflicts over editing in the past or have other users caused you stress? How have you dealt with it and how will you deal with it in the future?
A: I would not say I've been in any significant conflict with anyone. On the occasion that I do find myself in opposition with someone else, I've tried to make the best attempt I can to explain myself in a logical manner.

You may ask optional questions below. There is a limit of two questions per editor. Multi-part questions are disallowed, but you are allowed to ask follow-up questions related to previous questions.

Optional question from Trainsandotherthings

4. Your editing appears to mostly involve edit filters and gnoming, including semi-automated edits. Have you made any edits to create or substantially improve articles?
A: I did create Contraband Police (though it really is overdue for some expansion). Outside of that, no. I've added a few citations here and there, a few typo fixes if I run across them, but the rest of the pages Xtools says I have "created" are as a result of edit filter false positives or moves. EggRoll97 (talk) 01:00, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

Optional question from Thryduulf

5. Why did you choose to seek adminship via election rather than via a standard RFA?
A: I wasn't really sure about going for adminship at all, personally. I've considered it a few times, but just never really had the motivation to run the gauntlet. I noticed administrator elections being discussed, and after a day or so of second-guessing myself, decided to put myself up as a candidate. EggRoll97 (talk) 01:07, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

Optional question from Ganesha811

6. Are there any areas of adminship you do not plan to participate in, due to unfamiliarity or lack of technical knowledge? If you later decided you wanted to help in these areas, what would be your plan to become an effective admin in those areas?
A: Certainly. The encyclopedia's back-end alone is massive (see Template:Noticeboards, the numerous venues for requesting things like moves, deletions, undeletions, and many more). It would be entirely unrealistic of me to want to jump into areas without at least taking a silent look through what goes on (and more importantly, how the process works) before trying to participate. With the admin tools, it becomes increasingly more dangerous to just jump in, because there's a lot of buttons that admins can press that those without the bit don't have the technical ability to press, and I see it as important to be cognizant of that. I may not have answered the first bit in specifics, but the first place that comes to mind that I would be unfamiliar with is categories for discussion. I looked through it a bit at one point, and while I do have the page mover permission and could therefore feasibly move a category, I can't say I really found myself confident enough to leap in at the time. EggRoll97 (talk) 01:48, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

Optional questions from BeanieFan11

7. Your only content contribution is a stub which mainly cites Twitter. Do you think having experience in content creation is important to being an administrator? Why or why not?
A: I'll say I was a bit surprised to see Twitter links had been added as references. It certainly didn't start that way (for reference they appear to have been added in April, certainly not by my design). As for your actual question, though, I think content creation is a type of experience that one can bring to the encyclopedia. Wikipedia has a lot of people contributing, all with varied interests and skillsets. So I don't think content creation is the only way to show fitness for the bit. I think it's moreso one way that one could show that competence, not the only way to do so. EggRoll97 (talk) 00:27, 23 October 2024 (UTC)
8. You state that the main reason you want to become an administrator is toview deleted revisions. Within edit filters, some vandalism is in deleted revisions, and being able to access that without needing to ask an administrator to email a copy would be helpful. Could you give some examples of what you'd use the deleted revisions for, or why you think it will be helpful to see deleted vandalism?
A: A lot of revisions by LTAs end up hidden under RD2/RD3 (and it's a good thing they do, some of them are really vile), as does some disruptive vandalism. While I can get copies of these revisions by emailing an administrator, it's not necessarily the most efficient process. When trying to craft or add to/remove from a filter, it's generally necessary to have a diff to test the filter against (used to input into the test interface (EFH/EFM/sysop only) or into SOY's FilterDebugger to verify syntax). EggRoll97 (talk) 03:19, 23 October 2024 (UTC)

Optional question from Asilvering

9. Ritchie333 has pointed out that you've had a lot of G5 declines. Can you tell us about your current understanding of how G5 works?
A: Sure. As for the actual answer to your question, from a reading of G5, it applies to pages created as a result of block/ban evasion after the time when the block or ban was imposed. The general use of G5 is regarding sockpuppetry where someone has created sockpuppets following their original block for abusing multiple accounts, and then has continued the problematic behavior, thus making their creations via the sockpuppet accounts eligible for G5. For the context of my G5s, a lot of those G5s are around the same time period and I had mostly run into one user banned as a sock, then just G5ed any other pages they had in the NPP redirect queue as unpatrolled. This was a misunderstanding of how G5 worked, and I was working under the assumption at the time that it did apply to pages created as a result of a redirect, and I would like to thank Explicit for pointing out that it, in fact, does not. There is one of those G5s that I will defend, though I am not able to speak on it publicly. Admins can see 1319 (hist · log) for context on the one I am referring to. EggRoll97 (talk) 22:22, 24 October 2024 (UTC)


Discussion

Please keep discussion constructive and civil. If you are unfamiliar with the nominee, please thoroughly review their contributions before commenting.

AfD record: 50.00% match rate, n of 18. 5 keep !votes to 14 delete !votes. Mildly subjective comment: Well, it's not terribly subjective to call this a "poor" AfD record. But most of these are from a while ago - the two that were in the last year both matched the result. The candidate also hasn't expressed any interest in deletion processes. So while this AfD record obviously isn't cause to recommend the candidate, it doesn't really seem like a reason for concern either. -- asilvering (talk) 02:15, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

8,320 total edits since 2018 according to xTools. The majority of their edits have come since May 2023. An almost even division between Mainspace, Wikipedia, User Talk, and Wiki talk spaces. Their most edited main space pages are TV Guide (Canada) and Amy Adams, each with seven edits. Much of their recent work on Wikipedia is in the Wikipedia:Edit filter noticeboard and related areas. Nothing jumping out at me good or bad in their editing. <silly>Though plant-based villains will want to send minions to destroy EggRoll97 for their lack of plant article editing. And, no, editing the Green Green Grass disambiguation page does not count. Face our predictably arbitrary and irrational wrath!</silly> 🌿MtBotany (talk) 20:52, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

GAN & FAC notes. I took a look at EggRoll97's GA record; they have done three reviews, six years ago. All rather checklist reviews, which is discouraged these days though not back then. The accompanying comments make it clear they were evaluating the article more thoroughly than it might appear from the checklist. No nominations, so a net contributor to the GAN project. No activity at FAC. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 23:54, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

Declined speedies

Ritchie333 (talk) (cont) 10:54, 24 October 2024 (UTC)

The G5s are the same misunderstanding repeated many times, so the large number of cases isn't as intimidating as it seems. Hopefully they've learned that rule of G5 now. * Pppery * it has begun... 15:17, 24 October 2024 (UTC)
  • I'm struggling with this one more than most. I think normally I would want to see deeper experience from a prospective admin, and a bit more content work. GAs and FAs are nice, but anything that shows that you understand how core policies are applied is good; better still if you've had to make and defend an editorial decision. On the other hand, EggRoll wants the tools for a fairly niche purpose where they're unlikely to be asked to weigh in on content matters so the risk is low. I'll have to give this one some more thought. Ultimately, the answers to the questions are quite brief and superficial so my gut says "maybe not quite yet". If there was guaranteed to be another admin election in six months' time, I might oppose and encourage them to aim for that. As it is, I don't know where I'll land. Possibly neutral. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 20:40, 24 October 2024 (UTC)
  • I have seen EggRoll97 around the project. Seems like a solid editor. Lightburst (talk) 21:55, 24 October 2024 (UTC)
The above adminship discussion is preserved as an archive of the discussion. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the talk page of the nominated user). No further edits should be made to this page.

SheriffIsInTown

The following discussion is preserved as an archive of an administrator election discussion that did not succeed. Please do not modify it.
Withdrawn by candidate, closed by theleekycauldron (talk • she/her) 04:28, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

Nomination

SheriffIsInTown (talk · contribs · they/them) – I have been editing Wikipedia for over ten years, contributing to a variety of topics, with most of my work focused on WP Pakistan articles. I have also taken part in copyediting drives. During my active participation in several Guild of Copy Editors (GOCE) drives, I secured first place twice—once across all five categories and another time in four. I also improved the article on Pakistan significantly, securing third place in the Core Contest. Additionally, I've created 539 articles, mainly BLP articles, with 118 (almost a fifth) dedicated to women, addressing an underrepresented area. After my work on the Pakistan article, @Moxy offered to nominate me, but I didn't feel ready at the time. This is part of my broader effort to elevate the Pakistan article to featured status. Additionally, I am working on improving the Fatima Jinnah article for a potential GA nomination as part of the Women in Green initiative, and I believe I am about halfway through with both projects. Throughout my editorship I have regularly worked on fighting vandalism and D/E.

I've faced some challenges, including a brief block and three topic bans, but these have been learning experiences. I now handle conflicts more carefully and in accordance with Wikipedia's guidelines, which is reflected in my recent contributions.

Importantly, all my editing has been voluntary, without any involvement in paid work. My goal has always been to improve Wikipedia's content.

With the experience I've gained, the lessons I've learned, and my dedication, I feel ready to take on an admin role and make an even greater contribution to the community. Sheriff | ☎ 911 | 15:25, 8 October 2024 (UTC)

Questions for the candidate

Dear candidate, thank you for offering to serve Wikipedia as an administrator. Please answer these questions to provide guidance for participants:

1. Why are you interested in becoming an administrator?
A: I am interested in becoming an administrator because I have observed a persistent backlog in administrative tasks. With my experience and knowledge of Wikipedia's policies, I believe I can help address these challenges and contribute to improving the platform's efficiency. I am also eager to ensure the community's standards are maintained, fostering a productive and collaborative atmosphere.
2. What are your best contributions to Wikipedia, and why?
A: The best contributions I made to Wikipedia run across many areas. I have actively taken part in the copyedit drives, topping the leaderboard twice-once in four categories and another time in all five. Among my works is the improvement of the article on Pakistan, where I won third place in the Core Contest. Aside from that, I have created in total 539 articles, most of them on BLPs-118, one-fifth of them, on women. It is a highly neglected area, and through this, I tried to increase the diversity and depth of Wikipedia's coverage. This is part of my broader effort to elevate the Pakistan article to featured status. Additionally, I am working on improving the Fatima Jinnah article for a potential GA nomination as part of the Women in Green initiative, and I believe I am about halfway through with both projects. Throughout my editorship I have regularly worked on fighting vandalism and D/E.
3. Have you been in any conflicts over editing in the past or have other users caused you stress? How have you dealt with it and how will you deal with it in the future?
A: My initial editing history was marked by some excessive contentious editing, and I have had conflicts in the past. At one point, I was blocked for a few hours and have been topic banned in at least three different areas. However, I have learned a great deal since then, not only about conflict resolution but also about how to work within Wikipedia's guidelines and policies. Lately, my editing has improved much, and now I try to get disputes resolved more consensually and respectfully. I follow the dispute resolution processes of Wikipedia, seeking consensus wherever possible and focusing on a solution that is good for the entire community.

You may ask optional questions below. There is a limit of two questions per editor. Multi-part questions are disallowed, but you are allowed to ask follow-up questions related to previous questions.

Optional question from Giraffer

4. In Q1, you mention wanting to help with backlogs, but without examples. Which specific administrative areas do you want to use the tools in, and what relevant experience do you have?
A:

Optional question from BeanieFan11

5. On your user page, you have a section titled "Fun edits", in which you display yourself vandalizing the article on Donald Trump, as well as vandalism to another article. I find it concerning that an administrator candidate would link on their user page themselves vandalizing one of the most contentious topics on the entire website and describe it as "fun". Could you explain these edits?
A:

Optional question from Liz

6. Do you have any current topic bans in force you are operating under?
A: @Liz I currently do not have any topic bans. Sheriff | ☎ 911 | 01:08, 22 October 2024 (UTC)
7. Can you give a specific example of a dispute you were involved in and explain how it was resolved. Admins are frequently involved in disputes due to the nature of the job and it's nice to get a concrete example of how you handle editors who are difficult or have issues with actions you've taken.
A:

Optional question from Thryduulf

8. Why did you choose to seek adminship via election rather than via a standard RFA?
A:

Optional questions from Novem Linguae

9. I notice you don't keep archives of your user talk page, resulting in messages being deleted without an easy way to view them. Can you talk a bit about your thoughts on user talk archiving and transparency?
A:
10. I see in your user talk page history that an editor was worried that you might have used artificial intelligence to generate your administrator elections candidate statement. Just to be clear because it sounds like you did end up rewriting your statement in response to this talk page query (edit summary was "rewritten"), did you use AI to generate any part of your candidate statement?
A:

Optional question from Ganesha811

11. Are there any areas of adminship you do not plan to participate in, due to unfamiliarity or lack of technical knowledge? If you later decided you wanted to help in these areas, what would be your plan to become an effective admin in those areas?
A:

Discussion

Please keep discussion constructive and civil. If you are unfamiliar with the nominee, please thoroughly review their contributions before commenting.

The above adminship discussion is preserved as an archive of the discussion. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the talk page of either this nomination or the nominated user). No further edits should be made to this page.

Rsjaffe

The following discussion is preserved as an archive of a successful administrator election candidacy. Please do not modify it.

Final (319/89/208); See official results (non-admin closure) – DreamRimmer (talk) 16:34, 10 November 2024 (UTC)

Nomination

Rsjaffe (talk · contribs · he/him) – I'm Rory Jaffe. I have been on Wikipedia probably since soon after its inception, though I didn't register a username until 2007. I have never edited Wikipedia for pay.

I roam around doing many different things. When I edit, I generally do wikignoming. I use AWB for mass work (e.g., typo fixing, or, in one major instance, using regular expressions to fix messed up references in a mass-created series of articles). I occasionally create an article, typically when I look up something and get surprised that there isn't an article for it yet. Examples include Merrell Williams Jr., Van Norman Dams, Verbena lilacina and Fannie Quigley.

I also prowl for serious issues: e.g., undeclared paid editing, vandalism, and sockpuppetry. I try to be very clear and concise when posting about these issues. For example: Wikipedia:Sockpuppet_investigations/Umama99/Archive, and this recent ANI thread (contributions are Special:Diff/1250036606/1250036802 and Special:Diff/1250038072).

I have a doppelgänger account Truth69420 to make a point about usernames. It's been incorrectly blocked once, by ScottishFinnishRadish who then came back with User talk:Truth69420#I've been hoodwinked! to apologize. That account has made eleven edits in 2 years to ANI: all very brief. While I enjoy humor, I try to avoid derailing things, and often hold myself back when I'm tempted to say something that I find incredibly funny. — rsjaffe 🗣️ 20:10, 8 October 2024 (UTC)

Questions for the candidate

Dear candidate, thank you for offering to serve Wikipedia as an administrator. Please answer these questions to provide guidance for participants:

1. Why are you interested in becoming an administrator?
A: I want to help address the backlog in certain areas and improve responsiveness to issues. There currently are an insufficient number of active admins, so those who are active struggle to keep up. While I'm willing to pitch in where needed, my initial idea is to help with sockpuppet investigations, vandals, and undeclared paid editors.
2. What are your best contributions to Wikipedia, and why?
A: A few come to mind:
  1. Identifying the emerging LLM-generated text issue when it first appeared and bringing it to the attention of other Wikipedians. I was asked to write an article for Signpost, which contains much of the story: Machine-written articles: a new challenge for Wikipedia. Why? Because I identified and provoked action on a serious threat to Wikipedia's mission.
  2. Cleaning up Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. A featured article, it had accumulated issues over the years, including disjointed text, messed up references, and a few factual errors. I spent a few months (May to December) in 2021 cleaning it up, to the point where 21% of the current text was written by me. Why? Because this was a very difficult and detail-oriented task that fixed up an important article.
  3. Using auto wiki browser with regular expressions to fix orphaned references in well over 1200 autocreated plant articles. (I lost count, but it's probably a lot more than 1200.) Why? Because I identified a serious systemic issue with a large number of articles and found a practical way of fixing them.
3. Have you been in any conflicts over editing in the past or have other users caused you stress? How have you dealt with it and how will you deal with it in the future?
A: Yes, I've been in conflicts. I generally try to avoid perpetuating a conflict by simply not responding to personal attacks, just sticking to factual responses. I know who I am and I don't feel the need to start up a fight with someone who is already convinced of my wrongdoing. This is very successful in avoiding derailing a conversation. As an example, see ANI regarding CutePeach, where both I and the contents of my report were attacked, but I avoided responding and getting off topic. However, this isn't very satisfying, frankly, and also may not leave my name unsullied in the view of others. For example, I have been accused of lying about doing a WP:BEFORE search on some AfD nominations and decided not to get into a tussle about that even though I had done a before search. My actual fault there was not doing a Japanese script search before search, and even then, it was still unclear whether some of those were notable. I backed away from non-Latin alphabet AfD subjects after that.
I do engage when there is a good reason to do so (other than defending my reputation). For example, User talk:Rsjaffe/Archives/2024/October#Could you please stop removing my entry, do you have a bias?, where I tried to counsel a new user who was destined for failure if they didn't learn to assume good faith. Unfortunately, that user didn't reform and ended up blocked.
If I become an administrator, I'm going to have to reconsider my nonconfrontational stance, as it is not only my own reputation I have to think about, but rather the effect on other administrators' reputation in general. I probably will have to engage with unjust accusations more directly, though I will continue to try keep the conversation on track and avoid getting into a fruitless back-and-forth on those side issues.

You may ask optional questions below. There is a limit of two questions per editor. Multi-part questions are disallowed, but you are allowed to ask follow-up questions related to previous questions.

Optional question from Liz

4 In the work you say you do, how do you identify an undeclared paid editor?
A:
I won't go into a lot of detail, as this is already starting to turn into a long answer, but I'm happy to answer follow ups to any of this. Even though I'm listing it step-by-step, it's not a linear process: more like following my nose when something doesn't look right.
First step is establishing suspicion. It starts with looking at an article and seeing a lack of neutrality, or many insignificant references, or information that only the subject would know (e.g., a birthdate when there isn't public info on that), or a professional picture of the subject (often hard to get if you're not connected to the subject), etc.
Then, is the editor a single purpose editor or an editor creating articles that don't naturally go together? That is, are the articles plausibly related to some interest the wikipedian may have or do they appear to be tasks the editor has taken on from an external request? Do the articles have images that are of similar quality and nature?
Then comes the investigation. One of my favorite things is to drill down on the images. I focus on images because 1) a paid editor will have access to good images and the subject will want a nice picture, and 2) people may not think of scrubbing information from the images, such as metadata. What does Wikimedia say about the provenance? If there are multiple articles in question, does the metadata on the images indicate using the same camera? Are the images similar in the way they were taken? What does a TinEye reverse image search say about the image (e.g., original source)?
I also try to make plausible guesses as to the editor's identity and search on the web, on the company's site, and other related places for evidence. To avoid using confidential info (which can be submitted following instructions at WP:COIN), I try to use what I've learned externally to improve my inside-Wikipedia sleuthing in the hope of finding internal validation of the paid relationship.
At some point in all this (earlier or later depending upon my initial level of suspicion), I will give the editor the standard templated notice regarding UPE. Where it goes from there depends upon the editor's response (or not). This is the key step. A conversation with the editor usually provides me with the final impression of UPE or not.
I expect that the better UPEs are never detected, but this at least sweeps up the clumsier ones.

Optional question from Thryduulf

5. Why did you choose to seek adminship via election rather than via a standard RFA?
A: The first part of this answer will resonate with the older folks out there. I see the standard RfA process as being traumatic, like the bowel prep for a colonoscopy. Sure, the doc will get a clean look at your potential problems after going through all that prep, but, really, is drinking that whole gallon of prep necessary?
To get a little more serious, the shorter time interval, the attempt to keep the discussion constructive, and the confidential voting all make this a less stressful process for the candidate, though this process has stressed me a bit. The scrutiny shouldn't turn into a hazing: it should be focused on identifying appropriate candidates, and I think this process should do a good job of that.

Optional question from Ganesha811

6. Are there any areas of adminship you do not plan to participate in, due to unfamiliarity or lack of technical knowledge? If you later decided you wanted to help in these areas, what would be your plan to become an effective admin in those areas?
A: In preparation for this election, I reviewed some policies with an eye as to how an admin would function in them. I started with a simple one: vandalism and was impressed with how much judgment was required even there. Sure, there are lots of clear vandalism cases. But the section Wikipedia:Vandalism#Administrator response to vandalism uses "likely", "usually", and other such words frequently, which means that there are judgment calls even there. In short, even in areas that I am familiar with, I'm going to start with enhanced awareness as to edge cases and seek help with edge cases to understand the unwritten norms that arise from the experience admins have had in the area.
So the first answer is that I'm going to be careful even in areas I am familiar with, as there are very few "bright line" rules when deciding cases, and I'll seek out advice as needed. Secondly, I do plan to start out in areas I'm most comfortable with. Third, if entering an area that I'm less familiar with, I'll familiarize myself with the applicable policies and seek out advice from an experienced admin. How I develop competency in a new area will probably depend upon the area. For example, SPIs (which I'm familiar with but don't feel comfortable starting there yet), I'll need advice on the particular evidentiary requirements and the language used (e.g., when addressing IPs that might be engaged in sockpuppetry, as the policy is to not publicly connect IPs to accounts except in extraordinary circumstances).


Discussion

Please keep discussion constructive and civil. If you are unfamiliar with the nominee, please thoroughly review his contributions before commenting.

AfD record: 84.20% match rate, n of 272. 12 keep !votes to 250 delete !votes. Mildly subjective comment: most participation is from 2022 and earlier; in all 10 of the AfDs he participated in over the past year, his !vote matched the result. Some might find his !votes a bit curt but I don't see any red flags. Of the deletes in this data, 107/272 were from nominations. Most of these numbers are from 2022 and 2021. -- asilvering (talk) 01:04, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

Personal comment: I wouldn't encourage anyone to draw conclusions from these numbers other than "has had a lot of good AfD experience, which is a good thing in an admin candidate". 86.5% certainly is an eyebrow-raising delete % (it does go down to 73.7% if you look only at !votes and not nominations), but I don't think the number itself is terribly relevant given that most of the participation is from 2022 and earlier. Having read through many of the AfDs rsjaffe has been involved in, I would describe his approach as "skeptical", which in my opinion is a strength. Anyone who brings that many articles to AfD is going to get accusations of lying about having done a WP:BEFORE search - I've experienced my fair share of this, and my delete vote/nom rate is a good 30% lower than his.
tl;dr: this is a strong positive for this candidate. -- asilvering (talk) 01:04, 22 October 2024 (UTC)
Thank you for your feedback, and I want to expand a little bit about the change in participation. My overriding goal is to improve Wikipedia. I started to realize that, while there are many articles that do not meet notability, the harm to Wikipedia of having those articles ranges from very little to a lot, depending upon the nature of the article. So my focus turned away from most AfDs, based on the notion that many non-notable articles don't create major problems.
There are also different types of harms. A short list off the top of my head of potential harms from non-notable articles (and again, some articles have the potential for some of these and not others);
  1. Fragmentation of information. Encyclopedias should provide context, not just definitions or statistics. Fragmenting into little bits makes it harder to see the big picture when reading a specific article. This is true for some notable subjects as well, and you'll see a number of Merge votes by me: redirect and merge. See WP:PAGEDECIDE for more on this.
  2. Potential for contradictory information in the same topic. Fragmentation means multiple pages have to be maintained, and if they contain similar content, when new info arises, they might not be updated simultaneously.
  3. Verifiability. Notability (excluding certain special subject-specific notability policies) is about significant coverage in independant reliable sources. If the sources aren't meeting notability, verifiability suffers. When verifiability is weak, you can end up with bad information in the encyclopedia.
  4. Opportunity for bad articles. The less traffic an article has, it seems the less likely it is to have had reasonable scrutiny. NPP helps with this, at least at the article's inception.
  5. Using Wikipedia as an advertisement. This to me is most serious. I see it mainly with companies, schools and biographies of living persons.
In general, I found other areas where my time was better spent if I wanted to improve Wikipedia. I do, however pay attention to that last category, above, and to a lesser extent, to good merge opportunities. — rsjaffe 🗣️ 02:00, 22 October 2024 (UTC)
This response, too, I see as a strong positive. :) -- asilvering (talk) 00:06, 23 October 2024 (UTC)

Oh my! That answer to Thryduulf's question...thank you so much! Makes mine seem pedantic and boring by comparison; best laugh i've had here for i don't know how long. Happy days, ~ LindsayHello 06:09, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

GAN & FAC notes. No activity at GAN or FAC. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 23:55, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

Declined speedies


For a denominator, through the end of 2022 I had done 1380 CSD requests. In 2023 and 2024, 824. So that's a 3% decline rate through 2022 and 2% in 2023-2024. If you eliminate user talk pages (see below for discussion), the rates are 2% and 0.5%, respectively.
Certainly I've made some mistakes, but I think the rate, particularly as I've gained experience, has been very low. I'll go over each of the declined CSDs for 2023 and 2024, as they're few and most have interesting stories and/or lessons.
User talk pages: 11 of those 15 are for user talk pages. I know you can't delete user talk pages, but those fall in a gray area in the policy. I should have asked for clarification at the teahouse or asked to have the policy fixed (which is what I think needs to be done), so that's a mistake by me.
The policy states, for deleting other users' pages:In general, other users' user pages are managed by that user. Except for blatant or serious matters, it is preferable to try contacting the user before deletion (see above). However, unambiguous copyright violations, attack pages, promotional text, and privacy or BLP violations can be speedy deleted using a suitable template, such as {{db-attack}}, {{db-copyvio}} or {{db-spamuser}}; other pages likely to require deletion (or where remedial action is not taken) may be submitted to deletion discussion. So, my reading is that advertising should not be deleted by another user, use a CSD template instead.
However, user talk pagesare generally not deleted. So, when I see advertising on a talk page, I believe I cannot delete it, and I know that a CSD will be declined. That's a quandary. I've used CSDs on occasion to get administrator attention.
Personally, I think the policy should be changed to allow speedy flagging to draw an administrator to the problem talk page, but then provide administrators with instructions consistent with preserving the overall page history.
Hypersilly: Mangonese, Helium difluoride: See Special:Permalink/1252021371#User:Hypersilly. The Helium difluoride CSD request was an error. I should have looked more closely, as the user was making up both correct and incorrect redirects and pages. The listing for Mangonese is interesting. I suggest looking at the page history for its evolution: at the time I asked for deletion, it was not pointing to a plausible target, but was then repurposed.
Draft:United Kingdom of Atlantis: flagged by me as no indication of importance, declined. I should have flagged as hoax.
User:Dogliepop Instead of deletion, a prior version without the claims was restored.
— rsjaffe 🗣️ 15:38, 24 October 2024 (UTC)
The above adminship discussion is preserved as an archive of the discussion. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the talk page of the nominated user). No further edits should be made to this page.

Leonidlednev

The following discussion is preserved as an archive of an administrator election candidacy that did not succeed. Please do not modify it.

Final (89/265/262); See official results (non-admin closure) – DreamRimmer Alt (talk) 17:07, 10 November 2024 (UTC)

Nomination

Leonidlednev (talk · contribs · he/him) – Hello, I am Leonidlednev. I have created this account in 2017, becoming active in 2021. I mostly fight vandalism across WMF projects and do minor edits to fix typos/dead links on pages. I have been granted Global Rollbacker in November last year to help with cleaning up cross-wiki vandalism. So far, I have not had anyone ask me to write an article about themselves, nor was I ever paid for my edits to any WMF project. This is my only account so far, but I may create bot accounts for maintenance later. Leonidlednev (T, C, L) 03:04, 8 October 2024 (UTC)

Questions for the candidate

Dear candidate, thank you for offering to serve Wikipedia as an administrator. Please answer these questions to provide guidance for participants:

1. Why are you interested in becoming an administrator?
A: I am interested in becoming an administrator to help with the occasional backlogs on AIV and UAA, close XfDs that have overwhelming consensus to delete, and delete pages that clearly fall under G3 or G11.
2. What are your best contributions to Wikipedia, and why?
A: I feel that my best contributions are the edits I did while fighting vandalism on pages that were vandalized, as they make up the majority of my edits.
3. Have you been in any conflicts over editing in the past or have other users caused you stress? How have you dealt with it and how will you deal with it in the future?
A: In the past, I have repeatedly reverted a vandal's edits while they weren't blocked, resulting in a messed up page history. I now know that it is better to wait for the vandal to get blocked first, before reverting their edits.

You may ask optional questions below. There is a limit of two questions per editor. Multi-part questions are disallowed, but you are allowed to ask follow-up questions related to previous questions.

Optional question from Thryduulf

4. Why did you choose to seek adminship via election rather than via a standard RFA?
A: I chose to seek adminship via ADE instead of RfA since I felt more confident in this process. There was a decline in accepted RfAs over the years, so I didn't feel confident submitting one. --Leonidlednev (T, C, L) 01:21, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

Optional question from Ganesha811

5. Are there any areas of adminship you do not plan to participate in, due to unfamiliarity or lack of technical knowledge? If you later decided you wanted to help in these areas, what would be your plan to become an effective admin in those areas?
A: I currently do not plan to participate in disputed XfDs at the moment, due to unfamiliarity. I may become more active in that area, as I gain experience related to XfDs. --Leonidlednev (T, C, L) 01:33, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

Optional question from Toadspike

6. What are your best contributions towards improving article content?
A: So far, the majority of my edits are focused on minor improvements such as vandalism reverts, typo fixes, warnings, reports, and most recently rcat additions. --Leonidlednev (T, C, L) 15:11, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

Optional questions from BeanieFan11

7. You haven't written any articles. What are your thoughts on whether or not it is important for an administrator to have experience in content creation?
A: I think it depends on what duties the administrator is participating in. For example, if the administrator isn't interested in participating in NPP and only wishes to fight vandalism, content creation shouldn't be an issue. Experience on content creation can also be gained while being an administrator. --Leonidlednev (T, C, L) 20:03, 22 October 2024 (UTC)
8. You express an interest in closing some XfDs. Do you think it is appropriate for someone who has done no content work themself to be able to delete others' work? Why or why not?
A: I think that it is not appropriate to delete others' work in general, but there are some cases when it is, such as when the content has been on XfD for a while, an there is overwhelming consensus to delete it. --Leonidlednev (T, C, L) 20:03, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

Optional question from Ternera

9. Thank you for your interest in helping out! I see you do a lot of anti-vandalism work on small wikis. If you become an administrator, how do plan to balance your time between working on small wikis and doing tasks here?
A: I plan to do the majority of my edits on here, and sometimes balance those edits out with edits to smaller wikis. --Leonidlednev (T, C, L) 20:47, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

Optional question from AirshipJungleman29

10. Thanks for running! Could you give more details on the incident described in your answer to question 3?
A: There was a time before I applied for GRB when I would just revert a vandal's edits non-stop. This lead to page histories being messed up, as some users pointed out in my GRB application. I have since toned down the number of reverts I do while the vandal isn't blocked. --Leonidlednev (T, C, L) 01:58, 23 October 2024 (UTC)


Discussion

Please keep discussion constructive and civil. If you are unfamiliar with the nominee, please thoroughly review his contributions before commenting.

AfD record: no experience with AfD whatsoever; his only edits to AfD pages are reverts of vandalism. He maintains CSD logs, here and here, which I have not investigated. -- asilvering (talk) 02:19, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

GAN & FAC notes. No activity at GAN or FAC. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 23:57, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

Declined speedies

Ritchie333 (talk) (cont) 11:00, 24 October 2024 (UTC)

The above adminship discussion is preserved as an archive of the discussion. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the talk page of the nominated user). No further edits should be made to this page.

Zippybonzo

The following discussion is preserved as an archive of an administrator election candidacy that did not succeed. Please do not modify it.

Final (75/347/194); See official results (non-admin closure) – DreamRimmer Alt (talk) 17:08, 10 November 2024 (UTC)

Nomination

Zippybonzo (talk · contribs · they/them) – Heya, I’m Zippybonzo. I’ve been around for the best part of 3 years. My areas of focus are NPP, anti-vandalism and copyright to an extent. I recently looked again at the CCI backlog which I intend to focus my efforts on. I’m not expecting to get the backlog empty, but handling more recent cases is something that needs attention. I have never edited articles for pay, however I did participate in the Wikibench validation study, and received compensation for my time. I’ll be available for questions here throughout the remainder of the admin elections, so drop as many questions as you want below, and I’ll answer them to the best of my ability. There’s no such thing as a stupid question. Zippybonzo | talk | contribs (they/them) 06:36, 8 October 2024 (UTC)

Questions for the candidate

Dear candidate, thank you for offering to serve Wikipedia as an administrator. Please answer these questions to provide guidance for participants:

1. Why are you interested in becoming an administrator?
A: I’m primarily interested because I don’t do a lot of content work, so really I want to be handling background tasks, and leave the editors who are good at content to improve articles, instead of performing maintenance tasks. I initially intend to focus on CSDs, PRODs, AIV and UAA, and branch out once I get better at copyright, to help in copyright problems and contributor copyright investigations.
2. What are your best contributions to Wikipedia, and why?
A: I’ll split this into content and behind the scenes because my content contributions are limited and they’re not my best contributions. Content wise, a while ago I noticed GoHenry up for deletion, and I knew that it was notable, so I decided to bring it up to Start class. Behind the scenes wise, I coordinated 3 NPP backlog drives, from July 2022 through May 2023. This involved quite a bit of planning, and then a fair bit of execution.
3. Have you been in any conflicts over editing in the past or have other users caused you stress? How have you dealt with it and how will you deal with it in the future?
A: Last year, around this time, I was encouraged to leave the NPP coordination team, because of how I was coordinating drives in a way that made others feel like I was barking orders. In hindsight I should've taken that as my hint that I was doing it wrong, but I didn't. Eventually I did remove myself although it was never discussed onwiki. I was honestly a little annoyed because I didn't and still don't like criticism, though nobody really does. Then, what I should've done was take a week off and reflect upon it, and looked at what I'd done, but instead I left comment. After which my activity dwindled down, until over the last few weeks I've been trying to get more active. Moral of the story I learned: If people are telling you you're doing something wrong, they're most likely right and you should take a look at yourself.

You may ask optional questions below. There is a limit of two questions per editor. Multi-part questions are disallowed, but you are allowed to ask follow-up questions related to previous questions.

Optional question from Giraffer

4. Last year, you opposed 0xDeadbeef at RfA for "lack of content creation", when they had brought an article to GA status. Your (self-described) best content work is a start-class article to which you made six edits and currently have 1.9% authorship of. Given your respective content records, why do you believe you should be made an admin, but (at the time) believed 0xDeadbeef should not?
A: I don't really know fully why I opposed at the time, however I was not the most familiar with OxDeadbeef, we'd rarely crossed paths, so what I imagine I did was a pile on based on what I had read. Zippybonzo | talk | contribs (they/them) 08:01, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

Optional question from Trainsandotherthings

5. You have expressed interest in focusing on CCI. You were recently asked to be more careful in your work in this area. How have you been taking this on board?
A: Firstly, I've learnt that the people who work in copyright do a thankless task and they need some extra people, but mainly, I've learnt that to mark something as not a violation requires a significant amount of research, reading and comparing, and that for someone new to the area like myself, don't mark stuff as not violations unless you have 110% certainty that it isn't, it's a lot easier to find a violation than it is to clear it as not a violation. In future, I plan to handle the possible violations, which can be presumptively removed, and leave the ones I don't think to be violations for later review. Zippybonzo | talk | contribs (they/them) 08:01, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

Optional question from Novem Linguae

6. Can you talk a bit about your 30 minute block in 2021? It was reversed by the same admin that placed it with the message "AGF", so it appears it might have been erroneous?
A: It's quite the story. For context. I was excited about beginning to edit Wikipedia, and tried to convince someone at school to get into editing (sounds stupid, I know). They turned out to vandalise a couple of pages, get blocked, the auto block caught me, it looked suspicious, Yamla indeffed me, I wrote an appeal, and they accepted it with AGF. I wouldn't say it was erroneous, but there was some misunderstanding and miscommunication from my part. Zippybonzo | talk | contribs (they/them) 08:01, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

Optional question from Thryduulf

7. Why did you choose to seek adminship via election rather than via a standard RFA?
A: I'm not expecting a 100%, or probably even 80% success, and I feel it'll be easier to fail here, because you don't have to read everyone's !votes, and it's less discouraging to fail here, because you can't keep reading back the votes. I also wanted to test the process, and plan on writing an essay about the new process if the trial run leads to full approval. Zippybonzo | talk | contribs (they/them) 08:01, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

Optional question from Ganesha811

8. Are there any areas of adminship you do not plan to participate in, due to unfamiliarity or lack of technical knowledge? If you later decided you wanted to help in these areas, what would be your plan to become an effective admin in those areas?
A: In terms of areas I don't plan to participate in, ANEW, ANI, some PERM requests (autopatrolled, template editor and new page reviewer) and History Merges (at least for the first few months). That's mostly because I either don't like the place (ANI and ANEW), for PERM requests, it's because they are quite controversial permissions and ideally I want to stay away from drama, and history merges because from what I've read, they're not simple. I'd probably wait a few months and watch history merges, and potentially start handling some, assuming I can figure out how the buttons work, but they seem like quite a complex process. As for eventually helping in PERM requests, I'd probably wait a bit, review requests but only provide comments or deny in obvious situations, and then eventually handle them more often. Zippybonzo | talk | contribs (they/them) 08:01, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

Optional question from Valereee

9. I'm concerned about your answer to Q4: so what I imagine I did was a pile on based on what I had read. Can you expand on your current understanding of how people piling on without fully understanding an issue affects discussions here on wiki?
A: Yep, from what I understand, it can skew the result of a discussion in one way or another, which is why discussions results factor in arguments as well as number of !votes. In the case of RfA, it can also discourage the candidate. Zippybonzo | talk | contribs (they/them) 10:10, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

Optional question from Bunnypranav

10. You mentioned that you initially didn’t handle feedback well during the NPP incident and also acknowledged thatI didn't and still don't like criticism. As an admin, how do you plan to manage your personal discomfort with criticism while remaining open to community feedback, particularly when making difficult or controversial administrative decisions?
A: Ultimately, criticism is going to be a part of my editing, and where possible I plan to stay away from controversial areas for the forseeable future, until I am comfortably settled into admin tasks, after which I'd potentially start working in possibly more controversial areas, such as admin noticeboards. I'd like to say I don't want to be involved in any controversial areas, but that's wishful thinking, and nearly impossible to achieve, so I'd try to just keep out of places where I could get involved in controversy. Zippybonzo | talk | contribs (they/them) 12:27, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

Optional question from BeanieFan11

11. You have not written a single article (the two listed on Xtools appear to be redirects expanded by others) – you've also expressed an interest in deletion-areas. Do you think it is appropriate for someone with no content work themself to be able to delete others' work? Why or why not?
A: I would say it depends on the case, if it's a spam page, attack page or other low quality page, yes. I also would say BLPPRODs could also be deleted by someone with no content work. PRODs are an edge case, if the subject obviously isn't notable, I would say yes, however if the subject is notable, even borderline, I would argue it should be taken to AfD. As for articles at AfD, I have no intent in handling edge cases, however if there's clear, or near unanimous consensus for the page to be deleted, I would say that an admin without content work could delete it, although it would probably be best for an admin experienced in content to make the closure. Zippybonzo | talk | contribs (they/them) 15:48, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

Optional question from Giraffer

12. One of your listed best contributions is coordinating backlog drives. While this is very helpful work, it does not involve you personally making major edits to Wikipedia. What do you consider to be your best edits on Wikipedia? You've mentioned your lack of content, so this could be a CCI cleanup, an big SPI, a comprehensive content review (GAN/FAC/FLC), etc.
A: I would say the 2 GA reviews (and the one that I'm in the middle of), are the closest to content work, albeit still quite lacking contributions. Relating to question 2, the main reason that I don't write articles or content is because I just can't think of anything to write of, and I don't like how the words I write sound when reading them back to myself. Zippybonzo | talk | contribs (they/them) 15:47, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

Optional question from Hey man im josh

13. Do you consider this recent comment of yours to be WP:GRAVEDANCING?
A: It was definitely untoward, and I should've recognised it was gravedancing before I posted it. It added no value and in hindsight I shouldn't have made it. I should've really left the incident and denied recognition, but it is what it is. Zippybonzo | talk | contribs (they/them) 17:20, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

Optional question from Significa liberdade

14. In the discussion below, you state that you would prefer to work with PROD and CSD rather than AfD because "PRODs and CSDs are less controversial deletions". Can you expand on this sentiment? Significa liberdade (she/her) (talk) 18:17, 22 October 2024 (UTC)
A: PROD is described on WP:PROD as "a way to suggest an article or file for uncontroversial deletion.", and CSD described on WP:CSD as "[to] specify the only cases in which administrators have broad consensus to bypass deletion discussion". They're typically less controversial, because they don't go through a full 7 day discussion, where there may be disagreements with the closure, although obviously the creator may disagree with the page being tagged for deletion, it typically doesn't have as much discussion, which usually means that it's less controversial for a deletion. Zippybonzo | talk | contribs (they/them) 18:28, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

Optional question from HouseBlaster

15. Similar to your comment at 0xDeadbeef's RfA (see Q4), you also opposed Shushugah's RfA becauseWay too soon, 6000 edits isn’t enough. I also don’t particularly trust self-nominating - it just means that the nominee hasn’t been vetted by someone before being nominated. I admit that I find this a bit hypocritical, given that this is a self-nomination and you have 7,750 edits (7,650 > 6,000, but not by that much). Why do you believe you should be made an admin if Shushugah was not ready for adminship? HouseBlaster (talk • he/they) 18:33, 22 October 2024 (UTC)
A: I was planning to eventually run for adminship, but I felt that my best chance was at admin elections, and this may be the only run, so I felt it was a good opportunity to seize, experience the process and improve. The lowest edit count that typically succeeds is 8000 edits, and I felt it was close enough, and there may not be another chance to use the better (in my opinion) process, so I decided to run. Zippybonzo | talk | contribs (they/them) 18:54, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

Optional question from Sennecaster

16. In the discussion below, you said that youwill watch the process to learn (properly) how it works, and do some of the less controversial stuff with regard to copyright. While CCI is not inherently controversial, it has a very high learning curve mostly overcome through practice and responding to feedback (including criticism) gracefully. To that point, you have saidI didn't and still don't like criticism andI plan to stay away from controversial areas for the forseeable future. Participants are also frequently criticized - systematically removing content is a delicate process than can turn unpleasant very quickly, especially when mistakes are made, which naturally happens as someone gains experience. How do you plan to reconcile your avoidance of criticism with learning the nuances and complexities of copyright cleanup?
A: The comment about doing less controversial stuff was meant to be replying to the comment about deletions, but regardless, presumptive removals could definitely turn sour, so I plan to take it slow, only doing maybe 5 pages, wait a day to see if anybody has any feedback, and then do another handful of pages, until I'm confident that I'm doing it properly. I think the main way to avoid criticism for me is to just take it slow, make sure that any mistakes can be easily rectified, and build up confidence until I'm certain I can do it properly. Zippybonzo | talk | contribs (they/them) 07:34, 23 October 2024 (UTC)

Optional question from Rosguill

17 Could you specify what steps you would take to evaluate an article tagged for PROD after 7 days as an admin?
A Firstly as prerequisites, check that it has been at least 7 days, then check if any objections have been raised. Then I'd check that the reason for tagging still stands valid. If the reason was invalid to begin with, or the issues had been fixed, I would remove the tag without deleting. Zippybonzo | talk | contribs (they/them) 07:29, 24 October 2024 (UTC)

Optional questions from GreenLipstickLesbian

18. Despite having patrolled only 305 pages (many or of which have been the the project or userspace), despite being asked to step away from co-ordinating NPP drives out of concerns you were being domineering, and despite accusing an editor who asked you to step aside ofblackmail, you have chosen to run partially based on your experience co-ordinating NPP drives. Similarly, despite having minimal copyright experience, I first met you when you announced your intention tostart coordinating a the Copyright Cleanup Wikiproject in hopes ofreviving what actual participants know is a fairly active, albeit non-chatty, Wikiproject. (Post). Given your apparent lack of hands-on experience in the areas your operate in (content creation, patrolling, deletion, copyright cleanup), why do you regularly attempt to co-ordinate and lead other editors with more more experience?
A: I'm very much overzealous, and I will come up with ideas that seem clever in my head, often in areas that I've not been involved in for longer than a few days, because I have a sudden thought that "example idea" might be the best way to improve this and reduce x backlog. Zippybonzo | talk | contribs (they/them) 12:35, 24 October 2024 (UTC)
19. You said in Q8 that youdon't plan to participate in...PERM requests because youwant to stay away from drama. Which is interesting, considering you have 25 edits to WP:PERM/NPR, 13 edits to WP:PERM/PM, and 42 edits to WP:PERM/R. (Most of these edits appear to be providing commentary on other editors' requests for permissions). So when you say that you will beeventually helping in PERM requests, I find no reason to doubt you. Yet, in Q4, you unapologetically admitted to jumping in with apile on vote against a fellow editor. Could you expand on how you would choose to evaluate the skills, strengths, and weaknesses of your fellow editors, with particular focus to how you have (or have not) done so in the past and how you would do so as an administrator?
A: Q4 was intended to be more in the context of RfA, where I read what research others have done, and then make my decision off of that, and what I've seen from the candidate, and I wouldn't say unapologetically, it was last year, I was less experienced, and I made a decision based on what I had read, rather than doing my own research. With PERM requests, making the final decision is what I consider contentious, because it could result in either annoying the requester, or abuse of the permissions. Depending on the permission, I would either do an XTools overview, to check they meet the guideline statistics, and then a spot check of contributions to relevant areas (typically about 3-4 revert/warn combos per month for rollback, 1-2 requested moves and/or 3-4 requested moves/technical and/or 3-4 moves per month for page mover, about 10-20% of created articles for autopatrolled, AfD stats for NPR, AfC reviews (if relevant) and/or NPP school, for template editor, I'd probably leave that to the more technical admins, because I'm not great at understanding templates, etc). After that, I'd check talk pages (and archives if relevant) to ensure there aren't any major red flags being raised, and then assuming all is well, I'd grant the permission, if I spotted some potential issues, I'd probably comment and leave it for someone else to make the final decision, unless of course there were major red flags. Zippybonzo | talk | contribs (they/them) 12:35, 24 October 2024 (UTC)


Discussion

Please keep discussion constructive and civil. If you are unfamiliar with the nominee, please thoroughly review their contributions before commenting.

  • For Q4, Zippybonzo's work with NPP means that they know good (and bad) content where they see it. I'm not sure if 0xdeadbeef had similar activity in processes so closely tied to content. (t · c) buidhe 00:50, 22 October 2024 (UTC)
    @Buidhe, in 2024, Zippybonzo has seemingly patrolled 34 pages. Of those pages, only five were in article space. (Of the remaining 29, 25 were redirects, and 4 were in user, draft, and project space.) Looking at all their 303 patrols, and that ratio seems remarkably consistent. I'm not analysing that, however, because they're not running on their content knowledge- but I don't think saying that they're heavily involved in processes involving content based on the fact that they've reviewed five articles in this past year is going to be persuasive. GreenLipstickLesbian (talk) 03:03, 22 October 2024 (UTC)
    I actually disagree with this and believe Zippy's NPP work is vastly overstated. I've had to correct them countless times when they've given incorrect advice on the NPP Discord, advice that someone standing for adminship should never be giving or that wrong about. You'll find, if you look through their patrol log, that they actually have very little experience reviewing articles. Hey man im josh (talk) 19:01, 23 October 2024 (UTC)

AfD record: 80.00% match rate, n of 25. 3 keep !votes to 24 delete !votes. Mildly subjective comment: they have only participated in 3 AfDs in the past year, but they express an interest in deletion process (CSD and PROD). -- asilvering (talk) 01:59, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

Personal comment: I'm concerned about a candidate who expresses interest in deletion processes but has so little experience in them. These two recent AfDs [6], [7], which are 2/3 of the AfDs they've !voted in in the past year, don't inspire confidence. Their PROD log only has four items, but may have been turned off? (Nothing wrong with not keeping a log.) Their CSD log has not been turned off, but there are only ten items in the last year. -- asilvering (talk) 01:59, 22 October 2024 (UTC)
@Asilvering the PROD log isn't turned off, it's just that I don't nominate many PRODs outside of the NPP process, and within NPP, I use page curation to tag PRODs, iirc Special:Log/pagecuration should have some logs of deletion tags. Zippybonzo | talk | contribs (they/them) 07:36, 22 October 2024 (UTC)
Page curation deletion logs. – DreamRimmer (talk) 07:49, 22 October 2024 (UTC)
Thanks, @DreamRimmer. I totally forgot about that log. -- asilvering (talk) 16:59, 22 October 2024 (UTC)
Oh wow, that's neat. This will make it a lot easier to find some things. Alpha3031 (t • c) 07:53, 23 October 2024 (UTC)
Talk:Edgemead Football Club was painful to read. Completely botched attempt to guide a COI editor through WP:DCM, for content we wouldn't want anyway. —Cryptic 09:06, 22 October 2024 (UTC)
  • "Piling on" to discussions rather than making considered, nuanced judgements based on available evidence may not be a characteristic we should be encouraging in our admin cohort. I also wonder if 12 days is long enough for a candidate to re-learn the complexities of CCI. And AfD is a worthy admin task, but when one has only partaken in 44—and two one of them this year—I would wonder how much experience has really been gained. SerialNumber54129 12:01, 22 October 2024 (UTC)
    Re AfD (and XfD more generally), I don't plan to do much, if any work there for the first couple of years of adminship, however PRODs and CSDs are less controversial deletions and I'd probably rather do work there. Re CCI, I've not relearned CCI, and I'm not going to actively do much there for a few more months, but I will watch the process to learn (properly) how it works, and do some of the less controversial stuff. Zippybonzo | talk | contribs (they/them) 12:30, 22 October 2024 (UTC)
    I wouldn't say that's true about CSDs from the admin side. Yes, it's only supposed to be for uncontroversial deletions, but many things that are nominated are not, in fact, uncontroversial. A significant part of dealing with them is knowing when to decline them. -- asilvering (talk) 23:52, 22 October 2024 (UTC)
Out of scope for this discussion. theleekycauldron (talk • she/her) 17:16, 24 October 2024 (UTC)
  • It's also odd that the candidate expressed a commitment to support despite the instructions stating that voting is by secure poll and thatduring this discussion-only time, participants are discouraged from posting messages of support/opposition. SerialNumber54129 14:53, 22 October 2024 (UTC)
    I was using it as a way of explaining why I was asking my question, not as a way of expressing my vote. Zippybonzo | talk | contribs (they/them) 15:00, 22 October 2024 (UTC)
    I don't think this should be interpreted as "keep it secret whether you intend to support". Just that we don't need to bloat the discussion with generic statements that don't contribute to the conversation or a bunch of bold votes that won't be counted. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 15:25, 22 October 2024 (UTC)
    I think it should probably be interpreted asparticipants are discouraged from posting messages of support/opposition. SerialNumber54129 15:33, 22 October 2024 (UTC)
    Then it's not a "message of support", it's a question which happened to mention that they intend to support. Sort of in the same way I sometimes sign off messages with "thanks", but I wouldn't call them a "message of gratitude". Thebiguglyalien (talk) 16:36, 22 October 2024 (UTC)
    I find zippy's comment there to be acceptable. This is not the kind of diff I'd be comfortable opposing a candidacy over. –Novem Linguae (talk) 16:45, 22 October 2024 (UTC)
    I don't think that the comment was unacceptable. Still, we should consider questions in the format of "I support/oppose your nomination, and/but now answer the following" to be discouraged. There's no need to lace questions with such statements in RfA, which has dedicated sections for them, so it would be ironic if the new process introduced precisely to move away from that format of expressing advocacy would cause support/oppose advocacy to migrate upward, to the questions section. —Alalch E. 13:19, 24 October 2024 (UTC)
  • The answer to Q4 (my first question) is an explanation for why Zippybonzo cast the oppose !vote, but it doesn't answer the question about why they are not applying the same standard to themselves. I won't push further on it, but I've asked a second question which is hopefully easier to answer. Giraffer (talk) 15:42, 22 October 2024 (UTC)
    @Giraffer, to answer why I'm not applying the same standard to myself, I'm not really sure, I made that oppose based on what I read in the discussion, and probably should've looked deeper, it's a bit crude for someone who has written no content to oppose someone who's written more than me. When nominating myself, I'd forgotten about the oppose, I should really apply the same standard to myself, so (assuming this passes) I'm making a commitment to write (or improve majorly) an article within the next year, and if I don't, I'll hand back the sysop right, because I should've held my own RfA votes against myself. Zippybonzo | talk | contribs (they/them) 15:53, 22 October 2024 (UTC)
  • Full credit to Zippy for their answer to Q3. I remember that incident, I imagine it's difficult to talk about, there isn't much published on wiki about it so not talking about it would have been easy, but instead zippy decided to be transparent about it. I think that answer shows some personal growth. There may be some other reasons to oppose this candidacy, but I think zippy should get full credit for that particular question and answer. –Novem Linguae (talk) 16:49, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

GAN & FAC notes. No activity at FAC. Four GAN reviews; listed here. All are checklist reviews, with only a little additional commentary showing what was reviewed. No evidence of spotchecks which have been required since March of last year; only one of these reviews predates that change to the instructions. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 00:03, 23 October 2024 (UTC)

  • I'm concerned about his answer to Q4. First problem, it's double standard. Also, he promised to write more, but I like to see action rather than empty promises. Second problem, he failed to provide a rationale for his oppose last year. Third problem, "I did was a pile on" means that he was bandwagoning other editors. Traits that I like to see in future admins include having their opinion on different matters and the ability to defend their own opinions logically in a debate. This candidate has none. 2600:6C44:117F:95BE:798C:64B5:CDB2:3714 (talk) 05:38, 23 October 2024 (UTC)
  • It is slightly odd to compare different editors but I suppose the point in Q4 still stands. I feel weird about them claiming thatwe'd rarely crossed paths. We're actually both active in areas around edit filters, I regularly patrolled WP:EFFPR and commented at WP:EFM at that time. There is also Wikipedia:Edit filter noticeboard/Archive 11#Edit filter manager for User:0xDeadbeef, so I am a little surprised that they claim were not familiar with me. 0xDeadbeef→∞ (talk to me) 10:08, 23 October 2024 (UTC)
    I knew of you, and of your work around EF at the time, just not everything, for example I didn't know about your bot or content writing. Zippybonzo | talk | contribs (they/them) 10:25, 23 October 2024 (UTC)
    My intention with the question was to highlight a standard Zippy had set (one GA is not enough content), and ask why they did not hold themselves to that same standard. It wasn't supposed to be a comparison between you and them, but an opportunity for them to reflect on their content experience and how it stacks up against some of their own RfA criteria. I apologize if it was interpreted as rehashing old RfA opposition. Giraffer (talk) 14:46, 23 October 2024 (UTC)
    No, I did not see it as rehashing, I think it is certainly something to consider when evaluating this candidate. 0xDeadbeef→∞ (talk to me) 09:38, 24 October 2024 (UTC)

Copyright activity: Zippy has checked 9 CopyPatrol reports, never commented on a WP:CP listing, and edited 2 CCIs (Hauganm and Kippelboy). They've tagged [8] and [9] in the deletion PageTriage log, of which one was self-reverted due to being in the public domain. They have 4 G12s in their Twinkle CSD log, of which 2 are currently live; Special:Log/Chitra Ramaswamy was recreated and was a correct tagging, but Omnichannel retail strategy was a WP:BACKWARDSCOPY. For the CopyPatrol reports, they are all correct, but all of the checks are inverted of what they should be - "No action needed" is marked for pages that had copyvio and "Page fixed" for pages that had no issue. Sennecaster (Chat) 18:40, 23 October 2024 (UTC)

Personal comment: As mentioned in Q5, User:GreenLipstickLesbian and I pointed out two instances of missed CV on a CCI. The presumptive removal part is not obvious and I don't fault Zippy for that. However, I am unimpressed with the fact that they missed blatant CV because it wasn't picked up by the copyvio detector, and the lack of initiative to fix Varmahlíð themself. I understand that Zippy wants to gain experience in copyright before using the tools there, but I'm concerned about it being treated even as a premise for adminship given their track record (or lack thereof). Copyright cleanup also requires a very solid grasp on WP:V, and the lack of spotchecking on the GAN reviews that Mike Christie pointed out above does not inspire confidence in that. Sennecaster (Chat) 18:40, 23 October 2024 (UTC)

 Comment: I'm surprised Zippybonzo hasn't mentioned their three terms as coordinator at the Guild of Copy Editors (elections here, here and here). I'd have thought that would be a point of pride, not something to hide under a bushel. Whatever, it's nice to see they's still active on the project and I wish them luck in the election. Baffle☿gab 09:27, 24 October 2024 (UTC)

On the other hand, I'd be rather surprised if he did mention it.He does not seem to have contributed much to the GoCE, either as an editor or coord: one c/e (New Amsterdam Theatre, which comprised one edit (!!!)) signed up for, he's only ever commented on the project discussion page three times, and one edit to requests. Hopefully there's a ton of stuff I'm not seeing, but looking at those elections, he were pretty focused on getting the 'Lead coord' position from the start (literally their second question after being elected the first time was to ask about the Lead position). In their second election, he offered again; this time Dhtwiki suggested the projectcan go another round without a lead. In the lastest election The again offered, being willing tostep up to become a lead coordinator, given that we've cobbled around for about a year without one, and it's about time for us to get a lead coordinator. Their colleagues disagreed, suggesting that their work waslimited and that he wassomeone able to do more work here. He was told, also, that he wasstepping too far and stepping on toes, and that theyhaven't been very active at the GOCE since becoming a coordinator. While Zb suggested that hedeliberately decided to step up to lead, because I would like to become more involved with the project, the Guild—like every other project, including that for finding new administrators—clearly prefers to judge its candidates by past achievements than future promises. SerialNumber54129 11:20, 24 October 2024 (UTC)

Declined speedies

Ritchie333 (talk) (cont) 11:01, 24 October 2024 (UTC)

  1. No error: Self-reverted after deletion was contested, creator saying "I am not done creating the page and citing sources".
  2. No real error: Minor mix-up, self-reverted.
  3. Highly excusable error: Not a clear-cut situation, self-reverted.
  4. Error: poor investigation. But this was in 2022.
  5. Not technically an error: Misused non-contributor user talk pages with no talk-related history are subject to U5, but while deletion would not have been inappropriate, it was more economical to simply blank and post a relevant warning, not requiring extra work from an admin.
  6. Not technically an error: Article content was indeed missing, but it was sufficiently clear what the purpose of this page was and that it was not intended as an article; the alternative to deletion employed by the responding admin was better. But this was in 2022.
  7. Error: This was clearly the start of an article about the party. But this was in 2022.
  8. Error: I don't understand how this could have been interpreted as "no context". But this was in 2021;
The tagging mistakes are consistent with someone starting editing in 2021, making a few mistakes and not repeating them. —Alalch E. 12:01, 24 October 2024 (UTC)
The problem with that is that there's not a lot of CSD tagging to go off to show that they learned from those declines.
2024 – 8 items tagged, 2 declined
2023 – 18 items tagged, 1 declined
2022 – 57 items tagged, 5 declined
Personally I'd like to see more CSD tagging from someone who intends to work in that area. Hey man im josh (talk) 14:56, 24 October 2024 (UTC)
Agreed, but the lack of the same mistakes repeated, and there being some subsequent CSD tagging, means that there is evidence that the editor is in the process of getting it, but evidence that they've got it would be, as you say, more CSD tagging. —Alalch E. 15:22, 24 October 2024 (UTC)
The above adminship discussion is preserved as an archive of the discussion. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the talk page of the nominated user). No further edits should be made to this page.

MarcGarver

The following discussion is preserved as an archive of an administrator election candidacy that did not succeed. Please do not modify it.

Final (266/120/230); See official results (non-admin closure) – DreamRimmer Alt (talk) 17:09, 10 November 2024 (UTC)

Nomination

MarcGarver (talk · contribs · he/him) – I am MarcGarver and I made my first Wikipedia edit (as QuiteUnusual) on 2 August 2006. In the subsequent 18 years I've kept myself out of trouble with no real conflicts. I have a previous, failed, RfA from 12 years ago which mainly turned on close paraphrasing concerns which I feel I've long addressed. I spend most of my time on WP:AFC, and dealing with low level spam, paid contributions and vandalism. As an administrator I would undoubtedly focus on the areas I know best - promotional content and spam, undisclosed paid editing, and the extensive copyright violation that turns up at AFC and NPP. I will also say that I have been a Steward for ten years which requires a community reconfirmation every year. This doesn't qualify me to be an admin here as the expectations are very different but I hope it provides some reassurance that I can be trusted to be sensible! I can confirm I have never been paid to edit Wikipedia. I have a second account, User:QuiteUnusualPublic, which I used to use occasionally on public computers MarcGarver (talk) 09:00, 8 October 2024 (UTC)

Questions for the candidate

Dear candidate, thank you for offering to serve Wikipedia as an administrator. Please answer these questions to provide guidance for participants:

1. Why are you interested in becoming an administrator?
A: I spend a lot of time here - I'm usually active every working day - and I have a lot of technical experience of the admin toolset from other projects. I feel relatively comfortable with my knowledge of the main policies so feel that I can help out by dealing with the graft work. This is a genuine "I'm happy to help out" self-nomination. I have no burning desire to be an admin, and won't get upset by a "no" from the community.
2. What are your best contributions to Wikipedia, and why?
A: I am not a big content creator, but have made material contributions to some articles. Two things are most typical of my larger contributions: expanding stubs, especially where they are poorly cited (e.g., Annie Warren Gill (diff) and tidying up abandoned larger articles like MS Norman Atlantic (diff). I am pleased with this work. I also think I make good contributions to cleaning up unsupported claims in BLPs, either by finding citations or removing the content if that seems wise. I'm the kind of person who when I am drawn to an article by one problem, I try and not just revert the problem, but leave it a bit better. A good example is here when I needed to fix a problem edit, but stayed to improve a poorly cited BLP before I left. Finally I should mention Control self-assessment. I think I've done a good job on this article which I started from scratch, but I'm also mentioning it because it was the cause of the close paraphrasing concern 12 years ago so I thought I'd make it easy for people who wanted to check back on it.
3. Have you been in any conflicts over editing in the past or have other users caused you stress? How have you dealt with it and how will you deal with it in the future?
A: The only conflict was long ago (and very minor). I am generally very accepting of feedback and adjust my work as required. It doesn't cause me stress. I should also mention other projects. I've been a Steward for 10 years (which is why I have some deletions in the Wikipedia log despite never being an admin) and a CheckUser on Wikibooks for longer. In these roles, some low level conflict is inevitable but I think I've dealt with it in the same way: listen, adjust if appropriate, move forward. Perhaps the best example is how I responded to my failed RfA. I recognised the problem and, after the RfA had ended, went back and checked every piece of my work to ensure I cleaned up every problem I had created. You can see the history of this on my user page, created at the time - User:MarcGarver/WIP.

You may ask optional questions below. There is a limit of two questions per editor. Multi-part questions are disallowed, but you are allowed to ask follow-up questions related to previous questions.

Optional question from Thryduulf

4. Why did you choose to seek adminship via election rather than via a standard RFA?
A: There are several reasons. While I don't agree with the school of thought that "RFA is broken", I do think it is always worth experimenting with changes and I want to contribute to that in a minor way by taking part, whatever the outcome. RFAs consume a lot of focused time, and I find that difficult. The stats on my editing time will show that I am most active between 09:00 and 17:00 (UTC) on weekdays and usually with gaps of 15 minutes at most when I can contribute. I found it very difficult at my last RFA to find the focused time to stay on top of the RFA. The different structure of the election model is easier for me.

Optional question from Novem Linguae

5. Your userpage states you have a good article, but I don't see it in the good article tool. Can you please clarify the name of your good article? And feel free to talk about your contributions to it.
A: The article is Clifton Suspension Bridge. I would call it a minor contribution. Similar to what I do today, I spent a bit of time checking content that wasn't referenced, tidying up a few sentences, etc. I would hardly call myself a major contributor to it getting to GA status, but every little bit helps!

Optional question from Ganesha811

6. Are there any areas of adminship you do not plan to participate in, due to unfamiliarity or lack of technical knowledge? If you later decided you wanted to help in these areas, what would be your plan to become an effective admin in those areas?
A: Lack of technical knowledge, no. Having been a crat, CU, admin and Steward on other projects for many years I feel I am well versed in how to use the tools, plus all tool actions are reversible. However, what isn't so easily reversible is the impact of getting a decision wrong - e.g., it can easily upset an editor to the point that they stop contributing usefully. I would therefore initially steer away from anything I don't feel suitably experienced to deal with which would include things like complex issues on AN/I, content disputes and edit warring. Being able to contribute effectively in future comes from reading the policies and guidelines, observing others, contributing in a minor way, and then eventually stepping up. For example, the comment below re. my AfD stats correctly points out that I have a record there, but it is many years since I've been very active. I would begin my participating in more AfDs, seeing how experienced admins judged complex cases, begin by closing straightforward cases then work up to more complex ones while all the time checking against the relevant policies and asking for advice if I need it.

Optional question from Asilvering

7. You've been a steward for a long time, so I assume you like doing it. What do you like about it?
A: I've never really thought about it to be honest. Thinking about it now, I find that it gives me a sense of being part of an international community trying to do something worthwhile. For example much of the focus is on helping out the tiny projects that could never really manage on their own. I particularly enjoy the debate and different perspectives among the group on the knotty "big" problems that the WMF sometimes consults us on.

Optional question from Trainsandotherthings

8. If elected, you would be both a Steward and an English Wikipedia Administrator. How would you balance your time between both roles?
A: Same as now. Different Stewards do different things at different times of the day. I tend to look at Steward stuff early in my day when there is nobody else around, and reactively to issues I see on other projects. The rest of the day I tend to spend here. That's partly because right now we have a super-active Steward who gets to the noticeboard stuff really quickly leaving me free to be here!

Discussion

Please keep discussion constructive and civil. If you are unfamiliar with the nominee, please thoroughly review his contributions before commenting.

AfD record: 98.20% match rate, n of 55. 1 keep !votes to 58 delete !votes. Mildly subjective comment: these stats are great but they're stale - most of the participation is from years and years ago. Obvious tendency to deletion, but almost all of these are nominations, and here the % match rate speaks for itself. -- asilvering (talk) 01:37, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

  • Claiming a GA on the strength of a 3.4% authorship might be considered a bit of a stretch. SerialNumber54129 12:17, 22 October 2024 (UTC)
    Yes, while MarcGarver did some fine editing work on the page, it was not a major contribution and had little to do with the article receiving GA status. On the other hand, I don't believe that major content contributions are required to be a good admin, and Marc has certainly demonstrated their ability to edit productively both in technical and non-technical areas. —Ganesha811 (talk) 13:38, 22 October 2024 (UTC)
    The more important thing is that admins understand the ins and outs of content contribution, and claiming credit for what's essentially someone else's work is something that at least needs to be considered. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 15:29, 22 October 2024 (UTC)
    For what it is worth, I didn't (and don't) consider that I was claiming credit for anything more than I actually did and certainly not for someone else's work. That would be a pointless thing to do given the edit history identifies exactly who did what. The userbox just says "helped promote". I spent a bit of time helping, and contributed on the Talk page, so I felt like I helped to promote it. I didn't consider it a big deal as it was just a userbox. MarcGarver (talk) 16:47, 22 October 2024 (UTC)
    I agree with the others that using that GA userbox in this situation of low authorship is not a good look. You can probably make this issue go away if you remove the userbox. –Novem Linguae (talk) 16:59, 22 October 2024 (UTC)
    I take the point, although equally editing it now feels deceptive. To slightly clarify what I said above, I interpreted the purpose of the userbox to indicate participating in the process of getting an article to GA. I didn't take it to mean "was the major contributor to an article that became a GA. Anyway, as the consensus here is that I'm wrong, I'll remove the UB not least because I'm pretty obsessive about crediting people with their contributions (e.g., I have spent quite literally thousands of hours at Wikibooks deleting content people copy / pasted from Wikipedia then importing, merging the edit history, etc., to maintain the attribution). MarcGarver (talk) 07:50, 23 October 2024 (UTC)
    Thanks! Yeah I read a couple books when writing my GA and spent dozens of hours on it, so maybe it's petty, but it just didn't sit right with me to do a little bit of work then claim the GA. All good now. Thank you for being flexible. –Novem Linguae (talk) 08:25, 23 October 2024 (UTC)
    Noted. Figured it was worth mentioning, but it's not a huge issue in my mind. :) Thebiguglyalien (talk) 17:04, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

GAN & FAC notes. No activity at GAN or FAC. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 00:05, 23 October 2024 (UTC)

Declined speedies

  • That's not a declined speedy. I self-reverted the speedy in less than a minute when I realised that I was looking at a hijacked page and instead restored the correct page. MarcGarver (talk) 12:33, 24 October 2024 (UTC)
  • Similar to above, I self-reverted the speedy in a minute when I realised the problem was a large copyright addition that had been inserted a few days earlier and instead restored the correct version of the page. MarcGarver (talk) 12:35, 24 October 2024 (UTC)
  • I'll take these three as a group. All three were spam or webhost violations that were then blanked before or after the editor was blocked to remove the spam and post the block notice. So I agree they are "declined" speedies but I think it is arguable they could have been validly deleted rather than blanked. MarcGarver (talk) 12:54, 24 October 2024 (UTC)

Ritchie333 (talk) (cont) 11:02, 24 October 2024 (UTC)

The above adminship discussion is preserved as an archive of the discussion. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the talk page of the nominated user). No further edits should be made to this page.

Iwaqarhashmi

The following discussion is preserved as an archive of an administrator election discussion that did not succeed. Please do not modify it.
Withdrawn by candidate, closed by –Novem Linguae (talk) 21:20, 23 October 2024 (UTC)

Nomination

Iwaqarhashmi (talk · contribs · he/him) – Hello everyone, I'm Iwaqarhashmi. I joined Wikipedia on November 18, 2022, and the English Wikipedia is my home wiki. At first, I was mostly contributing here, but now I'm active on other wiki projects as well. I've made more than 160,000 global edits. I'm mainly involved in anti-vadalism work from day one. I actively patrol recent changes here and on Wikimedia Commons. I've successfully reported many and many users to WP:AIV and WP:UAA. I'm an experienced user with lots of rights and positive contributions. I've never had any blocks, and I've never done paid editing on any Wikimedia projects. Thank you and I'm happy to answer any questions. Waqar💬 08:56, 10 October 2024 (UTC)

Questions for the candidate

Dear candidate, thank you for offering to serve Wikipedia as an administrator. Please answer these questions to provide guidance for participants:

1. Why are you interested in becoming an administrator?
A: I'm interested in becoming an administrator to be able to help with the backlogs at WP:AIV, WP:UAA, and WP:RFPP. Also, I would try my best to consistently deal with the speedy deletion requests at CAT:CSD. Sometimes requests take days to be answered at WP:PERM, so I would be more than happy to help with that too.
2. What are your best contributions to Wikipedia, and why?
A: I'd say my best contribution to Wikipedia, which I'm really proud of, is me participating in the September 2024 NPP backlog drive, where I reviewed lots of articles and redirects. My other best contributions would be the thousands of user pages and drafts I've patrolled so far.
3. Have you been in any conflicts over editing in the past or have other users caused you stress? How have you dealt with it and how will you deal with it in the future?
A: I don't think I have been involved in any serious conflicts, but generally anti-vandalism work tends to bring disagreements. These disagreements can sometimes be stressful, especially when they involve personal attacks. However, I've learned to approach these situations with patience and understanding.

You may ask optional questions below. There is a limit of two questions per editor. Multi-part questions are disallowed, but you are allowed to ask follow-up questions related to previous questions.

Optional question from Thryduulf

4. Why did you choose to seek adminship via election rather than via a standard RFA?
A: Well, I'd been thinking about applying for adminship at the end of the year. But when these new elections came along, I thought it would be a great opportunity to try out this new experimental process. It seemed like a nice way to get involved and be a part of something different. Waqar💬 09:08, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

Optional question from Ganesha811

5. Are there any areas of adminship you do not plan to participate in, due to unfamiliarity or lack of technical knowledge? If you later decided you wanted to help in these areas, what would be your plan to become an effective admin in those areas?
A: At the moment, I don't plan to get involved in disputed XfDs, sockpuppetry, or COI cases due to my lack of experience in these areas. That being said, I'm open to new experiences and always looking to improve myself. If I decide to become active in any of these areas, I'll be sure to proceed carefully and seek help from experienced editors who have a strong understanding and knowledgeable. Waqar💬 09:08, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

Optional question from Novem Linguae

6. Can you talk about what is going on in this diff, where it looks like you removed 31 sections from User talk:Iwaqarhashmi/Archive 1?
A: Well, my talk page messages are always archived by ClueBot III to Archive 1, but a few months ago the page exceeded its size limit, and the bot created another page, Archive 2, for archiving messages. Since the discussions in Archive 1 were very old and stale, I decided to replace them by the new ones in Archive 2, so they don't get accidentally revived by any new users and only the latest relevant ones stay up front. All these old discussions can be found in the page history if ever needed, and per WP:KEEPDECLINEDUNBLOCK only declined unblock requests and past warnings shouldn't be removed and there wasn't any at all. For the record, I've also replaced the old AfC, Draftify, and CSD logs with the new ones because sometimes the pages were taking a lot of time to load up. Waqar💬 13:15, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

Optional question from Trainsandotherthings

7. Have you made any substantial edits to create, improve, or expand articles?
A: I have created a lot of articles about Indian politics, and none of them was deleted. I would say I've been active in improving articles on a variety of topics, but most of the articles that I've improved are related to the film industry. Waqar💬 14:01, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

Optional questions from Femke

8. What would you do if an editor requested the account creator user group at WP:PERM because they wanted to run an edit-a-thon?
A: The account creator user group is solely for those active in the WP:ACC process. It shouldn't be granted to those running an edit-a-thon. The eventcoordinator group is much better suited here as it allows to create multiple accounts just like the accountcreator group, but does not include some of the more sensitive overrides that the accountcreator group has. Eventcoordinators also have the ability to mark users as confirmed for up to 10 days, which can be quite useful when managing events (accountcreator does not allow this). Waqar💬 14:01, 22 October 2024 (UTC)
9. What steps would you take to assess somebody requesting autopatrolled?
A: In general users who regularly create articles, have demonstrated they are familiar with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines, especially those on biographies of living persons, copyrights, verifiability and notability. Have created 25 articles, not including redirects or disambiguation pages. Have had an account for a reasonable amount of time and haven't had any copyright issues in the last 12 months. Whom article creations are nearly perfect, including use of correct MOS formatting, categories, defaultsort, etc. Waqar💬 14:01, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

Optional questions from Saqib

10. You mentioned wanting to help at AIV and RFPP, but I haven’t seen much participation from you there, especially since you can report pages without admin tools. You also said you’re not comfortable with XfDs, sockpuppetry or COI cases due to a lack of experience but admins are expected to have some familiarity with these areas, especially AfDs and how WP:N works. I’m curious about what you hope to achieve with admin tools?
A: I've successfully reported more than 433 users to WP:AIV and WP:UAA collectively, and because of my impressive counter-vandalism work, I was granted rollbacker and pending changes reviewer. I've also opened a couple of sockpuppet investigations, so I am familiar with the concepts of XfDs, sockpuppetry and COI cases, but what I was trying to say was not the disputed and controversial ones and don't want to dive into more complex cases yet. I didn't say I wasn't familiar with AfDs and how WP:N works, because if you look at my records, I've made so many contributions to AFCs, I've reviewed over 1,373 articles so far. I've draftified more than 250 articles that either lacked reliable sources or needed additional sources. In the AFD discussions, I voted on 153 pages, without considering the no consensus results; 98.7% of my AfD's were matches. I was ranked fourth in the September 2024 NPP backlog drive last month where I earned 1,174 thousand points by reviewing thousands of articles and redirects. So what I hope to achieve with admin tools is a more efficient and effective way to contribute to the Wikipedia community, which includes blocking spammers, preventing vandalism, resolving disputes, etc. Waqar💬 15:38, 22 October 2024 (UTC)
11. I posted some messages on your talk page this year to express my concerns such as this, this, this, and this but it seems you’ve removed all of them, including from your archives. Could you share the reason behind that?
A: I've already answered this question above. I'd like to clarify something: I didn't remove your messages from the talk page; instead, they were archived by the bot. You posted those messages in May, and they were sitting in the archives for months. As I said above, what happened was I replaced the old and stale discussions with the new ones, and it had nothing to do with you. Thank you! Waqar💬 15:49, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

Optional questions from Dclemens1971

12. You mentioned your NPP backlog drive work as a point of pride, but based on the logs I can review you appear not to have initiated any XfDs while reviewing 1,174 pages and redirects that month. Can you explain why your reviewing balanced out this way?
A: Well, I didn't initiate any XfDs during that specific month, I did contribute to the NPP backlog drive by reviewing a significant number of articles and redirects. Because given the volume of pages I was reviewing, it wasn't really possible to initiate XfDs for every potential candidate. However, I prioritized those that required immediate attention or were particularly problematic and tagged them for speedy deletion. My goal was to contribute to the overall effort of reducing the backlog while maintaining quality standards. Waqar💬 16:09, 22 October 2024 (UTC)
13. When I look at your AfD participation, I see primarily instances where you !voted relatively late in the discussion after a consensus had already formed, and I don't see a lot of references to relevant deletion policies and guidelines. Do you have examples of XfDs where you cast P&G-based !votes earlier in the discussion that helped persuade other editors about your position?
A: Honestly, I didn’t realize that my voting patterns were coming across that way. I just jumped into discussions and voted wherever I could, without really paying attention to whether I was early or late in the conversation. Waqar💬 16:21, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

Optional questions from Mach61

14. When participating in AfD discussions, how often do you preform searches for sources that may show notability? If so, which resources do you use to conduct such sources (other than Google)?
A: Besides using Google, I sometimes check for notability by using sources like academic journals, reputable news articles, and books if available. Checking for mentions in established encyclopedias or reference works can also help assess notability as a last resort. Waqar💬 17:28, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

Optional questions from Hey man im josh

15. Do you think that users with additional user groups are more trustworthy or better contributors?
A: None of the above. Trust is something you can't earn by gaining rights. You have to prove that you're trustworthy by editing positively and being helpful to others. While you can be a better contributor if you have additional user groups, such as Rollbacker, to help fight vandalism more effectively, but that's not always the case. There are many ways you can become a better contributor even if you don't have any additional rights at all. You can gain each and every additional user group common/uncommon by fulfilling the requirements, but it just means that you're more experienced in that specific right-related area and nothing more. Waqar💬 15:26, 23 October 2024 (UTC)
16. In looking at your article creation history, I noticed that you made 58 Indian poltiican articles (I think all for the Odisha Legislative Assembly) between September 23 and October 3. Before that you had created a total of three lists for Pakistani films and two disambiguation pages. Can you comment on why, aside from the one politician article created 42 minutes afterwards, you stopped creating articles after receiving autopatrolled on October 3?
A: I was patrolling new pages, editing templates, and making articles as well. That was a lot of work I was doing, and I couldn't do all of the things at the same time because it was so hard. So I stopped doing everything else and started concentrating on articles only and made lots of them. When I got the autopatrolled right, I decided it was time to take a short break from that for a while and focus on other less time-consuming areas like templates and edit filter reports. I was planning to start making articles again after a month or so. But then these admin elections came along, so I thought I'd give this experimental process a try and started preparing for it. Waqar💬 15:26, 23 October 2024 (UTC)

Optional question from HouseBlaster

17. I think that Q14 was a two-part question, so I do not blame you for only answering one question. I am still interested in your response to the second part, so I will ask it separately: When commenting at AFD, how frequently do you look for sources that may show notability not already in either the article itself or AFD page? HouseBlaster (talk • he/they) 22:22, 22 October 2024 (UTC)
A: I try to be as thorough as possible. I often search for sources, and the frequency of my searches can vary depending on the topic and the complexity of the case. Waqar💬 15:26, 23 October 2024 (UTC)

Optional questions from Bobby Cohn

18. Regardless as to how your candidacy here may result, how do you plan to continue improving the project without admin tools?
A: I'll focus on doing anti-vandalism work, reviewing articles, patrolling recent changes, participating in discussions, creating articles, and helping other users. Waqar💬 18:04, 23 October 2024 (UTC)
19. Follow up to my first question as it pertains to editing without administrator privledges: how would you adapt your editing to address some of the concerns other editors may have raised in previous questions or the discussion below?
A: I believe most of the concerns are related to my AFDs, so I'll be more careful about my AFD votes. I'll do my thorough research, talk to other editors, and think about each case on its own. I'll make sure my votes are fair and helpful. Waqar💬 18:04, 23 October 2024 (UTC)


Discussion

Please keep discussion constructive and civil. If you are unfamiliar with the nominee, please thoroughly review their contributions before commenting.

  • Content creation consists primarily of single line articles, averaging ~20 words, on politicians, generally consisting of the formula "X is an Indian politician. He was elected to the Y assembly as a member of the Z party". Combined with a 77% use of automated tools, there may be less demonstratable understanding of either the creation process or the policies underpinning it than the community would wish in its new admins. The user page might also read oddly; I guess the esoteric Wiki-dreamscaping is harmless, but polishing the page has taken up over 20% of their time, which is about the same as their entire articlespace contributions.
    The answer to Q6 is slightly unsatisfactory. SerialNumber54129 12:42, 22 October 2024 (UTC)
    I would just note that, to the one concern that 20% of their edits are to the user space, this is a result of the candidate having logging on for their CSD and AFCH scripts, and may just be a symptom 77% of their edits coming from automated tools, as you've already identified. Bobby Cohn (talk) 14:40, 22 October 2024 (UTC)
    I'm pretty sure I had somewhere in the ballpark of 20,000 edits to my user space at the time of my RfA (which would have been about ~9-10% of my edits), mostly from CSD, AFC, and draftify logging. I don't see it as inherently problematic, but it should prompt follow up to see if what's logged was the proper course of action. Hey man im josh (talk) 18:57, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

AfD record: 98.60% match rate, n of 148. 25 keep !votes to 123 delete !votes. Mildly subjective comment: I'll keep it brief since the comments below this got to it first: this is clear vote-stacking. Disregard the stats and read the comments below. -- asilvering (talk) 18:52, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

  • This user's AfD participation history shows lots of examples of jumping in late with non-P&G-based !votes where consensus already existed. Take 14 July as an example. In !votes that came in some cases just a few minutes apart, this editor participated in 9 AfDs where a consensus had already formed. Comments included "With such prominent media coverage and award nominations, it's hard to argue against this artist's notability. The article needs improvement, for sure, but it seems unfair to delete the article." (here), "The article's a bit rough around the edges, but deleting it seems excessive." (here), and "This artist doesn't seem famous." (here). I am not sure these indicate an administrator-level understanding of the notability policies, and the participation record gives an appearance of trying to artificially boost one's AfD stats without high-quality participation. The candidate's answer to my questions about this above does not really grapple with the impression presented or offer evidence of more effective AfD participation. As for new page review, the curation log shows that the candidate marked this article as reviewed, which it really should not have been. It gives an impression of moving far too quickly. Dclemens1971 (talk) 16:56, 22 October 2024 (UTC)
Interesting... They've only participated in two AfDs since I noted the same concerns about pile on votes back in July after reviewing their 40 most recent votes when attempting to process their NPR permission request. Hey man im josh (talk) 17:17, 22 October 2024 (UTC)
After the NPP permission granted, there were no AfD major votes or nominations. Additionally, after receiving the AP flag, no articles were created. It seems that the votes are just meant to demonstrate participation in numbers. GrabUp - Talk 17:21, 22 October 2024 (UTC)
Upon reviewing their AFD votes, I noticed that nearly all of their votes closely mirrored those of others who voted before them and this pattern suggests an attempt to artificially inflate their AFD stats while maintaining a 100% match rate, which raises concerns about the authenticity of their AFD participation. Also their sole AFD nom was unsuccessful as well. — Saqib (talk I contribs) 19:54, 22 October 2024 (UTC)
  • While Iwaqarhashmi has expressed a desire to help at AIV and RFPP, their activity in this area seems limited. For example, they have reported ~100 pages at AIV and have NOT made any report at WP:RFPP, which raises questions about their experience with pages flagged in these areas. They also mentioned wanting to handle requests at CSD, but their CSD log shows that out of approximately ~2,000 pages tagged, only about 1% were in the main NS which suggests they may lack experience with speedy deletion requests related to main NS. They stated,I don't plan to get involved in disputed XfDs, sockpuppetry, or COI cases due to my lack of experience in these areas while also claiming familiarity with these concepts which is very contradictory, especially given that they have only filed ~5 reports at SPI, no reports at COI/N, and participated in AfDs, which seems more geared toward gaining NPP rights than demonstrating true engagement in this area. Lastly, I am not fully convinced by their response to my question #11. All of this, along with their statementI'm an experienced user with lots of rights, implies they're WP:HATCOLLECT. --— Saqib (talk I contribs) 18:14, 22 October 2024 (UTC)
    I don't know if I'm allowed to participate in this conservation or not. That's why I wasn't commenting here and was just answering questions. I would reply to @Saqib's comment above but I must say, I'm so heartbroken after reading this sentencethey're WP:HATCOLLECT. I really can't stand personal attacks and false allegations. Waqar💬 18:30, 22 October 2024 (UTC)
    I don't see that as a personal attack. It's one editor's inference based on behavior. Being able to tell the difference is critical to being an effective admin. Dclemens1971 (talk) 18:36, 22 October 2024 (UTC)
    Indeed, if there is evidence that this isn't hat-collecting, I'd like to see it. -- asilvering (talk) 18:56, 22 October 2024 (UTC)
    @Iwaqarhashmi: I'm afraid I cannot disagree with Saqib. And that wasn't a personal attack by almost any metric. While an allegation can be supported with evidence and still be unfounded, it's rare and not the case here. Also note that accusing others of personal attacks without evidence is itself, ironically, an aspersion. SerialNumber54129 18:37, 22 October 2024 (UTC)
    I'm just gonna avoid commenting further on Saqib's statements, and I'd prefer to focus on the topic instead. Thank you! Waqar💬 18:57, 22 October 2024 (UTC)
    It’s surprising to see someone running for admin get upset so quickly over a critical comment. @Iwaqarhashmi, you mentioned in your nom that you haven't been involved in any serious conflicts, yet your reaction to my comment raises some concerns. I can’t help but wonder how you would handle serious conflicts, which all admins are bound to encounter sooner or later. — Saqib (talk I contribs) 19:01, 22 October 2024 (UTC)
    Reminder that while candidates are allowed to response to comments in the comment section, they do not have to and they are well within their rights to let the conversations run their course. Hey man im josh (talk) 19:06, 22 October 2024 (UTC)
    Answer to Q16:I decided it was time to take a short break from that for a while and focus on less time-consuming areas like templates and edit filter reports. Forgive me, but why does it give the impression that they stopped article creation after getting the AP flag and shifted to areas like templates and edit filters to obtain the template editor flag (which Primefac recently granted temporarily), and then started a discussion about why I didn’t receive it permanently? GrabUp - Talk 16:38, 23 October 2024 (UTC)
  • Having recently reviewed Iwaqarhashmi's edits and trial NPP reviews in detail in August and September of this year, I believe they are an asset to Wikipedia and admire their enthusiasm, but I think that it is WP:NOTYET time for adminship. They are still learning the ropes at NPP, which was clear to me even before reading this discussion. I am concerned by WP:GAME-y AFD !vote pattern noted by others above, and also by the responseBecause given the volume of pages I was reviewing, it wasn't really possible to initiate XfDs for every potential candidate--if you feel like you don't have time to do due diligence for a review, you should slow down. CSD triage of the queue can be productive editing as well, but it is much less demonstrative of editing knowledge and it's not entirely clear that this is what Waqar is referring to in this context. signed, Rosguill talk 13:58, 23 October 2024 (UTC)
I also believe it's a WP:NOTYET as opposed to a never, and obviously, as mentioned above, shared the concerns about game-y AfD votes. Hey man im josh (talk) 14:38, 23 October 2024 (UTC)

GAN & FAC notes. No activity at GAN or FAC. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 00:05, 23 October 2024 (UTC)

Don't get me wrong, I don't doubt the candidate isn't here for the wrong reasons and they have the best intentions for the project, but reviewing their talk page archives (which I still have questions about, in regard to Q6 and Q11) shows that they may be looking for the fastest and easiest way to do the most amount of things (see their response to the way they patroll the NPP queue), which I think is inflating the HATCOLLECTOR concerns above. I think there's a pattern here that I don't feel was adaquetly addressed in their answer to my questions, Q18 and Q19. I'd like to see more thoughtfull contributions in the future. It's not so much the HATCOLLECTOR as it is the use of previous tools entrusted to this candidate, and their rushed nature in editing and using those tools, that gives me cause for concern with handing the mop.
This is a difficult discussion remark for me to leave. I've come across lots of the candidate's good work as well. And they have, as far as I can tell, incorporated previous suggestions that I've offered them to improve their editing when I've made suggestions. I would look forward being able to support them in the future, but I join my fellow reviewers above in thinking this request may be NOTYET. Bobby Cohn (talk) 20:28, 23 October 2024 (UTC)
The above adminship discussion is preserved as an archive of the discussion. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the talk page of either this nomination or the nominated user). No further edits should be made to this page.

NoobThreePointOh

The following discussion is preserved as an archive of an administrator election discussion that did not succeed. Please do not modify it.
Withdrawn by candidate, closed by –Novem Linguae (talk) 22:14, 23 October 2024 (UTC)

Nomination

NoobThreePointOh (talk · contribs · he/him) – Hi, everybody. I'm NoobThreePointOh, and I joined Wikipedia in January 2021 after originally editing as an IP in 2020 and a short-lived account in the later portion of the year before moving on to this one. Initially, most of my edits involved making some tiny changes, such as typo fixing, sentence brushing, etc. Later on, I moved to vandalism fighting, which I still do a bit today, and eventually ended up trying to improve some articles by adding citations and lots of information. I've never edited or worked for pay, and outside of the account which I mentioned above (I don't use it anymore), I do not own any other accounts. Feel free to ask me questions below, and I'll try to answer them to the best of my ability. Fire away. NoobThreePointOh (talk) 15:47, 8 October 2024 (UTC)

Thanks to everyone who participated in the discussion. I feel that I'm not ready yet, so I have withdrawn. I hope to earn some more experience in the future before reapplying, maybe in about a year or so. I have taken all of your words seriously and will be sure to properly follow the guidelines and policies for Wikipedia. Thanks again. NoobThreePointOh (talk) 22:09, 23 October 2024 (UTC)

Questions for the candidate

Dear candidate, thank you for offering to serve Wikipedia as an administrator. Please answer these questions to provide guidance for participants:

1. Why are you interested in becoming an administrator?
A: I'm most interested in becoming an administrator so that I can help clear the backlogs of some admin-specific areas, such as AIV, UAA, and ANI. Sure, it's not too much work to do, but I feel that administrators are really needed to help complete cases of checking accounts in terms of suspiciousness, solving problems between editors, and figuring out if the usernames of these editors really violate Wikipedia's username policy. If I were to become an administrator, I'd be able to solve these issues somewhat quickly. Also, I'm pretty good at spotting vandalism edits and reverting them.
2. What are your best contributions to Wikipedia, and why?
A: While I don't necessarily have any good articles, I did help improve the Interstate 85 in North Carolina article from what was originally looking almost like a low-quality C-class article to a somewhat decent article that seems like it is within grounds for becoming a good article. In fact, this article was originally a good article from May to July of this year, but it eventually got delisted because the citations didn't conform to the statements of the article. After having learnt my lesson on that, I got to work to try and fix the issues mentioned in the reassessment page by modifying certain sentences and removing citations that seemed like self-published sources. At present, the article looks like it could use a bit more improvement, but overall I think it's quite pleasant to read.
My other contributions include creating 4 other articles, which are U.S. Route 30 in Wyoming, U.S. Route 83 in South Dakota, Interstate 59 in Louisiana, and Interstate 59 in Mississippi. These don't have as much polish as the article I mentioned above, but I tried my best to help bring these articles up to standards to try and comply with the GNG for the site. They're not my best contributions, but it's not easy trying to bring an article so that it can fit readers' needs. It did take me a few days to try and carefully craft the route description and history sections for these articles. In future, I may go back to fix up the history section for all of these articles. There's still more to do.
3. Have you been in any conflicts over editing in the past or have other users caused you stress? How have you dealt with it and how will you deal with it in the future?
A: When I think about it, the chances of a candidate going through a successful RFA without having at least one conflict in their reign of editing Wikipedia are almost nil. And I'm certainly no exception to that. When I first edited on the aforementioned older account, Death Brushing (which I once again no longer use) in late 2020, I was edit-warring by adding redundant information to the infobox on the Pac-Man Championship Edition and Pac-Man Championship Edition DX pages. Another user, Namcokid47 (who also isn't active on Wikipedia), reverted my edits and told me to stop adding the things back. Eventually, it got out of hand to the point where the pages actually had to be semi-protected due to edit-warring. I expected to actually be blocked for doing so, but to my surprise, I wasn't. This was unusual too, because I thought that people get blocked for edit-warring. But I was genuinely glad I didn't get blocked. From that point on, I never wanted to edit war (even though I partially did later on below).
In February, though, I did make a lot of mistakes which did indeed lead to me almost getting blocked for them, but I will be listing the most egregious ones here. In early February, I reported a user to ANI for edit-warring on the Sydney Sweeney page for adding another image. Granted, the image that the other user added was copyrighted, but I should have never done that, and Bbb23 said that I should also be blocked in addition to that user. He's not wrong, either. Even if 3RRNO applied to me, really, edit-warring wasn't the right thing to do. Instead, I should have just taken the issue to the talk page for consensus. I admitted fault for it and this time, I have not had a single edit war so far (hope I don't jinx it). So in the future, if I tend to get close to an edit war with someone else, I need to sort this out on the talk page of that article that we are edit-warring on and come to a consensus.
In late February, right before the beginning of March, when I was reverting vandalism through AntiVandal, I noticed an IP remove information on the Wendy Zukerman article, and without thinking, I reverted it, as seen here. And you might be asking, "Why is that a wrong edit? It seems legitimate." Well, that was not the problem. The problem was when I wrote a comment on the IP's talk page saying that the information removed should not be because it was "vital" for us to understand the person's early years and what family they have. Man, that was truly the wrong thing to say on my part. I ended up getting a talk page message from Daniel, who said it was a violation of WP:BLP. I really felt bad about it because editors are usually supposed to treat each other with respect, even if someone is an IP. So I immediately went back to the IP's talk page and wrote a comment of apology to them and now, I've understood that I need to be more careful when reverting certain types of edits. In future, I may try to go slower and steadier as per the famous saying.
So these are some pretty severe mistakes I made. I understand being an administrator has a lot of responsibility, and from these mistakes, I hope that I can learn from them and not be hindered.

You may ask optional questions below. There is a limit of two questions per editor. Multi-part questions are disallowed, but you are allowed to ask follow-up questions related to previous questions.

Optional question from Thryduulf

4. Why did you choose to seek adminship via election rather than via a standard RFA?
A: Thanks for your question. I typically get stressed every time I see the RFAs going on, where the community votes to either support or oppose on the board itself instead of SecurePoll. Now to be fair, yes, I could have just requested adminship with the standard RFA still, but the threshold is usually about 75% consensus to become administrator and I might get nervous if I were to see the community vote right on this discussion. However, I feel that the election could be a great alternative to the RFA, and I hope it can be implemented in the future. I also generally have the "don't spoil it" feeling in my mind whenever an RFA or election happens, as when it does, I usually don't want to see the results until it ends. Elections seem to be a good place to start for me in that case.

Optional question from Ganesha811

5. Are there any areas of adminship you do not plan to participate in, due to unfamiliarity or lack of technical knowledge? If you later decided you wanted to help in these areas, what would be your plan to become an effective admin in those areas?
A: Yes, of course. One of the areas I'd stay out of would be AfDs, since I haven't participated a lot in them. Another is new page reviewing, as I would need to first get more experience in it. Now, if I were to help in these parts later on, for AfDs and deletions, I need to first carefully review the nomination. Does it pass WP:GNG? Is it fitted with reliable sources? Are there any paragraphs or sentences where it reads like an advertisement? Do the citations verify what the sentences say? These are all things I would do if I jumped into AfDs. On the other hand, for new page reviewing, pretty much, if not slightly different from the same thing. Does it pass WP:GNG? Is the page curation tool flagging any issues? If I find any of these issues, this is where I can slowly start pulling my interest into new page reviewing. Of course, I'm not completely ready to touch these areas yet, since yes, as you said, I might have a bit of unfamiliarity. Because of this, I'd first like to carefully learn to use the tools before venturing out.

Optional question from GreenLipstickLesbian

6. Hey, NoobThreePointOh. This past February, when you were doing anti-vandal work, you appear to have mistakenly warned and reverted an IP user's fully explained removal of vandalism. (They had provided a"rvv" vandalism edit summary, you used rollback on them, and then you gave them the uw-delete1 warning). Whey they and an experienced user called you out on this, you apologised, and explained you'd made your revert because"thought it was wrong to remove content like that". (The content being vandalism). This happened approximately a week before the incident you explained in question three, where you reverted an IP user's removal of poorly-sourced content. Then, when pressed on your talk page by an experienced user, explained that you had"just assumed that it would be some normal IP editor trying to vandalize"[10]. I'm interested in this philosophy- could you expand a bit more on how your beliefs concerning unregistered users impact your anti-vandal work, especially if you had the ability to block them/protect pages from them?
A: Ah, yes, I should have mentioned this incident in my answer to Q3 as well. It seems that my beliefs have largely changed over time. Yeah, during February, I didn't realize that the IP you mentioned with thervv summary was one of the more helpful IPs (it turns out that not every IP has the intent to vandalize Wikipedia). I was using AntiVandal, which when I think about it, seems to sometimes inaccurately detect a helpful IP's edit as "vandalism". Since March, though, I've become a lot more careful when performing anti-vandalism work, only looking to see if an IP does vandalize (like literal gibberish or removing a paragraph without actually explaining). It seems that in February I was really careless with the tool and now I usually patrol the edit filter log, which I feel is more accurate. But anyway, going back to your question. After this incident, I've seemed to understand that IPs with the true intention to vandalize are the ones that need to be reverted. And if I were an administrator, I wouldn't immediately try to block them unless I get the green light from another administrator that the IP is indeed a vandal. Also, while I shouldn't jump the gun, I know that pages are a lot more likely to get vandalized by IPs than registered accounts. The only time when I should block the IP or protect the page is in a last resort. As my beliefs have mostly changed over time, I believe now that Wikipedia should be accessible to all users, both registered and IP. And protecting a page should only be for a short time in most cases since doing so can sometimes hinder certain constructive users, both registered and IP again, from contributing to the page and making it a readable experience for everyone. Next time, if I'm ever doing anti-vandal work, even as an administrator, I should carefully examine the edit to see if it is constructive or not, and issue a warning to the user who does vandalize. Otherwise, blocking should be the next step I take.

Optional question from Trainsandotherthings

7. As a self-professed roadgeek, you must be familiar with the recent exodus of some roads editors to AARoads. While I'm glad we still have you here, why did you choose to remain on Wikipedia? Did you ever consider leaving?
A: This question makes me feel sad about the editors who have recently migrated to the AARoads Wiki and mostly retired, like Dough4872 and Rschen7754. I was initially hesitant about leaving Wikipedia after seeing an RfC about some non-road editors arguing that maps shouldn't be used as a source. Going back to your question, I chose to stay on Wikipedia because I knew that there are still some faithful road editors on here who refuse to go to that wiki. And I also know that road articles on Wikipedia are not a bad thing for people to read. Again, Wikipedia is all about providing valuable information for editors and readers alike to indulge themselves in and improve on. Because of this, I still don't understand why road articles don't meet notability, despite the abundance of sources not only from official DOT sites, but also literal clippings from Newspapers.com. I don't think I'm going to be leaving anytime soon, because I want to be one of the few road editors still helping to keep the content thriving on Wikipedia. It would genuinely be a shame to see all of the articles go to waste.

Optional questions from Femke

8. Thanks for standing! You have one delisted GA, which suffered from sourcing issues, including in text which seems to be added by you according to WhoWroteThat (feel free to correct me if I'm wrong). How would you prevent similar issues in the future?
A. Whew. In terms of this question, you're right about this. Fortunately though, I really learned a huge lesson from the reassessment. Following that period, I made sure to add more sources to almost every sentence (I say almost because some sentences are connected to others that already have sentences). Generally, when I write the route description for some road articles, I tend to use Google Maps since most of the time, it's pretty accurate on determining what direction and path the route is going. Now of course, that could be considered somewhat as original research, but usually there's no other way to tell which way a route is going or if there's any sort of construction on it other than from the official DOT website, and because of this, I made sure that the article looks a lot better written and sourced now. In future, if there's a statement that doesn't have a source, I first need to go online and search as much as possible for any source (be it the DOT site or some university research organization) so that it can be added to the statement to support it. If there's no source to find online, then I'd go to the talk page and start a new section asking people if they can find sources to add in the article. I'm sure Newspapers.com could be added as a source, but I try to refrain from using that unless I'm writing the history section of the article.
9. You indicate you'd like to work at ANI, which can sometimes involve assessing whether people misrepresent sources. In light of the above, how would you go evaluating those or would you abstain from these types of cases?
A. Occasionally, if I'm on ANI, I sometimes see these types of cases on there. If I were to see someone misrepresent a source, like say in a hypothetical situation, Person A were to say that Google Maps is a reliable source and was adding to a bunch of road articles. Google Maps is one of the most contentious topics and has seen scrutiny whether it's a reliable source or not. Now Person B, the person reporting Person A, is the one presenting their case that Google Maps is not a reliable source. They present the source to the case and explain the statement where the source was used. Now, if I were to get involved, I would first go and check the source to see if it can be used. If the map shows an overview of the route; say it shows a full map of I-85 in North Carolina in a top-down perspective with a blue stroke covering its route, then I feel it is okay to keep it as a source. Google Maps is generally considered as a last resort, because most of the maps I use come from something like ArcGIS. But going back to it, if the map shows Street View, I wouldn't consider it a reliable source. So if the map was reliable, I'd warn Person B (or block if they have multiple warnings) about WP:BOOMERANG. On the other hand, I'd warn Person A about using Street View as a source when it shouldn't. Generally, I want to stay patient with other editors, even if I were an administrator, since it wouldn't be right to treat them worse compared to the rest of the community. For other cases, I may stay out of them, since I try not to stick my head inside. Don't get me wrong, I know all about the sourcing guidelines, but I prefer to keep to road sources (if it ever were to happen). I hope this answer doesn't confuse you.

Optional question from RoySmith

10. With respect to Wikipedia:Good article reassessment/Interstate 85 in North Carolina/1, you say you havelearnt my lesson. Could you go into detail about what you have learned?
A: Of course. When I say that, I know that good articles are supposed to meet the criteria; pretty much all six of them. But I felt that once the reassessment was over and the article lost its GA status, I knew I had to put in a lot more effort to try and help work it back up to GA status. But I know, that considerably in my opinion, I think criteria number 2 (verifiable with no original research) is the most important. If I correctly remember, I think that was something you hinted out as a glaring weakness of the article. Now that doesn't mean the article is badly written. It's just I should have focused on trying to find citations for the sentences, something which I didn't do properly during the reassessment. After the article got delisted, I did get slightly discouraged, but I definitely know that there needs to be more sources and ones that actually confirm the statements written in the paragraphs. So using what you said in the reassessment and going back through the article by reading it word for word, I made sure to remove sentences that seemed like original research and added sources that were a better fit for the article. There still is a bit of brushing up to do, and I definitely have gotten a better grasp of how the article needs to meet the GA criteria.


Discussion

Please keep discussion constructive and civil. If you are unfamiliar with the nominee, please thoroughly review his contributions before commenting.

AfD record: 84.20% match rate, n of 13. 3 keep !votes to 10 delete !votes. Mildly subjective comment: these numbers are all from the past year, but there's not much to go on here. In any case this candidate has not expressed an interest in deletion processes. -- asilvering (talk) 01:22, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

  • Not especially impressed by the pseudo-U5 tag on Draft:Shajidul Hoque's Blog - specifically, {{db-reason|1=This page is a "blog" as it mentions, and the writings are not related to Wikipedia's goals, so I assume this should be deleted due to U5.}} - when the only thing bloggish about it was the draft's title. (It wasn't a G11, like it was deleted for, either.) Disappointed that neither the candidate nor deleting admin seems to have noticed that it was LLM output, despite the "From : Open AI" statement, too. —Cryptic 01:51, 22 October 2024 (UTC)
    I was actually going a little bit too fast while patrolling the edit filter log, forgot to mention that. That was actually my first time doing that, so I should have slowed down and reviewed it thoroughly. NoobThreePointOh (talk) 02:05, 22 October 2024 (UTC)
  • Content creation not great, although their user page mea culpa ("Well, I used to have Interstate 85 in North Carolina as a good article on here, but it got demoted. So consider it as me not having promoted any articles") brought a wry smile on, so points for that. Honesty is a pretty good quality in an admin. More unsatisfying is the statement that they "still don't understand why road articles don't meet notability" when they have justreferenced a 1,400 word/>8K-byte discussion on that very issue. While it's fine for any and every editor to disagree with an RfC outcome, it's less so for an admin to profess not to understand that outcome. SerialNumber54129 12:52, 22 October 2024 (UTC)
    Thanks for that response, Serial. It seems I've understood that's always not the case, and I guess we just have to go with the outcome. Looks like I can certainly roll with these types of issues in the future. Hope it doesn't hinder me too much. NoobThreePointOh (talk) 13:06, 22 October 2024 (UTC)
    The roads notability thing stood out to me as well. The whole roads dispute took place because several editors in that area had a fundamental misunderstanding of what's expected of editors on Wikipedia. The whole issue revolved around a failure to understand why we use secondary sources and an inability to apply WP:42—something we usually point newbies to as one of the first things that they learn. It would take quite a lot to assuage these concerns for me. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 15:45, 22 October 2024 (UTC)
    Lest anybody misinterpret my comments, I don't harbor any ill-will for Noob. I don't think he's qualified to be an admin now, and won't be until he demonstrates a better understanding of our core policies regarding WP:V and WP:RS. But I don't blame his current misunderstanding on any evil intent. Rather, I suspect he's just reflecting the cultural norms of the group he was working closely with. To be fair, I pressed him rather hard in the GAR and while his arguments were misguided, he unfailing continued to be civil and respectful. The ability to maintain one's composure in a heated space is something all admins need. But for now, Noob needs to spend some more time getting a better handle on our WP:PAGs regarding content. RoySmith (talk) 16:35, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

GAN & FAC notes. A couple of nominations and three reviews at GAN; see list here. The one promoted article (from May this year) was promptly demoted, and comments there indicate that perhaps it should not have been promoted. However, the three reviews seem sensible and clearly engaged with the article, though no spotchecks were done, and the quickfail was based on appropriate criteria. One nomination at FAC, quickly archived as premature, in May this year. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 00:11, 23 October 2024 (UTC)

  • I'm mentioned in the answer to Q3. This was only seven or so months ago, and it was such a serious failure of knowledge and understanding that I have some serious reservations as to whether the candidate is ready just yet. Daniel (talk) 04:33, 23 October 2024 (UTC)
  • Other things from around that same time (seven or so months ago) that give me pause: [11] [12] [13] [14] [15], From middle of this year [16] [17]. From two months ago: [18]. None of these are the sorts of interactions I want to see from a potential administrator, within the past few months. I am sure that one day this editor will be ready, but I'm not sure if it's right now. Daniel (talk) 04:43, 23 October 2024 (UTC)
  • From yesterday: this exchange. Cullen's message was professional. The other editor's reply was not ideal and showed clear frustration. The candidate's subsequent re-reply (to a thread they were not involved in previously) just poured gasoline on the fire and made the whole situation worse. It also provided an insight into a concerning mentality with the statementit's going to be pretty ugly by continuously poking at admins like this — administrators aren't a protected species and are expected to deal with some level of criticism and backlash to their actions, and show stoic fortitude in the face of such. This comment seems to be indicating a mentality that is very different. Daniel (talk) 20:47, 23 October 2024 (UTC)
The above adminship discussion is preserved as an archive of the discussion. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the talk page of either this nomination or the nominated user). No further edits should be made to this page.

ThadeusOfNazereth

The following discussion is preserved as an archive of a successful administrator election candidacy. Please do not modify it.

Final (321/88/207); See official results (non-admin closure) – DreamRimmer (talk) 16:36, 10 November 2024 (UTC)

Nomination

ThadeusOfNazereth (talk · contribs · he/him) – It is a pleasure to present ThadeusOfNazereth to the community as a candidate for adminship. Thadeus has the sort of well-rounded contribution history we need more of in administrators. He has worked on a considerable number of articles, including producing 3 Good Articles, 2 Featured Lists, and a handful of DYKs. He has done work at New Page Patrol; he has been a thoughtful participant at AfD; he has done some recent-changes patrol; and he has performed non-admin closes of discussions. He has demonstrated a nuanced understanding of policy, and is unfailingly courteous, even when his actions are challenged. I first asked Thadeus to run at RFA more than a year ago, and he wisely declined, noting that he expected to be less active in the near future. Thadeus has assured me that he is returning to full-time activity, and as he was keen on using the new election process, here we are. I hope you join me in supporting him. Vanamonde93 (talk) 17:24, 10 October 2024 (UTC)


Candidate, please indicate acceptance of the nomination here: I am happy to accept this nomination! I have never (and will never) edit Wikipedia for pay. I do not have any "real" alternative accounts, but edited under Football1607 briefly as a teenager - I no longer have any access to that account. ThadeusOfNazereth(he/him)Talk to Me! 17:38, 10 October 2024 (UTC)

Questions for the candidate

Dear candidate, thank you for offering to serve Wikipedia as an administrator. Please answer these questions to provide guidance for participants:

1. Why are you interested in becoming an administrator?
A: I've been a Wikipedia editor since I was thirteen years old and I'm finally at a spot in my editing where I'm confident enough in my understanding of processes and policies to contribute in a way that goes beyond standard content creation. I also have spent the last two years as a volunteer advisor with the Wikimedia Foundations Elections Committee, which oversees elections to the WMF Board of Trustees. Serving in that role has reinforced the importance of Wikipedia as a free and unbiased source of information and has also helped me learn a lot about conflict resolution and cross-cultural communication. There are a few areas that I am interested in spending time as an admin. I'd like to help reduce our backlogs, especially at the various deletion noticeboards, WP:AIV, and the WP:RPP backlogs that pop up during edit wars. I am also interested in helping with WP:DYK and helping close discussions at WP:RSN.
2. What are your best contributions to Wikipedia, and why?
A: I am definitely proudest of my content contributions to Wikipedia, with my two favorite articles probably being the Featured List of Washington (state) ballot measures and the Good Article Competitive debate in the United States. I also take a lot of pride in my articles about people from historically underrepresented groups - Stella Alexander, Jeffrey Veregge, and Shiro Kashino all come to mind. And who wouldn't be proud of being recognized as Precious?
3. Have you been in any conflicts over editing in the past or have other users caused you stress? How have you dealt with it and how will you deal with it in the future?
A: I hold WP:AGF very close to my heart and try to embody those principles, even when there are editing disagreements. Several years ago, there was a dispute over my closure of a discussion about the reliability of The Federalist - Atsme brought the concerns to my talk page, I engaged with her concerns in good faith, and we eventually followed the standard conflict resolution process by going to WP:AN. More recently, there was a dispute about the mention of Jeffrey Veregge's tribal membership in the lead of his article due to some ambiguously phrased guidelines. Again, I engaged with those concerns and made the decision to not push too hard on having things "my way." If I were to pick a single ideal that I try to hold myself to during editing conflicts, it's collaboration. With that in mind, I try to remind myself that I am not the most important person in the room and make an effort to place myself in other editor's shoes before I criticize their actions.

You may ask optional questions below. There is a limit of two questions per editor. Multi-part questions are disallowed, but you are allowed to ask follow-up questions related to previous questions.

Optional question from Thryduulf

4. Why did you choose to seek adminship via election rather than via a standard RFA?
A: This is a good question! There were two layers to my decision. The first is that I have felt the traditional RFA procress can quickly give way to frustration rather than productive discussion, both on the part of the candidate and the voters. The badgering of neutral and oppose voters in some RFAs has been well-documented and was (to my knowledge) one of the vectors that led to the creation of this process. Second, the traditional RFA process creates an undue amount of stress on participants. The longer discussion time does have benefits, but there are many RFA debriefs where candidates express surprise at the stress and report having to "always be on" during the process. My job is stressful enough during the day and I didn't want to undergo a process that might hurt my enjoyment of editing Wikipedia in the long-run. ThadeusOfNazereth(he/him)Talk to Me! 11:26, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

Optional question from Ganesha811

5. Are there any areas of adminship you do not plan to participate in, due to unfamiliarity or lack of technical knowledge? If you later decided you wanted to help in these areas, what would be your plan to become an effective admin in those areas?
A: There are definitely areas that I don't plan on participating in right away! The ones that immediately come to mind are WP:SPI, WP:COIN, WP:CCI, and anything more code-heavy like template work. If I did want to start participating in those areas (and I'm sure I will at some point), I would start by reviewing the main instructions before "shadowing" on the respective noticeboards to get a handle on the discussions and main policies. I would also participate in the discussions as a "guest," without taking actual admin action on anything right away. If I still wanted to participate after that, I would reach out to a more experienced contributor with any questions and a more formal request to shadow them until I got comfortable using the tools in that way. ThadeusOfNazereth(he/him)Talk to Me! 11:36, 22 October 2024 (UTC)


Discussion

Please keep discussion constructive and civil. If you are unfamiliar with the nominee, please thoroughly review his contributions before commenting.

AfD record: 83.90% match rate, n of 137. 21 keep !votes to 111 delete !votes. Mildly subjective comment: 54 of those deletes are nominations; not in the stats are a number of redirect !votes as well. Participation goes back a few years, 20 in the past year, most of those in the past month. Plenty of green flags in the last year: a gracious withdraw [19]; a clear nom [20]; clear WP:BEFORE and a good WP:ATD [21]; clear keep rationales [22], [23]. -- asilvering (talk) 21:29, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

Personal comment: I wish more AfD participants were like this. -- asilvering (talk) 21:29, 22 October 2024 (UTC)
Not surprised to see the "gracious withdraw" after Cunard entered the fray :)
More broadly, this is a solid candidate. Toadspike [Talk] 10:34, 24 October 2024 (UTC)

GAN & FAC notes. Four GAN nominations (all promoted, 2022 and 2023) and six reviews, so a net contributor. Reviews are a bit checklist-y but there are a few comments indicating more detailed looks at the prose and criteria. All were promoted; sometimes that's a red flag, if a reviewer never fails an article, but I recognize most of the nominators as experienced GA writers so no concerns there. No activity at FAC. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 00:18, 23 October 2024 (UTC)

Declined speedies

Ritchie333 (talk) (cont) 11:05, 24 October 2024 (UTC)

The above adminship discussion is preserved as an archive of the discussion. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the talk page of the nominated user). No further edits should be made to this page.

SilverLocust

The following discussion is preserved as an archive of a successful administrator election candidacy. Please do not modify it.

Final (347/74/195); See official results (non-admin closure) – DreamRimmer (talk) 16:22, 10 November 2024 (UTC)

Nomination

SilverLocust (talk · contribs · he/him) – I'm very happy to commend to you SilverLocust, who's stood out to me as an unusually capable editor for quite some time. Partly that's because of his work in the requested move process, which is striking both for its quantity (more than 1000 edits to WP:RM/TR; over 300 RM closures) and for its consistently high quality. Partly it's because of his content creation involving American law: a GA (which I can vouch for firsthand), nine new articles on the Supreme Court and its cases, and many other solid contributions large and small. And partly it's because of his efforts in all the other areas where he's involved. But no matter where on Wikipedia SilverLocust is working, the qualities he displays are the same: good judgment, a calm and friendly disposition, and above all a real diligence in how he goes about making a difference on this site. These traits will make him a great asset to the sysop corps, and that's why he'll have my vote—and hopefully yours too—in this first admin election. Extraordinary Writ (talk) 07:17, 10 October 2024 (UTC)

Co-nomination statement

I am so excited to co-nominate SilverLocust for the inaugural WP:EFA. Since this June, SilverLocust and I have been serving as trainee clerks for the Arbitration Committee. Much of the clerking coordination is off-wiki, and I can attest that he approaches it with the same level of care, attention to detail, willingness and ability to respectfully disagree, and simple hard work he does with on-wiki matters. Since we are the two newest people to the job, I have the honor and privilege of working frequently with SilverLocust to divvy up the clerk tasks. Since his appointment, he has gone above and beyond the normal clerical tasks. For instance, he create two Lua modules to automatically count arbitrators' votes. (It was 2024 and we were still manually updating these notes every time an arb cast a vote.) Beyond ArbCom, I would be remiss if I did not mention his work on Module:Request for permission links, which gives admins working at WP:PERM the ability to see what other permissions a given user is requesting. Content-wise, Lisa Blatt is a very pleasant read. I am more than thrilled to support SilverLocust in this election. HouseBlaster (talk • he/they) 16:21, 10 October 2024 (UTC)

Candidate, please indicate acceptance of the nomination here: I am pleased to accept the very kind nominations of Extraordinary Writ and HouseBlaster, each of whom I greatly admire. (I have never edited Wikipedia for pay, and the only other account I have used is SilverLocust+.) SilverLocust 💬 18:30, 10 October 2024 (UTC)

Questions for the candidate

Dear candidate, thank you for offering to serve Wikipedia as an administrator. Please answer these questions to provide guidance for participants:

1. Why are you interested in becoming an administrator?
A: I often run into situations where the admin tools would be helpful, and (like many editors) am concerned about the shrinking number of administrators. I like to help out with the requested moves process and technical move requests. Administrators can more cleanly moves pages over redirects with minor page history compared to the slightly clunky swapping method that extendedmovers use, and I'd like to help with the relatively small portion of requests that require an admin (usually due to page protection or a need for a history merge). I also help out with clerking for the arbitration process, which occasionally calls for use of admin tools or the help of an admin clerk (or arbitrator).
2. What are your best contributions to Wikipedia, and why?
A: For some article content, see Lisa Blatt (), Department of State v. Muñoz (), Grupo Mexicano de Desarrollo, S.A. v. Alliance Bond Fund, Inc. (pending), Corner Post, Inc. v. Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System.
For some template improvement, there's WP:RM/TR's Template:RMassist/core (which I edited it to flag blacklisted titles, to note clearly whether a redirect is targeted to a different page than the one to be moved, and to include a visible anchor like this in the permalink in edit summaries for technical moves), Template:Request for permission links (which I converted into a module that adds cross-references when a user is requesting multiple permissions and that shows the same links on the main permissions page that were previously visible only on the subpages for each specific permission), Template:R from move/Cross-namespace (which I created to track cross-namespace move redirects from mainspace, prevent their indexing in search results, and show a notice suggesting that they be nominated for speedy deletion).
3. Have you been in any conflicts over editing in the past or have other users caused you stress? How have you dealt with it and how will you deal with it in the future?
A: I don't recall significant stress or editing conflict, but I'll offer few points.
  • To avoid over-investment in discussions (in my case mostly requested moves), I generally prefer to take a succinct position in a comment or two and then move on, even if a participant in the discussion later says something Wrong™ that I might like to address.
  • To avoid edit warring, I generally adhere to a one-revert rule (or more specifically a "don't re-revert" rule).
  • When I offer criticism, I think it's helpful to be slightly stressed about how the the criticism will be taken and whether it is given constructively. I find it less stressful to receive criticism than to offer it. (To quote Epictetus's Enchiridion, "He was ignorant of my other faults, else he would not have mentioned these alone.")

You may ask optional questions below. There is a limit of two questions per editor. Multi-part questions are disallowed, but you are allowed to ask follow-up questions related to previous questions.

Optional question from Thryduulf

4. Why did you choose to seek adminship via election rather than via a standard RFA?
A: I was considering either running here or doing a Request for adminship in the next few months, but I don't think anyone looks forward to a week-long interview between about 200 interviewers and 1 candidate. I'm hopeful that this first administrator election will be the start of a more functioning and agreeable process for adminship, and have been happy to take part. SilverLocust 💬 05:08, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

Optional question from Conyo14

5. It seems you enjoy court cases, but are there other topics of Wikipedia you enjoy as well? i.e. sports, science, BLPs, history, etc.
A: Certainly. The large majority of my time on Wikipedia has been as a reader rather than an editor. Some topics that I enjoy on Wikipedia include linguistics, politics, history, religion, mathematics, and science fiction. I just find that I have more information to add (or fix) relating to the U.S. Supreme Court than other subjects. SilverLocust 💬 05:08, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

Optional question from Ganesha811

6. Are there any areas of adminship you do not plan to participate in, due to unfamiliarity or lack of technical knowledge? If you later decided you wanted to help in these areas, what would be your plan to become an effective admin in those areas?
A: Well, I could name a thousand things I haven't done, but two important areas where I would be very pleased not to do much admin work are Articles for deletion and Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents. While someone has to handle those, I personally find them tiresome. In general, I would expect myself to first be an effective and experienced participant in a process before looking to administer it. And I would look to start with easier administrative actions and then branch out gradually from there. SilverLocust 💬 05:08, 22 October 2024 (UTC)


Discussion

Please keep discussion constructive and civil. If you are unfamiliar with the nominee, please thoroughly review his contributions before commenting.

AfD record: 92.30% match rate, n of 13. 1 keep !votes to 8 delete !votes. Mildly subjective comment: great match rate, most of the data is recent, no red flags here at all; no cause for concern, and candidate has not expressed an interest in deletion processes. -- asilvering (talk) 00:22, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

GAN & FAC notes. One nomination (which was promoted) and one review at GAN; see here. The GA review they started is still underway, and looks reassuringly thorough (including a spotcheck). No activity at FAC. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 00:26, 23 October 2024 (UTC)

  • Familiar with SilverLocust's work across the 'pedia from a distance, and I have only seen good things. EW and HB as nominators is a strong pair of endorsements, also. Daniel (talk) 21:00, 23 October 2024 (UTC)

Declined speedies

— Preceding unsigned comment added by Ritchie333 (talk • contribs) 11:07, 24 October 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for checking on that for each candidate, Ritchie333. The G8 in May was removed by me (in favor of redirecting the userpage to the user's talk page); the G5 in April was removed by a fellow editor who noted that it was fine as a redirect. I count 196 speedy nominations listed on my CSD log. SilverLocust 💬 17:15, 24 October 2024 (UTC)
2/196 (Really 1/195), with one being a redirect, is a incredibly accurate. Conyo14 (talk) 22:25, 24 October 2024 (UTC)
The above adminship discussion is preserved as an archive of the discussion. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the talk page of the nominated user). No further edits should be made to this page.

Ahecht

The following discussion is preserved as an archive of a successful administrator election candidacy. Please do not modify it.

Final (303/94/219); See official results (non-admin closure) – DreamRimmer (talk) 16:05, 10 November 2024 (UTC)

Nomination

Ahecht (talk · contribs · they/them) – Hi, I'm Ahecht, and I've been a registered editor here for 18 years (and I was editing as an IP for at least a year before I registered for an account). Over that time I've focused on several areas of the project. I started out mostly doing copyediting and then moved on to anti-vandalism work. After spending a fair amount of time at WP:New pages patrol and WP:Recent changes patrol, I decided that I wanted to spend more time helping with content creation, as opposed to removal, and became involved with WP:Articles for creation and WP:Articles for creation/Redirects. At the latter, I created {{Request redirect}} to automate much of the review process, which led me down a rabbit hole to the technical side of Wikipedia. Since then, in addition to WP:GNOMEish work, I've created or improved hundreds of templates and modules, written widely used userscripts and external tools, and run bots that affects tens of thousands of pages. If you've seen my name around recently, it's likely either through a template or module I created, my work cleaning up pages that are broken because they exceed the post-expand include size limit, or as a page mover at Wikipedia:Requested moves/Technical requests. When I was marked as an administrator without tools back in April I said I would consider running if elections were held, so here I am.

I have never edited for pay, and will never do so. I have a bot account, Ahechtbot, and an unused doppleganger account, Ahect. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 15:19, 11 October 2024 (UTC)

Co-nomination statement

This is my third RFA nomination. Ahecht has made over 58,000 edits and is setting a personal record for activity levels in 2024. I've found their module work to be helpful and barnstar-worthy. They're active at Wikipedia:Requested moves/Technical requests where we have a critical need for more administrators who can move pages by deleting redirects rather than by non-optimal page swaps, so this should be a long-overdue promotion from page-mover. Clean block log; no noticeboard drama; 'nuff said. – wbm1058 (talk) 22:20, 9 October 2024 (UTC)

Questions for the candidate

Dear candidate, thank you for offering to serve Wikipedia as an administrator. Please answer these questions to provide guidance for participants:

1. Why are you interested in becoming an administrator?
A: A lot of the work I've done already has been on the "administration" side of Wikipedia, and my work in New Page Patrol, Articles for Creation, and answering edit and move requests as a template editor and page mover has given me a lot of experience with determining consensus and working in "customer service", helping newer users and answering their questions and complaints. Since there have been several technically-minded administrators who have recently resigned or gone on indefinite wikibreaks, I'd like to be able to use this experience to help with administrator backlogs, which would initially be edit and move requests for fully protected pages. I don't have any plans to get involved with deletion outside of WP:G6, but I could see myself branching out into other underserved areas of Wikipedia.
2. What are your best contributions to Wikipedia, and why?
A: I have a lot of edit history since 2006 but much of it is WP:GNOMEish, so while I know there are plenty of articles that I've rewritten or made large contributions to over the years, it's hard to remember most of them. Among the highlights, I've spent a lot of time updating and maintaining articles on cruise ships, including getting List of largest cruise ships promoted to featured list, I've rewritten large sections of movie articles, including Toy Story and Tough Guys Don't Dance (film), and, although I prefer editing existing articles, I have created a handful from scratch such as Spaceflight, Inc., Bill Sherman, Hollywood United Methodist Church, and Rival (consumer products company).
My most significant work has been on templates that impact a large percentage of Wikipedia pages. In addition to {{Request redirect}}, I updated {{High-use}} to automatically show transclusion counts tabulated by my bot Ahechtbot, I converted {{Reply to}} (aka {{ping}}) to Lua to allow more people to be mentioned at once, created Module:Gridiron color to consolidate 10 different color templates, created Module:Science redirect to consolidate 5 different redirect templates, and made significant contributions to Module:Taxonbar. During the COVID-19 pandemic, I rewrote {{Medical cases chart}} and {{COVID-19 pandemic}} to be native Lua, saving hundreds of pages from exceeding the post-expand inclusion size limit. In my efforts to further fix pages that exceed the inclusion size limit, I created Module:Flag, created Module:English Heritage listed building, created Module:Country2nationality/Module:Iso2nationality, and reworked Module:Navbox (and I'm sandboxing another revision that will consolidate {{Navbox}}, {{Navbox with columns}}, and {{Navbox with collapsible groups}}).
I've created several widely used userscripts, including Pageswap GUI (which I've used to help move almost 1000 articles), Picture of the Day Helper (which I've used to create over 60 Picture of the Day templates), Watchlist cleaner, TemplateSearch, Refresh, and Mass Move. I also have created several tools hosted at toolforge, including toolforge:ircredirect (which powers WP:IRC help disclaimer), toolforge:excel2wiki, and toolforge:randomincategory, and am a maintainer of toolforge:afdstats.
3. Have you been in any conflicts over editing in the past or have other users caused you stress? How have you dealt with it and how will you deal with it in the future?
A: It's impossible to completely avoid conflicts over an 18-year tenure. I deal with them by assuming good faith, and, as long as the other party isn't actively harming Wikipedia, just reminding myself that this is just a website I volunteer for, and it's not worth getting overly worked up about. If it's clear that my position doesn't match the consensus, I back down and continue on with my life. When I've upset people by denying an edit request, reverting an unproductive edit, or declining a draft, calmly explaining the policies and giving them next steps to follow has usually been able to diffuse the situation. In the rare cases that it isn't, I seek out help from the appropriate venues. Similarly, I know that some of my more technical edits have caused confusion, especially when I've screwed up and accidentally broken a page. I just try to be responsive, quick to self-revert if needed, and treat the other party the way I would want to be treated if the situation were reversed.

You may ask optional questions below. There is a limit of two questions per editor. Multi-part questions are disallowed, but you are allowed to ask follow-up questions related to previous questions.

Optional question from Z1720

4. In your response to question 3, you have given some information about the process you take in response to a conflict. Can you please give a specific example of a recent conflict or disagreement you have been involved with and describe either how you successfully managed the conflict or what you would have done differently? Thanks, Z1720 (talk) 00:17, 22 October 2024 (UTC)
A: The most recent thing to come to mind that could be called a "conflict" was with a well-meaning editor who was inappropriately changing english varieties across a series of articles on Italian food. I saw the changes on my watchlist and checked that there was already a discussion in place on their talk page explaining our guidelines, so I set to work unwinding the changes where appropriate. During this process they came to my talk page concerned about some of the reverts, and Valereee and I worked with them here and here to help them understand which changes were being undone and why. In the one or cases where they were correct that I had missed an english variant being established, I was quick to self-revert.

Optional question from Thryduulf

5. Why did you choose to seek adminship via election rather than via a standard RFA?
A:That's a good question. I had always been nervous about the time commitment required for a regular RfA, and honestly the thought of a full week of watching !votes trickle in to determine my fate seemed very stressful. While a few editors had suggested that I run in the past I never really had much motivation to. However, when an administrator without tools banner was dropped on my talk page about a week after the Administrator Election RfC closed, it got me to really consider running since the proposal was still fresh in my mind. The election format where there are a limited number of days for questions and discussion was appealing, as was the fact that I wouldn't be able to agonize over each !vote as it came in. What pushed me over the edge was when several administrators that I respect either resigned or went inactive in the intervening months, including technically-focused administrators like Pppery and Trialpears, so the timing seemed right.

Optional question from Ganesha811

6. Are there any areas of adminship you do not plan to participate in, due to unfamiliarity or lack of technical knowledge? If you later decided you wanted to help in these areas, what would be your plan to become an effective admin in those areas?
A: As I mentioned in Q1 above, I don't really have plans to get involved with deletion beyond some of the more obvious technical speedy deletions, although that's more due to a lack of interest at this time than familiarity or technical knowledge. There are other areas where I don't have a ton of experience, such as WP:UAA, WP:DYK, WP:ITN, and WP:PERM, and others where I haven't had the opportunity to learn the tools, such as actually protecting pages, working with edit filters, or performing history merges. If I did want to get involved somewhere I was unfamiliar with I would do so first as an editor, performing non-administrator tasks where possible. Before taking any administrative actions I would read all appropriate documentation, practice the actions in a sandbox or in my own userspace, and, most importantly, talk to an administrator who frequently works in that area to get advice and see where my efforts would be the most useful.

Optional question from Vanamonde93

7. Looking at an example of your creations from below, when you finished your initial edits on Rival (consumer products company), it looked like this. Admittedly that was a long time ago - so knowing what you know today, would you make any changes to that page? I'd appreciate some specifics, though I'm not asking for an entire rewrite of course.
A: I think the main thing I would change if I were writing that article today would be to find a wider variety of sources, rather than cite the same two over and over again (I also would've re-used the citations rather than list them separately). I would've directly cited the "International Directory of Company Histories" instead of the webpage that excerpted it, especially since it's available on the Internet Archive (or at least was before the hack). Also, now that I have access to Newspapers.com, I would've looked up the 10 articles cited by the "International Directory" listing and cited those directly as well.


Discussion

Please keep discussion constructive and civil. If you are unfamiliar with the nominee, please thoroughly review their contributions before commenting.

AfD record: 88.70% match rate, n of 291. 30 keep !votes to 256 delete !votes. Mildly subjective comment: these are good numbers, especially for someone who says they aren't particularly interested in working in deletion. The high proportion of deletes in the total is overwhelmingly due to nominations (214 in total). Stats are somewhat stale, with only 4 AfDs in the past year; no red flags in the recent ones. -- asilvering (talk) 03:29, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

  • Food for thought: Ahecht would have passed under the tradiitional RfA. SerialNumber54129 13:04, 22 October 2024 (UTC)
  • To follow up asilvering's stats, I want to highlight that Ahecht one of the maintainers of the AFD Stats tool that provides this data and is linked from every single candidacy page. Ahecht is who rescued the tool when it needed to be migrated over to a new system and is largely responsible for it continuing to run smoothly today. Legoktm (talk) 15:25, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

GAN & FAC notes. No activity at GAN or FAC. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 00:27, 23 October 2024 (UTC)

While I don't have activity there, I do have activity at FLC. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 18:03, 23 October 2024 (UTC)
  • One thing that stands out to me is the sourcing of the created articles. Here's what they looked like when Ahect created them: Spaceflight, Inc., Bill Sherman, Hollywood United Methodist Church, Rival (consumer products company). They almost consistently use tier 3 and tier 4 sources on the tiers of reliability page (which everyone should give a read), including a lot of press releases. In the older articles, the sources are bare links. I would accept the excuse that these are very old contributions, but that raises an even bigger concern as to why the candidate has chosen these edits as some of their "best contributions". The main source they used for Rival is blacklisted and still in the article today, after Ahect has chosen it as a "best contribution". Now, I don't believe that this affects the candidacy too severely insofar as a desire to work in technical areas, but all admins are going to be frequently brushing against things involving mainspace, content, and sourcing, and I'd need to be convinced that they've quickly acquired a massive amount of expertise on this subject in the last few years and that the selection of these articles was an oversight. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 20:22, 23 October 2024 (UTC)

Declined speedies

Ritchie333 (talk) (cont) 11:09, 24 October 2024 (UTC)

Thank you for compiling this list. I know replies here can be a faux-pas during a traditional RfA, but due to the number of candidates and the low level of discussion activity, I thought I'd chime in with some details: seven of those were self reverts, not declines, the two userspace ones were accepted and then REFUNDed, and the two WP:G6s that weren't self reverts were tagged to make way for a move but the admin opted to perform a HISTMERGE instead. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 15:51, 24 October 2024 (UTC)
The above adminship discussion is preserved as an archive of the discussion. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the talk page of the nominated user). No further edits should be made to this page.

Hawkeye7

The following discussion is preserved as an archive of an administrator election candidacy that did not succeed. Please do not modify it.

Final (199/252/165); See official results (non-admin closure) – DreamRimmer Alt (talk) 17:10, 10 November 2024 (UTC)

Nomination

Hawkeye7 (talk · contribs · they/them) – Hi I'm Hawkeye7. Some of you might know me from the Military History and Spaceflight projects. Or you might have met me at Wikimania in Hong Kong in 2013, Italy in 2015 or Poland in 2024! I've been around a long time. I started editing almost twenty years ago and am one of the most active Wikipedians. I am primarily a content creator, having written 110 featured articles and 370 good articles, and have created over 500 articles!

I generally pitch in when there is work to be done. I have participated in numerous drives. I rarely turn down a request for help, even when it is outside my area of expertise like reviewing an article on ice skating or rock bands, or assisting with a workshop on articles on Bhutan. I have developed bots to streamline the featured article processes and clean up backlogs.

I was was once an admin but was desysopped by ArbCom in the Civility Enforcement case twelve years ago. I was the third of several admins in a chain of knee-jerk admin actions and as such was technically "wheel-warring". This may not have led to sanctions from ArbCom, but it was part of a wider disputes which ended up at arbitration. This decision was not taken lightly, nor alone, but the responsibility was mine. At the time I thought that the editor in question would persist with a course of unacceptable behaviour until finally blocked for good. Regrettably, that ultimately proved to be the case, but not until after several more ArbCom cases. Twelve years is a long time ago - many editors have not been around that long - and I have a clean block record. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 04:14, 13 October 2024 (UTC)

Candidate, please indicate acceptance of the nomination here: Please disclose whether you have ever edited Wikipedia for pay.

I have never edited Wikipedia for pay. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 18:09, 12 October 2024 (UTC)

Questions for the candidate

Dear candidate, thank you for offering to serve Wikipedia as an administrator. Please answer these questions to provide guidance for participants:

1. Why are you interested in becoming an administrator?
A: I've been a Wikipedia editor for nearly twenty years now. I was recently re-elected as lead co-ordinator of the Military History project. As such I am frequently called upon to perform various administrative tasks even though I am not an admin. I am an autopatroller, file mover, new page reviewer, mass message sender and template editor. I feel I can make a contribution as an admin. I am in a different time zone to most, so can particularly help in areas where a quick response is warranted. One area I am particularly interested in helping out at WP:DYK, where there are often logjams due to no admin being available to promote the queues. I have a lot of experience in this area, having written or expanded 480 DYK articles and having worked on assembling prep areas. I would like to help reduce our backlogs, especially those at WP:RPP and WP:RM that most impact the content creation process.
2. What are your best contributions to Wikipedia, and why?
A: I am particularly proud of my work on featured articles. Initially, I wrote military articles based related to my PhD research, on the Second World War in the South West Pacific Area, like Douglas MacArthur's escape from the Philippines, Admiralty Islands campaign, Landing at Nadzab, and Battle of Sio. I am particularly interested in logistics, and wrote on Allied logistics in the Kokoda Track campaign, British logistics in the Falklands War, British logistics in the Normandy Campaign and American logistics in the Western Allied invasion of Germany (love the image I found for that one). I also wrote articles on the Manhattan Project, such as Robert Oppenheimer, and astronauts like Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin. I have conducted article writing workshops and was Wikipedian in Residence with Paralympics Australia, writing up my experiences in Paris 2024 for The Signpost
3. Have you been in any conflicts over editing in the past or have other users caused you stress? How have you dealt with it and how will you deal with it in the future?
A: You cannot be active for twenty years without some conflicts. Over ten years ago I was desysopped by ArbCom. I have now been on Wikipedia for nearly twenty years and have never been blocked or banned. I have not appeared before ArbCom since that case over ten years ago. If this RfA is successful, you have my word that I will work quietly and diligently, and use the administrative tools to help build the encyclopaedia.

You may ask optional questions below. There is a limit of two questions per editor. Multi-part questions are disallowed, but you are allowed to ask follow-up questions related to previous questions.

Optional question from Cryptic

4. What on earth did you realistically expect to happen as a result of Wikipedia:Bureaucrats' noticeboard/Archive 37#Review request? —Cryptic 00:08, 22 October 2024 (UTC)
A: I did not expect anything to happen or change as a result. I merely posed a question for my own edification about whether a close RfA could be appealed. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 03:09, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

Optional question from Thryduulf

5. Why did you choose to seek adminship via election rather than via a standard RFA?
A: To support the process! I felt that the standard RfA process had become too adversarial and intimidating, and was was deterring qualified editors from nominating. As a result, the number of active admins has been steadily declining. When people emailed me suggesting that I should run, I was still a bit hesitant. I did not want to be one of a small number of editors running, but I very much wanted the trial to succeed. I was one of the editors who pressed for this reform, most recently and back when it was first proposed years ago. I therefore delayed throwing my hat in the ring. I hope that my doing so encouraged others to also put their name forward! As it happened, a lot of other people delayed nominating until the eleventh hour (in one case, literally). We are still a long way from arresting the decline in active admins, but I believe this will be a step forward. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 03:09, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

Optional question from Trainsandotherthings

6. In 2023, at Wikipedia:Good article reassessment/Glencora Ralph/1, you said "There is no point in GAR at all." (referring to the process as a whole) and that the article containing no information on her career post 2012 (including a 2016 Olympics appearance) was "Not a reason for GAR. WP:SOFIXIT applies." Do you stand by those comments about the GAR process?
A: No, that was hyperbole. A GA should address the main aspects of the topic. This is significantly weaker than the "comprehensiveness" required of featured articles. It allows shorter articles, articles that do not cover every major fact or detail, and overviews of large topics. This includes articles that are not up to date. The sad fact is that we don't have enough editors to keep everything up to date and mass nominating articles at GAR defeats its purpose of reviewing and improving articles. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 03:09, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

Optional question from Novem Linguae

7. It looks like two editors recently claimed that you have a COI related to Australian Olympics articles. Can you please summarize what is going on at Wikipedia:Conflict of interest/Noticeboard#Alison Creagh? It is hard to follow.
A: Back in 2011, the Australian Paralympic Committee (now called Paralympics Australia) initiated a project to document its history. This included collecting documents and museum pieces and conducting oral history interviews with Paralympians. An online component was recognised as being important, and Wikipedia was identified as part of that. So they contacted Wikimedia Australia, and a joint endeavour began, called the "History of the Paralympic movement in Australia". I was brought into the project in 2012 as an experienced editor, albeit one with no knowledge of Paralympic sports whatsoever. I attended the 2012 Paralympic Games in London as a journalist with accreditation supplied by the Australian Paralympic Committee.
Later that year I was asked by the president of Wikimedia Australia to become the Wikipedian in Residence at the Australian Paralympic Committee. It should be emphasised that Wikimedia Australia was eager to be able to say that it had a Wikipedian in Residence, but no pay was offered, because Wikimedia Australia had run out of money. Nor would I have accepted any, because I had a full-time job, I would have had to seek permission from my employer, which might not have been forthcoming, and, above all, my very busy work schedule precluded me from devoting any fixed amount of time to it. Instead, we agreed that I would contribute what I could, when I could. Neither myself nor my predecessor was ever physically present at Paralympics Australia's headquarters in Sydney, except for a edit-a-thon held there in 2018, but I conducted a series of edit-a-thons and workshops around Australia until Paralympics Australia ran out of money as well, and terminated their part of the project in 2020.
Nonetheless, a small but devoted group of us continued to work on articles about Australian paralympians, coaches and administrators, and Australians at the Paralympic Games. As related in The Signpost, I obtained a media accreditation from Paralympics Australia for the Paris 2024 Paralympic Games for myself and another wikimedian as a freelance journalist and photographer from Wikimedia Australia. By "freelance", I mean we were not employees of Wikimedia Australia; I am just a member of that organisation. As far as the International Paralympic Committee was concerned, we were just non-rights news media, like the folks from the newspapers, radio, Getty images and the rest. As such I updated many articles related to the games and created new ones. Amongst these was an article on the new president of Paralympics Australia. In Paris I found that she had no article, so I created one. As was my usual practice, I submitted the new article to DYK to get some more eyes on it. Another editor raised the possibility of a COI in writing an article on a person who heads an organisation with which I have an association through wikipedia. I did not think so, but I left it for a uninvolved editor to make a determination. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 03:09, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

Optional question from Ganesha811

8. Are there any areas of adminship you do not plan to participate in, due to unfamiliarity or lack of technical knowledge? If you later decided you wanted to help in these areas, what would be your plan to become an effective admin in those areas?
A: There certainly are such areas. I have been around a long time and have been involved in many parts of the content creation and bot processes, but I freely admit that I do not know everything. One area I know absolutely nothing about that immediately comes to mind is sock puppet investigations. I have have never been involved in that aspect of Wikipedia at all. (I do not plan to participate in that area, due to unfamiliarity with it, but I have said that I am always willing to help out with any area.) I would read through our policies, and information pages, particularly the Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/SPI/Administrators instructions, and look through the current cases and archives of discussions. I would seek out an admin with experience in that particular area as a mentor. Until I became confident in the area, I would refer decisions to her. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 03:09, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

Optional question from Just Step Sideways

9. You have commented in your nom and in one of your answers to the standard questions about why you were desysoped, but it seems a bit short on the actual details. The committee in fact passed three findings related exclusively to your behavior[24], specifically that you wheel warred, that you made personal attacks on a user you had just blocked, and that you did these things after a previous admoinishment from the committee regarding the involved admin policy. Now, it's been a long time and this community can be wonderfully forgiving if one owns up to their own errors, what would you say to those who feel you still have not really done that, up to and including right here in this discussion?
A: It has been a long time, and several of the arbs involved in that case have come around to a different way of thinking. I honestly never intended a personal attack; my observation that the user seemed to be a protected species was intended as a statement of the situation to another admin. The third finding was particularly embarrassing to the arbs because they voted for a finding of fact that one of their number, Newyorkbrad, pointed out at the time was not true. Even the wheel war is looked at in a different light these days because ArbCom got into a wheel war in a subsequent case over the same user. At the time, I considered this as a personal attack, and I had advice that it was therefore not wheel warring. But here's the thing: when you take any admin action, you put your bit on the line. You are responsible. You can be second guessed. You can be hauled over the coals. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 05:29, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

Optional question from Toadspike

10. In two AfD discussions earlier this year, you citedMoroson, Lundstrom, Hammel, and books on the Battle of the Eastern Solomons or the Battle of Philippine Sea as grounds to keep the articles, and did not respond to my requests for a specific citation that established notability. Do you believe your response (or lack thereof) was sufficient to demonstrate the notability of those articles and complied with WP:V?
A: My apologies. I must have failed to get back to the discussion. I only have a bit of time to work on Wikipedia each day and prioritise responses to reviews. I do have all those books right here. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 19:37, 22 October 2024 (UTC)
Fair enough – apology accepted. Toadspike [Talk] 10:28, 23 October 2024 (UTC)

Optional question from Serial Number 54129

11. Did you ever contact Dweller? It sounds like he would have been willing to nominate you, especially if you've been avoiding controversy since 2018. SerialNumber54129 13:13, 22 October 2024 (UTC)
A: Yes, and he did nominate me, but the RfA was not successful. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 19:37, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

Optional question from BusterD

12. How many reviews of DYK, GA, A-class, and FAs of other wikipedians' works have you performed yourself so far in 2024?
A: Every DYK requires a QPQ review, so there were 14 DYK reviews. The MilHistBot keeps track of other reviews at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Military history/Awards. According to its tabulation, up to the end of September, I have performed 3 FA reviews, 18 A-class reviews and 11 GA reviews. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 19:37, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

Optional question from usernamekiran

13. Hi. Currently I'm a little confused, maybe I'm mistaking you for some editor. In the past, an admin was dysysoped by arbcom, with RfA being the only way to get back adminship. Later that editor had "requested to be re-sysoped". Was that you? Before asking the question, I went through the archives of bureaucrat's noticeboard, but I couldn't find the any relevant discussion, so I had to ask you directly. I apologise for confusion. —usernamekiran (talk) 18:36, 22 October 2024 (UTC)
A: In the really distant past, desysopping was regarded as temporary, and ArbCom might re-sysop. That has not happened for a very long time. In some cases, ArbCom has not allowed an RfA for re-sysop. This usually happens when the desysop is accompanied by an indefinite block. In the long lead up to this process, ArbCom has confirmed that the clause about an RfA also applies to any other community process, such as this one. Fram was re-sysopped on request, although this was later reversed. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 19:37, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

Optional question from usernamekiran

14. Hi. Currently I'm a little confused, maybe I'm mistaking you for some editor. In the past, an admin was dysysoped by arbcom, with RfA being the only way to get back adminship. Later that editor had "requested to be re-sysoped". Was that you? Before asking the question, I went through the archives of bureaucrat's noticeboard, but I couldn't find the any relevant discussion, so I had to ask you directly. I apologise for confusion. —usernamekiran (talk) 18:36, 22 October 2024 (UTC)
14.1 Sorry, I found it in the discussion below. It was not on bureaucrat's noticeboard. My follow-up question is: what was your rationale behind making that request? —usernamekiran (talk) 18:56, 22 October 2024 (UTC)
A: I felt that Fram's resysop was out of process. A decline would be an admission of that. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 19:37, 22 October 2024 (UTC)
@Hawkeye7: follow up question: I don't think I understand your answers properly. Fram had not requested for resysop. Fram was desysoped on 9/10 June 2019. WJBscribe added the sysop flag on 25 June 23:50 UTC, and it was then removed around three hours later log. You had made the request to WJBscribe on 16 June diff. What I don't understand is your use of "that". A decline of what, would have been admission of what? I feel like you are saying "decline of my resysop request would have been admission that Fram's resysop was out of process", which doesn't make much sense. Sorry, but English is literally my fourth language. —usernamekiran (talk) 19:54, 23 October 2024 (UTC)

Optional questions from Significa liberdade

15. Given that you talked openly about being desysoped in 2012, I'm surprised you didn't mention that you have failed two RfAs since then (2016 and 2019). Can you explain why decided not to mention this in your original nomination statement and answers to Q1-3?
A: I left out a lot of things. Lots of articles worked on. I was particularly pleased with the ones I created from scratch, and those I rescued from deletion and later brought to featured status. Getting Apollo 11 and its crew all up to Featured for the 50th anniversary of the 1969 Moon landing. Wikipedia Military Historian of the Year! Workshops and edit-a-thons in every state! Scholarships to Wikimania in Hong Kong in 2013, Esino Lario in 2015 and Katowice in 2024. Dinners with Sue Gardner, Katherine Maher and so many awesome Wikipedians. Field trips to Bangkok, Toronto, Beijing, Hamburg and Dubai. Participating in the New Page Patrol and Women in Red drives. Writing articles for The Signpost and The Bugle (our military history project newsletter). And yes, unsuccessful resysop requests in 2016 and 2018, and not one but two unsuccessful runs for ArbCom. Testing the Mediawiki software. Writing my own APIs in Perl and C#. Implementing the bots for FAC and MilHist administration. Getting the packbuild infrastructure to work on Toolforge. Uploading images to Commons. Good times and bad. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 21:01, 23 October 2024 (UTC)
16. What have you learned or changed about how you approach situations since your previous RFAs? Significa liberdade (she/her) (talk) 01:53, 23 October 2024 (UTC)
A: I have tried to take criticisms made to heart. I learned that people like to read edit summaries, so I have made a conscious effort to always provide them. Communication is always difficult in this written form, and I have worked on more effective engagement. I consciously adopted a less confrontational style of writing, and never respond with "No, you are wrong". I always thank people for their edits. I wrote a personal note to each and every editor who supported by RfA and thanked them for their support. I always apologise when I make a mistake. Being WP:BOLD seems to have become more difficult for newcomers over time, so more encouragement is required. I find that for a younger generation, Wikipedia has always been there. People have told me that everything is on Wikipedia nowadays. How I wish that was actually true! I try to set a good example, especially as lead coordinator of the Military History Project. I do a lot less content work and spend more time on administrative tasks like cleaning up the Military History Project backlogs. Since 2019, editing Wikipedia had become a much more solitary activity for me, with far less real-life and even on-Wiki contact with other people. This changed in 2024 when Wikimedia Australia began holding online chats over Zoom, and then came Katowice, with a chance to reconnect with so many people! Hawkeye7 (discuss) 21:01, 23 October 2024 (UTC)

Optional question from SilkTork

17. Could you explain what you mean by this statement you made in response to Q9: "The third finding was particularly embarrassing to the arbs because they voted for a finding of fact that one of their number, Newyorkbrad, pointed out at the time was not true." In relation to the finding that you had been previously admonished, all the Arbs active in the case supported it, including Newyorkbrad: [25]. (NYB added a comment later in response to Hersfold's feeling that the Civility case also related to involvement, which NYB didn't agree with - but that was a side issue, and not what we were voting on). To offer some clarity to people who might take your assertion for fact, I am not at all embarrassed that I supported a clearly obvious finding of which NYB said: "that Hawkeye7 was sanctioned in the case is a historical fact" 10:05, 24 October 2024 (UTC)
A:. Why would you vote on something if you didn't feel it was germane to the case? Hawkeye7 (discuss) 18:40, 24 October 2024 (UTC)



Discussion

Please keep discussion constructive and civil. If you are unfamiliar with the nominee, please thoroughly review their contributions before commenting.

  • where there are often logjams due to no admin being available to promote the queues -> you already have template editor rights, and DYK recently reduced protection of queues to template editor, so you can already do that. (In my opinion that action makes no sense, but I'm uninvolved there so will leave it at that) * Pppery * it has begun... 00:34, 22 October 2024 (UTC)
    I did not know that proposal got up! (Makes no sense to me either, but I guess they are getting desperate.) Hawkeye7 (discuss) 03:09, 22 October 2024 (UTC)
    When the idea was first proposed some years ago, it was specifically aimed at allowing me to move the prep areas. (I did not request it.) It failed because updating the main page was considered a prerogative of administrators. This time I was not involved in the discussion at all and presumably it had nothing to do with me. I am surprised that they decided to go ahead with it. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 18:42, 22 October 2024 (UTC)
  • While I've posed a tough question above, I also feel the need to comment that I have worked with Hawkeye7 multiple times at FAC and found his editing to be exemplary, in terms of research, accuracy, and ability to create engaging prose and properly summarize. I definitely learned from his editing in making my own forays at FAC. Trainsandotherthings (talk) 01:15, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

AfD record: 90.20% match rate, n of 427. 204 keep !votes to 219 delete !votes. Mildly subjective comment: obviously, these are very good numbers, and there's plenty of participation over the past year. -- asilvering (talk) 03:40, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

  • Moved from Q7.Aaron Liu (talk) 13:22, 22 October 2024 (UTC) That's a very long answer, yet it still manages to avoid addressing the key issue discussed in (the majority of) the recent COIN thread [27], i.e. the implausibility of your claims that while a close off-wiki associate of yours was paid $100 an hour to create new articles, which they only didin something like point form, you were apparently paid nothing at all toedit them into a readable and usable form. Ditto the fact that earlier in that year the off-wiki associate had benefited from your inappropriate use of admin tools, which resulted in those tools being removed. Another important issue raised in that thread is why it took you 12 years to make a formal declaration in relation to Wikipedian in Residence status, and only did so when it was pointed out that it was required under WP:PAID. Axad12 (talk) 04:39, 22 October 2024 (UTC)
    I was never paid. I don't know why you find it so implausible that someone would edit Wikipedia as a volunteer editor. Wikimedia Australia made a declaration of my status at the time. I was unaware that I had to make one. Again, I was not paid. And that was not the reason for my admin tools being removed, which related to an entirely different case. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 04:54, 22 October 2024 (UTC)
    My point was simply that you were asked to summarise the COIN discussion, but had left out any mention of the topics discussed in the majority of the thread. Axad12 (talk) 05:24, 22 October 2024 (UTC)
  • People should really read not only the COIN thread, but also Template:Did you know nominations/Alison Creagh which lead to this. Instead of just saying "oh yeah, I forgot, of course I have a COI when writing an article for the CEO of the organisation I am a Wikipedian in Residence for and which have just provided me with all kinds of benefits and support at the 2024 Paralympics", they denied this COI, then claimed I made personal attacks about them and another editor at the DYK (no idea what that was about), and denied that there was a ArbCom finding of fact of problematic undisclosed COI editing in the past, despite it being right here. They also have not complied with the basic WP:WIRCOI rules even after they were pointed out at the COIN thread. Fram (talk) 07:14, 22 October 2024 (UTC)
  • I played Blood Bowl a fair bit as a kid; didn't think I ever would again. SerialNumber54129 13:28, 22 October 2024 (UTC)
  • I endorse User:Fram's suggestion to read the COIN thread and discuss it there. Hawkeye7 did write another article (he's up to 546, apparently) and put it up for DYK (he has 484), but THIS ONE was BAD! No proof given whatsoever it was a COI issue of significance. BusterD (talk) 15:45, 22 October 2024 (UTC)
    • Editors are supposed to note when they have a COI with an article (and preferably not edit the article anyway), no matter if the end result is good or bad. I have made no claims about the quality of the article, only about the background. If you don't agree with the current guidance about COI and about the expectations for Wikimedians in Residence editing, then feel free to suggest changes to that. But I don't get why you feel the need to get all sarcastic about claims no one made anyway. Like I said, Hawkeye could just have acknowledged that they have a COI there, and no COIN thread nor this discussion would probably have happened. Instead, they denied having a COI, they denied ever having had problems with COI editing in the past, and they started making false claims about personal attacks instead. That is the issue, not whether that article is good or bad. Fram (talk) 15:53, 22 October 2024 (UTC)
      My BAD was unkind (but did draw your attention ;) I'd argue that Hawkeye7 has been a WiR for so long, the program has grown up around him, and COI reporting requirements have changed often in the many years since. Hawkeye7 certainly didn't try to fool anybody or intentionally omit any conflict, given his very public and continuous connection in person as a WiR at those events over many years. His explanation in questions above and at the COIN satisfy me. RfA voters have a chance to read our disagreement and then read up for themselves. The exact timing of the COIN report was particularly irritating (given your long disagreements) and if I've stroked short I might be forgiven for it. BusterD (talk) 18:48, 22 October 2024 (UTC)
  • Hawkeye7 is, as others note, a wonderfully prolific content creator who is always willing to support editors at the expense of his own time and no benefit to himself beyond the satisfaction of helping. An attitude of service — versus an attitude of "management" or "curation" — is, in my mind, the ultimate ideal for an Admin. In all my past interactions with Hawkeye7 he has been a mature, congenial, and easygoing editor with whom to work. I was excited to see him become a candidate. Chetsford (talk) 16:39, 22 October 2024 (UTC)
  • A 90.20% match rate is pretty good. I usually prefer to comment rather than close at AfD, because the real bottleneck is nominations lacking reviews rather than ones awaiting closure. I have closed AfDs, and none of my closures has ever been overturned at DRV. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 18:40, 24 October 2024 (UTC)
  • I asked a question above that, while addmitedly a bit pointed, provided an opportunity for the candidate to expand on their previous statements about what led to their desysop twelve years ago, with the hope that maybe they would just, finally, own their own mistakes that led to it. What I'm seeing instead is an attempt to minimize, again. I don't care who you are talking about, saying that another user isapparently some sort of koala (ie a protected species who is stewed most of the time).[28] is obviously a very personal attack, but Hawkeye, while only mentioning the first half of that statement, says aboveI honestly never intended a personal attack. They also claim the finding of a personal attack isparticularly embarrassing because NerwYorkBrad said the finding was untrue.That's simply not the case , he said the first half of the sentence, the part about protected species wasan attempt at humor gone awry but addedreferring to another editor as "stewed most of the time" was highly inappropriate. I don't think a user should have to carry old mistakes as a scarlet letter forever, but it's certainly a lot easier to move on if a user can admit their error. Just Step Sideways from this world ..... today 23:05, 22 October 2024 (UTC)
    I was referring to a another finding of fact. I have never denied what was a fatal miscalculation on my part, and have never tried to shift the blame onto others. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 00:14, 23 October 2024 (UTC)

GAN & FAC notes. Hawkeye7 is one of the most prolific contributors to both GAN and FAC. Detailed stats for GAN are here; for FAC, here. In summary: 376 of 386 nominations promoted at GAN, many of which are no longer GA because they are now featured; and 112 of 131 FAC nominations promoted. 198 reviews at GAN and 308 reviews at FAC. Hawkeye7 also runs the invaluable FACbot. I have reviewed many of their FAC nominations and their work is thorough, detailed, well-written and well-organized. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 00:33, 23 October 2024 (UTC)

  • I happen to strongly believe in second chances. Plus, it has been a long time since his desysop. However, the COIN happened too recently to be ignored. I've read the entire thread. Here is my take, it's true that Hawkeye7 technically was not paid, but he received many benefits from them. It's equivalent to being paid according to Wikipedia:PAID ("including money or other incentives"). Failure to disclose it is undisclosed paid editing. I believe it's a clear cut case here. It's a small mistake sure, but trying to argue that it wasn't paid editing is concerning. Hawkeye7 is no doubt a very prolific editor, but that does not mean he will be a good admin. The two positions (admin and editor) require 2 different skill sets. Someone who does not have a good grasp of Wikipedia's core policies should not become an admin in my opinion. 63.73.199.69 (talk) 02:37, 23 October 2024 (UTC)
  • Hawkeye7 claims "Fram was re-sysopped on request, although this was later reversed." I don't think I made such a request (but please correct me if I'm wrong): I was resysopped as a solitary action by WJBScribe (not by Arbcom), and this was reversed three hours later by another crat. The claim here that "I felt that Fram's resysop was out of process. A decline would be an admission of that." seems misguided, as the events already clearly showed that the resysop was out of process and no "admission" of this was necessary, and the circumstances were completely different anyway. Plus, Hawkeye already asked the arbss to reverse their desysopping in 2012[29], based on the completely false claim that "ArbCom made it clear that I had to either go through the RfA process or cease editing entirely", and they then made a weird request to have the desysopping vacated in 2014[30] because they believed that Arbcom had disallowed them to start a new RfA somehow.
    Most problematic about their answer to @Usernamekiran:, question 14.1 is this though: Hawkeye's request[31] was made on 1 July 2018, my brief resysop was in June 2019. Whatever his motivation for the review request might have been, it can't have been my situation. Fram (talk) 07:02, 23 October 2024 (UTC)
    The answer was correct; July 2018 was not a resysop request. The one referred to was in June 2019, as I said. What I do not remember is how you came to be de-sysopped in the first place. Was it an office action that accompanied your block? Hawkeye7 (discuss) 21:01, 23 October 2024 (UTC)
    Oh, on a user talk, that's one I hadn't seen yet, only all the other attempts to get the tools back one way or another. No idea how "Is there any way to have an RfA reviewed? It is frustrating trying to edit without the tool kit" is supposedly not a resysop request though, and your subsequent replies show a thorough misunderstanding of some basic processes (e.g., in reply to the suggestion that you can start a third RfA: "That path is not open, so far as I can see. RfA#2 was not unsuccessful; it was closed with no consensus from the bureaucrats."). Fram (talk) 08:10, 24 October 2024 (UTC)
  • The uncomfortable truth is that Hawkeye7 does not frequently acknowledge his mistakes. In this candidacy, he has not acknowledged his past mistakes and criticism or affirmed having learned anything from them. Doing so would hardly lose him the election: the community understands that prolific ex-administrators will have made mistakes. We cannot know it, but I suspect Hawkeye has not taken that approach because he still considers past criticism and current concerns of him to be invalid. The same ethos of 'never explain, never apologise' comes through in Hawkeye's 2016 RFA, where the question 'what you have learned' was studiously ignored. In his 2019 RFA, we only got to boilerplate question number 3 before he described his desysopping by ArbCom as a sort of technical violation: I was the third of several admins in a chain of knee-jerk admin actions and as such was judged to have been wheel-warring (emphasis added). Administrators are placed into difficult situations and require the character and communication skills to accept when they might be wrong. Arcticocean 18:10, 23 October 2024 (UTC)
    Very true, but I was not "placed" into a difficult situation; I mishandled it. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 21:01, 23 October 2024 (UTC)
    I've long been a Hawkeye7 supporter (perhaps because I watched their early work in real time before they were "famous"), but like good User:Arcticocean, I'm curious. Hawkeye7's work seems impeccable and his willingness to help others is well-known. Hawkeye7, I wish there was a way in which you felt comfortable letting us know why you felt youmishandled it, what lessons you learned in the process, and how you've incorporated it into being a good facilitator. Be as vague as you must. BusterD (talk) 03:24, 24 October 2024 (UTC)
    I'd also like to see what Hawkeye7 feels they have learned. For me (and I believe for many community members) mistakes in the past can be completely balanced out by showing that lessons have been learned. If lessons have not been learned, then there remains a concern that the mistakes will be repeated. All of us make mistakes now and again. Making a mistake is not in itself a problem - it's not learning from the mistake that causes concern. SilkTork (talk) 10:26, 24 October 2024 (UTC)
    The first lesson was not to get involved in a situation where you are not fully aware of all the background. For me it was a personal disaster, but for you it was another day at the office. If it had not been me, it would have someone else, if it was not then, it would have been sooner or later. We know this for a fact because it was what did happen. You assumed that everybody was familiar with the situation, because ArbCom was. So I began regularly reading the ArbCom cases, ANI and Jimbo's talk page - the usual places where dramas unfold - so I would not be caught out.
    The second was not rush in even when you do. An important change here was to read without comment, even when one feels very strongly about the issue. This was as much about discipline as anything - forcefully effecting a behaviour change. It was not always easy to do, it was not always successful, but became a goal, and I have largely realised it. I is a matter of trust of course, accepting that others will manage situations. It is not just learning but actually applying the lessons and making changes.
    Thirdly, mistakes do get made. I feel that the best and perhaps the only response is to accept, to apologise, and make amends as best I can. Maybe I need to work on expressing remorse in writing, but it is always heartfelt, and about adverse effects on others.
    I did develop a hierarchy of service to Wikipedia:
    1. Protect people - fellow edits and others (BLP);
    2. Protect the pages - from vandalism and misinformation;
    3. Uphold the pillars - the principles of a free encyclopedia where everyone treats their colleagues with respect.Hawkeye7 (discuss) 18:20, 24 October 2024 (UTC)
  • I went back and looked at a discussion I had with Hawkeye7 five years ago about adminship, and the sentence that leaps out for me is "I don't believe (though I'm happy to stand corrected) that Hawkeye has ever demonstrated remorse for some of the comments above. That would go some way towards convincing more people that this was water under the bridge." Reading the above comments, it looks like the concerns I had back then are still valid, unfortunately. Ritchie333 (talk) (cont) 10:39, 24 October 2024 (UTC)

Declined speedies

Ritchie333 (talk) (cont) 11:16, 24 October 2024 (UTC)

Ritchie, these were not declined. Frozen II/3 was a procedural one where a duplicate FAC nomination was created. And the Hanford engineer works one was needed for a complicated move over a redirect. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 18:53, 24 October 2024 (UTC)
  • Solid editor who I have seen around the project Lightburst (talk) 20:56, 24 October 2024 (UTC)
  • Full disclosure: I've met Hawkeye a couple of times and consider him a friend. Ignore the noise about the COI, it's a mountain out of a molehill. Look at the sum total of Hawkeye's contributions—including over 100 FAs on some difficult, meaty subjects across multiple nationalities—and ask yourself: is Hawkeye here to improve the encyclopaedia? Would he knowingly do anything to compromise the integrity of that encyclopaedia? Of course, that's not enough on its own. Hawkeye has made some mistakes in the past, but many of those are further on the past than some candidates' editing careers began and most are (to borrow a term from Newyorkbrad) "inside baseball". As long as he stays humble enough to ask for advice when he's out of depth, Hawkeye has the potential to make judicious, uncontroversial use of the tools. He has my full support. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 21:52, 24 October 2024 (UTC)
The above adminship discussion is preserved as an archive of the discussion. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the talk page of the nominated user). No further edits should be made to this page.

Sable232

The following discussion is preserved as an archive of an administrator election candidacy that did not succeed. Please do not modify it.

Final (175/143/298); See official results (non-admin closure) – DreamRimmer Alt (talk) 17:11, 10 November 2024 (UTC)

Nomination

Sable232 (talk · contribs · he/him) – Hello, I'm Sable232. I've been editing here since 2006. My editing varies and I don't specialize in anything - over the years it ranges from article expansion to fixing MOS and layout issues to article assessment, and no shortage of reverting vandalism and other disruption. I encounter plenty of sockpuppets and LTAs in my normal editing and have become adept at identifying them. My recent editing is probably what most would consider "gnomish".


Please disclose whether you have ever edited Wikipedia for pay.

I have never edited for pay and will never do so. Sable232 (talk) 18:24, 12 October 2024 (UTC)


Questions for the candidate

Dear candidate, thank you for offering to serve Wikipedia as an administrator. Please answer these questions to provide guidance for participants:

1. Why are you interested in becoming an administrator?
A: It's well known that Wikipedia doesn't have enough administrators. In recent months I've seen appreciable backlogs at places like SPI, RFPP, and AIV, and it stands to reason that a dearth of volunteers contributes to those backlogs. I know this trial election procedure is one of the ideas being tested in hopes of changing that, so I believe now is as good a time as any to volunteer.
2. What are your best contributions to Wikipedia, and why?
A: In the past, I expanded most of Wikipedia's Minnesota state highway articles from Stub to C-class. In recent years I've focused more on detail work, such as developing a consistent format for section anchors to allow for more easily fixing broken section links and reduce the likelihood of them getting broken in the future. As Wikipedia has become the first stop on the Internet for information for many people, it's even more important to have a level of encylopedic professionalism in article space and ensure that the small details are taken care of, there is a consistent style, and everything works as a reader would expect.
3. Have you been in any conflicts over editing in the past or have other users caused you stress? How have you dealt with it and how will you deal with it in the future?
A: I have, as nearly all of us have. I find that good-faith conflicts over content are best handled at article talk pages or those of the relevant WikiProject. I try to keep anything on Wikipedia from rising to the level of "stress" - closing the browser and walking away is often a good way to do so.

You may ask optional questions below. There is a limit of two questions per editor. Multi-part questions are disallowed, but you are allowed to ask follow-up questions related to previous questions.

Optional question from Z1720

4. In your response to question 3, you gave some information about the process you take in response to a potential conflict. Can you please give a specific example of a recent conflict or disagreement you have been involved with and describe either how you successfully managed the conflict or what you would have done differently? Thanks, Z1720 (talk) 00:24, 22 October 2024 (UTC)
A: One that sometimes comes to mind is an instance where I encountered what I thought were obvious copyvio images - photos taken with a phone of pictures on a computer screen. Too obvious, in retrospect. Copyvio images are a common problem and one that's hard to resolve if let go for too long so it's good to handle them promptly. But in this case, it wasn't; the uploader was the copyright holder, and photographed the images on his computer screen because he had trouble uploading the original files. He was, suffice it to say, not pleased that the images were tagged for deletion as copyvios and removed from the articles he added them to. He considered it "libelous" and commenced with some mild personal attacks towards me. That escalated to AN/I and a brief block for him before everything was sorted out. In retrospect, a deliberate copyright violation would likely not have been that obvious, and I should've engaged the uploader first. 49 times out of 50, what looks like a copyvio is a copyvio, but there can always be that one, and I wish I would've approached this one differently by questioning the uploader as to what was going on rather than taking the standard action of reverting and tagging.

Optional question from Thryduulf

5. Why did you choose to seek adminship via election rather than via a standard RFA?
A: In short, I saw the notice at the top of my watchlist and decided there was nothing to lose by throwing my hat in the ring now.

I'd noticed for some time the mentions of a lack of active administrators and had the thought in the back of my mind of volunteering, but I couldn't find clarity on what specific areas were most affected by insufficient admins nor what qualities were being sought in administrators. I was reluctant to self-nominate for RFA because I had no idea what to expect nor if I would be out of line to do so. After looking at some of the candidates already on the list, I felt my experience and track record were on par, so if I was going to do it at all, now would be the time.

Optional question from Ganesha811

6. Are there any areas of adminship you do not plan to participate in, due to unfamiliarity or lack of technical knowledge? If you later decided you wanted to help in these areas, what would be your plan to become an effective admin in those areas?
A: I don't plan on getting involved with AfD closures because I don't often participate in AfDs - I usually only do so where something appears in the Article Alerts for a WikiProject and I have something of my own to add to the discussion. If I were to try getting involved with that I'd spend more time !voting as an editor, and pay attention to how/when/why discussions are closed. There are a handful of things I see in the admin toolset that I don't quite understand from a technical aspect, and I'll leave those alone (editing JSON, modifying edit filters, editing intricate syntax in protected templates). If there's a need for that, I'm willing to learn, but it's hard to imagine what that would entail without more familiarity with how they work.

Optional question from Thebiguglyalien

7. Your userpage indicates that you participate at Wikipedia:WikiProject U.S. Roads/Minnesota, though it doesn't seem to be your main area of interest. Was your editing affected by the discussions about notability and OR with roads and the subsequent exodus of several roads editors?
A: Only slightly. I had started trying to work on getting those articles developed further a couple years ago, but I wasn't pleased with the prose I was coming up with and couldn't work around it at the time, so I set that aside. That said, the fact that the existence of those articles may be in jeopardy doesn't inspire me to focus on them anew.

Discussion

Please keep discussion constructive and civil. If you are unfamiliar with the nominee, please thoroughly review his contributions before commenting.

AfD record: 92.70% match rate, n of 124. 9 keep !votes to 92 delete !votes. Mildly subjective comment: most of this participation is from ages ago; only 7 in the past year (all matches); these are all in their area of editing interest (cars) and have extensive, helpful rationales, eg [32], [33]. -- asilvering (talk) 03:47, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

Personal comment: I wrote this before the discussion period opened and am very amused to see the answer to Q6. fwiw, it looks like your experience with AfD is just fine! -- asilvering (talk) 03:47, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

GAN & FAC notes. No activity at GAN. One brief comment seventeen years ago at one FAC, here. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 00:37, 23 October 2024 (UTC)

The above adminship discussion is preserved as an archive of the discussion. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the talk page of the nominated user). No further edits should be made to this page.

Mdewman6

The following discussion is preserved as an archive of an administrator election candidacy that did not succeed. Please do not modify it.

Final (195/131/290); See official results (non-admin closure) – DreamRimmer Alt (talk) 17:12, 10 November 2024 (UTC)

Nomination

Mdewman6 (talk · contribs · they/them) – Hello all, I am User:Mdewman6 and I've been gnoming around the English Wikipedia since 2019. I spend most of my time dealing with redirects and naming convention/disambiguation issues. I happily put myself forward to grab the mop should the community deem me worthy. I have only ever edited on any Wiki with this username. Mdewman6 (talk) 00:22, 13 October 2024 (UTC)

Please disclose whether you have ever edited Wikipedia for pay.

I have never edited for pay and never will. Mdewman6 (talk) 00:34, 13 October 2024 (UTC)

Questions for the candidate

Dear candidate, thank you for offering to serve Wikipedia as an administrator. Please answer these questions to provide guidance for participants:

1. Why are you interested in becoming an administrator?
A: I have a lot of experience at WP:Redirects for discussion and would like to join the corps there in closing more discussions, and many discussion closures there result in deletion. I also would like to help more with the backlogs at WP:RM and WP:RM/TR, and despite my views on this in the past, there are many cases where a WP:G6 deletion to make way for a move makes more sense than the cumbersome round-robin moves I currently undertake as a page mover (though there are certainly cases where redirect history should be preserved). I would venture into other admin areas in which I have little or no experience very carefully (seeking guidance from others as needed) or not at all.
2. What are your best contributions to Wikipedia, and why?
A: Helping to update WP:NCCHEM, specifically WP:OCHEMNAME, WP:CHEMPREFIX, and WP:CHEMGROUP, comes to mind, and performing page moves and creating redirects to bring articles into line continues to be a focus. While a contentious topic, I also work on WP:QUALIFIER issues (many via requested moves) as described at WP:MISPLACED.
With respect to content, I particularly like Neptune Odyssey (and, after being passed over in favor of Uranus, updating Uranus orbiter and probe) as well as (with help from others) Chiafalo v. Washington.
3. Have you been in any conflicts over editing in the past or have other users caused you stress? How have you dealt with it and how will you deal with it in the future?
A: As we all know, conflict is an unavoidable part of any collaborative endeavor. I think the most contentious time I've experienced editing was in regard to a 2022 move review regarding a requested move I had initiated. While there were some strong differences of opinion there and sharp discussion, I think all participants maintained WP:CIVIL and kept things from getting out of hand, and in my humble opinion, the piles of text and time devoted there ultimately resulted in the correct outcome. I know I was certainly a bit on edge during that time. One thing I like to keep in mind, especially when editing is bringing me down for any reason, is to stop editing and simply read Wikipedia- enjoy the thing you have helped build and maintain. I take a break and visit the Wikipedia article on a random topic I am thinking about, even if I already know a lot about it, just to see what we have to say on the topic. (Of course sometimes this leads to copy edits and other gnoming, but that's okay.)

You may ask optional questions below. There is a limit of two questions per editor. Multi-part questions are disallowed, but you are allowed to ask follow-up questions related to previous questions.

Optional question from Thryduulf

4. Why did you choose to seek adminship via election rather than via a standard RFA?
A: To be honest, my desire or need-based rationale to be an administrator never has risen above the 'activation energy' needed to wish to go through the RfA process, at least not to date. If another editor had encouraged me to run in the past, I may have, but I was also content gnoming away with just the helpful extra permissions I currently have. When I heard that the election process was a go for a trial round, I decided to put my name up and give the community a yay or nay. In contrast to RfA, where 1-2 candidates (normally) undergo intense community scrutiny for a week at a time, I like the idea of a process where the recruitment of qualified candidates is the priority, where candidates are still scrutinized by the community, but the focus is more on adding to the admin ranks with a slate of willing, experienced editors for which having the mop will be a net-positive for the project. Mdewman6 (talk) 04:33, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

Optional question from Ganesha811

5. Are there any areas of adminship you do not plan to participate in, due to unfamiliarity or lack of technical knowledge? If you later decided you wanted to help in these areas, what would be your plan to become an effective admin in those areas?
A: There are many areas that I am largely unfamiliar with that I have no plans to become involved in or use the tools. WP:SPI comes to mind, but of course there are many others, account creation, WP:DYK, file moving, category maintenance, WP:AFC, etc. If I did become involved in such an area, I would not use admin tools until I had gained adequate experience. One area where I have less experience but would like to become more involved in is template editing/creation, as there are changes to WP:RCAT templates that I believe would be helpful. I would tread carefully and not immediately edit protected templates, even though protected templates would become available for editing while holding the mop, and would continue to seek assistance from experienced template editors as necessary. Cautious discretion is the strategy in these cases. Mdewman6 (talk) 19:23, 22 October 2024 (UTC)


Discussion

Please keep discussion constructive and civil. If you are unfamiliar with the nominee, please thoroughly review their contributions before commenting.

AfD record: 86.50% match rate, n of 37. 11 keep !votes to 21 delete !votes. Mildly subjective comment: only five AfDs in the past year, and the candidate doesn't express an interest in deletion except via RM/RfD, so the stats are less relevant here. From some recent ones: [34], [35], [36]. These are good, clear AfD rationales, which indicate to me a desire for discussion and consensus rather than simply deletion. -- asilvering (talk)

GAN & FAC notes. No activity at GAN or FAC. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 00:38, 23 October 2024 (UTC)

The above adminship discussion is preserved as an archive of the discussion. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the talk page of the nominated user). No further edits should be made to this page.

Starship.paint

The following discussion is preserved as an archive of an administrator election candidacy that did not succeed. Please do not modify it.

Final (219/184/213); See official results (non-admin closure) – DreamRimmer Alt (talk) 17:12, 10 November 2024 (UTC)

Nomination

Starship.paint (talk · contribs · he/him) – Hello, dear reader! This is starship.paint here. I joined Wikipedia in 2011 and since then, I have contributed over 64,000 edits. From 2011 to 2016, I mainly edited in the topic of pro wrestling, where I have brought multiple articles (example and example) to Featured Article or Good Article status, (example and example), and having articles featured at DYK (example) and TFA. In 2016, a certain individual prompted me to start editing in other topics, including the contentious topics of recent American politics, gender-related controversies, abortion, and the Arab-Israeli conflict. If elected, per WP:INVOLVED, I will not use the tools in all of the above topics' disputes (except against blatant vandalism). I believe in compromise and working together with editors who may not share the same view, but of course we must still rely on reliable sources. I believe that my record shows that I am here to serve and improve Wikipedia, and I hope that given my contributions, you will lend me your support in this poll. starship.paint (talk / cont) First posted 12:22, 13 October 2024. Last updated 13:51, 20 October 2024 (UTC)

Please disclose whether you have ever edited Wikipedia for pay.

I have never engaged in paid editing and I have never had another account on Wikipedia. starship.paint (talk / cont) 12:25, 13 October 2024 (UTC)

Questions for the candidate

Dear candidate, thank you for offering to serve Wikipedia as an administrator. Please answer these questions to provide guidance for participants:

1. Why are you interested in becoming an administrator?
A: If elected, I’ll start by hanging around AN and ANI to gain some experience, and after that I will also try to help out at AE (but I will not administrate in involved topics). My work in contentious topics has led me to better appreciate the importance of AE. It is not the solution to every conflict in a contentious topic, but sometimes it is still warranted. Unfortunately, according to an active AE admin, link:there are very few admins doing any sort of AE work andmany of those doing that work are doing so intermittently, and hence I believe I can eventually help assist in this area of need for topics in which I am not involved. I may dabble in ITN (judging consensus in ITN discussions to post items in the news on the main page) and branch out to other areas as I go along. I want to help Wikipedia become a more conducive place for editors to work on content.
2. What are your best contributions to Wikipedia, and why?
A: In terms of concrete achievements, I (along with User:Ribbon Salminen) created Wrestle Kingdom 9 (from a redirect), got it through DYK, GA, and FA, which earned myself and Ribbon Salminen the WP:Four Award (and the article got TFA too).

I do have another FA (with TFA), other GAs, as well as around 20 other DYKs, the majority of which are not related to pro wrestling. During the process of attaining these I have reviewed other topics’ articles for FA, and DYK.
3. Have you been in any conflicts over editing in the past or have other users caused you stress? How have you dealt with it and how will you deal with it in the future?
A: I have edited in several contentious topics but I do not think many significant personal conflicts arose from these, or from what I recall, any official sanctions for those topics. I try to be civil and even-tempered, I aim to collaborate and I think I have good relations with some editors who have different opinions.

That being said, I must highlight, Wikipedia has not really caused me stress, except for one occasion in 2019 during the Wikipedia-WMF saga WP:FRAM, during which I received my only block (an indefinite one, plus talk access revoked, both lasted for less than a day). During WP:FRAM I helped to chronicle and summarize the events that had occurred. I was blocked due to me asking a named WMF staffer whether they owned a Twitter account with the same name that had been posting about WP:FRAM. I did not know it then, but this was WP:OUTING.

Being indefinitely blocked was traumatic, as I thought I may never be able to edit again. My appeal was quickly successful, after which I went to disengage myself from WP:FRAM and undertook not to repeat the same mistake. It was some time before I eventually edited normally again. After the incident I became more wary of conflict. I reverted less, moved on more, discussed if I wanted to continue the matter. I rarely template the regulars, preferring to write my own messages.

It struck me how one administrator said regarding my indefinite block that he would have blocked for two weeks instead. Perhaps the matter could have been resolved by then. Certainly, that would have reduced the emotional turmoil I had experienced. It was a lesson - behind every editor is a human with feelings. Administrators wield sanctioning powers that may affect people. When people are blocked, sometimes they do not even appeal, sometimes they do not return even after a successful appeal. This does not mean that these blocks were wrong, but this is what we risk when using them, so we must always consider carefully.

As an administrator, one would do well to remember the human behind every username.

You may ask optional questions below. There is a limit of two questions per editor. Multi-part questions are disallowed, but you are allowed to ask follow-up questions related to previous questions.

Optional question from Thryduulf

4. Why did you choose to seek adminship via election rather than via a standard RFA?
A: Thank you for your question, Thryduulf. I consider RFA a daunting process and potentially unpleasant. The elections are less daunting to me, given my feeling that the candidates are all in this together, living a shared difficult experience. Comparing recent RFAs and recent ArbCom elections (with a process resembling these admin elections), I believe that the admin elections are likely to be more pleasant. starship.paint (talk / cont) 01:18, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

Optional question from Ganesha811

5. Are there any areas of adminship you do not plan to participate in, due to unfamiliarity or lack of technical knowledge? If you later decided you wanted to help in these areas, what would be your plan to become an effective admin in those areas?
A: Thank you for the question, Ganesha811. First, never say never, I don’t want to rule anything out, as I am open to learning and improving, but I will do my best to proceed carefully in any area. Second, as I have been primarily a content editor, I am indeed unfamiliar or lacking in technical knowledge in several areas (e.g. sockpuppetry, unpaid editing, copyright violations, speedy deletion, history merges, WP:PERM), I certainly would not jump hastily in these areas! Third, if I want to help in an area I am not familiar in, I believe the simplest avenue to start is by asking an editor who is very experienced in the area on advice and perhaps small assignments so that I can progress and improve. starship.paint (talk / cont) 05:23, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

Optional question from Trainsandotherthings

6. As someone who has edited significantly in contentious topics, how do you view the change from the former discretionary sanctions system to what we have now with contentious topics? Could it be improved further?
A: Thank you for your question, Trainsandotherthings. The change was definitely positive in some regards - for example, alerts under the former name 'Discretionary sanctions' could lead to editors' misunderstandings such as 'Given your edits, admins can punish you however they want!' The new name, 'Contentious topics', more clearly indicates what the true issue is. Another key change was the requirement for discretionary sanctions alerts to contentious topics alerts. From what I remember, discretionary sanctions alerts generally needed to be re-given every year to count as awareness, which gave leeway for wiki-lawyering over alerts and awareness, whereas contentious topics alerts simplifies the requirements for awareness, such that after the first alert (or after other actions), editors are presumed aware, but can still "refute this presumption on appeal". starship.paint (talk / cont) 13:01, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

Optional question from hako9

7. Among all the policies/guideline on wikipedia, if you were to make changes to any one of those, which policy/guideline and what changes do you think you could make the best case for, while persuading other editors?
A: Thank you for your question, hako9. Overall I am quite happy with the policies and guidelines, but I can raise one policy I recently supported changing - the CheckUser policy (as suggested by User:Sean.hoyland). In the Arab-Israeli conflict topic area, we have seen persistent abuse by sockpuppets of banned editors (not exclusive to one 'POV'). I believe that in contentious topics which have more sockpuppets, the threshold for executing a CheckUser should be lower (e.g. edit warring can be grounds to use CheckUser). This will more easily allow us to root out ban-evading editors. Unfortunately, even if editors here are persuaded, it may not be enough - when I originally supported this change, I was responded to by User:Barkeep49 who saidCU policy has a globally established floor (one which is monitored by the Ombuds who report directly to the Board of the WMF … we're already operating close to, if not at, the floor … "make it easier to run CU" isn't something ArbCom or even enwiki can decide. starship.paint (talk / cont) 13:32, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

Optional question from Valereee

8. Re: your answer to Q3, can you discuss your understanding of the various reasons an administrator would decide to block indefinitely rather than for a limited time period, and in particular why an indef is often best not only for the project but for the person being blocked?
A: Thank you for your question, Valereee. The thing about time-limited blocks is that they run the risk of editors simply waiting out the time period, and then resuming their previously disruptive behaviour once the block expires. Certain behaviours (e.g. the worst violations of WP:BLP) can be so disruptive to the point that an administrator would not want to risk the project suffering further damage unless the editor can persuasively assure that they will not resume the disruptive behaviour. You posit that indefinite blocks are often best for the person being blocked - but I think I haven't yet been persuaded on this point. Perhaps, as an admin, you have seen much more examples and evidence for this than I have. Of course, an indefinite block may be beneficial for people if this scenario plays out - if they want to continue editing (legitimately), they are forced to reflect and explain how they can change to no longer disrupt the project, and if they follow their own advice, they will be able to edit Wikipedia more smoothly in the future. If they are not able to explain how to change, there is a possibility that they are not suited for Wikipedia, and if they remain blocked without further action they can focus their time and effort on other things. This assumes no block evasion, but we know that this does not always apply. starship.paint (talk / cont) 13:54, 22 October 2024 (UTC)
SP, FWIW -- and this is often misunderstood by non-admins, new admins, and even some experienced admins who don't do much unblocking -- many admins are reluctant to lift a time-limited block without getting the agreement of the blocking admin, so in practice most time-limited blocks run their full period. An indef is seen by many admins as "blocked until the user shows they understand and will make the necessary adjustment to their behavior" and as liftable by anyone, which can literally mean five minutes if the blocked editor "gets it" right away. Valereee (talk) 11:39, 23 October 2024 (UTC)
I see. Thank you Valereee for educating me (and other readers) on the admin behaviour norms, I appreciate it! starship.paint (talk / cont) 12:54, 23 October 2024 (UTC)

Optional question from Bunnypranav

9. You’ve mentioned editing in contentious areas like American politics, gender-related controversies, and the Arab-Israeli conflict. How would you approach using admin tools in such sensitive areas, especially where the line between vandalism and legitimate but controversial edits is blurry?
A: Thank you for your question, Bunnypranav. You listed three contentious, sensitive areas that I am WP:INVOLVED in. For topics that I am involved in, it would have to take really obvious vandalism for me to take action myself, so obvious that any reasonable administrator would have done the same. Examples of obvious vandalism in such topics include this and that. If there is a chance that the edit is controversial but legitimate, it can be discussed on the article talk page, or a noticeboard, or referred to an uninvolved admin. starship.paint (talk / cont) 14:15, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

Optional question from Alalch E.

10. What would you do if you encountered a draft that is an identical copy of an article deleted via AfD, in which the consensus was to delete it as an Wikipedia:Attack page, whereby not all editors agreed that the article should be deleted, some arguing in good faith that it is not an attack page?
A: Thank you for the question, Alalch E.. If the consensus is legitimate and particularly if the draft is regarding living or recently deceased people (per WP:BLP and WP:BDP), I would delete the article under WP:G10. We have a duty to report fairly on living people that we cover. However, I would be willing to provide a partial WP:REFUND of legitimate references in the draft to any editor willing to work on a proper article on the subject. starship.paint (talk / cont) 06:57, 23 October 2024 (UTC)

Optional question from Gamaliel

11. You were one of the most active and prominent editors involved in editing the Gamergate harassment campaign article and have the 13th most number of edits to that page. Editors on both sides of that conflict were widely criticized on Wikipedia and in the news media. Do you feel your behavior in that conflict is up to the standards expected by the community to fill the role of administrator? Why or why not?
A: Thank you for the questions, Gamaliel. Gamergate was and is a controversial topic. I tried my best to edit in accordance to policies and to adhere to reliable sources, as I do for every topic. I do not recall being sanctioned for editing in this area or being singled out for criticism by the media (you can enlighten me if I am wrong). There was an ArbCom case, WP:GAMERGATE, but I was not listed as an involved party. Of course, I am involved in the Gamergate topic area, but it seems that my conduct was satisfactory to the point that I was not included in the ArbCom case? Perhaps you can be more specific on any behaviour or wrongdoing you want to discuss. starship.paint (talk / cont) 06:57, 23 October 2024 (UTC)

Optional question from Gamaliel

12. Several years ago you called for ArbCom to investigate and possibly sanction Wikiproject Women in Red for a tweet presumably published by one of its members. Would you make the same request today? Why or why not? How would you investigate and sanction an entire WikiProject? What would you say to members of that WikiProject to assure them that you can remain neutral on issues related to that project?
A: I would not make the same request today due to, as you referenced, the difficulty in investigating and even sanctioning a WikiProject. In addition, the request was found to be off-topic with regard to the specific matter before ArbCom per above. Regarding assurance, I will say, consider me WP:INVOLVED with regard to Women in Red. I will recuse, as much as possible, for actions explicitly related to the WikiProject, if I am aware of the WikiProject's involvement, baring blatant vandalism. This doesn’t mean that I recuse from articles about women, though, there has to be more explicit involvement of the WikiProject. starship.paint (talk / cont) 06:57, 23 October 2024 (UTC)


Discussion

Please keep discussion constructive and civil. If you are unfamiliar with the nominee, please thoroughly review his contributions before commenting.

AfD record: 89.10% match rate, n of 138. 42 keep !votes to 80 delete !votes. Mildly subjective comment: these are good numbers but they go back more than a decade so they're not a strong basis for any conclusion about the candidate. He participated in 7 AfDs in the past year, all related to I/P; the !votes here are typically short and, obviously, given the topic area, the AfDs are well-attended and no one vote is likely to sway the discussion by itself. I spot-checked a few older AfDs and found only very brief !votes; if they were more recent I might have looked harder to see if it was evidence of vote-stacking, but since it's from more than a year ago I don't think it's a big issue. tl;dr, ignore the numbers, and evaluate the candidate on other things. -- asilvering (talk) 22:02, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

GAN & FAC notes. Five GAN nomiantions, but no reviews; list is here. All ten or more years ago. Seven FAC nominations and 12 reviews; list here; again, all old -- the most recent is from 2016. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 01:41, 23 October 2024 (UTC)

  • Thank you Mike Christie for reviewing my record. From what I remember of the FACs, they kept failing (until they finally passed) because few editors were willing to review a pro wrestling article. The difficulty in passing FAs due to low interest in FAC reviews of pro wrestling articles did lead me to stop trying for FA after the successes. starship.paint (talk / cont) 07:01, 23 October 2024 (UTC)
Hello, just a note that I will be logging off around 15:00 (UTC) today, so I may not be able to answer late-arriving questions for this questioning period. That is usual for my editing hours. starship.paint (talk / cont) 03:26, 24 October 2024 (UTC)
  • Logged off right after making this comment. Hopefully there won't be a bunch of declined speedies listed for me! Especially seeing as I cannot recall myself nominating articles for speedy deletion, though it is possible that I have done so, but pretty few times, probably? starship.paint (talk / cont) 15:18, 24 October 2024 (UTC)
The above adminship discussion is preserved as an archive of the discussion. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the talk page of the nominated user). No further edits should be made to this page.

Frost

The following discussion is preserved as an archive of an administrator election candidacy that did not succeed. Please do not modify it.

Final (102/268/246); See official results (non-admin closure) – DreamRimmer Alt (talk) 17:13, 10 November 2024 (UTC)

Nomination

Frost (talk · contribs · he/him) – Hello, I’m Frost! I spend most of my time on Wikipedia patrolling recent changes, reverting vandalism, identifying and removing spam, tagging improper pages for deletion, reporting vandals, sockpuppets, and users violating the username policy, among other activities.

About me - I created my account in 2017 and started to edit actively in late 2019. I took a break in early 2021 and returned in mid that year when I was granted the rollback right, though I was not as active as I had been before. A few months ago, I decided to put the rollback right to good use by getting into anti-vandalism. Since then, I've been on Wikipedia pretty much every day for hours.

I consider this a productive hobby as I learn new things here all the time. I try not to take anything on Wikipedia or the internet personally, so I’m able to navigate most situations without becoming stressed. I learn from mistakes and try to never repeat them. I observe how things are done by others and the feedback given to them then try to adopt those qualities myself.

I’ve never edited for pay, and this is my only account. Frost 08:43, 10 October 2024 (UTC)

Please disclose whether you have ever edited Wikipedia for pay.

Questions for the candidate

Dear candidate, thank you for offering to serve Wikipedia as an administrator. Please answer these questions to provide guidance for participants:

1. Why are you interested in becoming an administrator?
A: As someone who patrols recent changes regularly, I come across hundreds of problematic edits and page creations every day, many of which require blocking, deleting, protecting, revdeling, and other actions. Becoming an administrator would grant me the ability to deal with them directly instead of relying on the noticeboards. Furthermore, I would like to use the tools to help out at less frequented areas, such as Histmerge and Linkspam.
2. What are your best contributions to Wikipedia, and why?
A: I’d say my best contributions come in the form of helping to keep the place clean from vandalism and other detriments. In the last four months, I’ve made hundreds of reports to AIV, RfPP, SPI, UAA, etc, against disruptive users and problematic pages, and hundreds of speedy deletion requests. Content-wise, I’ve worked on many Liverpool F.C.-related articles and created several articles about footballers. While I may not have any GAs, I believe my content creation work has demonstrated a strong understanding of Wikipedia's policies and guidelines, and improving articles I've created and other articles I'm interested in to achieve the GA assessment is a goal on my checklist for the future. However, for now, I am more active in the janitorial side of Wikipedia, and I intend to use the tools mostly for this.
3. Have you been in any conflicts over editing in the past or have other users caused you stress? How have you dealt with it and how will you deal with it in the future?
A: There may have been disagreements regarding my actions here and there, but I believe my responses to them have been overall positive. When I do find myself in a conflict with another user, I try to understand their point of view and assess the situation neutrally, then see if there’s a mistake on my part or theirs before sharing my thoughts. An example of me handling a conflict is Giorgi Mamardashvili, where I made a change to the article and was reverted. I then proceeded to engage with the other user on the article's talk page and a resolution was reached.

You may ask optional questions below. There is a limit of two questions per editor. Multi-part questions are disallowed, but you are allowed to ask follow-up questions related to previous questions.

Optional question from Thryduulf

4. Why did you choose to seek adminship via election rather than via a standard RFA?
A: I'm fine with both processes but picked AdE because it's new and I wanted to see how the community rates me through a ballot and test if it's more accepting than RfA, which gives the impression of "you may apply to become admin but you have to be near perfect" while AdE gives "we need admins so please apply, you don't have to be perfect". I also share the views of Starship.paint in his answer to this question, particularly about RfA being daunting and AdE being less emotionally burdening due to the feeling of collectiveness.

Optional question from Ganesha811

5. Are there any areas of adminship you do not plan to participate in, due to unfamiliarity or lack of technical knowledge? If you later decided you wanted to help in these areas, what would be your plan to become an effective admin in those areas?
A: I don't see myself doing certain things like closing AfDs or participating in reviewing user conduct/actions, but my interests can change over time and I may eventually choose to do them or participate in areas where there is a shortage of editors or in other unfamiliar areas after gaining some understanding about them. To be effective, I'll learn more about them, study the norms and attempt to emulate.

Optional question from Ternera

6. Thank you for your dedication to cleaning up vandalism! If you become an administrator, do you see yourself editing the same amount you currently are? And how do you plan to keep yourself from feeling burnt out?
A: I expect the experience of being an admin to be completely different from what I currently do so I intend to tread carefully and learn the ropes before editing in the way I do now. When I become comfortable with using the administrator tools, I expect my activity level to improve naturally. I simply take a break when I don't feel like opening Wikipedia on some days so that's the plan to avoid feeling burnt out as an admin.

Optional question from Sennecaster

7. You mentioned in Q1 helping out with histmerges in the future. Can you give some examples of requests you've made, either simple through {{histmerge}} or complex through WP:Requests for history merge?
A: There are a few but the only ones I'm able to find through edit summaries are Special:Diff/1236707164 and Special:Diff/1241669537.


Discussion

Please keep discussion constructive and civil. If you are unfamiliar with the nominee, please thoroughly review his contributions before commenting.

AfD record: 88.20% match rate, n of 17. 1 keep !votes to 16 delete !votes. Mildly subjective comment: most of this is nominations, all but one of which matched; the one that didn't isn't a real miss, in my opinion (it ended in merge but just as easily could have been to redirect, which would count as a match). I participated in the other miss, so no further comment there. -- asilvering (talk) 04:20, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

GAN & FAC notes. No activity at GAN or FAC. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 01:43, 23 October 2024 (UTC)

  • I think Huggle and rollback account for the majority of those automated edits. I often find myself on anti-vandalism patrol at the same time as Frost (though we are apparently in opposite timezones) and having more admins watching AIV and UAA at those times wouldn't hurt. ClaudineChionh (she/her · talk · contribs · email) 04:04, 23 October 2024 (UTC)
  • Frost undoubtedly does good antivandal work - whenever I do Recent Changes stuff I often attempt to revert vandalism only to find Frost already did it a few seconds before me (which is a good thing!). I personally would like to see more exposure to other areas though, because with this much focus on one job it makes it difficult to evaluate other qualities. BugGhost🦗👻 08:28, 23 October 2024 (UTC)

Declined speedies

Ritchie333 (talk) (cont) 11:16, 24 October 2024 (UTC)

  • You're a bit too quick to pull the trigger on AIV reporting in my opinion. This is a gut feeling only because I'm not able to do a deep dive in the timeframe available. Your Huggle reports are fine but a lot of your manual reports have issues, like reporting IPs as vandal-only accounts, giving a warning but then reporting to AIV with no further edits, and generally reporting sooner than necessary. Even 20 years in, a lot of people don't get what "anyone can edit" really means and (hate speech, libel, etc aside) we should always start by assuming good faith. My gut feeling is this nomination is a little premature. If you're not elected, give it six months, give potential test edits one more chance than you do right now, spend a bit of time in the in the mainspace, then come see me about an RfA nomination. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 22:03, 24 October 2024 (UTC)
The above adminship discussion is preserved as an archive of the discussion. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the talk page of the nominated user). No further edits should be made to this page.

The Squirrel Conspiracy

The following discussion is preserved as an archive of an administrator election candidacy that did not succeed. Please do not modify it.

Final (264/145/207); See official results (non-admin closure) – DreamRimmer Alt (talk) 17:14, 10 November 2024 (UTC)

Nomination

The Squirrel Conspiracy (talk · contribs · he/him) – Hello! I'm The Squirrel Conspiracy. I previously edited as Sven Manguard for a long time and as Nezzadar for a shorter time before that. Over a decade ago, I had an RfA that was unsuccessful because I was worried you could get from Nezzadar to my real identity. Now I don't really care about that. I'm an admin on Commons and Wikidata, so I know what the mop entails, and while it isn't recent, I have a solid track record writing articles. I make no promises that I'm going to be a high volume contributor as an admin on this project - that's why I've avoided a traditional RfA - but I do promise to stay around and help out where I can, in areas where I feel comfortable that I'd be knowledgable enough (for example, if WP:FFD ever gets backlogged, it would be an easy place for me to slide in).

Candidate, please indicate acceptance of the nomination here:

Yes, I accept.

Please disclose whether you have ever edited Wikipedia for pay.

No, I have not.

Questions for the candidate

Dear candidate, thank you for offering to serve Wikipedia as an administrator. Please answer these questions to provide guidance for participants:

1. Why are you interested in becoming an administrator?
A: I am an admin on Commons (currently my primary project), and often tackle cross-wiki spam and vandalism. Having the mop here would make that work easier for me and alleviate some of the burden on other admins when spam and vandalism here needs deleting/revdeling. Additionally, having the ability to see deleted contributions would be very helpful in investigating potential cross-wiki spam and vandalism (often I'll see a file was uploaded on Commons as part of the creation of a page on this project, which was subsequently deleted).
2. What are your best contributions to Wikipedia, and why?
A: I've done a lot of things over the last fifteen years. I proposed the Filemover right and created 45 articles, a handful of featured lists, and 17 good articles. Architecture of the Song dynasty will always have a special place in my heart because it was my first GA and because I worked on it with User:NickDupree, who has sadly passed away.

Noways, I've scaled my time on Wikipedia way back, as the time and energy I used to have for major writing projects has been consumed by my career and side gig. Instead, I'm primarily active on Commons, where I can drop in for 15 or 30 minutes at a time and do a bunch of work that doesn't require much day-to-day continuity. My recent work on this project centers around fighting cross-wiki spam and vandalism.

3. Have you been in any conflicts over editing in the past or have other users caused you stress? How have you dealt with it and how will you deal with it in the future?
A: It's impossible to be on a large, collaborative project for 15 years and not encounter conflicts. However, I find it's helpful to keep in mind that there are plenty of other editors about and no issue needs to be resolved by me alone. If I think I'm getting heated, I disengage and let other folks step in.

You may ask optional questions below. There is a limit of two questions per editor. Multi-part questions are disallowed, but you are allowed to ask follow-up questions related to previous questions.

Optional question from Thryduulf

4. Why did you choose to seek adminship via election rather than via a standard RFA?
A: I came up in the era where RfA was a deeply involved - at times even vicious - process. I didn't see a traditional RfA as being worth it - either in time or emotional bandwidth - for the amount and type of mop usage I'd anticipate being able to contribute. When I saw the call for volunteers for the admin election, I figured it would be a low stakes way to go about seeing if the community had any interest in giving the mop to someone for a few hours a month of admin gnome work.

Optional question from Ganesha811

5. Are there any areas of adminship you do not plan to participate in, due to unfamiliarity or lack of technical knowledge? If you later decided you wanted to help in these areas, what would be your plan to become an effective admin in those areas?
A: I don't see myself participating on the admin noticeboards, articles for deletion, or requests for permissions on this project. I already do those kinds of things on Commons and the need for my time there is arguably greater. If I were to take on work that I'm not doing at the moment, it would probably be around DYK, as I used to prepare sets there a while ago. Should that change, I would ease myself into the new responsibilities, looking at current policy and what other admins are doing, before I kick the training wheels off.

Optional question from Trainsandotherthings

6. You write "Nowadays, I've scaled my time on Wikipedia way back" and you haven't made more than 83 edits a month since 2020. If elected, do you foresee your editing activity per month on Wikipedia changing?
A: Not really, no. Commons is my main project, and I spend a dozen plus hours a week there. As bad as the admin-to-workload situation is here, it's much, much worse on Commons, too. I'm requesting the mop here purely so that when cross-wiki anti-spam and anti-vandalism work carries from from Commons to here, I have the tools to resolve the issues without needing to add to the workload of the existing local admins. The Squirrel Conspiracy (talk) 04:20, 22 October 2024 (UTC)


Discussion

Please keep discussion constructive and civil. If you are unfamiliar with the nominee, please thoroughly review their contributions before commenting.

AfD record: 77.40% match rate, n of 53. 2 keep !votes to 53 delete !votes. Mildly subjective comment: only 9 in the last year; most of this data is from 2020. Given the candidate's stated reasons for running I don't think any of this is terribly relevant (in particular, I think anyone worried about high delete !vote ratios shouldn't be, given their emphasis on cleaning up cross-wiki spam). More relevant is the approach, so here are his two noms from the past year: [37], [38]. Both successful, and both appropriately open to discussion ("appears to" fail GNG, etc). No real flags, red or otherwise. -- asilvering (talk) 17:57, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

GAN & FAC notes. Two reviews at GAN not long after account creation, in 2015 and 2016. Both are reasonably detailed. Nine nominations at GAN; most in 2020, several of which were quickfailed. GAN stats are here. Eight FAC reviews -- list is here; five are image reviews, and several were opposes on copyright grounds, e.g. this one. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 01:50, 23 October 2024 (UTC)

Regarding the quickfailed GANs, I used the best available sources I could find, but the reviewer didn't feel they were reliable enough, and considering that there just weren't better sources covering competitive Super Smash Bros players, I abandoned the effort to see them through GAN. If I recall correctly, they were all already nominated before the first one failed. The Squirrel Conspiracy (talk) 05:03, 23 October 2024 (UTC)

Declined speedies

  • U5 en:User talk:Ozzie Ostrichorange 2023-10-04T07:52:41Z
    • Was an advertisement. Admin truncated page instead of deleting.
  • G3 en:Wikipedia:List of hoaxes on Wikipedia/Dream Craft 2022-09-05T04:08:46Z
    • Converted to PROD and subsequently deleted. Then restored as a subpage of list of hoaxes.
  • G12 en:Drug policy of South Korea 2020-07-13T17:05:06Z
    • Was a copyvio. Admin truncated article and history revdeled history instead of deleting.
  • G5 en:Virti Vaghani 2020-07-13T03:25:37Z
    • I don't remember this one. I must have saw something that made me think it was a sock, and the admin must have saw something that indicated otherwise.
  • U1 en:Turbopolsa 2020-06-26T22:16:57Z
    • This was from when it was a sandbox page in my own userspace.
  • G12 en:Drug policy of South Korea 2020-06-16T00:40:31Z
    • Was a copyvio. Admin truncated article and history revdeled history instead.
  • A7 en:Rebecca Win 2020-04-16T04:42:30Z
    • I converted this to an AfD, and then withdrew that after editors found Burmese-language sources.
  • F8 en:File:Makassar Script alphabet-2.png 2020-03-21T07:24:51Z
    • IIRC it was the same file when I filed the request, then someone cleaned up the pixelation on the Commons file.
  • G12 en:Petite France (theme park) 2016-01-09T01:50:10Z
    • Was a copyvio. Admin truncated article and history revdeled history instead.

Ritchie333 (talk) (cont) 11:12, 24 October 2024 (UTC)

The above adminship discussion is preserved as an archive of the discussion. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the talk page of the nominated user). No further edits should be made to this page.

AntiDionysius

The following discussion is preserved as an archive of an administrator election candidacy that did not succeed. Please do not modify it.

Final (248/135/233); See official results (non-admin closure) – DreamRimmer (talk) 16:51, 10 November 2024 (UTC)

Nomination

AntiDionysius (talk · contribs · they/them) – Hello, I'm AntiDionysius. I have never edited Wikipedia for pay. This is my only account; I've had it and used it since 2015, but the majority of my activity has been in the past twoish years. I am both a rollback and pending changes reviewer. I contribute in mostly maintenance-focused ways, with a focus on recent changes patrol, welcoming and/or assisting new users, and article cleanup/expansion. In this, I spend a lot of time asking admins to do things like block vandals, protect articles, and speedily delete pages. This means two things: first, that over time I have gained a solid familiarity with Wikipedia policy in the relevant areas; and second, that we could all save some time and trouble if I were to just perform those tasks myself. I consider Wikipedia to be a superlatively valuable resource on an increasingly messy internet; I am proud of what I do already to contribute to it, and I would be grateful to have additional tools with which to amplify that contribution.

Questions for the candidate

Dear candidate, thank you for offering to serve Wikipedia as an administrator. Please answer these questions to provide guidance for participants:

1. Why are you interested in becoming an administrator?
A: In essense I'd like to be an admin because I like making Wikipedia better and I think I would be able to do so to a much greater degree as an admin. As I said, I contribute to the project in a mostly gnome-y way, including: dealing with vandalism; tagging and/or cleaning up articles with sourcing, POV and tone issues; tagging promotional additions for deletion; and welcoming new users. I think the tools of adminship would enable me to do some of these and other maintenance tasks much more effectively. In particular I have occasionally been in the position of waiting a while for an admin to be online and available to deal with a spree of vandalism/LTA. Part of that may be a time zone issue, since so many admins on English Wikipedia are located in the US whereas I tend to be online during European active hours; this strikes me as a way in which I could be particularly useful as an admin. Just in general, I think my experience doing maintenance work has given me familiarity with the vital areas of Wikipedia policy (V, NOR, NPOV, CSD, BLP etc) and the quotidien work of admins to the point that I think I would be a responsible and useful member of the admin team, given the chance.
2. What are your best contributions to Wikipedia, and why?
A: It's mostly the collective worth of a lot of vandalism-fixing. I've also revamped some semi-obscure articles which badly needed rewriting, sourcing, expansion, and/or the removal of POV/promotional content, and there is something special about seeing an entire article which has been brought up to standard by your labour. Having been a journalist in a past life I fancy myself relatively good at source-finding in particular. Also: on more than one occasion I have been able to, with patience, talk down new users who were angry about some or other part of Wiki policies (most often but not always COI) and seemed like they were cruising for an indef block, and convince them to instead engage calmly and constructively in a mutually-beneficial manner. Other times, I have tried and failed to do that. I mention it because I think AGF is one of the most important parts of Wikipedia, and turning what had been a combative interaction into a constructive one where everyone remembered the human being at the other end of the talk page is perhaps a rare thing on the internet of 2024, and probably couldn't happen in many other online spaces.
3. Have you been in any conflicts over editing in the past or have other users caused you stress? How have you dealt with it and how will you deal with it in the future?
A: I was involved in a content dispute over a small wording issue on a contentious topic in October 2023. It was, because of the subject matter, emotive and stressful for me and I imagine for others too. I dealt with it by doing my utmost to remain calm, civil, and mindful of policy, and by trying to see things from the other side's perspective insofar as I could. When we were unable to solve it through pure discussion, I referred it to the Dispute Resolution Noticeboard. It was difficult and frankly unpleasant but I think I largely did the right thing in how I approached it. Were I in a similar situation again in the future I think that general approach - trying to AGF and seeking outside facilitation when it became clear we weren't getting anywhere on our own - would be a good one to repeat.

You may ask optional questions below. There is a limit of two questions per editor. Multi-part questions are disallowed, but you are allowed to ask follow-up questions related to previous questions.

Optional question from BeanieFan11

4. You mention in the nom that one of your focuses isarticle cleanup/expansion – what would you say are your best article contributions?
A: I did a long and somewhat painstaking clean-up of Coalition of the Gulf War a little while ago; someone had expanded it admirably but it was poorly cited and had a lot of grammatical issues and needed to be gone through with a fine-tooth comb. I also recently expanded Royce White - not drastically, but in a way that (I think) helped to settle a minor, simmering dispute around how to represent his controversial political views.
I also helped with the early expansion of Mohamed Muizzu when he'd just gotten elected President of the Maldives, and trimmed down International Institute of Rural Reconstruction from a long piece of messy advertising copy into something relatively useful. Those are the ones that come to mind, but I have a feeling I'm forgetting some better examples. --AntiDionysius (talk) 13:11, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

Optional question from Thryduulf

5. Why did you choose to seek adminship via election rather than via a standard RFA?
A: The idea of seeking adminship at some unspecified future point had been in the back of my mind for a little while, after an admin mentioned to me a few months ago that I should consider it down the road. I would probably have done an RFA at some point, but when I got the pop-up for the call for election candidates, I realised enough time had passed and my edit count was high enough that it was worth consideration. I think the process is probably better than RFAs, though as I said, I'd be open to doing one of those too. --AntiDionysius (talk) 13:11, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

Optional question from Ganesha811

6. Are there any areas of adminship you do not plan to participate in, due to unfamiliarity or lack of technical knowledge? If you later decided you wanted to help in these areas, what would be your plan to become an effective admin in those areas?
A: I will admit to being comparatively less familiar with AfD; I have participated, but not nearly as much as I have in other areas relevant to the role of admin. While I still don't think closing discussions and acting on the results of consensus is beyond my capabilities, I think I will make an active effort to participate in a good number of AfD discussions to gain familiarity and experience before considering making that a regular part of my admin duties. Were I to be elected, I would want the community to gain maximum value from my being an admin, so I would aim take the time to do this. --AntiDionysius (talk) 13:11, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

Optional question from Daniel Case

7. As you do a lot of patrol work, are there any areas not currently designated as contentious topics that you would support an effort to designate?
A:Excellent question. I think the current list is very good. I think there is potentially an argument for designating contemporary UK politics as a CTOP, along the lines of the designation for post-1992 US politics, but I don't know that the volume of issues it generates is large enough to make it necessary.
More broadly, I do see semi-frequent disputes about the politics of the far-right in various countries. But it's an odd case in that the thing that tends to be in dispute is whether a certain person or party actually is far-right (for example, the repeated removal of the phrase "far-right" from the 2024 United Kingdom riots article), so putting articles under the contentious topic would itself be contentious. And honestly the US politics CTOP already covers about 75%+ of such disputes anyway, so it's hardly an urgent issue. So short answer: the list is quite good as is. --AntiDionysius (talk) 19:36, 23 October 2024 (UTC)

Discussion

Please keep discussion constructive and civil. If you are unfamiliar with the nominee, please thoroughly review their contributions before commenting.

  • I've seen this user around a lot here, especially during my time recent changes patrolling (I think they may in the same timezone as me). They are bold, but cautious and always leave appropriate warnings or personalised messages, and in my experience always assumes good faith and never bites. I've seen them help many newcomers understand our policies in a emphatic way. When I saw their name on the adminship election list - I was really excited! They would make an amazing admin and I hope they do become one. MolecularPilot 02:38, 22 October 2024 (UTC)
    This is really encouraging to hear from someone who is relatively new themselves, thank you for writing it. -- asilvering (talk) 17:42, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

AfD record: 100% match rate, n of 10. 1 keep !votes to 10 delete !votes. Mildly subjective comment: candidate's Q6 says they're not very experienced with AfD, which is true, but I don't see any red or even pinkish flags in here. I looked at all the ones from the last year. -- asilvering (talk) 17:41, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

CSD noms: I've been turning down many of this candidate's G11 nominations, particularly in draftspace (where I think it's important to delete only the most egregious cases). Since I'm aware I'm lighter on the G11 trigger than many others, I think it would be better for someone who isn't me to look into this and give an opinion. -- asilvering (talk) 17:41, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

GAN & FAC notes. No activity at GAN or FAC. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 01:55, 23 October 2024 (UTC)

Comment: I'm relatively new to editing Wikipedia, but I've seen AntiDionysius' user pop up intermittently while doing my own vandalism patrol. I haven't interacted much personally with them, but I do know that they do a good job at that, and the only "criticism" I have is that they often manage to revert vandalism minutes or even seconds before I get around to it! Leave some for the rest of us! XD

I don't have anything much else to add here. To me, AntiDionysius just seems like another vandalism patroller and article cleaner-upper who's good at their job and aware of Wikipedia policy. They also respond quite quickly to talk page messages and explains their reasons instead of leaving alphabetti spaghetti all over the table, which is always a good sign of active participation and engagement with others. Sirocco745 (talk) 03:35, 24 October 2024 (UTC)

Declined speedies

Ritchie333 (talk) (cont) 11:15, 24 October 2024 (UTC)

  • I think I'm the admin mentioned in q7. I've seen you around a lot and I've been impressed by your temperament when dealing with trolls and vandals or just difficult editors. It's slightly earlier than I would have offered an RfA nomination but I'll certainly be supporting. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 22:53, 24 October 2024 (UTC)
The above adminship discussion is preserved as an archive of the discussion. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the talk page of the nominated user). No further edits should be made to this page.

Dr vulpes

The following discussion is preserved as an archive of a successful administrator election candidacy. Please do not modify it.

Final (322/99/195); See official results (non-admin closure) – DreamRimmer (talk) 16:14, 10 November 2024 (UTC)

Nomination

Dr vulpes (talk · contribs · he/him) – Hello everyone I’m Dr Vulpes I made my account in 2017 but didn’t really start to edit seriously until 2022. Before I made my account I was an IP editor where I mostly corrected minor typos and added sources.

Most of my maintenance work has been with NPP, and it’s the kind of work that I enjoy doing. I can also be found moving articles though the AfC process or looking up sources for articles at AfD. I really enjoy AfC as it gives me a way to try and help new editors gain their footing. AfC also lets me do fun gnoming tasks for new articles such as copyediting, putting in citation templates, and linking to other articles. AfD gives me a chance to help source articles and apply policy in meaningful ways. I use AWB for WP:CHECKWIKI and WP:AWBTASKS, I previously used AWB for creating short descriptions as part of WP:WPSHORTDESC. I keep an incomplete record of my errors and mistakes to be both transparent and open about where I’ve gone wrong and how I’ve improved as an editor. I have a bot account VulpesBot which blanks inactive IP talk pages. I was briefly autopatrolled because I was really into making articles about lichen and when I decided I wasn’t going to go forward with that project I requested to have that permission revoked so as to not be a hat collector.

Between 2015 and 2022 I was enrolled in a graduate program so I never really got into editing seriously until I finished. Two of my unexpected wikibreaks in 2022 and 2023 were due to dealing with the effects of long covid. I have never engaged in paid editing or article creation. All of the significant edits I’ve made to articles about my previous employers/schools were made after I was a student or was longer employed by them. I look forward to everyone's questions and thank you for this opportunity. Dr vulpes (Talk) 21:37, 13 October 2024 (UTC)

Co-nomination statement

It's my pleasure to co-nominate Dr vulpes. I contacted him in September to run for RfA, impressed by their record of helping new editors at AfC where they often leave encouraging and actionable comments when drafts are not quite ready to shine. They also frequently patrol NPP, where the tools come in handy, in addition to helping out with barnstar distribution after a backlog drive. When pointing out problems with other people's edits, they remain calm, kind and clueful. Hopefully, you'll join me in supporting him. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 09:07, 21 October 2024 (UTC)

Questions for the candidate

Dear candidate, thank you for offering to serve Wikipedia as an administrator. Please answer these questions to provide guidance for participants:

1. Why are you interested in becoming an administrator?
A: I am interested in becoming an administrator primarily to help with backlogs and maintenance tasks including redirect CSD, page protection, and requests at WP:PERM. I see these tasks as an extension of the maintenance work I do at NPP and I find that to be really fulfilling. Eventually I would like to branch out and expand my contributions to other areas that need assistance, once I have gained the appropriate level of experience and mentorship. It’s important to know what you don’t know and I’m willing to take the time to ease into this role.
2. What are your best contributions to Wikipedia, and why?
A: Bringing Clipperton Island up to GA status was a fun and rewarding experience, I hope to get it to FA one day. In middle school I earned my ham radio license and have been mildly obsessed with radio and far away islands ever since. There is a lot of interesting and diverse material about Clipperton which made it a real joy to work on. The amount of material I was able to find in multiple different presidential libraries was kind of shocking. Working on the Clipperton Island article has pushed me to start looking to partner with ham radio organizations and clubs to help preserve their material and our history. For example, given the island's remote location, obtaining media is a challenge. To overcome this, I reached out to the TX5S ham radio DX-pedition team that visited the island in January 2024 to ask them to donate images for the article. I’ve started articles about important DX-peditions and hope to keep creating more articles about future ham radio topics. I am also working on UC Merced, Atlantic Canada, and Begum Abida Ahmed with the aim of bringing them up to Good Article status. Additionally, I have contributed significantly by sourcing articles and assisting with AfC and NPP. During my graduate studies, I was trained in finding and organizing material for use in systematic reviews, a skill I excel at and enjoy getting to apply here. When I find an article at AfC or AfD that needs some additional sources, I try my best to incorporate them.
3. Have you been in any conflicts over editing in the past or have other users caused you stress? How have you dealt with it and how will you deal with it in the future?
A: One conflict that stands out to me was the one at Indigenous science. I arrived at the article via AfD and disagreed strongly with how the article had been written. I drastically rewrote the article after there appeared to be rough consensus against the previous tone at AfD. After some more back and forth via talk page and edit summaries, involved editors reached a form of compromise and the article creator and I both walked away. It's a testament to one of our community's greatest strengths that we were able to sort out this disagreement quickly and form consensus. Now some of their material and ideas are being formulated into the same article and it helps add to the article in a meaningful way. Also from that editor I was introduced to WP:WPSHORTDESC which I enjoyed working on for a while.
I have had far more positive experiences collaborating with other editors than negative ones. Early on, when I began nominating and participating at AfD, I encountered some challenges. However, I learned a lot from those experiences, and after completing NPP School my understanding of policy significantly improved. Occasionally, I became frustrated during AfD discussions and would choose to step away from disagreements. Often, upon revisiting the issue after a day or two, I realized I was mistaken. I acknowledge that social context can be lost in online interactions, and sometimes what appears confrontational is simply a miscommunication or misunderstanding. I have found that apologizing, stepping back, and seeking mutual understanding from a place of respect can be effective. As part of my job I’ve taken conflict resolution and de-escalation workshops and try to use those skills when needed. That said, I generally don’t often edit articles on highly contentious topics outside of maintenance and gnoming tasks.

You may ask optional questions below. There is a limit of two questions per editor. Multi-part questions are disallowed, but you are allowed to ask follow-up questions related to previous questions.

Optional question from Thryduulf

4. Why did you choose to seek adminship via election rather than via a standard RFA?
A: I had been thinking about doing a traditional RfA sometime next year. Then last month Femke reached out to see if I would be interested in running for an RfA. They also offered to nominate me which gave me a bit of the push I needed. I still spent a couple weeks mulling their offer over and felt that the election format might be a less stressful alternative to a traditional RfA. In general I’m a fairly quiet and non-confrontational person so the idea of a week long RfA with all the attention focused on me was a real barrier for me. That said, if there had been a timeline for a second election within the next year I probably would have picked it over this election since there are a lot of people running. Dr vulpes (Talk) 04:47, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

Optional question from Ganesha811

5. Are there any areas of adminship you do not plan to participate in, due to unfamiliarity or lack of technical knowledge? If you later decided you wanted to help in these areas, what would be your plan to become an effective admin in those areas?
A: I do not see myself working on COI, sanctions, or sockpuppets for a while. These are areas that I don’t have a significant amount of time invested in. If there is a need for admins to work in those areas I don’t mind learning and moving in that direction but I would want some mentorship or someone to check my early work while I started getting into it. I view adminship a lot like how I started at NPP. I went to NPP school and worked with my peers to improve my understanding of how everything worked.I document mistakes and use them as ways to learn and improve. My plan is to stick to areas that I feel are natural extensions of my NPP work and closing discussions. Right now that would include page protection, requests at WP:PERM, and WP:RM. Over time once I gain the experience and familiarity with the role I would like to move into merges, splits, and vandalism. Dr vulpes (Talk) 06:29, 22 October 2024 (UTC)


Discussion

Please keep discussion constructive and civil. If you are unfamiliar with the nominee, please thoroughly review his contributions before commenting.

  • Some concern with sloppy CSD tagging. Milk Daddy was an (apparently auto-)biography tagged A11; Milk daddy was a redirect tagged A10; Bo’oh’o’wa’er was a redirect created by a well-established user (coincidentally, fellow candidate Knightoftheswords281), initially to Regional accents of English#England, tagged R3; En.Gaetano Minale was a redirect (to draftspace) tagged A2; Welding safety was a redirect to a category tagged R2. —Cryptic 00:34, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

GAN & FAC notes. One GAN nomination, last year, promoted; two reviews, last year and this; both seem sufficiently detailed, though no spotchecks seem to have been done. List is here. No activity at FAC. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 01:59, 23 October 2024 (UTC)

Comment: I've had limited interaction with Dr vulpes, but my experience with them (and also a bit of peeking at their talk page) has given me a good initial impression. They're a polite user who generally responds on their talk page in a timely manner and is aware of Wikipedia policy and the differences in handling the different types of users (e.g. not being bitey), and they take the time to explain their reasoning in a comprehensible way. I'm still quite new to Wikipedia so I haven't been everywhere as often as some of the other users here, but I have seen them in AfD a few times and they do a great job at those. Sirocco745 (talk) 04:23, 24 October 2024 (UTC)

Declined speedies

Ritchie333 (talk) (cont) 11:26, 24 October 2024 (UTC)

One of the 3 speedies from 2024 was not declined, but reverted immediately by dr vulpes as they misread the AfD discussion. Hence the difference with significa liberdade's analysis. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 16:11, 24 October 2024 (UTC)
Knowing Dr vulpes from AfC and NPP work, I'm confident that he'll ask for clarification when unsure about whether to CSD something, so I'm not at all concerned by CSD declines. -- asilvering (talk) 20:47, 24 October 2024 (UTC)
The above adminship discussion is preserved as an archive of the discussion. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the talk page of the nominated user). No further edits should be made to this page.

Valenciano

The following discussion is preserved as an archive of an administrator election candidacy that did not succeed. Please do not modify it.

Final (221/102/293); See official results (non-admin closure) – DreamRimmer Alt (talk) 17:15, 10 November 2024 (UTC)

Nomination

Valenciano (talk · contribs · they/them) – I joined Wikipedia in 2005. In that time I've made over 60,000 edits here and have been active as a new page patroller, WP:RFPP, WP:AIV, WP:UAA. I maintain a log of pages I've nominated for speedy deletion here. I've created over 400 articles here plus over 40 on other Wikipedia language projects, including 26 DYK hooks on the main page and 3 Good articles. I have also been active at AFD. I have never edited for profit or used alternative accounts. Valenciano (talk) 22:57, 13 October 2024 (UTC)

Please disclose whether you have ever edited Wikipedia for pay.

Questions for the candidate

Dear candidate, thank you for offering to serve Wikipedia as an administrator. Please answer these questions to provide guidance for participants:

1. Why are you interested in becoming an administrator?
A: There has been a call for more admins in recent times and concern over falling admin numbers. I believe I have more than enough experience to help. I have been active at WP:AIV (240 edits), WP:UAA (558 edits) and WP:RFPP and it would be useful to have the tools in those areas.
2. What are your best contributions to Wikipedia, and why?
A: All 3 of my good articles were written by me from scratch and I've over 25 main page DYK hooks credited to me. One of the articles I started (Last use of capital punishment in Spain) was on the main page in the "on this day" section at the end of last month. I have had autopatrolled rights for many years.
3. Have you been in any conflicts over editing in the past or have other users caused you stress? How have you dealt with it and how will you deal with it in the future?
A: Editing a lot in the politics area, it would be impossible to avoid disagreements. Over the years, with experience, I've learnt to focus disagreements on what the sources say rather than being dragged into personal disputes on involvement on drama boards like WP:ANI. I have a clean block log and have never been sanctioned for anything.

You may ask optional questions below. There is a limit of two questions per editor. Multi-part questions are disallowed, but you are allowed to ask follow-up questions related to previous questions.

Optional question from Z1720

4. In your response to question 3, you outlined the process you take in response to a potential conflict. Can you please give a specific example of a recent conflict or disagreement you have been involved with, and describe either how you successfully managed the conflict or what you would have done differently? Thanks, Z1720 (talk) 00:41, 22 October 2024 (UTC)
A:There haven't been so many recent ones. I have many pages on my watchlist and comment where I feel it's appropriate and try and keep in focused on relevant policy, for example here. Earlier there was a dispute at Metrovalencia, a page on which I've written a bit over half the content. In that case I wasn't sure what the user was trying to do. We resolved it on the talk page however on reflection a more personalised approach to the user would have been better.

Optional question from Thryduulf

5. Why did you choose to seek adminship via election rather than via a standard RFA?
A: Some years ago someone asked me about doing an RFA. Frankly the standard RFA looked like a daunting and potentially unpleasant process so I chose not to. This process looked better and I felt that I could help out with some janitorial tasks so decided to give it a go.

Optional question from Ganesha811

6. Are there any areas of adminship you do not plan to participate in, due to unfamiliarity or lack of technical knowledge? If you later decided you wanted to help in these areas, what would be your plan to become an effective admin in those areas?
A:There are several where I wouldn't anticipate participating in. History merges and image copyright would be two that would come to mind. In the unlikely event that I did, it would be by treading carefully, reading the relevant pages like Wikipedia:Image_use_policy, look at how other users have dealt with it, ask them for advice and ask at relevant pages like Wikipedia:Media_copyright_questions.

Optional question from Femke

7. Under which considerations would you put an article under extended confirmed protection? I'm asking in the context of your April 2024 request for extended confirmation of Torremolinos.
A: In cases where protection might be necessary, it would be a last resort after other measures had not worked. First of those would be communication with users involved to try to stop the disruption or edit warring. If communication hadn't worked and the disruption had continued, for example from a registered user adding vandalism, then a block may be in order. If those measures hadn't worked or were inappropriate, then semi-protection of the article would be the next step. Semi-protection would be used in cases like that of dynamic ips edit warring and vandalising the page on an ongoing basis. Extended confirmed protection would often be an escalation when semi-protection had been unsuccessful and would be for cases when registered users are disrupting an article through vandalism, socking etc. This could include hot button topics in the news or simply a sockpuppet constantly trying to push their POV in the article. I've bolded registered users because in the case of Torremolinos I have to hold my hands up and say that I erred in asking for extended confirmed protection when the years-long disruption is from (a) dynamic ip user(s) (a semi-protection case) and was not a case for ECP. That's an error I won't make again.


Discussion

Please keep discussion constructive and civil. If you are unfamiliar with the nominee, please thoroughly review their contributions before commenting.

AfD record: 93.70% match rate, n of 277. 51 keep !votes to 238 delete !votes. Mildly subjective comment: these stats are great but they're very stale - only 1 AfD in the past year, and only 9 in the past five years. -- asilvering (talk) 06:42, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

GAN & FAC notes. Four GAN nominations; three were promoted. Stats are here. All are at least nine years old. No activity at FAC. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 02:02, 23 October 2024 (UTC)

Declined speedies

Ritchie333 (talk) (cont) 11:27, 24 October 2024 (UTC)

@Ritchie333 thanks, I believe accountability and explaining actions is important. So, let me explain all of those. According to the logs, I believe Bachana Arabuli was not declined and was indeed deleted as G4. Same with Pop Party, tagged by me as A1 and deleted as such as the log shows. A different article appears to have been created under that title.
Mongo people was not a case of decline. It had had vandalism added to it, I mistakenly tagged it as vandalism, but quickly realised and reverted my own tag a minute later. Same with this one: a self-revert by me 1 minute later. and this on Wikipedia:The blank page. This one was a misspelling, when I realised I self-reverted. Template:College of William & Mary a blunder by me after vandalism had been added by a sock.
Amiran khalvashi was created in mainspace and I marked as A7, which I believe is correct, it was then moved to userspace. کاربر:Yamaha5/bug of pdf 2 the same: tagged by me as G1 and deleted as G1 with a userspace later created. കേരള ഉപ മുഖ്യമന്ത്രിമാര്‍ and Utilisateur:Receptie123 likewise were deleted in mainspace and moved to user space.
On General Colton it was a page where the creator [requested deletion] and I added G7. It had been a dab page consisting of just 1 existing article. RHaworth unspeedied and added more blue links. Trelawnyd and Gwaenysgor was self-described by its creator as "a pointless article that i have been forced to make. the article on trelawnyd itslef is enough" which looked like A10.
Neither User:Kierat nor User:BGirlsLove were declined. The first was tagged by me as a copyvio while in this version and the page was then user blanked. The same happened with the second which was clearly promotional in version and user blanked. Similar with User talk:Raymondbaist0543 and User talk:Msoftindia, tagged by me as G11, where the spam was removed with the latter account blocked for promotion.
Several of those were redirected instead, including Head of Islamic Republic of Pakistan, Erik Parnes, The Noble Qur'an, 18 July 2012 Bulgarian Terrorist Attack, Makoto tachibana, Arsenal Football Ground, Largest Cities of New England and सोनिया विहार. Matthew Cornford was an existing redirect to which vandalism was added and had the vandalism removed was again redirected. Conspicuous was a Wiktionary redirect which I shouldn't have tagged A3. In those latter cases, I would certainly take a different approach now and redirect them (or leave the redirect) instead. Valenciano (talk) 12:08, 24 October 2024 (UTC)
  • I looked at the ten most recent request for protection. 7/10 were honoured as is, two were protected at a different level, and one declined (but later protected). I consider this April 2024 request a mistake (request for extended protected when there is only IP disruption), but would of course love to hear if there was more to it. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 16:48, 24 October 2024 (UTC)
    For Q7: great to see learning from the example. However, the answer isn't quite there yet. ECP is usually only appropriate when there is edit warring with at least one (auto)confirmed editor, rather than simply registered. Semi-protection also prevents brand new accounts from editing, so is preferred when the disruption is between ips and new accounts. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 20:33, 24 October 2024 (UTC)
Thank you, I'm always happy to receive feedback and willing to learn if I've erred somewhere. I have been active at WP:RFPP since at least 2012 and this has been mentioned for the first time now so it is something I will keep in mind going forward regardless of whether I get the admin tools or not, so that will not be repeated. Valenciano (talk) 23:06, 24 October 2024 (UTC)
The above adminship discussion is preserved as an archive of the discussion. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the talk page of the nominated user). No further edits should be made to this page.

Sohom Datta

The following discussion is preserved as an archive of a successful administrator election candidacy. Please do not modify it.

Final (298/108/210); See official results (non-admin closure) – DreamRimmer (talk) 16:17, 10 November 2024 (UTC)

Nomination

Sohom Datta (talk · contribs · they/them) – Colleagues, it is my pleasure to present Sohom Datta for your consideration. In the wider movement, Sohom is a fantastic software engineer, who is a trusted maintainer of multiple MediaWiki extensions including ProofreadPage, Wikisource, and PageTriage. On English Wikipedia, Sohom has guided 10 articles through the good article process, and has done considerable content creation related to cybersecurity articles such as cross-site leaks and cookie stuffing. Sohom is also a new page patroller and an NPP coordinator. Sohom is personable and pleasant to interact with, and I enjoyed working with him writing software patches at Wikimania 2023. Sohom has 7,583 edits, a tad below what candidates who have recently passed RFA tend to have. But I feel this edit count is close enough. I firmly believe that Sohom has the experience and the temperament to become a very helpful technical admin, and it would be my pleasure if you would join me in supporting his candidacy. –Novem Linguae (talk) 15:45, 13 October 2024 (UTC)

Co-nomination

I reached out to Sohom months ago when I was looking for experienced editors with potential to ask about running for RfA. I'm happy he has finally decided to go for it. While his edit count is a bit low for a typical RfA candidate, I implore people to give him a chance. He has spent thousands of hours working on the technical side of mediawiki and that's something an edit count doesn't reflect. Sohom is kind, knowledgable, and I trust him to not do anything horrible, which is what I look for in an admin. I think he'll do a great job learning on the job. Clovermoss🍀 (talk) 16:20, 13 October 2024 (UTC)

Candidate, please indicate acceptance of the nomination here: I accept the nomination. A list of accounts I use can be found at User:Sohom Datta/Accounts. -- Sohom (talk) 20:56, 13 October 2024 (UTC)

Please disclose whether you have ever edited Wikipedia for pay: I have never been paid (nor will I ever accept payment) to make content edits on English Wikipedia. -- Sohom (talk) 20:56, 13 October 2024 (UTC)

Questions for the candidate

Dear candidate, thank you for offering to serve Wikipedia as an administrator. Please answer these questions to provide guidance for participants:

1. Why are you interested in becoming an administrator?
A: Since joining Wikipedia in 2019 as a Google Summer of Code intern, I have focused primarily on technical contributions to Wikimedia, writing frontend JavaScript performing tasks similar to gadgets and userscripts on-wiki. I have contributed around 240 patches to various Wikimedia extensions, fixing bugs and implementing new features. I believe I can best serve the community as a (int-)administrator by helping to maintain enwiki's aging and under-maintained system of gadgets and userscripts, like Navigation popups, which are in need of attention. Additionally, I would also like to assist with fulfilling edit requests for fully protected pages, editing fully protected Lua modules, system messages, and potentially running admin bots.
In addition to my technical work, I have experience with Did You Know nominations and would be interested in helping other admins in that area as well. I do recognize that I have less experience in this area compared to some contributors, I will approach the work carefully, ensuring that I read all relevant instructions and seek guidance when needed.
2. What are your best contributions to Wikipedia, and why?
A: As Clovermoss and Novem hint in their nomination statement, most of my contributions don't show up in my edit count. A lot of my time is spent debugging Wikipedia issues on my local computer, or on Phabricator and Gerrit. I've made 56+ patches to the PageTriage extension (240 patches overall to Wikimedia extensions). Some of my most complex patches include redesigning the NewPagesFeed to use Codex, fixing two security issues in the PageTriage extension, and helping clean up the tagging and deletion module in PageTriage. I've also spent a significant amount of time working with new contributors to add features to the PageTriage extension, over the course of this summer, I coordinated (and am still coordinating) T360848, a project to make the NewPagesFeed more searchable and user-friendly. This required meeting weekly with the new contributor(s), helping them understand the codebase, and guiding them through the process of submitting patches. Outside of enwiki, I've also contributed to the ProofreadPage extension, where I've helped introduce a new zooming and panning library into Wikisources, and taken over maintainership of phetools, a set of tools that operated a cross-wiki bot (the responsibilities of which was taken over by SodiumBot) that was essential for some Wikisource workflows. During the toolforge grid deprecation, I also contributed to the CropTool, helping the tool migrate to the new toolforge architecture.
Coming back to things I've done on-wiki, besides tech, my biggest contribution to the wiki is my content work, especially the good articles that I helped write. Privacy and computer security are two areas that I am extremely passionate about. In fact, I dream of a day when Wikipedia's coverage of the cybersecurity and privacy topic area will rival that of established academic textbooks and courses. I am particularly proud of my contributions to Cross-site leaks, which is probably the most comprehensive one-page overview on the topic on the internet (barring maybe the XS-Leaks Wiki). I am also proud of my work on History sniffing, an obscure but important privacy-compromising attack that can leak your browsing history to a malicious website, and Site isolation which explains the technical reason behind why Google Chrome is a memory hog. Besides these serious topics, I've also written articles about lighter topics, like Boroline, a popular antiseptic cream in India, and Hindu Mela, a fair in pre-independence India. If the community chooses to trust me with administratorship, I intend to still keep contributing to the encyclopedia in a similar manner in the future, by writing more articles on these topics.
3. Have you been in any conflicts over editing in the past or have other users caused you stress? How have you dealt with it and how will you deal with it in the future?
A: Conflicts are unavoidable in a environment like Wikipedia, I have had my fair share of disagreements especially on technical fronts including times when I was overly dismissive of certain opinions and/or did not consider others perspectives. I have since learnt from those experiences, my current approach to disagreements and conflicts is much more measured, I tend to first try and understand the "why" behind a person's opinions before trying to provide counter arguments. In cases where there are irreconcilable differences, I have found that disengaging with the conversation and coming back after a while with a clearer mind has helped me prevent those differences from spiraling out of hand or in some cases even resolve those differences.

You may ask optional questions below. There is a limit of two questions per editor. Multi-part questions are disallowed, but you are allowed to ask follow-up questions related to previous questions.

Optional question from Thryduulf

4. Why did you choose to seek adminship via election rather than via a standard RFA?
A:I was approached by Clovermoss to run for adminship a few months ago, however I had decided to not take the splash at that moment since I was unsure how my low edit-count would be perceived by RFA regulars (since RFA has a stigma of being rather harsh on some folks). Two months on, I think I'm in a slightly better position edit-count-wise and I wanted to give the new admin election process a test, so here I am :) Sohom (talk) 14:31, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

Optional question from Ganesha811

5. Are there any areas of adminship you do not plan to participate in, due to unfamiliarity or lack of technical knowledge? If you later decided you wanted to help in these areas, what would be your plan to become an effective admin in those areas?
A: Probably handling complex user-conduct enforcement cases such as those at WP:ANI and WP:AE. I lack the appetite to contend with drama such as the kind that shows up on those noticeboards. If I ever become active in that area, I will make sure to start by reading up the relevant policies in the area, before shadowing the more experienced admins, asking questions and trying to handle the straightforward cases. Sohom (talk) 14:31, 22 October 2024 (UTC)


Optional question from Zippybonzo

6. Thank you for your contributions to technical areas, and I do plan to support you when voting opens, I'm just curious as to outside of interface admin tasks, what else would you use sysop for?
A: The amount of work that exists in "maintaining gadgets" land will probably keep me busy for a while. I intend to primarily edit in technical (int-)administrative areas for the foreseeable future. However, I do plan to use the rest of the admin toolset when necessary during regular editing, such as rollbacking and revdelling obviously disruptive content or blocking users engaging in clear vandalism, particularly if they appear on my watchlist. Sohom (talk) 00:43, 23 October 2024 (UTC)


Discussion

Please keep discussion constructive and civil. If you are unfamiliar with the nominee, please thoroughly review their contributions before commenting.

AfD record: 81.70% match rate, n of 82. 9 keep !votes to 76 delete !votes. Mildly subjective comment: 64 of these delete !votes are nominations, which leaves their !votes pretty balanced. In this AfD, they show that they are happy to reconsider when they appear to be wrong (more subjective comment: I'm not sure you were wrong, Sohom); in this one, they make good arguments that don't ultimately prevail (more subjective comment: I think this is a poor WP:NAC). Typical participation looks like this. I was surprised to find this much participation and this match rate given the candidate's stated interests, actually, so I think the main takeaway to be had here is "not jerk, has clues even outside of their regular interest". -- asilvering (talk) 20:00, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

GAN & FAC notes. Fourteen GAN nominations and eleven reviews (all in the last year); list is here. Two of the nominations were quickfailed, but both could be seen as rather harsh fails. The reviews look reasonably thorough, though I didn't see evidence of spotchecks in the ones I looked at. One FAC nomination and six reviews, all in the last eight months. Good to see that ratio of reviews to nominations; FACs average six or seven reviews, so that's a net positive or close to it. One image review and five content reviews, with enough detail to make it clear the articles were read carefully. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 02:12, 23 October 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for taking a look, I agree I wasn't super clear in my GA reviews that I was doing spotchecks. I will keep the feedback in mind and explicitly call out spot checks going forward. Sohom (talk) 21:49, 23 October 2024 (UTC)

The technical expertise is good, and Sohom Datta can create content as well. Cookie stuffing is rated at GA, but well exceeds the standard. The "Mechanism" section makes a technical subject very clear, is no longer than it needs to be, and has infographics made seemingly for that article. Privacy Sandbox is a solid article that they've pushed closer toward NPOV. Rjjiii (talk) 05:02, 23 October 2024 (UTC)

Declined speedies

Ritchie333 (talk) (cont) 11:27, 24 October 2024 (UTC)

Noting that the decline at en:Draft:Keystroke Inference Attack was due to my unfamiliarity with the WP:RDRAFT policy at that time.
Also, @Ritchie333 I'm not totally sure that en:User:Sohom Datta/PageTriageUserspaceLogger.js should count as a declined CSD since the revert of the CSD tag was done by me a minute after the nomination (since I nominated the wrong page) ? Sohom (talk) 11:42, 24 October 2024 (UTC)
The above adminship discussion is preserved as an archive of the discussion. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the talk page of the nominated user). No further edits should be made to this page.

SWinxy

The following discussion is preserved as an archive of an administrator election candidacy that did not succeed. Please do not modify it.

Final (168/177/271); See official results (non-admin closure) – DreamRimmer Alt (talk) 17:15, 10 November 2024 (UTC)

Nomination

SWinxy (talk · contribs · he/him) – Hi, I'm SWinxy (/swi:ŋksi:/), an editor who got into this at the start of the COVID lockdowns, joining in May 2020. I've written articles such as Steve (Minecraft), Catturd, and Keffals. I'm also a press photographer for Wikimedia Commons—one of my photos is in the 2023 collage image!—and member of WP:WMNYC. Being a user on this site has made me better equipped to do research, and gave me my life's mindset. I feel beholden to discussions, which I liken to talking with colleagues. I've never edited for pay, and I have a zero-edit bot account called User:SWinxyTheBot. SWinxy (talk) 04:35, 14 October 2024 (UTC)


Candidate, please indicate acceptance of the nomination here:

Please disclose whether you have ever edited Wikipedia for pay.

Questions for the candidate

Dear candidate, thank you for offering to serve Wikipedia as an administrator. Please answer these questions to provide guidance for participants:

1. Why are you interested in becoming an administrator?
A: The tools I desire out of the admin toolbox are to protect and unprotect pages, view and restore deleted pages, and editing fully-protected articles. Modifying protection levels would be nice to have, as I edit in contentious topic areas where alterations may need to be made. Viewing deleted pages would assist me greatly in writing and deletion discussions. (Are there useful sources in a deleted page I missed? Is there context to an old deletion discussion I need?) While I don't think I've ever made a fully-protected edit request, I've often wanted to make tiny changes to articles temporarily under full protection, brought to my attention because they were fully protected. I don't really want to have the mop so I have the ability to block users or delete pages—that's not my thing, but maybe later as the site's needs change? I've been encouraged by User:Rhododendrites to cast my hat into the ring, and here I am. Backdropping this is the concern about shedding administrators over time. I want to become an admin to stem the outflow of great people with me in their stead.
2. What are your best contributions to Wikipedia, and why?
A: I think by best contributions are around the prosecution of Donald Trump in New York. I created the page, originally as the indictment, and moved up to being member of the press on the scene. (I even went into the courtroom one day!) While I was stationed there for ~six weeks, I took a ton of photos, and added photos to reporters who never have had any photo added to their articles (there were so many). I'm very proud of it all!
3. Have you been in any conflicts over editing in the past or have other users caused you stress? How have you dealt with it and how will you deal with it in the future?
A: Oh, yes (namely cricketer AfDs). But I don't think in the past year I've been in any highly-stressful or uncivil conflicts. I try to lay out my view as I would to a colleague, and hope consensus is in my favor. If it's not, well, that's OK. From past conflicts, I've changed how I approach them. Briefly mentioned in my opener, AGF is my prevailing, core attitude to pretty much everything in my life. We're all here, of course, with a purpose.

You may ask optional questions below. There is a limit of two questions per editor. Multi-part questions are disallowed, but you are allowed to ask follow-up questions related to previous questions.

Optional question from Z1720

4. In your response to question 3, you mention how you have had conflicts in the cricketer AfDs. What was the nature of the conflict(s) in the AfD space, and how specifically do you handle such conflicts now? Diffs to recent examples would be beneficial. Thanks, Z1720 (talk) 00:48, 22 October 2024 (UTC)
A: My conflict had been with a few members of Wikiproject Cricket, who I felt were both ignoring the notability guidelines on sports and were considering databases and routine coverage to add to a person's notability. Scrolling back it looks like there were three that got under my skin: Van Holten, Safiullah Khan, and Manzor Elahi. I regret being so much even if I still disagree with the opinions. I stepped back from regularly participating in AfDs because I recognized that I was getting too high-strung and needed space. For the past year I think, I've just made a comment and left it at that (e.g. Jessica Reed Kraus. SWinxy (talk) 04:35, 23 October 2024 (UTC)

Optional question from Thryduulf

5. Why did you choose to seek adminship via election rather than via a standard RFA?
A: Going through the RfA process puts a ton of pressure and scrutiny on candidates, and something that I am too afraid of. I care a lot of what my peers here think of me. Being a part of a cohort going through the same thing at the same time makes me feel more at ease to do this. Because I know I'm not alone. SWinxy (talk) 04:35, 23 October 2024 (UTC)

Optional question from Ganesha811

6. Are there any areas of adminship you do not plan to participate in, due to unfamiliarity or lack of technical knowledge? If you later decided you wanted to help in these areas, what would be your plan to become an effective admin in those areas?
A: ANI is an easy 'no' to me. I feel like it requires someone who is able and willing to commit a substantial amount of time moderating occasionally large conflicts between editors and the wider community, and I don't see myself as capable as others to properly adjudicate that area at the moment. If someone asked me to go out of my regular areas, even for things outside my comfort zone, I'll surely try. Y'know, go slowly at first and keep an ear out. SWinxy (talk) 04:35, 23 October 2024 (UTC)

Discussion

Please keep discussion constructive and civil. If you are unfamiliar with the nominee, please thoroughly review his contributions before commenting.

  • The candidate wantso protect and unprotect pages, view and restore deleted pages, and editing fully-protected articles. The candidate also states they have nevermade a fully-protected edit request. It's not as negative as it sounds though: they have made other requests for page protection. Seventeen in the last three years, [including one this year. The Steve (minecraft) article is pretty good (although I see another editor took it to GA). SerialNumber54129 15:59, 22 October 2024 (UTC)
  • Regarding prosecution of Donald Trump in New York, the photojournalism stuff there is really cool and worth admiring. With that said, note that SWinxy didn't really write the article; he was the first person to edit it and then helped build it up at the beginning, but he only contributed to 1.9% of the article. Elsewhere, his userpage implies that he got Technoblade to GA even though most of his contributions to the article were a few cleanup edits and he only contributed 2.6% of the article. It's not the end of the world if a candidate doesn't have much editing experience, but it's inflated here. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 00:56, 23 October 2024 (UTC)
    • I'm pretty proud of what I started at the Trump article, even though others took up where I left off and my additions—large components at the time—were chipped away. Seeing what of mine remains now is purely vestigial. I don't want to steal any valor from the editors of Technoblade; I just wanted at the time to say "look! I helped* make a GA!". Mentions have been removed from my userpage. SWinxy (talk) 04:35, 23 October 2024 (UTC)

GAN & FAC notes. No activity at GAN or FAC. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 02:14, 23 October 2024 (UTC)

  • AfD record: 71.9%% match rate, n of 309. 32 keep !votes to 156 delete !votes, 31 of which are nominations. Subjective comment: He does not tend to pile-on !votes and will attempt to add sources (e.g., here and here) and/or provide decent reasoning for !vote (e.g., here and here). Significa liberdade (she/her) (talk) 03:42, 23 October 2024 (UTC) (stepping in for asilvering)
    All I'd add to this is that there are only 12 in the last year, so the numbers are of limited use. His match rate in the past year is 100%, with the technical exception of this one, but I'd hardly call that a flub. -- asilvering (talk) 21:05, 24 October 2024 (UTC)

Declined speedies

Ritchie333 (talk) (cont) 11:28, 24 October 2024 (UTC)

Oh right I forgot about the G13s. Back over that summer I thought that I would help clear out the backlog of expired drafts, which used {{Draft article}} and categorized them as eligible for G13. That was a Bad Idea. (s/o to Liz for helping me clean my mess up 😭) SWinxy (talk) 18:33, 24 October 2024 (UTC)
The above adminship discussion is preserved as an archive of the discussion. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the talk page of the nominated user). No further edits should be made to this page.

FOARP

The following discussion is preserved as an archive of a successful administrator election candidacy. Please do not modify it.

Final (268/106/242); See official results (non-admin closure) – DreamRimmer (talk) 16:27, 10 November 2024 (UTC)

Nomination

FOARP (talk · contribs) – Hi, I'm FOARP (short for Fear Of A Red Planet, a handle I chose during my days living in China based on the colour of the Chinese flag and the famous Public Enemy album, and with no meaning beyond that). I've been on Wiki since 2007 but first got really interested in editing Wikipedia back in 2013 or so when I came across the Shark Island concentration camp article and saw that it was in need of a heavy edit. I pottered away on bits and bobs, mostly in the history area, up until about 2018 when I became interested in the policy area and AFD, and from then on I've been contributing regularly here.

The thing I like best about Wikipedia is writing and improving (and then reading!) informative articles together with other people who share that interest. Wikipedia is a powerful tool for educating and informing people across the world from a neutral point of view.

To cover off the formalities: I have never edited Wikipedia for pay, I’d also be open to a recall vote though AFAIK typically Admins-gone-rogue are just desysoped via ARBCOM and this route is almost never used. FOARP (talk) 08:45, 9 October 2024 (UTC)

Questions for the candidate

Dear candidate, thank you for offering to serve Wikipedia as an administrator. Please answer these questions to provide guidance for participants:

1. Why are you interested in becoming an administrator?
A: I've been interested in becoming an administrator for a long time because I'd like to do more to help clear backlogs, particularly in closing RM discussions and AFDs. In my work on the RM backlog I think I've shown reasonable competence at reading consensuses, but there are some RM discussions that really require the mop to be able to handle correctly, without the "RMNAC" tag at the end of the close sparking doubts in the minds of the community as to the challengeability of the close. I'd also like to do more to contribute at AFD, where I have a reasonably good record for nomination/voting but closing AFD contentious discussions is difficult as a non-admin. Similarly, I'd like to do more to help with the backlog in RFCs eventually when I have a bit more experience of making admin closes at RM/AFD.
2. What are your best contributions to Wikipedia, and why?
A: The successful GAs I did together with Hog Farm/Haukurth/GhostRiver are, in terms of content and the process of production, my favourite work on here because it really was good to do a deep dive in to these topics collaboratively with other editors who knew the topic area and sources, and produce something that was informative to the reader and a contribution to the project. I also enjoyed the mini-project I did for a while making articles about female authors from Sweden, which I really should pick up again. In terms of sheer numbers of articles, the work I did together with other editors too long to list in full (Hog Farm, BilledMammals, Shahram, Dlthewave, Reywas92 and many others certainly more prominent than myself) may have had more effect on the project, particular in (relatively) obscure corners like Iranian village articles. I've also done my best to contribute to policy discussions around mass creation of PAG-failing articles, a field that continues to develop in Wikipedia.
3. Have you been in any conflicts over editing in the past or have other users caused you stress? How have you dealt with it and how will you deal with it in the future?
A: Yes. I think the important thing is always to stay calm and assume good faith: nearly all the time, if someone looks like they're having a bad day, that's exactly what's happened. It's also worth remembering that this encyclopaedia is built on consensus, and that won't always go your way and it is never the end of the world if it doesn't. Wikipedia is not a bureaucracy, but there is a thread of consensus that your should try to interpret and follow here, and you can't go far wrong, most of the time, by doing so.

You may ask optional questions below. There is a limit of two questions per editor. Multi-part questions are disallowed, but you are allowed to ask follow-up questions related to previous questions.

Optional question from Z1720

4. In your response to question 3, you mentioned that you have been involved in some conflicts. Can you please give an example of a conflict you have been involved with, and describe how you successfully navigated that conflict or what you would have done differently? Thanks, Z1720 (talk) 00:59, 22 October 2024 (UTC)
A:
This is a tough question to answer because you always wonder whether you could have done a better job of things, whilst also you tend to think you were on the right side of everything whilst other people might not see it that way. Conflict is anyway, for me, nothing to be proud about or actively seek out - I'm assuming, of course, that "conflict" here goes beyond a mere content-dispute which might go to MRV, AFD, or an RFC.
In terms of "good" handling of conflicts, I was involved in the issues surrounding two mass creators of PAG-failing articles, one of whom who was eventually blocked (I don't see any reason to bring their name in to it here but this ARBCOM case is the most relevant one) and another of whom retired under a cloud after being desysopped. In both cases I tried my best to see things from their POV and assume good faith, whilst also remaining clear that their behaviour was unacceptable.
In my ORCP back in 2021 I disclosed all of the "bad" conflicts I think I had been in up until that point (see here) and I don't think I've had any more since then. Getting temporarily blocked on Basque Wiki back in 2019 due to a Google Translate issue was a dumb mistake and I shouldn't have reacted the way I did, so I guess "don't be dumb, keep calm" is the main lesson I got from that.

Optional question from Thryduulf

5. Why did you choose to seek adminship via election rather than via a standard RFA?
A:
I've been working on an RFA for several months and had a nominator lined up, and was due to go live with it this month. I actually didn't know these elections were happening until the person who agreed to nominate me pointed out that this was going to happen - it seemed like a good opportunity to try out something new so I went for it. FOARP (talk) 17:23, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

Optional question from Ganesha811

6. Are there any areas of adminship you do not plan to participate in, due to unfamiliarity or lack of technical knowledge? If you later decided you wanted to help in these areas, what would be your plan to become an effective admin in those areas?
A:
I don't plan to forswear doing anything permanently but there's areas I won't claim any deep understanding of and wouldn't simply jump straight in to using the tools in. Anything on BOTPOL would be a straight-forward example of this. Anti-Vandalism is also not something I'd claim a great knowledge of. Anti-sockpuppet another. User names also. EDIT: Mike has correctly pointed out I haven't had any involvement in FAC so that's another area, but I have done a bit of work on FLC so hopefully it wouldn't take long to learn.
If I was going to go in to any of these areas I would looks first at what other people experienced in the area do, read up the PAGs they reference, ask for advice, and then move from there.

Discussion

Please keep discussion constructive and civil. If you are unfamiliar with the nominee, please thoroughly review his contributions before commenting.

GAN & FAC notes. Three GAN nominations, in 2019 and 2021, listed here. All were promoted; some thorough reviewing was done on them. No reviews. No activity at FAC. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 02:17, 23 October 2024 (UTC)

  • Thanks asilvering, Femke, and Mike Christie for your comments. Being in the middle of the pack - a large pack - like this seems to have resulted in not that many people dropping by to ask questions. You can see the pageview stats versus Queen of Hearts (currently listed at the top of the list) and the most recent traditional RFA (AirshipJungleman29) here. It is what it is. Anyone interested in asking anything after the discussion closes is welcome to drop by my talk page for a chat. FOARP (talk) 21:53, 24 October 2024 (UTC)
    If your nominator has time to do up a statement, I think it would be nice to see it. I'm surprised so many people went without nominators entirely. -- asilvering (talk) 22:00, 24 October 2024 (UTC)
The above adminship discussion is preserved as an archive of the discussion. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the talk page of the nominated user). No further edits should be made to this page.

LindsayH

The following discussion is preserved as an archive of an administrator election candidacy that did not succeed. Please do not modify it.

Final (240/121/255); See official results (non-admin closure) – DreamRimmer Alt (talk) 17:16, 10 November 2024 (UTC)

Nomination

LindsayH (talk · contribs · they/them) – Hello. I am LindsayH, editor and gnome. I've been here and active a little over a decade and a half; my user page gives more information about what i do (finding a backlog or list of potential edits and doing them), my alternate accounts (three, Kahtar, Rhydypennau, and Rhubarb Bikini), and why i'm not a content creator despite believing in our content-central mission (i don't enjoy it as much).
What i would like to do here is suggest what i would do if given the admin tools. A glance at the earliest of my contributions shows that i started very slowly, using talk pages a lot, trying to learn without messing up entirely. If granted the tools, that is exactly what mine actions will be ~ going very slowly, watching and following knowledgeable admins and learning from their actions, and absolutely not doing what i believe the community would disapprove of. That last phrase is central to my Wikipedia ethos: We are a community, virtual, but no less real, made up of very real people, and i feel that that fact should be and is central to the way we interact through editing and discussing together and through any actions taken by those with advanced tools.
I have never edited for pay, nor would i. Happy days, ~ LindsayHello 09:32, 14 October 2024 (UTC)

Questions for the candidate

Dear candidate, thank you for offering to serve Wikipedia as an administrator. Please answer these questions to provide guidance for participants:

1. Why are you interested in becoming an administrator?
A: I'll be entirely honest, i do not have a “need for the tools”, rather i look at being an admin as a way i may help with the community. I have read and occasionally participated in many discussions over the years on both the declining numbers of administrators and the potential reform of RfA, and i suppose it would be hypocritical of me not to offer to serve and alleviate the one when a suggested solution to the other comes along. Mine interest is purely in serving the community, in the process of helping the construction and maintenance of the world's best encyclopaedia (i may be slightly biassed in this assessment). I cannot predict in detail what i would do as an administrator, other than looking for tasks which seem to need doing and aren't being done ~ in other words, most likely i would be scanning the backlogs for what i feel i could do. What i can predict, on the other hand, is that my behaviour and feelings towards the content creators will remain the same: I admire intensely those who choose to serve by writing our encyclopaedia, and all my actions are and will remain focussed on supporting them and their writing.
2. What are your best contributions to Wikipedia, and why?
A: I am a gnome, pure and simple, not a content creator, so my best contributions are definitely gnomic. One of the best is the work i do on reducing some CS1 errors ~ those red error messages you have probably seen in some reference sections ~ which i came across when reading and wondered what the message was about. When i first corrected and started tracking the type of errors i focus on (specifically, these ones) there were 36,000 of them, and when i last checked (i've been on holiday, away from WP for a week) there were under 5,000; by no means do i claim all that reduction, but a good chunk of it is mine. Another task i feel good about it correcting grammatical or typographical mistakes which substitute a wrong homonym for a word (think “there/their”, for example). As to the second part of the question ~ why? ~ easy: It is my belief that anything which makes our content more accessible makes it better, and my little actions definitely do that, far more than the few content creation or development actions i have made; i believe that this history page or this one can demonstrate that my content work is not nearly as important as the gnome stuff i describe above.
3. Have you been in any conflicts over editing in the past or have other users caused you stress? How have you dealt with it and how will you deal with it in the future?
A: Of course; in my case, usually, it is with someone who doesn't understand what i'm doing or disagrees with it, rather than conflict over content. The only real content conflict was over ten years ago, in 2009, over some interpretation and presentation of history over the de Clare family; most of it can be found here, if you're interested. At that time i kept calm, tried to explain what i thought, and did my best to separate the person who disagreed with me from the disagreement: It is essential to me to remember that we have chosen to do this thing as a community of individuals, each of whom from the Founder to the very newest IP editor deserves my respect ~ though their actions may not. I believe i act in the same respectful way when someone comes to my talk page to ask why i have made a certain change or correction.

You may ask optional questions below. There is a limit of two questions per editor. Multi-part questions are disallowed, but you are allowed to ask follow-up questions related to previous questions.

Optional question from Thryduulf

4. Why did you choose to seek adminship via election rather than via a standard RFA?
A: Thanks for the question, Thryduulf. I'm sorry it's a rather long answer. In my RfA criteria i mention a comment i made at talk:RfA nearly twelve years ago which triggered me to become more interested and active in the process of how we create admins; since that i time i have read just about every discussion and participated in some, and was very excited by the real prospect of some changes in the process. During the course of our first experiment, the first two days being limited to discussion not !voting, i was disappointed at first that no one seemed willing to try it so planned to myself because i believed that the experiment needed to be given a chance, then three candidates did try but each were, for assorted reasons, unusual and unsuccessful so i anticipated myself as a candidate again, then we had three great candidates who succeeded. I decided that i wouldn't hang back when the second experiment, elections, came along, because i wanted to be sure that this trial got a shot at working and, as with many people, i did not expect such a large candidate pool; as it happened, i was away from home (and therefore Wikipedia, as i find editing on my phone quite difficult) during the first week of the call for candidates but threw my hat into the ring as soon as i returned. TLDR précis: I wanted to be sure our experiments for modifying the process had a chance.

Optional questions from Trainsandotherthings

5. Are there any areas you would not be interested in participating as an administrator?
A: Thank you for the questions. So, i have very little technical ability ~ for reference, if you look at my questions at VPT, they are of a very basic level ~ and i think we can be sure i would not be interested in anything requiring that ability. Other than that, i am so conscious of this community and the importance of being part of it that i tend to be loath to remove people from it except in the most extreme (long term behaviour) or obvious (persistent vandalism) cases, so i anticipate using the block tool as an area i am not really interested in.
6. You say on your user page "I can write, i do write, quite a lot, but i write expressing opinion, and i don't choose to avoid that here." How will you balance expressing opinion with being impartial as an administrator when required? This is not a "gotcha" question, it is something I have struggled with myself and part of why I've never run for administrator.
A: What an interesting question ~ i can't say that i've ever thought of things that way. Put simply, i suppose, i do not see my writing as being involved in my external life, it is a very personal part of me and does not affect my life or interactions with the world around me. For example, i have been a manager in the places i have worked for about thirty years, and the fact that i write opinionated book reviews, poetry, prose pieces, &c. has never affected mine ability to be impartial towards those people i support. To my mind, the same is true here, so my writing style does not and will not change the way i approach editors (people) nor mine interaction with them.

Optional questions from Femke

7. Could you give us a few examples of backlogs you feel comfortable starting with, given your experience?
A: Hello, thank you for the question, Femke. Having watched the admin process from afar over the years, i am well aware of some of the difficulties, potential pitfalls and, even more, the levels of judgement required, thus whatever i do would be slow and steady, attempting to learn process and discernment. I suppose the first couple of examples that come to mind would be intervention against vandalism, usernames for admin attention, and requests for unblocks, perhaps. I'm well aware that i have not much experience in any of these areas, so maybe i could tell you that in any area or backlog i look to help this would be my learning process: Look at the actions required; pick one or two, see what other admins do with them; see if i can predict what will happen next time; if it turns out i'm right, do the same thing in the next similar case; ask an active admin if they think i was correct before taking any subsequent actions. I see it as very much a process of learning through gaining the benefit of others' experience, as opposed to learning by making mistakes ~ because admin mistakes affect actual people, whereas if i make a grammatical error or misread a CS1 entry that can easily be changed.

Optional question from Serial Number 54129

8. Do you think it's wise to have "Happy days" baked in to your sig as a sign off when giving someone negative feedback? (Perhaps e.g. here, here or here; while the messages were perfectly civil, and perfectly proper, each case involved warning a new editor/IP against something and then telling them it was happy days.)
A: Hi Serial Number 54129, thanks. I have thought about this previously; about ten years ago, i suppose, i changed from "Cheers, LindsayH" to "Happy days, LindsayH" because i felt the first to be a little inappropriate; i suppose in my mind the happiness of the days is supposed to reflect my mindset, but i've not thought it through sufficiently perhaps. I do, occasionally, modify the signature, i think i've gone to "Unhappy days" once or twice, when commenting on something i felt was very sad, but i do always revert to the current form. You've made me think; i do not wish to be giving mixed messages, so i shall change it. I do thank you; new signature > ~ LindsayHello 17:24, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

Optional question from Cowboygilbert

9. I took a look through your talk page archives and saw that you sometimes don't respond to people who ask questions, will you try to make a habit of it to try to respond to everyone when they ask you a question or leaves a non-automated message on your talk page?
A: Cowboygilbert, i don't think i know you; hello :) You are quite right, sometimes i don't respond: Usually it's if i don't feel i have anything to offer, though occasionally i have intended to reply later and then entirely forgotten; both of those are entirely on me, and i need to be careful of not giving the wrong impression (“i'm too important to bother with your trivia”). So, yes, i will try to be better at being more responsive; thank you for drawing it to mine attention.


Discussion

Please keep discussion constructive and civil. If you are unfamiliar with the nominee, please thoroughly review their contributions before commenting.

AfD record: 88.70% match rate, n of 62. 5 keep !votes to 56 delete !votes. Mildly subjective comment: only 5 AfDs in the last year (all matched, nothing remarkable), so these numbers aren't terribly useful. -- asilvering (talk) 21:09, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

  • By the way, thank you for considering running in the discussion-first trial when it looked like the trial was in trouble. Appreciate the bravery of standing up simply because someone needs to stand up. -- asilvering (talk) 21:09, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

In terms of other metrics, Lindsay has a decent >90% match rate for her 24 CSDs (three of the blues are recreations, one G12 where somebody decided to rewrite as stub instead, one where a different redirect target could be found). They have made 29 requests at AIV, and 21 at RfPP according to Xtools, the more recent (post 2019) were honoured, except one where there was a autoconfirmed user edit warring with IPs, so that semi would give them an unfair advantage. I would love to know how to assess AIV reports for accuracy. Their 3 3RR reports led to action (2x block, 1x semi). Seems to know what they're doing in general, even if overall admin-adjacent activity is a bit low (much higher than mine pre-RfA still). —Femke 🐦 (talk) 21:35, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

In response to Q7: archive scrolling and trying to predict what others do is also how I tackle new admin areas. Lindsay's three reports at UAA all led to a block. There is only a small group of editors that work on unblocks, so help would be welcome there. LindsayH does have substantial experience at AN(I). My impression is that they are firm and kind at AN(I), are okay to propose sanctions, are okay to be in the minority too. and do try to see if there is a route that requires lesser sanctions. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 07:15, 23 October 2024 (UTC)
Not mentioned yet, but they were asked by User:Innisfree987 to consider running (User_talk:LindsayH#RfA). Trying to note nomination offers and encouragements for all candidates which don't mention it yet. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 07:29, 23 October 2024 (UTC)
Thank you for the ping! Yes that was the main comment I had intended to add—grateful Lindsay was willing to stand, as her leadership and contributions to a positive working culture on the site had always stood out to me so much that I assumed she was already an admin, and let her know I hoped we could make it so. Innisfree987 (talk) 08:05, 23 October 2024 (UTC)

GAN & FAC notes. No activity at GAN or FAC. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 02:19, 23 October 2024 (UTC)

Declined speedies

Ritchie333 (talk) (cont) 11:28, 24 October 2024 (UTC)

The above adminship discussion is preserved as an archive of the discussion. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the talk page of the nominated user). No further edits should be made to this page.

Velella

The following discussion is preserved as an archive of an administrator election candidacy that did not succeed. Please do not modify it.

Final (157/162/297); See official results (non-admin closure) – DreamRimmer Alt (talk) 17:17, 10 November 2024 (UTC)

Nomination

Velella (talk · contribs · they/them) – I have never applied to be an admin before because I believed that the original process was poorly designed to select the right people for the role. I do hope that this process is more effective, at the very least in reducing stress on the applicants. I have been active on Wikipedia for more than 19 years but did get blocked once in the first few weeks because I misunderstood the rules. Lesson learnt. I enjoy working in logical structures driven by rules and conventions. I enjoy it less when outside of my comfort zone of science and the environment, so I tend not to get involved with social media, manga, soccer (or most sports for that matter). My overriding reason for applying is to provide support for the overall admin effort to allow those with specialist skills to use those skills knowing that others can pick up much of the day-to-day admin tasks. For the record, I am unavailable on 22nd October but will respond to any questions etc. before the deadline of the 24th October.

I have never accepted any payment or any inducement for writing or editing any article or for voting! in any discussion or for any other purpose.

 Velella  Velella Talk   15:32, 13 October 2024 (UTC)


Candidate, please indicate acceptance of the nomination here:

Please disclose whether you have ever edited Wikipedia for pay.

Questions for the candidate

Dear candidate, thank you for offering to serve Wikipedia as an administrator. Please answer these questions to provide guidance for participants:

1. Why are you interested in becoming an administrator?
A: To support the overall admin effort. Whenever I see an admin backlog in some routine task, I feel that I could be helping, especially to reduce the stress on the existing individual admins. In common with many aspiring admins, dealing with vandalism and sock-puppetry, and ferreting out undisclosed paid editing would all appeal. I would also be content with closing AfDs or providing input at ANI. However, my expectation is that once familiar with the tool set, and developing and practicing new skills, my efforts might be in unexpected areas.
2. What are your best contributions to Wikipedia, and why?
A: The quality of Wikipedia articles matters to me, so I have felt most satisfied when I have been able to correct factual errors by searching out RSs to support a correct answer. I have also been able to author some 200+ articles and substantially add to others, some of which have become GAs and have provided inputs to DYK
3. Have you been in any conflicts over editing in the past or have other users caused you stress? How have you dealt with it and how will you deal with it in the future?
A: I tend to avoid great dramas on Wikipedia. I try to be clear, polite and succinct in my inputs to talk pages to reduce ambiguity. Stress, however, is I guess inevitable, but I stick to my position if I believe that it is consistent with the rules and policies of Wikipedia. I feel most stressed when other editors substantially re-work articles that have had much time and consensus discussion invested in getting to their current state. It may be that such re-works are an improvement, but it can be hard not to feel bruised. However I don't pursue an editing disagreement simply because my version has been replaced. The strength of Wikipedia lies in the combined wisdom and consensus of all its editors and sometimes I may be wrong.

You may ask optional questions below. There is a limit of two questions per editor. Multi-part questions are disallowed, but you are allowed to ask follow-up questions related to previous questions.

Optional question from Thryduulf

4. Why did you choose to seek adminship via election rather than via a standard RFA?
A: There were several reasons for not pursuing the conventional route. Most significantly I found the inquisitorial debate with the candidate stressful and at times intimidating, even though I was not the candidate. Admins certainly need to be able to stand up for themselves but I doubt whether the RfA selection method helps to weed out the appropriate for the inappropriate. For the record, I have given expert witness statement to two select committees of the House of Commons and once to the European Parliament. There are few more stressful environments where being truthful, accurate and standing your ground are crucial. In those case the questions were relevant and valid. Asking a potential admin their opinion, is not, I believe necessarily helpful nor necessarily a good indication of future performance, but it can be stressful.
The second major issue for me was seeking endorsement from an existing admin. I have little doubt that I could find such endorsement but this seemed to me a waste of valuable admin time resource and I am acutely conscious of misjudging an apparently cordial relationship resulting in, at best, a luke-warm endorsement. I would much prefer that my work on Wikipedia over 19 years would stand as a better testimony. I have not solicited any endorsement for this application

Optional question from Ganesha811

5. Are there any areas of adminship you do not plan to participate in, due to unfamiliarity or lack of technical knowledge? If you later decided you wanted to help in these areas, what would be your plan to become an effective admin in those areas?
A: My belief is that there are many areas where my existing knowledge would be insufficient and where new skills and new knowledge would be required. My hope was, that if accepted, I would be of most use in dealing with simple vandalism, speedy deletion and AfD. However, dealing with undeclared paid editing, sock-puppetry etc cause me great frustration and I would hope to be able to assist in these areas. I acutely conscious that there are a great many other areas of work where I have had little involvement, and some that I might be poorly suited to. I have never become involved in any of the great dramas at ANI, but if chipping away at the mundane and numerous tasks releases other admin time for some of the more contentious issues, I would be content. My natural approach is to start new tasks with care having read around the topic and watching others at work.

Optional question from Trainsandotherthings

6. You write "I have also been able to author some 200+ articles and substantially add to others, some of which have become GAs and have provided inputs to DYK." To clarify, have you nominated any articles yourself to either of these processes?
A: I have made two nominations to DYK. The first was not well made but the second on Superphosphate was successful. I have made no GA nominations but I created Friends of Friendless Churches which later became a featured list, much of that through the efforts of others but which I continued to help expand and provide images.
In mentioning DYK and GAs in this application, I see myself reflecting some of the concerns I have had about the RFA process where experience in these area was clearly flagged as critical to the success of applicant admins. In reality much of my effort always has been improving quality of Wikipedia as a whole by filtering out vandalism, editing out unsourced contentious text or finding sources for it, and tagging non-notable articles for deletion. My CSD log is a better measure of where my main work has lain. Previous versions going back to 2016 are here and here. I have also been routinely working at AfC trying to deal with a few articles every day that I am working on Wikipedia, both Drafts and new articles – work I would intend to continue with whatever the outcome of this process.
May I also extend an apology to everyone involved in this process for my absence for most of today and the inevitable delay in responding to the questions raised.

Optional question from Sam Sailor

7. The "new report" at Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Justice FAISAL MAHMUD FAIZEE—wouldn't it have been logical to merge it with my report above as a comment?—made me look at your recent edits. On 3 October you draftified using a script L'aurora delle trans cattive with the standard reason "more sources needed". On 14 October you draftified Faisal Mahmud Faizee giving the same reason. Please re-read the relevant p&gs, and re-evaluate the circumstances surrounding these two moves. Is there anything you would do differently in similar cases in the future?
A: Had it not been for these elections, I almost certainly not have been on Wikipedia this week because of family circumstances. The circumstances also prevented me from responding to questions until very late on 22nd October. I can offer no excuses except that Twinkle has no particularly relevant category for reporting a block evading sock. What I can offer, however, is that if given Admin rights, I will not under any circumstances be exercising those rights while at the same time supporting others through difficult times. The simple direct answer is yes, of course I would do it differently.
Dealing with L'aurora delle trans cattive , when I reviewed this it was a single paragraph supported by only a single source. I anticipated that it might well be notable but it clearly was not demonstrably notable at the time of review. Hence the move to Draft.
Faisal Mahmud Faizee was a single paragraph supported by a single ref that was not independent. A very chequered history of COI editing had left the article in that state. A better option would have been to request protection in its state prior to COI whitewashing.


Discussion

Please keep discussion constructive and civil. If you are unfamiliar with the nominee, please thoroughly review their contributions before commenting.

AfD record: 77.80% match rate, n of 450. 9 keep !votes to 475 delete !votes. Mildly subjective comment: 292 of the deletes are nominations; the keep rate on !votes only is still very low after the noms are removed. Candidate has been participating at AfD for a long time. Some recent-ish flubs ([43], [44]), but I don't see anything really concerning. Here are some typical noms: [45], [46]. -- asilvering (talk) 23:46, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

GAN & FAC notes. No activity at GAN or FAC. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 02:20, 23 October 2024 (UTC)

CSD log Expanding on their answer to Q6, their CSD log is so long they've had to split in into multiple logs. Exactly 3,000 edits to it! I have to go back to April to find a declined CSD, a U5 (only checking blue links). In March there was a slightly odd G8, which may have been a mistag? Overall, accuracy seems to be >97%. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 14:55, 23 October 2024 (UTC)

  • First of all, autopatrolled is now unbundled from the admin toolset, so this not a grave concern. A week back, I noted that Velella's creations do not meet the current expectations around autopatrolled, as the non-BLPs usually have uncited content. Velella indicated that they'd fix this as soon as they have time however. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 14:55, 23 October 2024 (UTC)
A list of declined speedies, hidden due to the large volume of CSDs from the candidate

Declined speedies

Ritchie333 (talk) (cont) 11:29, 24 October 2024 (UTC)

This might have been a bit much to dump into the discussion section...Do you mean to dispute Femke's assessment that the candidate is fairly accurate with CSD tagging? Toadspike [Talk] 11:43, 24 October 2024 (UTC)
Ritchie indicated he's just providing the data unfiltered, given time constraints. The large number of declined CSDs are a numbers game here (as we've got 3000 entries), so I don't think there is a contradiction. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 16:08, 24 October 2024 (UTC)
Makes sense, and I agree with your assessment. Thanks for putting the list into a collapsible box. Toadspike [Talk] 18:52, 24 October 2024 (UTC)

In regards to Q & A 7:

MoveToDraft screenshot (older version, slightly different wording)
  • L'aurora delle trans cattive was draftified 34 minutes after its creation, despite our long-established practice of waiting at least one hour before draftifying. WP:NPPHOUR even has this in bold. The article should not have been moved to draft space.
  • Faisal Mahmud Faizee, an article created more than a year ago on 31 August 2023, was draftified on 14 October 2024, despite the long-established practice not to draftify articles older than 90 days, cf. WP:DRAFTNO. The article does not have"a very chequered history of COI editing". It has a simple history of WP:NOBLANK-vandalism starting two hours prior, which would be evident by a quick look in the history, cf. WP:HTSV. That the candidate decides to move the article based on its then-current state rather than have a look at the history is evident from the fact that they 5 minutes later in this diff "restore last last good version before COI blanking". The article should not have been moved to draft space.
    But even if WP:NPPHOUR and WP:DRAFTNO were forgotten, there are no excuses for performing these moves. The script used, MoveToDraft, does an age check on the article the user tries to move (User:MPGuy2824/MoveToDraft/core.js line 1372 ff. "Checks if draftification is appropriate and warns the user accordingly") and warns the user in bold, red letters
    Draftifying isn't appropriate per WP:DRAFTIFY since this article was edited less than 60 minutes ago. or
    Draftifying isn't appropriate per WP:DRAFTIFY since this article is more than 90 days old.
    Yet this user smashes the "Continue" button.
    You would think that after they discovered that they draftified Faisal Mahmud Faizee based on a vandalized version (despite being warned that it was inappropriate in any case), and restored the last good revision they would return the page to main space, but no, they leave it there and let somebody else move it back 32 minutes later.
    These two examples of tool misuse are not isolated. A quick look at the candidate's draftify log led me to The Brilliant Healer's New Life in the Shadows, where a very experienced content creator was actively working on the article, but the candidate nevertheless butts in and draftifies the article less than 24 minutes after it is started. What makes this case even worse than the two above is that article creator had placed an {{in creation}}-template on the top, yet the candidate pulls the MoveToDraft-trigger prematurely again.
    For me, it's not a question of whether the candidate is fit for the many permissions granted with the admin toolkit including the block and delete buttons, I don't think they are. It is rather a question of whether any continued DILLIGAF-attitude towards guidelines, clear warnings from the tool used, and towards content creators should result in a change of the patrol permission currently granted with NPR. Cases like the above only create extra busywork for other editors. Sam Sailor 11:54, 24 October 2024 (UTC)
Let us agree that this was a mistake. I have agreed that already, and I guess there may be more. Let us assume that in my career here there are perhaps 100 significant mistakes - I doubt that figure but it may be a useful hypothesis. In a 19 year career here of some 100,000 edits, that yields a failure rate of about 0.001% or a success rate of 99.99%. We are human, both as journeyman editors and as admins, and a 99+% success rate would, in almost all organisations, be acceptable. Admins also make errors but it would be inappropriate to note any here. This process for me has been very stressful. This is neither an excuse nor an explanation but it has certainly impacted my logical approach and for that I am sorry. However I do find it odd that these errors were not managed as would have been expected with a note to my talk page if my editing was being questioned or a note to the article talk page if content was in doubt. Neither of those routes were followed. I find that unusual.  Velella  Velella Talk   22:44, 24 October 2024 (UTC)
The above adminship discussion is preserved as an archive of the discussion. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the talk page of the nominated user). No further edits should be made to this page.

Robert McClenon

The following discussion is preserved as an archive of an administrator election candidacy that did not succeed. Please do not modify it.

Final (259/206/151); See official results (non-admin closure) – DreamRimmer Alt (talk) 17:17, 10 November 2024 (UTC)

Nomination

Robert McClenon (talk · contribs · he/him) – I am Robert McClenon, and have been editing Wikipedia from 2005 to 2006, and again since 2013. I have from time to time been asked whether I am planning to run for administrator or why I am not already an administrator. I have had two unsuccessful Requests for Adminship, in March 2006 and in September 2017. The request in 2006 was a case of too soon, although it was easier to become an admin in the first decade of this century. The request in 2017 seemed to start well, but then became more critical as I was questioned about some of the speedy deletion nominations that I had made at New Page Patrol, and became negative. I think that there have been at least three changes in the past seven years. The first is that I learned from that failure. The second is that new article creation is now restricted to autoconfirmed editors, which reduces the number of misguided new article creations, and so changes the priorities for New Page Patrol. The third is that I think that the views of the community have changed, so that the community now mostly agrees with me that quality control is even more important than continued expansion of the encyclopedia. We need more Class C articles more than we need more new stubs.

My focus as an editor has been on the maintenance and improvement of the quality of the encyclopedia. As an administrator, my focus will continue to be on the maintenance and improvement of the quality of the encyclopedia, and I hope that I can further improve the encyclopedia by wise use of the administrative tools. Robert McClenon (talk) 14:38, 14 October 2024 (UTC)

I have never edited Wikipedia for pay. I will work with other administrators to enforce the rules that editing for pay must be disclosed. Robert McClenon (talk) 14:38, 14 October 2024 (UTC)

I was asked to offer some comments about incivility. Civility is the fourth pillar of Wikipedia. I have written an essay about different types of incivility, at User:Robert McClenon/Incivility. Robert McClenon (talk) 23:02, 15 October 2024 (UTC)

Candidate, please indicate acceptance of the nomination here: Yes. I am not arguing with myself. Robert McClenon (talk) 17:27, 14 October 2024 (UTC)

Please disclose whether you have ever edited Wikipedia for pay. See above statement.

Questions for the candidate

Dear candidate, thank you for offering to serve Wikipedia as an administrator. Please answer these questions to provide guidance for participants:

1. Why are you interested in becoming an administrator?
A: Much of my work in Wikipedia has been in the three areas of dispute resolution, the draft review process. and the deletion discussion process. Being given access to the administrative tools would enable me to do those jobs better, and to do work in those areas that is beyond what I am now doing. In particular, first, as an administrator, I will be able to view deleted articles, and so be better able to decide whether a draft being reviewed is an improvement over a deleted article. I would also like to close discussions at Miscellany for Deletion and at Deletion Review. I have not been closing deletion discussions because I have seen that there is a bias for non-admin closers because they do not have the ability to delete pages.
As an admin, I will also review speedy deletion nominations, especially G6 technical requests and G11 spam.
Robert McClenon (talk) 14:38, 14 October 2024 (UTC)
2. What are your best contributions to Wikipedia, and why?
A: Some of my best work in Wikipedia has been mediating content disputes at the Dispute Resolution Noticeboard. I have learned usually to begin a content dispute resolution by reminding the editors that the purpose of dispute resolution is to improve the encyclopedia, and then asking them what they want to change in the article that another editor wants to change (or what they want to leave the same that another editor wants to change).
Another area in which I have made contributions to Wikipedia is in Articles for Creation review. I have focused on drafts whose titles already exist in article space. Sometimes their titles require disambiguation, and I have become very familiar with disambiguation. I also have a great deal of experience in dealing with drafts whose titles are redirects. Admin status would give me the ability to delete blocking redirects rather than tagging them or moving them.
Robert McClenon (talk) 14:38, 14 October 2024 (UTC)
3. Have you been in any conflicts over editing in the past or have other users caused you stress? How have you dealt with it and how will you deal with it in the future?
A: Much of my work in Wikipedia has been in trying to reduce conflict. One of the most stressful episodes in my history in Wikipedia was my second RFA in September 2017. It was difficult because some editors began taking issue with my whole record of contribution to the encyclopedia. I dealt with that stress in what I thought was the only reasonable way, which was to withdraw my RFA but continue editing, and to learn to be more patient in nominating new pages for deletion. Shortly after that, the flow of bad new articles was reduced by limiting new article creation to confirmed editors. Other than that, most of my involvement in conflicts has been trying to resolve conflicts, either at DRN or at WP:ANI.
Robert McClenon (talk) 14:38, 14 October 2024 (UTC)

You may ask optional questions below. There is a limit of two questions per editor. Multi-part questions are disallowed, but you are allowed to ask follow-up questions related to previous questions.

Optional question from Thryduulf

4. Why did you choose to seek adminship via election rather than via a standard RFA?
A: One of the reasons is that I had not been in discussion with anyone recently about nominating me for RFA, and I did not want to self-nominate for RFA, because I have seen that does not usually go well. Also, I have come to think of the RFA process as a broken process. A few years ago, it was broken because it was toxic. Now it is broken because it is being abandoned, which shows that a new process should at least be tried. When the plans for administrator election began to develop, I thought it might be less stressful and more helpful to take part in the first test of the new process. Robert McClenon (talk) 05:05, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

Optional question from Ganesha811

5. Are there any areas of adminship you do not plan to participate in, due to unfamiliarity or lack of technical knowledge? If you later decided you wanted to help in these areas, what would be your plan to become an effective admin in those areas?
A: - Two areas that I am aware of that I do not plan to participate in are categories and history merges. I am aware that categories are complex, and I know that other editors and administrators are more familiar with them. If I decided to work in that area, I would participate in CFD discussions before trying to close any CFD discussions. I am aware that some administrators are very good with history merges. I see no need for every administrator to be able to handle every complex administrative duty. Robert McClenon (talk) 04:35, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

Optional question from Aaron Liu

6. Thanks for signing up for the trial. A major concern last time was your use of PRODs and CSDs. If elected administrator, would you continue using the PROD process, or would you delete articles you would've PRODded outright?
A: - I have used PROD 8 times in 2023 and once in 2024. I used PROD more extensively when I was doing New Page Patrol before autoconfirmation was required to create new articles, and there was an excessive amount of crud coming in. I have not done New Page Patrol recently, and the quality of the input has improved. Since PROD is meant to identify non-contentious deletions, as administrator, if I think that a PROD is appropriate, I will still use PROD so as to allow seven days for other editors to object. As an administrator, I do not plan to delete any pages with content outright, because a second set of eyes and a second brain are helpful. What I am ready to delete outright as an admin is blocking redirects, in order to make room to move drafts to article space, but then only if the redirect does not have significant history. Robert McClenon (talk) 04:35, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

Optional question from Serial Number 54129

7. What are your views on non-admin arbitrators?
A: - The English Wikipedia has not had any arbitrators who were not already administrators when they were elected, but the requirements for arbitrators do not require previous service as administrators. I think that it would be good for the community to elect one or two non-administrators to the ArbCom, to have a somewhat different perspective, in particular in cases of administrator abuse. I recognize that a non-admin elected as an arbitrator would then have all of the rights and privileges of an admin who had been conventionally selected. However, I think that having one or two arbitrators who had not previously been administrators would provide a somewhat different view on administrator abuse, and some editors might have more trust that the arbitrators were not protecting rogue admins. (I am not saying that there are rogue admins, but I am saying that a few users think that there are rogue admins.) Robert McClenon (talk) 01:15, 23 October 2024 (UTC)

Optional question from Just Step Sideways

8. Kind of dovetailing with the above,observers of arbitration committee proceedings will have noticed that nearly every single case request features a statement from you, regardless of whether you have any involvement or any prior knowledge of the subject of the request, unfailingly formatted as Statement by Robert McClenon (<subject of request>) in apparent anticipation of addding a statement to whatever other matter may come before the committee while the current request is pending. This, to my mind anyway, suggests that you see yourself as a sort of "shadow arb" even adding statements to requests that are clearly without merit or those where a decision among arbs to accept or decline is already manifest and just waiting out the clock. I guess what I'm asking is: Do you think your commentary at case request is so vital that you must make it every time regardless of the factors I have mentioned? Also, presuming you are elected as an admin, do you anticipate running for the committee again in this year's election, or will you be focusing on adjusting to your new role as an admin?
A:8a. I will answer this question within 24 hours. ::I think that this question is about why I almost always provide a statement on every Request for Arbitration. The answer is that I don't really have a specific answer. I think that ArbCom should take more cases than it does, because I think that editors with User:Robert McClenon/Long Block Logs often divide the community, and ArbCom should consider whether they are net negatives. However, I don't have a specific reason.
The reason why I put a descriptor after the case name is a habit both from times that there have been have been two open RFARs, and from DRN. If two level 3 or level 4 headings have the same heading, trying to click on one of them from a table of contents sometimes gets the other one, and other minor odd things happen. Robert McClenon (talk) 00:05, 24 October 2024 (UTC)
8b. If elected as an admin, I do not plan to run for the Arbitration Committee at the end of 2024. I will be busy learning how to be an effective administrator, in particular as an AFC reviewer, and as a closer of MFDs and DRVs. Robert McClenon (talk) 01:15, 23 October 2024 (UTC)

Optional question from Carrite

9. This is a bit of ancient history and I am asking this to see if your thinking has evolved over the past decade. On July 17, 2013 you opined on Wiki: "Mine may be a minority opinion, and I haven't visited Wikipediocracy and don't think that I want to do so. However, I think that, unlike Encyclopedia Dramatica, Wikipediocracy is not meant well and is not meant to be humorous, but is either malicious, or, at best, has only the excuse of middle-school humor. My own opinion is that anyone posting a link to Wikipediocracy that refers to a specific Wikipedian should be blocked, and should then explain that he wasn't outing anyone. I told you it was a minority opinion." -- Have you over the subsequent decade ever visited Wikipediocracy? If so, has you view of that site changed in any way? Do you still feel that an instablock is merited for any Wikipedian posting a link to a thread with a named Wikipedian on that site? Thanks! --Tim //// Carrite (talk) 21:46, 23 October 2024 (UTC) //// Randy from Boise on WPO.
A: - I have not visited WPO and do not plan to visit it. However, I have come to the conclusion that posting a link to WPO should be dealt with by an admin on a case-by-case basis, and as an admin I will leave that decision to other admins. One conclusion from the current RFAR about WPO is that some WPO discussions are innocuous or may even be constructive to Wikipedia, and that some WPO discussions are toxic, and that incivility on Wikipedia about WPO is an immediate concern. So I am revising my position. Robert McClenon (talk) 04:37, 24 October 2024 (UTC)

Optional question from North8000

10. What are your views on inclusionist and exclusionist type priorities/leanings? North8000 (talk) 19:36, 24 October 2024 (UTC)


Discussion

Please keep discussion constructive and civil. If you are unfamiliar with the nominee, please thoroughly review his contributions before commenting.


As someone whose ideology aligns with inclusionism a bit more, I find the remarks that appear to imply stubs should not be allowed into Wikipedia concerning and don't really see what the candidate means by the quality control attitude changing. (There is AfC now, yes, but I don't think the part about stubs is a prevailing viewpoint, especially when a lot more new articles are starts and not stubs.) However, I'm sure many can attest to Robert's calm demeanor—in moderating (DRN) or commenting elsewhere. Aaron Liu (talk) 03:35, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

Hmmm. I said that we need more new Class C articles more than we need more new stubs. I didn't mean that stubs should be discouraged, and I can see how you might have reasonably interpreted my statement in a way other than what I meant. I have accepted stubs at AFC, in particular when there was a good case for notability and a possibility of expansion of the stub, such as biological species or medieval bishops. I meant that the acceptance of Class C articles or expansion of stubs and starts to Class C should be a priority. I hope that this clarifies the matter. Robert McClenon (talk) 04:50, 22 October 2024 (UTC)
When I said that the quality control attitude of the community had changed, I meant that I see more emphasis on quality of articles and less on quantity. I perceive less "radical inclusionism" than a decade ago. An example of the change has to do with sports notability, where professional athletes are now required to meet general notability. Robert McClenon (talk) 04:58, 22 October 2024 (UTC)
  • Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of Playboy Interviews also makes me concerned about AfdBefore and engagement in discussion (the latter only mildly, since I've seen Robert conduct well within discussions). Hopefully such examples of deletion will not be a focus. afdstats shows ~69% match, though nearly all of those have Robert as nom. Aaron Liu (talk) 03:44, 22 October 2024 (UTC)
    I will note that I thought that the article was too incomplete to be in article space, and I requested that it be draftified, not deleted. The article was kept, which was a good Heymann result. I think that my nomination was useful because it caused the improvement of the article. Robert McClenon (talk) 04:50, 22 October 2024 (UTC)
    I wholeheartedly appreciate your clarification on C-class articles above, but this comment concerns me a bit. AfD is for assessing the notability of articles, and 1. using it purely to attract Heymanns is a somewhat radical idea I'm not sure how to feel about 2. the same person expanded the article before and after the nomination. I think what should've been done instead here is a bold move of the article to draftspace. Aaron Liu (talk) 23:05, 23 October 2024 (UTC)
    User:Aaron Liu - Cyclone Yoris had already boldly moved the article to draft space on 21 July 2024. GimmeChoco44 had contested the draftification by moving the page back to article space. Another bold move would have been move warring. The way to resolve a contested draftification is by sending it to AFD. In this case, when I nominated it for AFD, I did not request its deletion, because I stated Draftify as nominator. A bold move to draft space had already been attempted. Robert McClenon (talk) 05:24, 24 October 2024 (UTC)
    Ah. That is an interesting scenario... Aaron Liu (talk) 11:33, 24 October 2024 (UTC)
    The advice of WP:Drafts seems to be to leave it in place as constructive edits are underway. (Also note that the new user interpreted the rationale of no sources as a request to add a bunch of primary sources. I think a clarification could've been raised to the user first.) Aaron Liu (talk) 11:40, 24 October 2024 (UTC)
    The interesting scenario is a contested draftification, which is not a rare scenario for New Page Patrol. If a page has been boldly draftified once, and moved back to article space, that is a contested draftification. Moving it to draft space a second time is not permitted, and would be move warring. A consensus process is needed in this situation,and the consensus process is AFD. In the case in point, I !voted for draftification (again) rather than for deletion. Robert McClenon (talk) 23:53, 24 October 2024 (UTC)

AfD record: 74.30% match rate, n of 420. 26 keep !votes to 374 delete !votes. Mildly subjective comment: many of the mismatches are because he frequently votes for draftification and the article is kept; some pretty strange ones like this one [47] that don't show any evidence for deletion, just gives a condition for WP:HEY, which isn't really how AfD is supposed to work; here [48] is another example of that, which leaves all the other voters somewhat confused. Here [49] is another strange one, where Robert McClenon votes delete explicitly without checking for sources, becauseIn my opinion, the burden of checking for sources is on article authors even before it is on nominators. Article authors should wait until the sources exist before moving the article into article space in the expectation that there will be reviews. A film article with no reviews is a film article that should have stayed in draft space or user space until the reviews were published. -- asilvering (talk) 06:08, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

Personal comment: At that point I had to stop, since I wasn't going to be able to maintain a tone worthy of a section I intended to keep only "mildly subjective". I am really concerned about these results. A common refrain at AfD is that AfD is WP:NOTCLEANUP, but that's more or less explicitly what Robert McClenon's intent is in these examples. In the third, his was the sole !delete vote remaining, preventing the nomination from being withdrawn. (This is not a case of someone not noticing the later comments.) -- asilvering (talk) 06:21, 22 October 2024 (UTC)
Robert McClenon keeps a XfD log: User:Robert McClenon/XfD log, which I found useful. Ca talk to me! 10:57, 22 October 2024 (UTC)
That quote has tempted me to support. I for one am glad that someone is taking crappy content to task instead of the hand-wringing we often see at AfD about maybe there could be sources some day. If you haven't already found the sources, the article shouldn't have existed in the first place. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 16:14, 22 October 2024 (UTC)
  • I have found that Robert converses in a very methodical, steady manner. This works well within the rules-based format of DRN, but in the fluctuating scenarios outside where an admin is likely to find themselves, perhaps it could come across as indifferent and detached? Robert, do you see your communication style as different to others, and if yes, what can be the consequences? ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 09:20, 22 October 2024 (UTC)
    I agree. TrangaBellam (talk) 09:27, 22 October 2024 (UTC)
    I am aware that I try to keep my communication even and objective, because I remember that Wikipedia is an electronic workplace, and that the objective is the maintenance and improvement of the encyclopedia. Studies of electronic communication as long ago as 1985 have stressed both the immediacy and the permanence of electronic communication, which mean that one should avoid being harsh or insulting. I think that staying even and objective is especially important in the "fluctuating scenarios" at WP:ANI, where someone needs to be a voice of reason. Robert McClenon (talk) 16:50, 22 October 2024 (UTC)
    An appropriately logical and precise response. Thank you. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 18:09, 22 October 2024 (UTC)
  • I agree with AJ29. I am often impressed by his uninvolved and down-to-ground comments on WP:arbcom cases and dramathreads. I do find the issue of hasty and poor use of speedy deletions raised in the 2017 RfA concerning, but I trust his promise he will be "patient in nominating new pages for deletion". The AfD Asilvering linked however, is concerning. "Burden of checking for sources is on article authors even before it is on nominators" is out of community norms, and wp:before is a de-facto guideline. As an AfC reviewer, I also find his pagemove/disambiguation-related comments on AfC very helpful. Ca talk to me! 10:57, 22 October 2024 (UTC)
    I don't think I agree about the pagemove/disambiguation-related comments on AfC, though I don't disagree so strongly that I've bothered to bring it up before. As a reviewer, I don't feel much about them either way, but I have come across some newbies who found them confusing and/or off-putting, and if you were to ask me what I thought newbies would probably think of them, it would also be "confusing and/or off-putting". No examples come to me off-hand, and again, I've never considered this important enough to say anything about before (it just would feel strange not to mention it now that someone has brought it up). -- asilvering (talk) 19:10, 22 October 2024 (UTC)
    Wait, Before is not a guideline‽ Aaron Liu (talk) 23:10, 23 October 2024 (UTC)
I acknowledge that I have not had activity in the Good Article and Featured Article processes. Robert McClenon (talk) 05:11, 23 October 2024 (UTC)

@Robert McClenon isI will be busy learning how to be an effective administrator, in particular as an AFC reviewer a typo? I'm sure you know that you can be an Articles for Creation reviewer without being an admin. Toadspike [Talk] 11:44, 23 October 2024 (UTC)

  • @User:Toadspike, fyi, I applied for New Page Patrol training after my run for admin. It helped. It validated and filled in gaps. When I see a human pursuing continuing education, I see a GOOD thing. There are so many kinds of admin tasks (some technological, some behavioral), even for a well-seasoned contributor like this candidate. It's not just that the candidate is experienced; in my eyes the candidate has over his wikicareer demonstrated consistent and reliable behavior. I am comfortable trusting such volunteers with more responsibility. BusterD (talk) 13:35, 23 October 2024 (UTC)
    I don't think you understood my comment – Robert McClenon has already participated in over 10,000 AfC reviews [50]. I am hoping that Robert can clarify how becoming an administrator would affect his AfC reviewing (or vice versa), since these two roles should be unrelated. Toadspike [Talk] 16:17, 23 October 2024 (UTC)
  • A few people have complimented Robert's hyperlogical tone. That is strange. Something about the tone has always felt artificial and difficult to understand (Personal attack removed). Had he not had this communication style for many years, I'd perhaps have suspected him of writing his comments with gen-AI. An underlying problem is that he's often commenting pointlessly on things, such as every arbitration case request (see above from Just Step Sideways). While it might not be true in every case, many of his noticeboard and arbitration contributions, while not being necessarily incorrect, also aren't… correct. They don't advance the discussion or help anybody. The problem probably lies in the tone, which entails talking about the things which Robert wants to talk about, including things that do not matter. I am left with the overall impression that at best, he would be a 'filler' administrator, able to deal competently with basic tasks. At worst, he will bite off more than he can chew. His preferred administrative area is intervening in interpersonal disputes. That requires tact and emotional intelligence beyond what comes through in Robert's writing. Without meaning to be unkind to him, and I hope that this does not discourage him from participating in other ways to Wikipedia, I do not think that Robert would make a good administrator. Electing him would be a mistake. (A separate, extremely serious concern is that Robert has studiously and flagrantly ignored the more difficult of a pair of questions. I have seen him doing this before in elections.) Arcticocean 17:48, 23 October 2024 (UTC)
    People on the autism spectrum are often described as having "artificial" writing or speech style. I don't know whether that applies to Robert, and frankly, I don't see it as relevant. Being "hyperlogical" might be a hindrance to working as a marriage counsellor, but I see it as a boon for most admin work. Emotional intelligence can be useful when moderating disputes, but Robert's success comes from his rare ability to cut through the emotional noise, and adjudicate based on facts and policy. That is not a handicap. And if he said he'll answer Q8 within 24 hours, rest assured he will answer it within 24 hours. Owen× ☎ 18:20, 23 October 2024 (UTC)
    • To the best of my knowledge, I am neurotypical. I write in the way that I write because of several historical factors:
    • 1. 45 years employed in information technology (largely before it was called information technology), dealing with equipment that is entirely logical, although it is sometimes personified, and in recent years simulates humans.
    • 2. 39 years using electronic communication media, and following the advice that was given in the 1985 Rand Shapiro report, to be aware of both the immediacy and the permanence of electronic mail and electronic media. This means being aware that there are unseen humans on the other end of what one is writing.
    • 3. More than a decade experience in Wikipedia, seeing that some of the names and pseudonyms belong to humans who have feelings that may be easily hurt.

Robert McClenon (talk) 05:10, 24 October 2024 (UTC)

  • From his use of indentation, it appears that 8A was the unsigned holding answer and 8B was the substantive answer. If there was to be an 8C which answers the unanswered question, that's fine and it addresses my parenthetical comment. I see from the history that he did post both answers at once, but I shouldn't really have to look so far to divine his meaning. As someone said above, another fault of Robert's is being prone to "basic errors of fact". I'd term that broader: he's a little prone to "basic errors", the unclear holding answer to question 8 being another such error… Arcticocean 20:48, 23 October 2024 (UTC)
    I agree with this. Aaron Liu (talk) 02:16, 24 October 2024 (UTC)
  • As a DRV regular, I have had a fair bit of exposure to Robert's contributions there. Are they slightly unusually-worded? Yes. Are they normally somewhere about the mark in terms of policy and/or 'finding the best outcome'? Also yes. No one is perfect and he as well as everyone else has sometimes ended up sharing an opinion that isn't reflected by the end consensus, but this is hardly unique to Robert. I hear what Arcticocean is saying above, but don't see it as quite as serious an issue as they do. I'm sure that if Robert takes wading into interpersonal disputes slowly, he will be an excellent administrator. Daniel (talk) 20:54, 23 October 2024 (UTC)
I did not say that my focus as an administrator would be on interpersonal disputes, and I would not plan to focus on them. I said that I would close MFD and DRV discussions, and that I would delete blocking redirects for the acceptance of drafts. Robert McClenon (talk) 00:20, 24 October 2024 (UTC)
I will add that my experience in dispute resolution, which has to do with content disputes at DRN, is to avoid any interpersonal matters, and focusing on content. "Discuss content, not contributors." Wikipedia has always separated content disputes from conduct disputes. Robert McClenon (talk) 04:30, 24 October 2024 (UTC)

Declined speedies

Extended content

Ritchie333 (talk) (cont) 11:31, 24 October 2024 (UTC)

Quite a bit of those he removed himself. Aaron Liu (talk) 11:37, 24 October 2024 (UTC)
The above adminship discussion is preserved as an archive of the discussion. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the talk page of the nominated user). No further edits should be made to this page.

SD0001

The following discussion is preserved as an archive of a successful administrator election candidacy. Please do not modify it.

Final (306/101/209); See official results (non-admin closure) – DreamRimmer (talk) 16:20, 10 November 2024 (UTC)

Nomination

SD0001 (talk · contribs · he/him) – Colleagues, it is my pleasure to present SD0001 for your consideration. SD0001 is a very talented technical editor. As the most active maintainer of Twinkle when I first started working on it, SD0001 is one of my technical mentors on Wikipedia, and his quick attention to my Twinkle patches is the reason I stayed active with Twinkle. SD0001 is the 2024 Tech Contributor of the Year, the creator of the GitHub organization wikimedia-gadgets, and a trusted MediaWiki developer. With all his work on gadgets, this is someone who can instantly make good use of permissions such as interface administrator. In addition to his excellent technical contributions, he also has around 15,000 edits, 10 years of tenure, and has helped to promote the good article Dairy in India. Finally, this editor was a pleasure to interact with and write patches with at various conferences. I hope you will join me in supporting SD0001's candidacy. Thank you. –Novem Linguae (talk) 05:00, 14 October 2024 (UTC)

Co-nomination statement

I'm honoured to be able to nominate SD0001, a force multiplier whose contributions touch on so many areas of Wikipedia. So many of us have benefited from his work in ways we aren't even aware of. As a member of New Pages Patrol, I can personally say that SD0001 has improved my ability to contribute there and at Articles for Creation, thanks to the gadgets, scripts, and reports he's created and contributed to that make life easier for reviewers. Both NPP and AfC would be much worse off and far more backlogged without his efforts.

In addition to the impressive work mentioned above, SD0001 is also a member of the Bot Approvals Group (since 2020), the operator of SDZeroBot, which won the 2020 Coolest Tool Award in the newcomer category, was recently named Editor of the Week, and has been "a prolific contributor to MediaWiki core infrastructure".

The butterfly effect of SD0001's contributions cannot be overstated. He has the temperament, communication skills, and knowledge that we look for in admins. I'm a big fan of putting the tools in the hands of capable individuals, and there are few more capable than SD0001, so I hope you will join me in supporting him. Hey man im josh (talk) 19:42, 17 October 2024 (UTC)

Candidate, please indicate acceptance of the nomination here: I accept the nomination. I have never edited for pay, except for a grant from WMF for localizing Twinkle. Other accounts through which I've edited are SDZeroBot, and DL9C many years back. – SD0001 (talk) 16:08, 14 October 2024 (UTC)

Questions for the candidate

Dear candidate, thank you for offering to serve Wikipedia as an administrator. Please answer these questions to provide guidance for participants:

1. Why are you interested in becoming an administrator?
A: I am requesting adminship as there are many instances where the tools could be of use to me – in editing protected templates and modules, updating gadgets that I maintain, and responding to edit requests. I would love to help out by operating adminbots. I would also like to help with history merges, and backlogged areas where my help is sought. However, I do not intend to deviate much from my primary focus of technical edits, as that’s really all I'm inclined towards. If elected, it is very unlikely you would ever see me closing a contentious AfD or blocking an unblockable. That isn't my thing.
2. What are your best contributions to Wikipedia, and why?
A: The article Dairy in India is among my best contributions as it enabled me to embrace the process of writing a quality article.
Among my more visible contributions are the AfC submit wizard through which around 6000 drafts are submitted monthly, and the wizard through which DYK nominations are created. I also wrote the original dark mode toggling script which came to be most-used gadget on the project with 89000 users, a humbling statistic.
I am also proud of my work on Twinkle - in which my most significant contributions include adding search functionality in the tagging and user warning screens, adding support for removal of maintenance tags, and for deletion sorting of AfDs.
Through my MediaWiki contributions in key areas like Scribunto and ResourceLoader, I have enabled the community to build more capable modules and gadgets by introducing new abilities like putting JSON files in gadgets and enabling Lua to query page categories, as well as improved site performance.
3. Have you been in any conflicts over editing in the past or have other users caused you stress? How have you dealt with it and how will you deal with it in the future?
A: I have been in several conflicts throughout my editing journey. In these situations, I try to express my thoughts as clearly as possible and avoid engaging in too much of back-and-forth conversations, since the intent is to convince other readers of the thread rather than specific editors I am replying to. Much of the effort in a collaborative project lies not in coming up with new ideas, but in building consensus for them. When things don’t go my way, I remind myself that most things we discuss here are not a big deal in the grand scheme of things. Taking some time off and focusing on other parts of the project really helps.
I also tend to be careful in writing talk page comments to avoid the meaning from being misconstrued. I consider every comment from the readers' perspective before saving.

You may ask optional questions below. There is a limit of two questions per editor. Multi-part questions are disallowed, but you are allowed to ask follow-up questions related to previous questions.

Optional question from Thryduulf

4. Why did you choose to seek adminship via election rather than via a standard RFA?
A: I feel that not being able to see the !votes makes the elections a more pleasant experience than RfA. There are pros and cons to both - the benefit with RfA is that it allows candidates to stand at a time of their choosing and be mentally prepared, whereas in the elections, the timing is non-negotiable and could interfere with real life. On the other hand, RfA allows candidates to artificially spruce up their profile ahead of time, whereas the elections make it more likely that the community sees unfiltered versions of candidates, which is good for both the community as well for the candidates who can skip the tedious pre-RfA preparation.
Also, I personally am drawn to the election as it is a nascent process where the expectations and best practises are still to be realised or worked out, creating a fairer playing field where candidates don't have to worry about conforming with established norms, and can instead be judged solely on their work.

Optional question from Ganesha811

5. Are there any areas of adminship you do not plan to participate in, due to unfamiliarity or lack of technical knowledge? If you later decided you wanted to help in these areas, what would be your plan to become an effective admin in those areas?
A: There are plenty of areas I don't plan to participate in. To name a few: arbitration enforcement, sockpuppet investigations, and CCI. There are also areas like edit filter management where I lack the technical familiarity. If I wish to take on any new area - the approach would be to participate in that area in an editorial capacity first, and slowly transition to an admin role, keeping in contact with the regulars to maintain a feedback loop. For instance, if I were to be an effective AfD admin, I would first spend more time !voting in discussions and move on to relisting, before I would consider closing them.

Optional question from Bugghost

6. Could you tell us about your requested self-block and the alternate account that you used during the time that block was active?
A: In 2015, I needed to stay off Wikipedia for some time to focus on real life. This turned out to be difficult for me back then as a teenager, despite requesting a two-year self-block. Editing through an IP was less compulsive (as IPs can’t receive pings or notifications), so I did that for a while. However, a few gnomning tasks like creating MfDs required an account. The account DL9C was created shortly before the self-block when I tried to introduce Wikipedia editing to a family member. They didn't catch on and the account was unused except for a couple of sandbox edits, so I ended up using it myself. A CheckUser found out and kindly blocked the alt account on the basis of my original self-block request.
The association of that account to my main account was not required by policy as there was no overlap of editing history. Nevertheless, it did go against the spirit of a self-block, which I regret evading. Subsequently, I did not edit through any account for over two years.


Discussion

Please keep discussion constructive and civil. If you are unfamiliar with the nominee, please thoroughly review his contributions before commenting.

AfD record: 85.70% match rate, n of 63. 34 keep !votes to 42 delete !votes. Mildly subjective comment: a good record, especially for someone who says they're not interested in deletion-related areas; only one in the last year. -- asilvering (talk) 03:13, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

  • Just wanted to say that I'm satisfied with SD0001's answer to my question about the self block request - it was a long time ago and wanting to take time off wikipedia to focus on other things is a very reasonable thing to do. Bypassing a self-block in order to put some stuff through MFD isn't a problem in my view, as it wasn't a "real" block anyway. BugGhost🦗👻 07:48, 23 October 2024 (UTC)

Declined speedies

Ritchie333 (talk) (cont) 11:32, 24 October 2024 (UTC)

The above adminship discussion is preserved as an archive of the discussion. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the talk page of the nominated user). No further edits should be made to this page.

DoubleGrazing

The following discussion is preserved as an archive of a successful administrator election candidacy. Please do not modify it.

Final (306/104/206); See official results (non-admin closure) – DreamRimmer (talk) 16:11, 10 November 2024 (UTC)

Nomination

DoubleGrazing (talk · contribs · they/them) – Hi All, I'm DoubleGrazing. I registered my account 18 years ago, but only did occasional edits until about 5 years ago when I started getting increasingly active, and now a significant chunk of my spare time is spent here on Wikipedia.

I've created over 200 articles, although these days mainly spend my time at AfC, with a bit of NPP on the side, which then inevitably leads me also to AfD, SPI, dealing with copyvios and vandalism, etc. From all that, I send a lot of work to our already-overworked admins, and that's the reason I'm putting myself forward for the mop, so that I can start hopefully reducing the work load in those areas rather than just always adding to them.

I think I have a reasonably good understanding of most areas of policy and practice. One relative weakness is 'short-termism', in the sense that although my account is fairly old, I've only really been active for a few years, so lack the long view and depth of experience of behind-the-scenes work that more established editors have. -- DoubleGrazing (talk) 16:26, 14 October 2024 (UTC)


Candidate, please indicate acceptance of the nomination here: Self-nom... so yeah. :)

Please disclose whether you have ever edited Wikipedia for pay. Never have done, never will.

Questions for the candidate

Dear candidate, thank you for offering to serve Wikipedia as an administrator. Please answer these questions to provide guidance for participants:

1. Why are you interested in becoming an administrator?
A: Admin backlogs are a perennial problem, and because of what I mostly do, I'm conscious that I'm constantly contributing to them, so I thought I should stop being part of the problem and become part of the solution – pick up a mop and bucket, and roll up my sleeves, in other words! I would start slowly, in the areas I'm already familiar with, as I like to know what I'm doing and not rush into things. And I would naturally welcome feedback and corrections, and ultimately be open to recall, if folks didn't feel I was doing it right.
2. What are your best contributions to Wikipedia, and why?
A: I don't know about best, but I'm maybe most pleased about the fact that approx ⅓ of the articles I've created have been women's biographies, as part of the WikiProject Women in Red. I've not even tried to pursue GA/FA status for the articles I've created, and consequently only have one GA to my name, 1987 Viking Sally murder; I guess that must also therefore count among my 'best contributions' in some ways.
3. Have you been in any conflicts over editing in the past or have other users caused you stress? How have you dealt with it and how will you deal with it in the future?
A: In AfC/NPP reviewing, one inevitably comes into contact with editors who are less than happy about their draft being declined or new article moved to drafts etc., but I try to explain what I've done, and more importantly why, and this usually helps avoid conflicts (although I expect admins experience much more such interactions, and this is something I've considered before nomming myself). I haven't got into edit wars and similar conflicts; I usually try to follow the WP:BRD approach. Occasionally I've had to resort to ANI on behavioural issues, but luckily such instances have been few and far between. So no, I've not been in any major conflicts. IRL, I cope with stress pretty well, and would like to think I can handle any stress that adminship brings, also.

You may ask optional questions below. There is a limit of two questions per editor. Multi-part questions are disallowed, but you are allowed to ask follow-up questions related to previous questions.

PLEASE NOTE: At this time, approx 18:00 UTC, I have to go offline due to an IRL engagement, and am therefore unable to reply to any more questions tonight. Apologies to anyone who was hoping to ask me something in the remaining hours. Feel free to come by my talk page to post your question, and I will reply there as soon as I can. Best, --DoubleGrazing (talk) 17:57, 24 October 2024 (UTC)

Optional question from Thryduulf

4. Why did you choose to seek adminship via election rather than via a standard RFA?
A: A couple of things. Firstly, it was suggested to me by 0xDeadbeef; without them, I probably wouldn't be here. I've previously declined a couple of suggestions of RfA, because I'm not really a fan of the process, but when this came along I thought it would be a chance (possibly one-off) to try something new and different. I've also been for a while undecided about throwing my proverbial hat in the ring, and this opportunity finally pushed me off the fence. --DoubleGrazing (talk) 05:55, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

Optional question from Ganesha811

5. Are there any areas of adminship you do not plan to participate in, due to unfamiliarity or lack of technical knowledge? If you later decided you wanted to help in these areas, what would be your plan to become an effective admin in those areas?
A: Yeah, the whole area of banning users, especially with partial (ie. not whole-site) bans, is something I'm not at all familiar with and certainly wouldn't rush into. I sometimes browse AN/I and see deliberations on someone's behaviour and whether they should get a TBAN or ABAN or something else, and why, and who has the right to impose it, etc... I just groan and move swiftly on. I guess eventually I might have to get my head around these things, too, and would then study the rules and follow those AN/I discussions more closely and chip in myself, but it's not something that appeals to me. --DoubleGrazing (talk) 06:12, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

Optional question from Asilvering

6. What got you into AfC and what do you enjoy the most about it?
A: This goes back a few years so my memory is a bit hazy, but I used to spend much of my time wandering about aimlessly, adding a maintenance tag here, taking part in an AfD there, categorising articles, patrolling the recent changes log... then I somehow discovered the AfC (or possibly NPP, can't remember which came first; IIRC, I got both rights around the same time) backlog. I figured 'backlog' means there's more to do than there are doers, so thought I'd chip in. The first reviews were hard work, I didn't want to make any mistakes, but soon you get into it, and it immediately just felt like I'd found a 'purpose'. And there's a nice supportive community, and always something new you can learn from fellow reviewers.
What I enjoy most is accepting a draft, no question about it! This might surprise someone looking at my review history, where acceptances are rare as hen's teeth, but that's because I mostly (esp. more recently) fish in the new submissions end of the pool, and there's just a lot of dross you have to wade through (copyvios, spam, hoaxes, etc.) which means the vast majority are declines or rejections. But when you find that all-too-rare gem you can accept, in particular if it's by a new editor, there's no better feeling than hitting the 'accept' button. :) --DoubleGrazing (talk) 06:49, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

Optional question from Serial Number 54129

7. What would your view be if you were accused of being one of the most solid candidates for admnistrative tools the community has had for over three weeks?
A: Ha! I would say that's one thing I have never been accused of. This preposterous character assassination is wholly without merit, and I move to strike it from the record! --DoubleGrazing (talk) 18:22, 22 October 2024 (UTC)


Discussion

Please keep discussion constructive and civil. If you are unfamiliar with the nominee, please thoroughly review their contributions before commenting.

  • As a fellow AfC reviewer, DoubleGrazing is a name I see often. In their reviews, they tend to post informative comments for the submitters. Ca talk to me! 00:21, 22 October 2024 (UTC)
  • I frequently find pages tagged G11 by the candidate that can be salvaged by removing a paragraph or section or two. Draft:Velur Service Co-operative Bank Ltd (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) is a recent example I happen to remember. —Cryptic 01:01, 22 October 2024 (UTC)
    I've noticed the same (I declined that one, after all), but I think that's a function of volume to at least some extent: User:DoubleGrazing/CSD log. A lot of their G11 tags even result in blocks for the submitting editors. I can also say I've had the experience of declining and cleaning up something that they CSD'd, only for the original editor to return and make everything even worse. (I recall getting a wry "asilvering, you sure about that?" ping. Point for DoubleGrazing.) -- asilvering (talk) 02:48, 22 October 2024 (UTC)
    Interesting you should say that, @Cryptic. Your comment made me curious, so I took a look at my CSD log. In the last three months (since start of August) I've made 630+ speedy requests. Of these, all but a few ended up getting deleted.
    There are actually 30 blue links on that list (of 630+), but the vast majority of these are subsequent recreations; in two cases the speedy tag was removed before an admin got there; in one, I failed to realise the draft was copied form an existing article whereas I thought it was copyvio (duh!); two tags I removed myself because the authors wanted to rewrite the drafts; one was tagged accidentally by someone else; and one (Draft:CodeWeb Agency) has a bit of a back story to it so the draft was retained on purpose.
    In fact, unless I'm mistaken, the Draft:Velur Service Co-operative Bank Ltd you mention is one of only two where the speedy request was declined, per se; the other being Draft:AVXE.
    Of course, I'm not saying these are the only two of my speedy requests that were declined ever; I only went through the last three months, and one would no doubt find many more if one went back further. And of course you can still characterise this as "frequently", regardless of the number. I just wanted to say in my defence that I don't request speedies willy-nilly, there is always a reason, and the requests are usually (as in, 99%+ usually) accepted. -- DoubleGrazing (talk) 11:34, 23 October 2024 (UTC)
    I haven't checked but from general impressions, I'd count DoubleGrazing among the more accurate patrollers wrt A7/G11 tags. Espresso Addict (talk) 05:03, 24 October 2024 (UTC)
  • AfD record: 89.50% match rate, n of 447. 14 keep !votes to 431 delete !votes. Mildly subjective comment: only one result hasn't gone their way in 2024, and it was a "draftify" instead of the voted-for "delete"; many of these deletes (226!) are nominations from doing NPP work; this is a very good AfD record. -- asilvering (talk) 02:36, 22 October 2024 (UTC)
Personal comment: the delete % is extremely high, even if the nominations are removed, but they're extremely accurate delete !votes and I'm not worried about this; I have to go back a full year to find the first AfD where the candidate !voted delete and the outcome was keep. -- asilvering (talk) 02:36, 22 October 2024 (UTC)
  • I've looked at the AN(I) contributions of all the candidates, and DoubleGrazing's contributions stood out positively. He's firm, but unfailingly kind to new editors and willing to diplomatically go against the grain when experienced editors show insufficient patience to newer editors. Important quality in an admin. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 07:36, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

Declined speedies

Ritchie333 (talk) (cont) 11:32, 24 October 2024 (UTC)

Analysis of random three of above:
  • User:LibreCompliance/sandbox [51] G12 Decline reason: "declining speedy deletion although I did speedy the draft and blank this page; a new user with 6 edits ought to be able make mistakes in sandbox space without undue administrative action". DoubleGrazing is technically right as WP:G12 saysThis applies to text pages that contain copyrighted material with no credible assertion of public domain, fair use, or a compatible free license, where there is no non-infringing content on the page worth saving. Indeed, the page consisted of two copied sentences. However, the decline provided a good WP:IAR reasoning.
  • Draft:Neeru Yadav [52] G5 and G11 Decline reason: "declined, this does not appear to be block evasion". The decliner is correct; the page has been extensively edited by a socks Category:Wikipedia sockpuppets of Theflyerofspace, but the initial creator User:PQR01 is a good faith user. The entire draft reads promotional but contains some inklings of usable prose, but I have seen promotional drafts speedied for less.
  • Draft:바카라사이트 추천 G2 [53] Decline reason: "not sure how this is a test". Only text in the page is (translated) "Cato Community provides diverse guides to Baccara", which is a gambling game. Title translation "Baccara website recommendation". I feel as WP:IAR applies here because there is no way this promotional one-liner will ever become a useful article. Ca talk to me! 12:31, 24 October 2024 (UTC)
    Overall, the three declined speedies I analysed were edge cases with no clear right and wrong, and it is natural for a prolific editor to make some mistakes. Ca talk to me! 12:39, 24 October 2024 (UTC)
    I've picked another random three:
    • Carla Walker-Miller A7. Contained a borderline claim of significance (speedy deletion is explicitly only for the "most obvious cases"), but original author added clearer claims after the nomination.
    • User:~seaofstars~/Mary Bukoh U5 and G11. Was tagged immediately after it was moved to userspace (from draft) explicitly so that it could be improved. U5 was egregiously bad, G11 was also incorrect as rewriting to avoid being exclusively promotional did not require TNT and no opportunity for doing so was given.
    • Draft:Viveen (admin only link) G12. Declined because the copyvio material could be (and subsequently was) removed. I've not looked at the source material but based on the difference between the tagged version and the first revision not-revision deleted the tagging was aggressive but not unacceptable.
    Based on the six analysed I'm seeing significant errors of judgement, particularly given that IAR has absolutely no place when it comes to speedy deletion. Thryduulf (talk) 14:40, 24 October 2024 (UTC)
  • I agree the seaofstars deletion is concerning, but since the February 2024, DoubleGrazing has nominated more than 1000 pages for speedy deletion, with 25 being declined. That is 0.025% [2.25%] error rate. Ca talk to me! 00:09, 25 October 2024 (UTC)
The above adminship discussion is preserved as an archive of the discussion. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the talk page of the nominated user). No further edits should be made to this page.

Pbritti

The following discussion is preserved as an archive of an administrator election candidacy that did not succeed. Please do not modify it.

Final (254/123/239); See official results (non-admin closure) – DreamRimmer Alt (talk) 17:18, 10 November 2024 (UTC)

Nomination

Pbritti (talk · contribs · he/him) – Hi, I'm Pbritti! I've been editing since 2018 and have generally focused on material related to Colorado, Virginia, and Christianity. Most of my contributions have been to mainspace content, particularly within the over 60 articles I've created. I firmly believe in Wikipedia's mission to freely distribute accurate and encyclopedic information on every notable subject and credit this mission with my decision to become a schoolteacher for my career. ~ Pbritti (talk) 16:46, 14 October 2024 (UTC)

Candidate, please indicate acceptance of the nomination here:

Self-nomination. ~ Pbritti (talk) 16:47, 14 October 2024 (UTC)

Please disclose whether you have ever edited Wikipedia for pay.

I have never and will never edit Wikipedia for financial/material compensation. ~ Pbritti (talk) 16:46, 14 October 2024 (UTC)

Questions for the candidate

Dear candidate, thank you for offering to serve Wikipedia as an administrator. Please answer these questions to provide guidance for participants:

1. Why are you interested in becoming an administrator?
A: Multiple editors have reached out to me off-project about considering adminship, generally due to my experience in content creation and non-admin administrative tasks. I've declined in the past. This was initially due to my own concerns about my level of experience and maturity, while more recently it has been due to off-project commitments. However, personal developments have made me more confident and comfortable moving forward with this. As an admin, I would want to focus on addressing vandalism, page protections, and (once I have enough experience) unblock requests. I would also consider helping with AfD/PROD closing/page deletion.
2. What are your best contributions to Wikipedia, and why?
A: My first major contribution was Colorado Coalfield War. It failed GA twice, but it taught me that I need to cooperate with other editors, even when I'm the primary editor on a particular article. Since then, I've done my best to embrace the best of Wikipedia's content policies in Book of Common Prayer (Unitarian) (one of the eight GAs I've work on) and Free and Candid Disquisitions (my only FA), as well as my articles on architecture. A more complete (if somewhat dated!) account of my content work is visible here. My work untangling a few messy piles of sockpuppets also remains a point of pride.
3. Have you been in any conflicts over editing in the past or have other users caused you stress? How have you dealt with it and how will you deal with it in the future?
A: Definitely. Perhaps the most frustrating was this one from June 2023. I was newly granted NPP permissions and made poorly considered draftifications. Instead of acknowledging the guidance of more experienced editors, I pushed back and got burned (I deserved that!). It took me a longer than it should have to learn that my ego should not get in the way of Wikipedia's mission. Since then, I have become increasingly willing to defer binary disputes to broader resolution processes and accept early suggestions of compromises. A recent dispute that !voters might want to review can be found here.

You may ask optional questions below. There is a limit of two questions per editor. Multi-part questions are disallowed, but you are allowed to ask follow-up questions related to previous questions.

Optional question from Thryduulf

4. Why did you choose to seek adminship via election rather than via a standard RFA?
A: A mixture of timing and encouragement. An admin reached out to me about three months ago about contemplating a standard RfA and I deferred at that point due to some (very positive!) developments in my private life. At the outset of the self-nom stage in the election process, multiple other editors who had asked me to consider adminship in the past encouraged me to try the election process. Upon reading the procedure for the election system, looking at my calendar, and considering concern about a lack of admins to counter abusive editing, I decided this was as good a time as any to place myself before my peers as a possible mop-wielder. ~ Pbritti (talk) 01:30, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

Optional question from Ganesha811

5. Are there any areas of adminship you do not plan to participate in, due to unfamiliarity or lack of technical knowledge? If you later decided you wanted to help in these areas, what would be your plan to become an effective admin in those areas?
A: I'm no computer whiz and still occasionally flub when I'm supposed to use a substituted template, so the more code-intensive side of the project just isn't for me. If I did become involved, it would probably take the shape of gradual improvement to my familiarity without the use of any admin tools until I could find a mentor or get some oversight, and even then it would be limited. Great question. ~ Pbritti (talk) 01:42, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

Optional question from Abminor

6. I'd like you to take a look at this AfD again, which afterwards you wrote the word "shameful" in your edit summary, which was undesired by the nominator and led to you being notified on your talk page. How were you feeling when you first noticed that AfD and what do you think you'll do instead if you see an AfD like that come up again?
A: Working backwards, I would definitely not act in an admin capacity on an AfD for an article or subject that I have significant proximity to (that was an article I had massively expanded). I reacted sharply and coarsely to the AfD due to my certainty that it was a notable subject and the repeated accusations by an editor other than the nom that it was somehow a conspiracy theory that I was peddling. I regret my use of the term "shameful" towards TarnishPath, especially since I consider them an exceptional and thoughtful editor. If something similar were to ever arise in a future AfD, I would instead emphasize policy-based justifications for my !vote and avoid anything that could inflame passions. ~ Pbritti (talk) 13:25, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

Optional question from Conlinp

7. What are your feelings on the idea of admins being recalled by the community, and would you be willing to undergo recall if the community raised concerns about your conduct as an admin?
A: I've considered this question in the past when it was posed to other candidates and find myself of two minds. If the community felt I should go through a recall process, I would accept that. As a blanket statement, though, I think the community does a decent job keeping admins accountable without a universalized recall process. I could be convinced otherwise, though, and have no strong feelings on it. ~ Pbritti (talk) 19:20, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

Optional question from TarnishedPath

8. You have previously engaged in personal attacks and casting of WP:ASPERSIONS at Special:Diff/1232130137 (refer to edit summary) and User talk:Pbritti/Archive 16#Shameful where you labelled as "shameful" the filing of an AFD on WP:NOR grounds and misrepresented my position, claiming that I had engaged in "[d]enialism of arson targeting Indigenous people and their places of worship". Can you advise why the community should elect someone who appears to be lacking in judgement as an admin? TarnishedPathtalk 08:04, 23 October 2024 (UTC)
A.: After reading your participation in an off-project thread and comments that you directed in relation to my editing and the subject, I assumed that you shared the opinion of another person in that thread. You clarified that this was not the case on my talk page. I am deeply sorry for making assumptions about your conduct and further apologize for being the cause of the discomfort that you expressed in the comment below. Regarding my judgement, perhaps the community would appreciate knowing that now I avoid seeing what others might be saying about me off-project. ~ Pbritti (talk) 11:28, 23 October 2024 (UTC)


Discussion

Please keep discussion constructive and civil. If you are unfamiliar with the nominee, please thoroughly review his contributions before commenting.

  • From looking through contribs, Pbritti seems to be pretty good at mediating disputes, and cooling off tense discussions - eg. this [54] on a talk page about a quarrel about Chinese medicine; this [55] bit of advice to a new blocked user who was attempting to add well meaning (but apparently unhelpful) external links to a library that they run; this [56] advice to a new editor who got reverted. In 2022 logged an ANI which ended up with a new user throwing personal attacks at them repeatedly while no admins intervened - became understandably annoyed but remained calm and referencing sources. Potentially good temperament for an admin. BugGhost🦗👻 07:16, 22 October 2024 (UTC)
    i have to corroborate the temperament aspect. occasionally i'll see him get into a dispute on content or otherwise (happens to the best of us) and he does a good job at avoiding escalation on his end. ... sawyer * he/they * talk 14:32, 22 October 2024 (UTC)
    I don't have any specific instances coming to mind but I endorse the above comments. -- asilvering (talk) 22:23, 22 October 2024 (UTC)
    I heavily disagree. Refer to Special:Diff/1232130137 where they initiated a dispute and then User talk:Pbritti/Archive 16#Shameful where they further inflamed it. If I had any confidence in the community enforcing WP:CIVIL (one of our five pillars) I would have taken their behaviour to WP:ANI at that time. TarnishedPathtalk 08:09, 23 October 2024 (UTC)
    I think that's why I asked this specific question; to seize the opportunity to ask anyone who may have made specific mistakes in the past to think like adults and how they would approach such matters. If I'm satisfied with their answer, I'd have high hopes that they'd be in better standing leading up to adminship. After all, we're all striving to improve ourselves. A♭m (Ring!) (Notes) 08:20, 23 October 2024 (UTC)
    To be honest I felt intimidated by that experience, unlike many experiences that I've had on Wikipedia, when I had another editor ABF about where I was coming from and implying that my motivation was that of a racist conspiracy theory. I think this is the first time I've ever engaged in administrator elections and only did so because of the strong felling that seeing that Pbritti had nominated elicited in me. Up until that point I respected them as having solid judgment and my respect for them was strongly diminished at that point in time. TarnishedPathtalk 08:45, 23 October 2024 (UTC)
    Thankyou @Pbritti for your candid response. Ps, in the conversation you linked even though your name was mentioned by another editor, my response wasn't referring to you but the other party that they mentioned. There's absolutely nothing wrong with wanting to know what others are saying about you but given that there was another name mentioned besides yours it might have been prudent for you to ask me about my statement and we might have avoided the situation. In any case I will happily support your RFA. TarnishedPathtalk 12:50, 23 October 2024 (UTC)
  • From a content review perspective, I can testify that Pbritti has been one of the most helpful reviewers I've worked with, especially given the rather difficult subject matter at Talk:Military dictatorship/GA1. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 16:19, 22 October 2024 (UTC)
  • I first encountered Pbritti as a helpful and encouraging new page reviewer, making good use of the tools to engage page creators. Having done a GA review of an article by Pbritti, I can also testify that his content creation is of exceptional quality. Dclemens1971 (talk) 17:05, 22 October 2024 (UTC)
  • Per above. SerialNumber54129 17:17, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

AfD record: 78.80% match rate, n of 203. 69 keep !votes to 116 delete !votes. Mildly subjective comment: 38 of those deletes are noms, which leaves the keep:delete rate pretty even; also a good handful of WP:ATDs. Some samples: a gracious withdrawal [57]; a clear and unopposed nom [58]; a nom where he's responded to a keep [59]; explaining his work and changing his mind [60]; another full nom (this one ending in merge) [61]. This one [62] is nearly a year old at this point but illustrates well the candidate's approach to collaboration and dialogue in AfDs. Anyone tempted to compare match rates when evaluating candidates will notice that Pbritti's is lower than most others; I find Pbritti's AfD participation better than most and would strongly warn against using the numbers as criteria for evaluation here. -- asilvering (talk)

Personal comment: I think this AfD record speaks really well of the candidate in general, beyond the bounds of simply understanding the related policies. Not afraid to disagree with others or to call for some WP:TNT where warranted; collaborative with others and happy to explain his thinking; makes a good honest effort to find sources before giving up, and points out where other sources might still be found. -- asilvering (talk) 23:16, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

GAN & FAC notes. Twelve GAN nominations and fourteen reviews; see list here. Their first three nominations failed, several years ago; since then every nomination has been successful. They failed one review after a thorough discussion; see Talk:Lalita Tademy/GA1. The rest, mostly in the last eighteen months, they promoted. Looking through some of them I see they put a good deal of work into the reviews, though I don't see explicit spotchecks. At FAC they have one nomination and four reviews, all in 2023 and 2024; see here. Not all the FAC reviews were in depth but at least one was. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 02:32, 23 October 2024 (UTC)

Declined speedies

Ritchie333 (talk) (cont) 11:32, 24 October 2024 (UTC)

The above adminship discussion is preserved as an archive of the discussion. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the talk page of the nominated user). No further edits should be made to this page.

Knightoftheswords281

The following discussion is preserved as an archive of an administrator election candidacy that did not succeed. Please do not modify it.

Final (59/308/249); See official results (non-admin closure) – DreamRimmer Alt (talk) 17:19, 10 November 2024 (UTC)

Nomination

Knightoftheswords281 (talk · contribs · they/them) – Good day y'all! I'm Knightoftheswords281 (KOTS, or Knights). I joined way back in mid-2020, but only started seriously editing in mid 2022. After being purely focused on mainspace content for approximately half a year, I began participating at WP:ITN in January of 2023, where I've been an on and off regular. Among my article creations include Titan submersible implosion, Death and funeral of Pope Benedict XVI, 2023 Michigan State University shooting, Bud Light boycott, Támara prison riot, and Killing of Nahel Merzouk; additionally, I wrote most of the foundation for the Solomon Peña, Good News International Ministries, and 2023 Messenia migrant boat disaster articles. I bear a clean block record, and seek to improve, not detract from the project. — Knightoftheswords 18:47, 14 October 2024 (UTC)

Please disclose whether you have ever edited Wikipedia for pay.

None of my editing has been the result of paid contributions, nor any other similar WP:COI. — Knightoftheswords 18:48, 14 October 2024 (UTC)

Questions for the candidate

Dear candidate, thank you for offering to serve Wikipedia as an administrator. Please answer these questions to provide guidance for participants:

1. Why are you interested in becoming an administrator?
A: I plan to use my administrative powers in ITN, mainly to clear the backlog and give the admins there a hand. The ITN admins are somewhat stretched to the limit, and it's become a chronic issue. It's not uncommon for older nominations that are ready to not get posted due to admins being overly stretched and either not noticing or not being available at the time; this is especially the case for RDs.
2. What are your best contributions to Wikipedia, and why?
A: I generally hold Killing of Nahel Merzouk and Good News International Ministries as some of my best work that was created by myself. Additionally, I am also proud of my work on the Titan submersible implosion and 2023 Messenia migrant boat disaster articles. Furthermore, although this isn't exactly an article, I popularized the practice of including vocal recordings within the infoboxes of biographical articles (see Jenna Ortega, Grover Cleveland, Vladlen Tatarsky, Samo Burja, Camila Cabello, etc.).
3. Have you been in any conflicts over editing in the past or have other users caused you stress? How have you dealt with it and how will you deal with it in the future?
A: I've had firey spats with editors early on (I recall my behavior in this particular exchange, as well as this one), and on ITN, which is known for its rather spicy nature, I had plenty of very aggressive and rude disputes with editors; I used to be particularly known for erecting colossal (emphasis), angry walls of texts in many of those such convos. I've come to ease myself a bit since then and especially on ITN, I generally hold the position that such behavior will just worsen the place.

You may ask optional questions below. There is a limit of two questions per editor. Multi-part questions are disallowed, but you are allowed to ask follow-up questions related to previous questions.

Optional question from Thryduulf

4. Why did you choose to seek adminship via election rather than via a standard RFA?
A: I've considered running for adminship for around a year plus, mainly due to periodic concerns raised on WP:ITNT about shortages in admin power, with the occasional suggestion about someone running as an "ITN admin." When I heard a few months ago that the community was running a test for an admin election system, I decided to use the opportunity to throw my hat into the ring; besides, I've always been keen on being involved in experimental things like this on the project. Furthermore, I admit that it does feel a little less intimidating running here as well, which is partially why this system is e even being tested IIRC. — Knightoftheswords 15:43, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

Optional question from Conyo14

5. Are there any areas/topics of Wikipedia that you wouldn't consider touching with a 10-foot pole prior to becoming an admin that you may delve into?
A: Generally speaking no. While I generally hold that an admin should have broad awareness of the wider world of the mop, I'm mainly concerned with ITN, which is the part of the project space where I work the most. Even excluding ITN, there really isn't anywhere I can see myself going that I would be unusually adverse to prior to receiving the mop. I guess the closest thing would be templates, which I do see myself dabbling in from time to time, however as of now, it's been limited by my lack of expertise on the topic and WP:TEMPLATE-PROTECTION. — Knightoftheswords 15:50, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

Optional question from Ganesha811

6. Related to the question above - are there any areas of adminship you do not plan to participate in, due to unfamiliarity or lack of technical knowledge? If you later decided you wanted to help in these areas, what would be your plan to become an effective admin in those areas?
A: WP:SPI always seemed too technical for me, and unlike other technical stuff, like most things WP:BACKLOG, doesn't seem to be having a manpower shortage IIRC that would warrant more hands on deck. To become an effective admin there, I would need to learn more about SP patrolling, which I feel would be where I would do best. — Knightoftheswords 15:58, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

Optional question from Trainsandotherthings

7. In August 2023, WaltClip left a message on your talk page which began "I have to say that your recent content at WP:ITNC is becoming disruptive" and highlighted a scathing 3kb comment of yours. While all involved in the discussion on your talk page appear to have apologized and worked things out, how has this informed your participation at ITN going forward?
A: In history, certain stories that are false or extreme examples of something like let them eat cake get nonetheless used to convey a certain sentiment about a topic and I very much see that discussion as one of those. It's not exactly unknown that the culture on WP:ITN can be incredibly toxic. People coalesce into distinct cliques, much of the standards there are based on popularity/ickiness than real merit, and it is to an extent anarchic. Hell, that comment you mentioned was in part of a wider drama around the Lucy Letby nominations (1, 2) over a reoccuring topic of contention, national notability (specifically relating to stories on either side of the pond. In societies, values, taboos, responsibilities, and other abstract ideals might feel excesisvely constricting but as anyone who grew up in a society where they were absent, they're the difference between a functional society where people have high social trust and corruption is low, and collapsing societies where corruption, anti-social behavior, degeneracy, barbarism, and random violence and rape is common. I think that ITN (and to extent Wikipedia as a whole) needs to err more on the side of having orderly values rather than social anarchy. That discussion was one of the things that incentivized me to really cool down my temper on that side of the project. — Knightoftheswords 16:33, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

Optional questions from Bunnypranav

8. You’ve mentioned that your earlier participation in ITN involved disputes and aggressive behavior. Could you give an example of a recent situation where you successfully managed a disagreement in a more constructive and collaborative way?
A: I've generally avoided tense conversations on ITN in the past year; there aren't really any recent examples of major disputes on ITN involving me. My cooldown in behavior has primarily manifested in, well, generally not trying to get involved in pointlessly fiery conflicts, avoiding escalation, and writing way less than I used to back in the day. Furthermore, I did start to bring more issues to WP:ITNT in an attempt to gather WP:LOCALCONSENSUS. — Knightoftheswords 17:56, 22 October 2024 (UTC)
9. You acknowledged havingfiery spats and writing angry walls of text in disputes in the contentious areas of ITN. As an admin (who intends to spend most time in ITN), how will you ensure that your past behaviors don’t affect your decision-making and power to close discussions?
A: I've become less quick to anger on ITN as a method of emotional moderation on ITN, and I've also gotten over some WP:GRUDGEs that in retrospect probably subconsciously informed some of the particular comments that I made. Generally, the whole place needs to calm down, and as an admin, I'll make sure that it isn't just me that's cooling down. Furthermore, a lot of the users that I had spats with don't seem to be as active there now, so hopefully this will aid the process. — Knightoftheswords 18:00, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

Optional question from Thebiguglyalien

10. Several editors (disclosure that I am among them) have raised concerns that ITN deviates from the rest of the project in regard to how it evaluates sources and how administrators determine consensus. How do you intend to evaluate consensus as an ITN admin?
A: Overall, I do believe that ITN is a place here that needs strong-willed admin action. I believe the whole "hands off, I don't want to get dragged into the mess" attitude that some ITN admins have has allowed a lot of issues there to intensify to an intolerable scale. This isn't to discredit their work (Godspeed), and seeing how admins who have tried to reestablish order and competence at that part of the project have been treated, it is understandable to a degree. Generally, though, I do think that as an admin, I would have a duty to be a bit more harsh in reading consensus. It seems that as part of this hands off approach, the type of stuff WP:NOTADEMOCRACY is meant to advise against has taken hold, where if enough editors raise a stink, irrespective of the actual quality of their arguments, a nom won't be posted (Wikipedia democratic voting is worse than normal democratic voting since the "consensus" factor means that the threshold goes from >50% to like >2/3). ne of my first noms on ITN, the Tyre Nichols killing saw a very excellent write up by Snow Rise (talk · contribs) on the topic, in which he correctly highlighted that most of the rationales/nota-criteria on ITN are really just rationalizations for WP:IDONTLIKEIT, and how unanchored the place is from WP:OR, WP:WEIGHT, and the like (also yes, the fact that WP:NOTNEWS is frequently invoked there is telling enough of ITN's dysfunctionality). On Wikipedia, when we judge article notability, we judge it based on sources and coverage, and for a while now I've integrated that philosophy into my ITN nota-criteria. Now obviously, for say excessively-tabloidy news stories and the like, this can be subject to WP:IAR, however, I think a broad analysis of this is a good way of measuring notability. I will also oppose the usual BS stuff (solely opposing stories because their from a certain country, !votes with no rationale, and I will try to help clamp down on the toxicity if needed [Political bias, random personal attacks, etc.]. ITN needs serious and immediate reform; although I've only been contributing for under two years now, it's clear that we are seriously testing community patience, with there being increasing calls to abolish ITN altogether, including dozens in the discussions you've linked (I support a hybrid of 1 and 2, but I've been letting the proposed amendments and discussions sit in my mind for a week or so). — Knightoftheswords 18:52, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

Optional question from Conlinp

11. What are your feelings on the idea of admins being recalled by the community, and would you be willing to undergo recall if the community raised concerns about your conduct as an admin?
A: I think that administrator recall as an institution is way too obsolete for me to participate in it. I find the process to be a vague, largely forgotten, and obscure aspect of Wikipedia (look at the revhistory, or this page as an example). There are a large number of editors listed there who clearly aren't active or event present anymore on Wikipedia (as pointed out by Just Step Sideways (talk · contribs), five years ago on what is the latest comment on its talk page). It also seems like something that could get hijacked for popularity contest reasons. There have been so few recalls (the last 2019, and the last one that actually wasn't canceled prematurely in 2014) that I don't even know how it would play out going into 2025. It seems like something that was created in good faith but clearly had major shortcomings that have effectively made it nothing but another memory in the dustbin of the project. — Knightoftheswords 19:20, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

Optional question from BeanieFan11

12. Could you explain the bizarre redirects you created that are listed in the below section?
A: Virtually all the redirects are from a time on Wikipedia where I effectively wasn't even active for a year. I used to create a TON of redirects early on, and I was a lot younger and a tad bit immature back then and wasn't as serious with this Wikipedian task as I am years later. I've grown since then and was successfully nominated (without my knowledge) for autopatroll back in March. — Knightoftheswords 22:09, 22 October 2024 (UTC)
To follow up on the comments made by Cryptic (talk · contribs), those particular redirects were (in retrospect) not fully thought-out attempts to highlight racial dog whistles, as I explained to Cyrius (talk · contribs) (the one who deleted the 109/110 countries redirect) here. There wasn't any malicious intent. — Knightoftheswords 18:33, 24 October 2024 (UTC)


Discussion

Please keep discussion constructive and civil. If you are unfamiliar with the nominee, please thoroughly review their contributions before commenting.

AfD record: 72.70% match rate, n of 22. 16 keep !votes to 2 delete !votes. Mildly subjective comment: the match % is on the low side compared to the other candidates in this election but I don't recommend putting much stock into it as the candidate does not participate in AfD often and evidently mostly joins in when they see something that they think shouldn't be deleted. There are a couple vote-stacky ones like this but I don't think it's a real concern. Here are some more substantial ones: [63], [64]. In short, nothing much to go by here. -- asilvering (talk) 20:49, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

GAN & FAC notes. No activity at GAN or FAC. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 02:34, 23 October 2024 (UTC)

Some of these were captured above in comments by Cryptic and SN, but here's everything odd and/or concerning I found in deleted contributions (for the benefit of non-administrators):
Selective deleted redirects 2022-2023
  • 17:22, 21 August 2023 (diff | deletion log | view) +20‎ N Big blue blob ←Redirected page to France Tags: New redirect Visual edit
  • 17:22, 21 August 2023 (diff | deletion log | view) +20‎ N The big blue blob ←Redirected page to France Tags: New redirect Visual edit
  • 17:20, 21 August 2023 (diff | deletion log | view) +28‎ N Ottoblob ←Redirected page to Ottoman Empire Tags: New redirect Visual edit
  • 03:19, 11 June 2023 (diff | deletion log | view) +478‎ N Talk:Bo’oh’o’wa’er →Contested deletion: new section Tag: 2017 wikitext editor
  • 02:35, 11 June 2023 (diff | deletion log | view) +49‎ N Bo’oh’o’wa’er ←Redirected page to Regional accents of English#England Tags: New redirect 2017 wikitext editor
  • 22:11, 5 June 2023 (diff | deletion log | view) +22‎ N Hexahectaenneacontakaiheptagon ←Redirected page to Colorado Tags: New redirect Visual edit
  • 01:58, 19 May 2023 (diff | deletion log | view) +80‎ N 3rd World country with a Gucci belt ←Redirected page to United States Tags: New redirect 2017 wikitext editor
  • 01:55, 19 May 2023 (diff | deletion log | view) +78‎ N Third World country with a Gucci belt←Redirected page to United States Tags: New redirect 2017 wikitext editor
  • 21:22, 4 February 2023 (diff | deletion log | view) +26‎ N Tonald Drump ←Redirected page to Donald Trump Tags: New redirect Visual edit
  • 17:52, 21 January 2023 (diff | deletion log | view) +49‎ N 13/50 ←Redirected page to Race and crime in the United States Tags: New redirect Visual edit
  • 05:10, 19 December 2022 (diff | deletion log | view) +18‎ N Da joos ←Redirected page to Jews Tags: New redirect 2017 wikitext editor
  • 06:37, 15 December 2022 (diff | deletion log | view) +45‎ N 109 countries ←Redirected page to Expulsions and exoduses of Jews Tags: New redirect 2017 wikitext editor
  • 06:36, 15 December 2022 (diff | deletion log | view) +45‎ N 110 countries ←Redirected page to Expulsions and exoduses of Jews Tags: New redirect 2017 wikitext editor
  • 04:55, 31 October 2022 (diff | deletion log | view) +26‎ N Meat riding ←Redirected page to Woman on top Tag: New redirect
  • 04:55, 31 October 2022 (diff | deletion log | view) +26‎ N Meatriding ←Redirected page to Woman on top Tag: New redirect
  • 04:55, 31 October 2022 (diff | deletion log | view) +26‎ N Dick riding ←Redirected page to Woman on top Tag: New redirect
  • 04:55, 31 October 2022 (diff | deletion log | view) +26‎ N Dickriding ←Redirected page to Woman on top Tag: New redirect
  • 04:53, 31 October 2022 (diff | deletion log | view) +22‎ N Cheeks clapped ←Redirected page to Anal sex Tag: New redirect
  • 04:51, 31 October 2022 (diff | deletion log | view) +22‎ N Sloppy toppy ←Redirected page to Fellatio Tag: New redirect
  • 04:50, 31 October 2022 (diff | deletion log | view) +22‎ N Giving top ←Redirected page to Oral Sex Tag: New redirect
  • 16:37, 21 October 2022 (diff | deletion log | view) +22‎ N Yeetus the Fetus ←Redirected page to Abortion Tag: New redirect
  • 18:08, 18 October 2022 (diff | deletion log | view) +22‎ N Yeetus that Fetus ←Redirected page to Abortion Tag: New redirect
  • 03:07, 18 October 2022 (diff | deletion log | view) +57‎ N Full protection ←Redirected page to Wikipedia:Protection policy#Full protection Tag: New redirect
  • 18:43, 17 October 2022 (diff | deletion log | view) +57‎ N Semi-Protection ←Redirected page to Wikipedia:Protection policy#Semi-protection Tag: New redirect
Apologies for the poor formatting. While most of the sexually explicit ones were indeed in October 2022, there's plenty of bizarre ones in 2023 also, and the 19 December 2022 creation is in poor taste in my view. Daniel (talk) 22:34, 23 October 2024 (UTC)
Their answer to Q12 seems to put some light on these childish redirects. I'll take it with a grain of salt that a majority came in October of 2022, with them ceasing in August of last year. Between that time and now, it appears they've matured in a fast enough span of time to be an extremely better editor. Is a year enough though to ignore those sorta kinda WP:NOTHERE redirect attempts? Conyo14 (talk) 00:01, 24 October 2024 (UTC)
Fair point, and your last (rhetorical) question is indeed the key one. Will be a judgement call for voters. Daniel (talk) 00:14, 24 October 2024 (UTC)
Oh wow. I hadn't noticed 13/50. [65] - the edit summary used while nominating it as a G10 - is a good summary if you don't immediately recognize it. —Cryptic 02:53, 24 October 2024 (UTC)
And an explanation of the 109 countries and 110 countries redirs. —Cryptic 03:05, 24 October 2024 (UTC)
Thanks for the context, Cryptic. If the candidate has any response to this, I'm all ears. Daniel (talk) 03:22, 24 October 2024 (UTC)
Wow, what a stretch and jump to conclusions. I can see that Kots really wanted some connection of dots there, but perhaps in good faith. I too would like to hear their thoughts on it. Conyo14 (talk) 05:19, 24 October 2024 (UTC)
While most of these are in poor taste, I can at least understand why an editor not familiar with common redirect practices might create them in good faith—especially since there are plenty of valid redirects that we'd also consider to be in poor taste like many of those in Category:Redirects from non-neutral names and Category:Redirects from colloquial names. Also, Hexahectaenneacontakaiheptagon is a brilliant word and I weep at its deletion. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 03:34, 24 October 2024 (UTC)
The above adminship discussion is preserved as an archive of the discussion. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the talk page of the nominated user). No further edits should be made to this page.

Pharaoh of the Wizards

The following discussion is preserved as an archive of an administrator election candidacy that did not succeed. Please do not modify it.

Final (154/226/236); See official results (non-admin closure) – DreamRimmer Alt (talk) 17:19, 10 November 2024 (UTC)

Nomination

Pharaoh of the Wizards (talk · contribs · they/them) – I have been editing since 2006 that is over 18 years and plan to stay in the project for life. Hence feel that I having tools would be a net positive for the Project. I have never edited for pay and precisely I do not edit or otherwise contribute to any WikiMedia article or project on behalf of any employer, client, or affiliated person, organization, or other entity; nor do I receive or solicit any compensation for any edits or other contributions.Pharaoh of the Wizards (talk) 19:42, 14 October 2024 (UTC)

Candidate, please indicate acceptance of the nomination here:

Yes, I accept.Pharaoh of the Wizards (talk) 19:49, 14 October 2024 (UTC)

Please disclose whether you have ever edited Wikipedia for pay.

No, I have not.Pharaoh of the Wizards (talk) 19:49, 14 October 2024 (UTC)

Questions for the candidate

Dear candidate, thank you for offering to serve Wikipedia as an administrator. Please answer these questions to provide guidance for participants:

1. Why are you interested in becoming an administrator?
A: I am a Wikipedian for life and I have reported over 6900 users in UAA and over 4900 to AIV and taken part in over 5500 AFD.I have done thousands of CSD nominations ,I do work heavily in Admin areas. Hence feel that my becoming an admin will be net positive to the Project and can help share the workload.
2. What are your best contributions to Wikipedia, and why?
A: I have created over 3000 articles and my work in UAA ,AIV and AFD is my best contribution.
3. Have you been in any conflicts over editing in the past or have other users caused you stress? How have you dealt with it and how will you deal with it in the future?
A: I am strict follower 1RR and have not been involved in any in any significant conflict with anyone.

You may ask optional questions below. There is a limit of two questions per editor. Multi-part questions are disallowed, but you are allowed to ask follow-up questions related to previous questions.

Optional question from Thryduulf

4. Why did you choose to seek adminship via election rather than via a standard RFA?
A: Thank you for your question. Nothing specific a new electoral process opened up and decided to sign up. Personally I have considered running for adminship in the past but never seriously.

Optional question from Conyo14

5. Among your thousands of articles, which area of Wikipedia tends to be your favorites (i.e. sports, politics, sciences, BLPs, etc.)?
A: Thanks for your question ,I am a generalist enjoy creating articles in all topics nothing specific.

Optional question from Ganesha811

6. Are there any areas of adminship you do not plan to participate in, due to unfamiliarity or lack of technical knowledge? If you later decided you wanted to help in these areas, what would be your plan to become an effective admin in those areas?
A: Thanks for your question. I am going to be careful even in areas I am familiar with and do plan to start out in areas I am most comfortable with. I plan to start gradually and slowly. I do not plan to participate in categories. If I decide to take part ,I will first take part in CFD discussions for a year before trying to close any CFD discussions. I know other editors and admins are more familiar than me in categories. I see no need for every admin to be able to handle and participate in every complex administrative duty.

Optional question from Novem Linguae

7. I notice you have deleted some messages from your user talk without adding them to your user talk archive, for example here and here. Can you talk a bit about your thoughts on user talk archiving and transparency?
A: Thanks for your question. I made a mistake in deleting these messages do not recall how it happened.

Optional question from Conlinp

8. What are your feelings on the idea of admins being recalled by the community, and would you be willing to undergo recall if the community raised concerns about your conduct as an admin?
A: Thanks for your question I am willing to undergo recall if concerns were raised about my conduct by the community.

Optional question from Mach61

9. Your projectspace messages have a lot of grammatical errors (I can point out specific examples if you wish). Should you be elected, do you intend to proofread what you type more intently for messages relating to your admin work (such as block notices)?
A: Thanks for your question. I will proof read and use spell check and will do everything possible to reduce grammatical errors.

Discussion

Please keep discussion constructive and civil. If you are unfamiliar with the nominee, please thoroughly review their contributions before commenting.

AfD record: 97.70% match rate, n of 459. 87 keep !votes to 302 delete !votes. Mildly subjective comment: this is clear vote-stacking. Pharaoh's comments tend to be late or the very last in a discussion, very brief, and would not change the outcome: [66], [67], [68], [69], [70], [71], etc. Many of their votes are as the third delete !voter (eg [72]), which as a closer I usually appreciate, since it helps avoid soft deletion or no consensus closes for lack of participation - but there's still an expectation that participants aren't just agreeing with the nom without doing any further checks. For someone who says AfD is their best contribution, I'd like to see some substantial deletion rationales, but I didn't find any. -- asilvering (talk) 19:27, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

GAN & FAC notes. One GAN nomination, in 2009; see here. Four FAC reviews, in 2007 and 2008; see here. All are one-liners, though to be fair that wasn't all that unusual back then. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 02:40, 23 October 2024 (UTC)

Their answer to Q9 doesn't show that the answers to the optional questions are being grammar checked. Either English is not their first language or they're typing too fast. I am not disregarding their efforts through AfD. It seems they very much enjoy that route, and do quite well in it. Conyo14 (talk) 14:38, 23 October 2024 (UTC)

  • I have seen Pharaoh around at AfD and I thought I had a positive impression. However, Asilvering's comment above prompted me to check the editor interaction tool. It seems we've only actually participated in the same AfD three times 1, 2, 3, and unfortunately all three match Asilverings assesment of vote-stacking with minimal rationale. I am also concerned by punctuation, spacing, and grammar issues in the nomination and questions above, which I guess I never noticed at AfD due to the terse !votes. Toadspike [Talk] 16:32, 23 October 2024 (UTC)
  • The candidate is not giving me much to go on, with their one-line answers to nearly all the questions.-- Pawnkingthree (talk) 19:09, 23 October 2024 (UTC)
    Agreed. Answers to the questions should be longer, so that we can get to know the candidate and their thought process. –Novem Linguae (talk) 10:42, 24 October 2024 (UTC)

Declined speedies

Very long list, though the % of total noms declined is unstated

Ritchie333 (talk) (cont) 11:33, 24 October 2024 (UTC)

The above adminship discussion is preserved as an archive of the discussion. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the talk page of the nominated user). No further edits should be made to this page.

Bastun

The following discussion is preserved as an archive of an administrator election candidacy that did not succeed. Please do not modify it.

Final (186/177/253); See official results (non-admin closure) – DreamRimmer Alt (talk) 17:20, 10 November 2024 (UTC)

Nomination

Bastun (talk · contribs · they/them) – Back in the early noughties, I noticed more and more search results pointing me at a site called Wikipedia. I added the site to my favourites, and created an account in 2005. I've been here ever since, 19 years now. I edit in a large number of areas - Ireland and Irish-related, politics, current affairs, pop culture, and... apparently I've over 4,000 pages on my watchlist now. I don't create many new articles, but do my best to improve and maintain existing ones, revert vandalism, and generally contribute where I can. Since January of this year, I've been involved in WP:NPP, an area I find very interesting, getting me out of my 'comfort zone' areas of interest.

I have a clean block log (I received one block, in error, but the logs can't be expunged). I've never edited with another account, and I have never edited Wikipedia for pay. BastunĖġáḍβáś₮ŭŃ! 20:30, 14 October 2024 (UTC)

Questions for the candidate

Dear candidate, thank you for offering to serve Wikipedia as an administrator. Please answer these questions to provide guidance for participants:

1. Why are you interested in becoming an administrator?
A: Wikipedia needs admins, and we have gone from several simultaneous RfAs, on a rolling basis, to one or two a month. And we are losing admins, too. I would like to volunteer my services. The mop, if I am successful, will mostly be used around WP:NPP-related issues, such as WP:PROD and WP:CSD, and WP:AIV. Some years ago I built my then employer's intranet using the Mediawiki platform, but I wouldn't call myself familiar with the tools. I learn quickly, though.
2. What are your best contributions to Wikipedia, and why?
A: As mentioned, I don't create too many new articles, but Mother and Baby Homes Commission of Investigation and Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse are both articles I created, focusing on a murky area of Ireland's past, that are both B-class, and I'm quite proud of them. I should really revisit them to see about raising them to GA status. Back in 2009, I was heavily involved in WP:IECOLL's discussions on how to resolve the perennial question of what to name the various Ireland-related articles, which resulted in the Poll on Ireland article names. This resulted in a two-year moratorium on any move discussions and, until earlier this year, an agreed venue for all such move proposals. On a more whimsical note, on 27 August, 2024, I got to write the edit summaryNo Camel Case, per WP:MOS! on the article Kharai camel!
3. Have you been in any conflicts over editing in the past or have other users caused you stress? How have you dealt with it and how will you deal with it in the future?
A: I'm an Irish editor, who edits articles concerning The Troubles, so yes, I've been involved in many disputes related to that area, in the past! Thankfully, that's an area that's become a lot quieter over the last 15 years, with hardline Republican and Loyalist editors seemingly moving away from the project. I would have had disagreements with some editors on tangentially-related issues in this area in the past (such as the Ireland-article-naming disputes), but we are now friendly, any hatchets long since buried. I have been involved in other disputes, the most significant one in recent years being a full four years ago now, and I don't think I've had cause to visit AN/I since. That last one related to Wikipedia:ARBGG and yes, it was stressful at the time. When challenged, as I was, I will absolutely defend myself, with diffs, where necessary. I've largely avoided the more contentious articles in that area since, and, largely thanks to a GA drive by some interested editors, the main articles in that area (or at least, the ones involving the dispute that I was involved in) are a lot quieter, too. If I am successful in my application, I am obviously not going to use my mop in either Troubles- or ARBGG-related areas, nor on articles where I've done any significant editing. In the future? We have some good WP:DR processes, and I am more than happy to proactively use WP:XRV while learning the ropes to check "am I doing the right thing here?"

You may ask optional questions below. There is a limit of two questions per editor. Multi-part questions are disallowed, but you are allowed to ask follow-up questions related to previous questions.

Optional question from Tryptofish

4. Thank you for indicating that you will consider yourself WP:INVOLVED for issues related to The Troubles. Looking back, after a long time, what if anything would you like to say about our interaction here? Thanks. --Tryptofish (talk) 00:50, 22 October 2024 (UTC)
A: Wow, that's some ten years ago, now. For context, IIRC this was a content dispute over whether it was appropriate to class the main non-governmental participants (and one minor fringe group) in The Troubles as Christian terrorists, and/or to describe The Troubles themselves as Christian terrorism. You had many sources that described them as a conflict with a religious dimension, and a couple that called them specifically Christian terrorism. Others including me were strongly opposed to inclusion. My feelings on the subject were perhaps best summarised in this edit. Regarding our interaction, I think my frustration was clear at times, but ultimately, thanks to all of the participants, the result was a better article. I've not been back to it too much, but the structure now is much improved, imho (the sections on individual conflicts in various countries were removed and the article became more general.) And I see 'The Troubles' was removed from the 'See also' section sometime between October '21 and October '22.

Optional question from Thryduulf

5. Why did you choose to seek adminship via election rather than via a standard RFA?
A: Public humiliation is not one of my kinks :-) Joking aside, though, I believe the standard RFA process is deeply flawed, and is probably a large contributory factor in the drop-off in the number of candidates. I may or may not be elected to the position of admin, but at least it'll be a simple "you made it/didn't make it, with votes of X:Y", rather than a list of fellow editors who you work with every day, but now you know how they really feel about you :-)

Optional question from Novem Linguae

6. It looks like back in 2021, you removed a message from your user talk page and used the edit summaryLike I said, fuck off. You appear to have missed the whole point of Star Trek, from Gene's days to the present.. And in 2019, you used the edit summaryYou should apply some butthurt cream, there, Mr Snowflake. Both messages were certainly appropriate to remove since they both contained hate speech. In general, what are your thoughts on leaving snappy edit summaries? Are there circumstances where it is appropriate?
A: If someone appears on an editor's talk page with an anti-Semitic or racist remark, or calls that editor a "libtard", then in all honesty, I don't think it's inappropriate to snap back, at least in an edit summary. Full disclosure, I've also told someone in an article's talk page edit summary to eff off with their racism. I got a mail from an admin about that, well deserved - it's not appropriate for article space. It is also not appropriate for an admin, though, at all, and if elected, I would obviously not rise to reacting to trolling, abuse, etc.

Optional question from Ganesha811

7. Are there any areas of adminship you do not plan to participate in, due to unfamiliarity or lack of technical knowledge? If you later decided you wanted to help in these areas, what would be your plan to become an effective admin in those areas?
A: As mentioned in my self-nomination above, I've worked on the back end of Mediawiki software (actually, that's over a decade ago now, so not in any way up to date!), and I learn quickly. I wouldn't rule myself out of any particular area of admin work, but obviously, working in IT and having had access to the mop on that work-wiki, I'm very aware of how much there is to learn, and that's without even considering policies and procedures here. A good example is when I responded to the call for new NPP patrollers earlier this year, and there turned out to be a lot more to it than I had first expected! So, yes, learning curves, and many of them! I will not be breaking new ground, though - we have noticeboards for all the relevant areas where I can read up, ask questions if necessary, and get guidance. (This suits my wiki-availability - it tends to be chunks of 10 to 30 minutes, through the day, rather than several hours at a time). There isn't really an area I can say I wouldn't work in, but my plan would be to take things slowly, getting competent in one or two areas at a time.

Optional question from Conlinp

8. What are your feelings on the idea of admins being recalled by the community, and would you be willing to undergo recall if the community raised concerns about your conduct as an admin?
A: Admins can mess up and make mistakes, as anyone can, but if they are continually making mistakes, or displaying conduct issues, then yes, they should be open to recall, and I would absolutely be open to recall myself.


Discussion

Please keep discussion constructive and civil. If you are unfamiliar with the nominee, please thoroughly review their contributions before commenting.

GAN & FAC notes. No activity at GAN or FAC. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 02:41, 23 October 2024 (UTC)

AfD record: Based on the responses above, Bastun has a clue. And since Asilvering hasn't gotten around to analyzing AfD stats here yet, I'll do it: 83.9% match rate, n of 124. 47 keep, 105 delete (plus 6 merge and 2 redir). Of their nominations, 69% were deleted, but this is skewed by 6 no consensus/other closes and 9 unclosed AfDs. These stats seem decent to me. Toadspike [Talk] 16:49, 23 October 2024 (UTC)

  • Thanks for providing the missing stats. As for clue, I urge all editors to take a close look at Q4, the one that I asked. I agree with the part of the answer that says that multiple editors (although I will emphasize that it was not all of them, as stated in the answer to Q4) did indeed work through to making the page much better (relatively) than it had been. I could substantiate that I played a significant (not unique) role in making that happen. But look at the discussion I linked to, and please evaluate for yourselves whether the answer here, that there was just some "frustration", is an adequate way of describing it in retrospect. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:14, 23 October 2024 (UTC)
    The response to your request for source verification was not at all constructive and probably shows a misunderstanding of WP:BURDEN. Thankfully, the response under "Shortening of section" was more positive. I cannot view one interaction from ten years ago as disqualifying, especially when the candidate indicated that they will consider themselves INVOLVED in this topic area, but Tryptofish is right that others have to evaluate for themselves. Toadspike [Talk] 10:21, 24 October 2024 (UTC)
I'll add a bit more to the stats above: 40 of those are nominations, which brings their delete !vote % down even more. Some recent noms where an obvious WP:ATD isn't considered beforehand, eg [73] (imo not a huge concern, but worth a reminder that we should consider alternatives that preserve page history when possible); I'm confused by the wording of this recent nom [74], since that Guardian review wasn't hiding; but these are pretty small potatoes and I'd say their AfD participation and rationales is good overall - explains when necessary, writes shorter comments/rationales when it's not. (fwiw, I don't think it was necessary on this one [75], but you're not going to make 40 AfD noms without getting accused of a failure to WP:BEFORE at least once.) I think you'd have to be pretty picky to say this record doesn't reflect well on the candidate in general. -- asilvering (talk) 02:15, 24 October 2024 (UTC)
Personal comment: Boy oh boy have I ever gone back and forth about writing this comment at all. Here's the shortest thing I can come up with: I think in a regular RFA bits and pieces of this AfD record are the kind of thing that would have people saying "come back in six months". I think that would be bs to say during an RFA, and I think it's even more bs to say now, when we're trialling an election system we may never repeat (let alone in six months) that was created in large part because people felt RFA was too much of a meatgrinder. If this nonspecific vibes comment makes you want to vote oppose on this candidate, well, I can't stop you, but I think you're missing the point and I wish you wouldn't. It's worth looking at the candidate's XTools here: for the past several years, they've had a combined user talk and project-space edit proportion of <15%. This year, so far it's at 28%. That's in large part due to getting more active in stuff like AfD and NPP. So this is what the candidate looks like when they're learning the ropes of something new - and my conclusion is that they're doing perfectly fine. If they're even marginally more careful with the admin tools, they'll continue to be fine. -- asilvering (talk) 18:37, 24 October 2024 (UTC)

Declined speedies

Ritchie333 (talk) (cont) 11:33, 24 October 2024 (UTC)

  • One of my highest priorities when looking at potential admins is acceptance of WP:BRINE. In my eyes, the answer to Q6 is disqualifying. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 16:33, 24 October 2024 (UTC)
    @Thebiguglyalien I'll admit that I was really concerned about this myself. So I dug. A lot. And I think it's fine. Here is a recent BRIE example that came up while I was looking through AfDs. I thought it was snappy, but I don't know if everyone would agree. (Let the record state that Bastun is correct on all counts and that the comment at the bottom made me laugh.) Here is a kind of snippy edit summary. In the last four months or so, there's nothing even approaching those years-old edit summaries. What I found instead was a lot of kind and encouraging NPP comments, and evidence of graciously taking advice and correction. I'm very much willing to believe that when Bastun says they'll further moderate their behaviour as an admin, they mean it. And I really care quite a lot about BRIE and being helpful to newcomers.
    There's one exception to this, going back years: Ireland. Bastun, I'm glad to see you acknowledge that you're WP:INVOLVED when it comes to the Troubles and WP:ARBGG. If you'll take advice from me on this, I think you should scrupulously stay away from using the tools in anything related to Ireland at all, and also do whatever it takes to get your hackles to go down before you respond to anyone on the topic when you're annoyed.
    I came into this one expecting to oppose. We're not supposed to state our voting intentions, so instead I'll say this: Bastun, if you don't get elected this go around and you want to talk about RFA, you know where to find me. -- asilvering (talk) 19:12, 24 October 2024 (UTC)
  • I've edited in the Troubles topic area and I have a lot of related articles on my watchlist so Bastun's name pops up on my screen from time to time. I've found them calm and level-headed, and willing to listen to other viewpoints, even in heated discussions on emotive subjects. They've had rollback since before I joined, reviewer for about as long as it's been a thing, and I granted them rollback at the end of last year. I find it amusing that the shortcut "BRINE" is used to chastise someone for salty remarks! ;) I intend to support, though I would say from experience that it's not a good idea to feed the trolls—however tempting! HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 20:11, 24 October 2024 (UTC)
  • I feel like I should explain a bit more about why I raised the issue of that old discussion that touched on The Troubles. I pointed out in my question that it was from a long time ago. And my question gave the candidate an opportunity to go back and point out what, in retrospect, he might have done differently. His answer seems to me to rather conspicuously avoid doing that. In the original discussion, I pointed out (politely) misrepresentation of sources, taking a source to say one thing when it actually treated it with more nuance. A third editor came along and found additional sources that solved the problem, and that editor and I quickly agreed. But the candidate responded the way that he did, and while I can detect frustration there, I'm also seeing POV-pushing. At the time, and again in the answer on this RfA page, the candidate portrays me as trying to treat The Troubles as religious terrorism. But if you look at what I actually said at the time, that wasn't what I was doing. I simply wanted the page to reflect the source material, where the source material seemed to me, and to other editors, to be taking a more nuanced approach than all-or-nothing. I think it's good that HJ hasn't been seeing this more recently (but how did they have rollback since before you joined, while you gave them rollback last year? :) ), but I feel like this is something that editors should evaluate. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:59, 24 October 2024 (UTC)
    I think HJ meant 'new page reviewer', rather than 'rollback' - he added me to the former group in December of last year. BastunĖġáḍβáś₮ŭŃ! 22:26, 24 October 2024 (UTC)
The above adminship discussion is preserved as an archive of the discussion. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the talk page of the nominated user). No further edits should be made to this page.

Peaceray

The following discussion is preserved as an archive of a successful administrator election candidacy. Please do not modify it.

Final (270/107/239); See official results (non-admin closure) – DreamRimmer (talk) 16:24, 10 November 2024 (UTC)

Nomination

Peaceray (talk · contribs · he/him) – I have been editing for nearly fifteen years. I identify primarily as a WP:GNOME who also does citation cleanup, but I also do a lot of welcoming & anti-vandalism work.

My work flow is generally this. Peaceray (talk) 22:08, 14 October 2024 (UTC)

  1. Go through my watchlist
  2. Look for edits from editors who have a redlinked talk page or any edit that is color-coded by ORES when it is working for me.
    • For newly registered editors
      1. Check the quality of the edit(s)
      2. Thank the edit (or one of the edits) if it is really good
      3. If it is a bad edit, revert, typically using RedWarn but undoing an individual edit if possible or manually reverting a portion of an edit.
      4. Include an intelligent or educational edit summary if I am not using an entirely canned edit. Usually I will link to the specific polic[y|ies] or guideline(s) via the short cut(s)
      5. Welcome the editors using {{wm}}. Yes, I know that can be a lot of links to throw at someone, but I want new editors have a handy reference to go look something up.
      6. If I have reverted the editor, then warn that editor, employing policy & guideline links & specific {{tq}} snippet from them if warranted.
    • For IP editors, I go through much the same process, except that I use Twinkle for welcoming.

If I see something suspicious to me about the edits, I may go check the editor's contributions. If I see something concerning there, I will go check if those edits need to be reverted or if the editor needs to be warned about edits reverted by others. If I encounter someone who has been warned four times that month or has resumed disruptive behavior after a block has expired, I will use Twinkle on the the appropriate notice board (typically WP:AIV & WP:ANI, sometimes WP:AN3, WP:SPI, or WP:RFP.

If I see something that divulges personal information or that is blatantly offensive, I have been emailing the Oversight team for edit or edit summary suppression.

As I go along, if I notice anything that can be improved about the page, I will try to attend of that. This often might be improving or fixing citations, fixing grammar, fixing MOS:APPENDIX issues. Sometimes this requires opening discussions on article talk pages to let folks know what I am doing.

I consider welcoming first, then education of new or less experienced editors to be important, which is why I link to policies & guidelines in edit summaries, user warnings, & talk page discussions.

My editing is hardly limited to the above. Really, I would be most happy simply improving articles, but that is where I start my session unless I am specifically working on something. Please check https://xtools.wmcloud.org/ec/en.wikipedia.org/Peaceray & my edits in the User talk, Talk, & Wikipedia namespaces to see what would most directly relate to my work should I become an administrator.

Peaceray (talk) 22:08, 14 October 2024 (UTC)


Candidate, please indicate acceptance of the nomination here: Since I am self-nominating, I accept that.

Please disclose whether you have ever edited Wikipedia for pay. Never. I have turned down editing for pay once.

Questions for the candidate

Dear candidate, thank you for offering to serve Wikipedia as an administrator. Please answer these questions to provide guidance for participants:

1. Why are you interested in becoming an administrator?
A: So I can help with the workload! I feel helpless when I spot a vandal or disruptive editor who is on a rampage & there is a backlog on the noticeboard. I also sometimes come across obvious & persistent vandals who need to be blocked immediately. In that regard, my default would be to wait for the first disruptive edit after four or the final warnings, then block for 31 hours. That seems to be the norm among administrators.
I also know that there are a myriad of admin tasks that do not involve blocking & protecting. I know several administrators whose focus is elsewhere.
2. What are your best contributions to Wikipedia, and why?
A: I will answer with more my favorite contributions, as I believe these are indicative.
3. Have you been in any conflicts over editing in the past or have other users caused you stress? How have you dealt with it and how will you deal with it in the future?
A: Yes. Often this gets handled on talk or user talk pages. Usually we hash it out after, even after vigorous discussion. I try to stay cordial.
I have asked for a third opinion a couple of times.
I have never been blocked on any Wikimedia project except for en.wikipedia.beta.wmflabs.org where I was autoblocked for trying to paste a citation that was legit in enwiki that was apparently blacklisted at the test site.

You may ask optional questions below. There is a limit of two questions per editor. Multi-part questions are disallowed, but you are allowed to ask follow-up questions related to previous questions.

Optional question from Thryduulf

4. Why did you choose to seek adminship via election rather than via a standard RFA?
A: It was timely. I had just returned from WCNA 2024 where I heard Clovermoss give a keynote speech & was inspired by her. I had been thinking about becoming an admin & kept seeing the banner notifying me about trying this election process. It seemed like a shorter path, although if I should not be chosen with this round, I would probably try again after a appropriate wait time & taking into account whatever feedback that I have received here.

Optional question from Ganesha811

5. Are there any areas of adminship you do not plan to participate in, due to unfamiliarity or lack of technical knowledge? If you later decided you wanted to help in these areas, what would be your plan to become an effective admin in those areas?
A: There are things that I am unfamiliar with, that I would like to learn more about.
  • History merging is something that I am not yet familiar.
  • I have seen deletion in action but am not familiar with the mechanisms.
    • I have seen instances that beg for mass deletion. In a recent situation, we had a editor who registered last May who then was warned about harassing other editors. Several days ago, this same editor went on a rampage reverting IP editors' edits then giving them final vandalism warning, often repeatedly, regardless of the quality of the edits. This editor is now blocked, & I replaced a good many of the warning with welcomes, but it would have been more efficient to nuke those new IP editor talk pages that this editor created.
  • I am curious whether I could contribute in the maintenance of edit filters. I have about 25 years experience of working in UNIX/Linux up until seven years ago, so I have worked quite a bit with regex.
  • I do not know how partial blocks are implemented.
  • I do not yet understand the criteria for granting and revoking user rights.
Things I will probably shy away from
  • Speedy deletions that are not blatant advertising, COI, copyvios or flagrant non-notables – I would tend to move those into the Draft namespace if warranted.

Optional question from Bugghost

6. In your answer to Q1, you said "I also know that there are a myriad of admin tasks that do not involve blocking & protecting" - could you clarify what you meant? I initially read this as you considering entering other areas of admin work if elected, but I may be misunderstanding.
A:
  • Mediating edit warring
  • speedy deletion in cases of blatant advertising, COI, or copyright violation
  • adding to the spamlist for compromised websites
  • learning the admin tools
  • cleaning backlogs: I probably would peruse the backlogs to get to know my way around what needs to be done.
I think that there is probably a lot to be learned by hanging out in the #wikipedia-en & #wikipedia-en-admins IRC channels. I have visited the former upon occasion, but only when in great need (as in the time we were running an edit-a-thon & a article-banned editor started editing that very page & an admin blocked the IP address of the library from where we were editing. I was able to contact the very admin on IRC who responded:Gee, I never blocked an entire edit-a-thon before.)

Optional question from Conlinp

7. What are your feelings on the idea of admins being recalled by the community, and would you be willing to undergo recall if the community raised concerns about your conduct as an admin?
A: To the latter, an emphatic yes. To the former, I do believe in recall & that admins should voluntarily submit to the process. I think that there are instances where admins have overstepped their bounds. Since admins serve unlimited terms, there needs to be some means of accountability. Currently in the absence of a voluntary recall, it is left to ARBCOM to review & remove adminships.


Discussion

Please keep discussion constructive and civil. If you are unfamiliar with the nominee, please thoroughly review his contributions before commenting.

AfD record: 88.20% match rate, n of 17. 15 keep !votes to 4 delete !votes. Mildly subjective comment: these numbers go all the way back to 2011 and there are none from the past year, so they're of limited value for assessing the candidate, who in any case has not expressed an interest in deletion processes. -- asilvering (talk) 00:17, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

  • i don't know too much about Peaceray but they were the person who welcomed me when i made my account nearly 5 years ago. welcoming new users is very valuable! ... sawyer * he/they * talk 14:38, 22 October 2024 (UTC)
  • A best contribution: "Going to IRC to ask for something". SerialNumber54129 17:26, 22 October 2024 (UTC)
  • GAN and FAC notes: One GAN nomination which was promoted after extensive review. One review which he promoted (and subsequently commented on the FAC nomination for the same article). No other FAC activity. ClaudineChionh (she/her · talk · contribs · email) 02:37, 23 October 2024 (UTC)
  • I am pleased to see this user has put himself up for adminship. We haven't agreed on everything in the past (the first interaction I can remember having with this user was a disagreement on who should be categorized as an alumn. In retrospect, Peaceray was correct, of course!) but I can say without a doubt that this user is a major net positive to the project. In addition to his great content work (which I am mostly familiar with through the Hawaii Wikiproject), he definitely has the temperament to make a great administrator. There have been several times where I saw Peaceray respond to well-intentioned, but misguided, edits in a compassionate and respectful, though firm, way. I try my best to emulate Peaceray's approach, as I believe such an approach is key to improving editor retention. I think he can definitely be trusted with the tools and would be a great admin. Aoi (青い) (talk) 09:40, 23 October 2024 (UTC)
    Although he and I don't interact on-wiki, Aoi's description of who Peaceray is (and his approach to the nomination) matches up with the one time I have met him in person. ❤HistoryTheorist❤ 02:01, 24 October 2024 (UTC)
  • I just want to say that I can vouch for this user personally, as in "have met him at various wikievents". In fact, we wound up sharing a room during Wikimania 2016, and he, I and Rosiestep had a nice dinner together in Toronto at WCNA last year. I knew he wasn't an admin, but I am glad that he has decided it is time, and stepped forward. Daniel Case (talk) 03:50, 24 October 2024 (UTC)
  • I know this candidate to be a reasonable, professional, respectful, mature person. I have zero qualms about Peaceray's candidacy. (And, yes, Daniel Case, that was a nice dinner.) --Rosiestep (talk) 13:12, 24 October 2024 (UTC)
The above adminship discussion is preserved as an archive of the discussion. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the talk page of the nominated user). No further edits should be made to this page.

Spy-cicle

The following discussion is preserved as an archive of an administrator election candidacy that did not succeed. Please do not modify it.

Final (131/202/283); See official results (non-admin closure) – DreamRimmer Alt (talk) 17:21, 10 November 2024 (UTC)

Nomination

Spy-cicle (talk · contribs · they/them) – Hello, I'm Spy-cicle, I joined in December 2018 and have engaged in a range of topics here including video games, biographies, politics, and anything I stumble across. I have also engaged in fair number of AfDs during my time here and formerly served as a delegate for Wikipedia:Featured topic candidates. I have 11k edits and while my editing history over the last year or so has been a bit sporadic due to personal reasons I plan on ramping up my activity once again. I have never been blocked or have ever been paid to edit for Wikipedia. I have created 20 articles (excluding redirects or disambs) and produced 5 GAs and 2 FLs.  Spy-cicle💥  Talk? 23:33, 14 October 2024 (UTC)

Questions for the candidate

Dear candidate, thank you for offering to serve Wikipedia as an administrator. Please answer these questions to provide guidance for participants:

1. Why are you interested in becoming an administrator?
A: I am interested so I can help out in various areas which are known to have backlogs on occassion. The areas specfically I want to help out at are WP:RPP, WP:AIV, and closing AfDs.
2. What are your best contributions to Wikipedia, and why?
A: Across my 5 GAs and 2 FLs my best contributions are recreating the All Ghillied Up article, saving it from a merger and getting it to GA. Also proud of getting Clint Hocking and Johnny Depp filmography up to GA and FL, respectively. I am also proud of overhauling the Media Molecule article from a start class to B-class article (perhaps GA someday) which had intially had about 600 readable prose and 23 references before I overhauled it 2,400 readable prose with over 140 references and six free images.
3. Have you been in any conflicts over editing in the past or have other users caused you stress? How have you dealt with it and how will you deal with it in the future?
A: Early on my Wiki 'career' I had a couple of edit conflicts. These arouse due to me not really understanding Wiki guidelines at the time. I remember one of them was because I did not know about MOS:INFOBOXUSE and thought it was standard and required for all biographies to have infoboxes. Fortunately, I am wiser now and have a good grasp of guidelines and policies as well as the importance of WP:CIVIL and WP:AGF.

You may ask optional questions below. There is a limit of two questions per editor. Multi-part questions are disallowed, but you are allowed to ask follow-up questions related to previous questions.

Optional question from Thryduulf

4. Why did you choose to seek adminship via election rather than via a standard RFA?
A: Adminship was not something I seriously considered until somewhat recently. I considered it briefly in the past but quickly realised I definitely did not have enough experience to become one. Reading over RfAs over the years, RfA seems like an incredibly daunting and stress-inducing process but I think the separate discussion and SecurePoll voting phases of Admin elections reduces some of that stress/anxiety. So hearing about Admin elections, recently renewed my consideration for nominating myself to become one; somewhat of a right place (in terms of my current level of experience), right time situation for me.  Spy-cicle💥  Talk? 01:28, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

Optional question from Ganesha811

5. Are there any areas of adminship you do not plan to participate in, due to unfamiliarity or lack of technical knowledge? If you later decided you wanted to help in these areas, what would be your plan to become an effective admin in those areas?
A: Areas I do not plan on participating in that immediately come to mind are CSD, SPI, or probably investigating incidents to do with COIN due to both unfamiliarity and lack of applied technical knowledge. If I decided I wanted to help out later, I would first, refresh myself and re-read all the related policies and guidelines. Secondly, if I had any gaps of understanding in interpreting these policies/guidelines I would ask an experienced editor in that area about it. Thirdly, if still need practical examples of applying policy have a look of recent examples of an experienced editor in that area to see how generally deal and handle such issues in that area. Finally, try my best to apply these policies/guidelines and find the most straightforward cases to deal, and avoid borderline/edge cases at least to start with.  Spy-cicle💥  Talk? 19:37, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

Optional question from Tamzin

6. You brought the article Zuby to GA in 2021. At the time of passing GA, it said that Zuby, a cisgender man, "stat[ed] he had broken the British women's deadlift record while 'identifying as a woman'"; this was sourced to news articles about the publicity stunt, not to any sources that track British lifting records. When I reworded the article to clarify that this man had not in fact broken any women's sports record, as is standard for when we quote incorrect statements, you reverted me and then argued on talk that it was not necessary to clarify that his statement was false. You later twice reverted [76] [77] Acousmana to restore the words "he believes that only biological females should be allowed to compete [in women's sports]", putting unclear and dated terminology back in wikivoice. That bit, at least, has since been removed; the uncritical reporting of his false claim remains in the article. With that in mind, are you happy with the current state of the article and of how you have stewarded it? -- Tamzin[cetacean needed] (they|xe) 04:54, 22 October 2024 (UTC)
A: Looking back, yes I should have been more receptive to change like including the Outsports coverage which is currently in the article. The issue with the main dispute is that the Sky News and The Times articles do not outright say the Zuby's statement is false they just quote and attribute the claim to himself, which the article does attribute to him. Imo, it would not be correct to cite the Britsh weighlifting source in the article when no secondary RS covering the event did. Regarding the terminology part, yes that was an error on my part I believed at the time the Sky News article used the term but it was actually a quote so that should have been attributed, not in wikivoice.  Spy-cicle💥  Talk? 06:57, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

Optional question from Abminor

7. If you get promoted to adminship, what should you do if someone asks you about an area - whether it be a contentious topic or a noticeboard - that you're not comfortable with?
A: I would try to redirect their question to those who are best qualified to ask it. This could be redirecting them to (in order of preference) a noticeboard on this topic, related WikiProject(s), or experienced editors in that topic area.  Spy-cicle💥  Talk? 23:43, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

Optional question from Conlinp

8. What are your feelings on the idea of admins being recalled by the community, and would you be willing to undergo recall if the community raised concerns about your conduct as an admin?
A: Yes, in principle I support the idea of having some kind direct accountability in the form of recall petitions towards admins. For me, I just think an issue as delicate and critical as recalling admins by users needs to have great implementation otherwise the system could be unfairly abused against admins in good standing. Provided a good, non-abusable system was in place then yes, I would be fine with undergoing recall; admins get voted in by users, and so a way to recall admins who have been abusing their tools against the Wiki policies should be held accountable.  Spy-cicle💥  Talk? 07:02, 23 October 2024 (UTC)

Optional question from Ca

9. On which areas would you consider yourself WP:INVOLVED?
A:


Discussion

Please keep discussion constructive and civil. If you are unfamiliar with the nominee, please thoroughly review their contributions before commenting.

AfD record: 84.30% match rate, n of 108. 36 keep !votes to 57 delete !votes. Mildly subjective comment: these are good numbers, but only 6 are from the last year; there is nothing unusual to mention about their participation in the six recent ones. -- asilvering (talk) 00:14, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

Personal comment: I don't see any cause for concern here. -- asilvering (talk) 00:14, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

GAN & FAC notes. Nine nominations and one review at GAN; see stats here. The review was careful and thorough. All between 2019 and 2022. Eight reviews at FAC and no nominations, so a net contributor there; list is here. Opposes are not particularly common at FAC from new participants, so worth high-lighting this oppose in Spy-cicle's second FAC review. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 03:29, 23 October 2024 (UTC)

  • The response to Tamzin's question is correct from a WP:V perspective but leaves me concerned about a lack of sensitivity to terminology and sourcing relating to trans topics. Searching through RSN archives, I see this pattern repeated in a comment opposing the reconsideration of PinkNews, which doesn't look great next to this !vote to preserve the reliability of a conservative watchdog described by Columbia Journalism Review asat its heart, MRC doesn’t exist to make the media better — it’s just one part of a wider movement by the far right to demonize corporate media. ([78]). signed, Rosguill talk 23:48, 23 October 2024 (UTC)
    I don't actually agree that it's true from a V perspective. If the sources had clearly said "Zuby broke the record," then we'd have been in awkward WP:WSAW territory. But that's not really what happened. As Spy-cicle acknowledges in their answer, sources uncritically quoted Zuby but didn't actually endorse the claim. In which case what V and SYNTH demand is that we not state anything that is not clearly stated in sources, and that's doubly true when it's an extraordinary claim that would need extraordinary evidence. (To be clear, for anyone unaware, there are few if any top-level sports organizations that would accept "I identify as a woman" as sufficient to be in women's rankings, even before getting in to the procedural requirements for verifying a record.) My edit to the article didn't add anything like "but he isn't listed on the British Powerlifting records page", which would indeed be OR. It just reworded things to avoid any appearance of endorsing a claim that was both obviously false and not explicitly made in any source. Spy-cicle reverted that change, fought to keep it out, and even after replying above has still not fixed the error in what is ostensibly a GA. -- Tamzin[cetacean needed] (they|xe) 00:49, 24 October 2024 (UTC)
  • I reviewed Spy-cicle's request for protection (n=26, but found like 12 in archives easily). I'm a bit too tired to count the rate of honoured requests, but my impression was that the hit rate is somewhat lower than for other candidates I've looked at. That said, I have to go back to 2019 to see what I consider a clear mistake (Wikipedia:Requests_for_page_protection/Archive/2019/06, asking for semi after 3 weeks of no vandalism, with a large gap between prior vandalism). —Femke 🐦 (talk) 21:33, 24 October 2024 (UTC)
The above adminship discussion is preserved as an archive of the discussion. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the talk page of the nominated user). No further edits should be made to this page.
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