Nomination
Toadspike (talk · contribs) – It is my pleasure to put forth Toadspike for administrator. I first noticed his iconic bright green signature at RM after I got my own page mover rights and saw a competent, methodical, and calm way of handling discussions. I quickly found myself sighing in relief whenever I saw him show up in heated RMs or beating me to a close; this is someone I and others trust and learn from regularly. Toadspike is a frequent contributor at RMTR, keeping the page clean of requests and explaining why various requests are contested with steps to go forward. He is consistently clear and patient with newer editors, the primary users of RMTR, but firm enough to enforce the article title guidelines. But even more exceptional are his requested move closes. Even when challenged, he remains calm, focused on the merit of the arguments, and I find him to be well-reasoned and always with a plausible, valid read of consensus.
Outside of requested moves he is diligent at providing AFD with high quality participation, translation assistance, AFC and NPP, and improving articles. You can gander around his contributions and find thoughtful, thorough work no matter where you look. He is an editor that I trust to handle adminship with diligence and decorum. I hope you join me in supporting. Sennecaster (Chat) 14:25, 2 October 2025 (UTC)
Co-nomination statement
You don't need to hang around AfD for long, either as participant or closer, to become grateful for Toadspike's accurate, in-depth, and well-researched !votes. In particular, 'Spike haunts WP:DSCH and WP:DSZH, bringing his multilingual source-sleuthing skills to bear on some of our most difficult discussions, where he is always collaborative, kind, and sympathetic. As Sennecaster notes, he remains calm when challenged, even when that challenge comes from the kind of person who signs off with a "go to hell." (For the even temperament required of administrators, look no further.) His experience with the administrative side of the project extends through WP:AFC, WP:NPP, WP:RM, and copyright cleanup. For these reasons, I have been (gently!) pestering him to run for the better part of a year. I am glad to see the time has finally come. -- asilvering (talk) 14:26, 2 October 2025 (UTC)
- Candidate, please indicate acceptance of the nomination here: Thank you. I accept the nomination. I have never edited for pay and I have one alternate account, User:Toad's Pike. Toadspike [Talk] 15:03, 2 October 2025 (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 enjoy helping out where my skills and abilities are most needed. In the past, this has meant helping with language-related queries and translations or making use of access to sources others may not have. Over the past six-and-a-half years, I have also built up skills that are very specific to Wikipedia's "backend" processes, such as assessing notability at articles for deletion, determining common names in requested moves, and summarizing consensus in discussions, alongside general familiarity with our many policies, guidelines, and processes. Lately, I have noticed that I often have the knowledge to act on administrative tasks, but not the tools. This includes closing AfDs as delete, performing admin requests at RM/TR, or fixing Main Page issues at ERRORS. I am interested in becoming an administrator because I'd like to make better use of what I've learned and improve the encyclopedia in new ways.
- 2. What are your best contributions to Wikipedia, and why?
- A: 5 Broadgate, Julier Pass, and Anna Pestalozzi-Schulthess are representative of my content work, along with the six articles I’ve had featured on DYK (linked at the top of my userpage). I am equally proud of my content reviews, which often require greater attention to detail, especially the source reviews. Some examples are Featured article candidates/Guandimiao, Featured list candidates/List of Kansas City Chiefs first-round draft picks, Featured article candidates/Kim Kitsuragi, and Talk:Vavilovian mimicry/GA1. I like to think my participation at AfD and my assistance at RM/TR have also been useful, and I help out at the Resource Exchange when I can (which not as often as I like; y’all request obscure stuff!). Finally, I’ve closed some gnarly discussions; many of these can be found in my edits to CR, such as this RfD and this RSN discussion, but this also includes my closes of RMs and AfDs.
- 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 often had disagreements with others and certainly been stressed; when I see a new talk page message, my first instinct is (still) to wonder what I’ve screwed up. However, I try to prevent disagreements from becoming emotional or personal, because that is the best way to find consensus and improve the encyclopedia. The discussion on my user talk page of my close of the Church Fathers RM is an example where I took time to respond calmly and carefully, focusing on my interpretation of the discussion in light of relevant policy. Once I had explained my close and the discussion felt like it was going in circles, I left it at that. The close was then taken to Move Review, where I chose not to comment, having already said everything I wanted to on my talk page. Overall, my conduct in that situation was a good example of how I prefer to handle potentially contentious interactions.
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. Make sure to use level-five section headers, not boldface.
Optional question from Sdkb
- 4. I see that you have done several featured article candidate reviews. Could you share with us a bit more about why and how you approach this work? (Note: I have already !voted, but I'm asking this since I think it's healthy for RfA candidates to have the opportunity to discuss their contributions. Monitors, feel free to count it as two questions due to the
and
.)
- A: Thank you for the question, Sdkb. Apologies for taking so long to answer; my drafts kept turning into FAC review how-to guides. I've tried to distill that into something more concise.
- I do content reviews, not just at FAC, because I'm interested in the topic of the article. It is a lot of fun to read and discuss an article and its sources with my fellow editors. As elsewhere, I also enjoy applying specific skills (usually language) where they are most needed and helping to clear backlogs.
- As for my approach, the starting point for a review is to read the article. Even after editing for over half a decade, I consider myself a reader first and editor second. Everything we do should further the reader's understanding. I then read some of the sources, usually the ones cited for the most interesting or exceptional claims, because it's fun and it teaches me more about the topic. This is also why I tend to spotcheck a very large proportion of citations in my source reviews, during which I check for source-text integrity (of paramount importance in everything we do on Wikipedia). Source reviews are also the review type best-placed to assess comprehensiveness, though this is easier with some background knowledge. Having no background knowledge can also be a good thing: Starting out clueless is the best way to check if the average reader would understand an article (e.g. my parasitic ant review). When pointing out potential issues, I try to be extremely specific. Whenever I can, I suggest a fix myself. I try to remain constructive: Though I critique the nominator's work, I do not criticize the nominator. My last thought is that I wish nominators were more brave. I am nitpicky and I am sometimes wrong; I wish nominators were more willing to push back against my suggestions.
Optional questions from Ultraodan
- 5. What do you think you will use admin tools for most and least often?
- A: Right off the bat, I will most often reach for the tools to perform G6 deletions of redirects without history to clear the way for page moves. I currently handle a lot of technical move requests with round-robin moves instead of G6 simply because it’s faster as a non-admin, even though a G6 leaves a cleaner page history and move log. There are some other admin tasks I find interesting in my answer to Question 1. The range of admin tasks is so wide that it is hard to say what I will do least often; the true answer will likely be something I've never heard of. But of the things I have heard of, rollback is a userright I've never felt a need for, so I am unlikely to use it frequently; I’m also unlikely to frequent some of the more obscure XfD venues like MfD.
- 6. There's been some discussion about the importance of content creation from RfA candidates. A rule of thumb I often see is at least one article at GA status. What's your opinion about vast experience creating high-quality content being seen as a requirement for adminship?
- A: While I don't think "vast experience creating high-quality content" should be a requirement for adminship, I do think some experience creating high-quality content is a very good thing. Good articles are used as a proxy for knowledge of our content guidelines. There are other ways to demonstrate familiarity with our content guidelines and there are some things that writing a GA doesn't teach you. For instance, GAs do not guarantee knowledge of notability or BLP policy. On the other hand, there are things you learn by submitting an article to a content review process, especially about yourself and your writing, that are difficult to learn any other way. It is hard to discover that your prose is too technical or verges on CLOP without having someone else read it and tell you. Finally, content reviews can vary widely, so simply looking at the statistics can be misleading: I worked a lot more on and learned a lot more from my "review" of the Kim Kitsuragi FAC than I did from the Alcoholism GAR, but only the latter gives me a userpage icon.
- 7. Under what circumstances would you leave a new editor a personalized message on their talk page as opposed to boilerplate? DS (talk) 23:25, 4 October 2025 (UTC)
- A: I almost always go with a personalized message. The only exception is when I am recent changes patrolling, during which I leave appropriate warning templates for clearly disruptive edits using antivandal scripts. Banner blindness is a real challenge and writing concise, personalized messages is the best way to get important information across.
Optional question from GTrang
- 8. How will you assess consensus at AfDs that have a mixture of "delete" and "keep" !votes?
- A: Just as I have been for over a year now. The most common example of a mix of different !votes is when an article was nominated, got a few delete !votes, was then improved, and then got a few keeps. In cases like this, I weigh the earlier !votes less, though I prefer to have some indication that those early !voters actually changed their mind (e.g. after being pinged) rather than just assuming their concerns have been addressed. In cases where there was no major shift in !voting patterns over time, the most important factor is the strength of arguments and sourcing. Comments from editors with a clear conflict of interest can be discounted, and where canvassing or sockpuppetry seems likely, comments from very new or inexperienced accounts can be weighed less. If after all that there is still no consensus, then I relist, close as no consensus, or let the discussion sit with the hope that it'll attract more attention from experienced editors in the old discussions section.
Optional question from ZKang123
- 9. With regards to the Sengkang LRT line FAC and the GAR for Singapore Rail Test Centre, do you think Wikipedia's sourcing requirements may reinforce structural biases? Do you think these might prevent or limit participation – for example in Asia / the global south?
- A: Wikipedia can only be as good as its sources. This Signpost article on the gender gap is a great explanation of another area where our sources limit our ability to cover underrepresented topics. The cases you mention are just the tip of the iceberg – Singapore has a strong media ecosystem, a great library system, an excellent online newspaper archive of digitized papers, and sources primarily in English. None of that is true for most countries of the Global South, which makes it very challenging for the average Wikipedian to find reliable sources. So, do Wikipedia's sourcing requirements reinforce structural biases? Yes, absolutely. However, we have good reasons for requiring reliable sources. We don't want anything people post on social media to be used as a source on Wikipedia, even if that is how much of the world gets their news. As for whether this prevents or limits participation – I can't decide how other editors react to these sourcing problems, but to me they are an interesting challenge to wrestle with and overcome, for instance by finding and translating non-English sources. In my view, that attitude is the best way to improve our coverage of places where sourcing is limited and counteract bias where we can.