Ended August 22nd 2008
Note: Before giving your opinion, you may want to read this. Longer comments (called essays) have been moved to the talk page.
This is American Eagle (you may remember me from all those years ago, lol), and this is something I have been waiting to do for a while now. I would like to nominate Razorflame (talk · contribs) for adminship. Over the past few months, we have corresponded and talked to one another, for the most part, by e-mail. Through talking with him, I have been convinced that he has both the commitment and experience needed for adminship. Up to this, which is his 9th RfA, I’ve noticed that several users oppose because he was hasty and self-nominates himself (I understand why now). But I believe he is ready, and I will nominate him.
With 24,000+ edits, I don’t think anyone would question his commitment. Many have commented about his lack of experience. But now with have been coached on EN:WP for adminship, and with how he has fixed problems that other users could see, he has greatly grown. He has a very great understanding of how things are run, how to enforce our policies, and he has the experience and trust needed. He was the nominator of Lights, Gwib, and myself for adminship, and all were successful. So he obviously knows what is needed for Sysop privileges.
He has also been very friendly and kind, he has given out (I believe) more Barnstars and has welcomed more new users than any other anyone else. I want to encourage you to consider Razorflame for adminship – he is very helpful and friendly, often acts like an administrator, ends conflicts and apologizes for his part in them, likes to help articles, has created thousands, a great vandal-fighter, tags pages for deletion (all deleted edits), and overall a very excellent user for this Wikipedia. He has proven to be an excellent user since he started, and I believe he should be granted sysop to better aid in his helping of the Simple English Wikipedia. Thank you. — American Eagle (talk) 01:53, 15 August 2008 (UTC)
Candidate's acceptance:I humbly accept. Thank you, American Eagle, for taking the time to write this very, very amazing nomination and I am very honored to have been nominated by you. While it is pretty uncommon to have a co-nominator about halfway through the Request for Adminship, I am very grateful and am very happy that a user that I have had great times with on the Simple English Wikipedia in the past, present, and most likely in the future to have co-nominated me for adminship, even in the face of the opposition. It takes a lot of mental fortitude to co-nominate me when drama like this happens in a Request for Adminship. I am very happy and grateful that Kennedy has co-nominated me, and I am thrilled that he has co-nominated me for adminship. It really means a lot to me. Cheers, Razorflame 19:11, 18 August 2008 (UTC)
Because of the size of this RfA, a short version of the votes has been included. The full votes with all the discussions about each one is in the sections below.
1: Struck by Eptalon due to low edit activity. 2: Self-struck.
(unindenting) Hello all, I am also adding a short notice, but my notice is different from that of Archer7 (that is why I add it). Administrators can do the following:
This RfA is to ask you if you trust Razorflame to handle these tools in the way they are intended to be handled. Please note that all the administrators are a team. In short, if you think Razorflame capable to successfully handle these tools, then you should support him, if not, then please oppose him. This decision is up to you. I am not a psychiatrist, I am not qualified to talk about addiction; Your vote should only depend on whether you trust Razorflame to handle these responsibilities. I also want to bring your attention that Razorflame is the number 2 editor is this wikipedia; according to his own account, he has done over 24.000 edits; He has been with us for about 10-11 months, if memory serves me right.
I also want to bring up fairness: Please be fair: There are many things about adminship (such as judging the right time to block a user for) that can only be learned on the job. So, when you make up your mind about Razorflame, please be fair. We all make mistakes; Making them is the only way to learn things.Try to judge him the same way than you judge other editors.--Eptalon (talk) 01:41, 17 August 2008 (UTC)
Interesting that the co-nom arrived a couple of hours after you emailed Kennedy. Wouldn't like to think you've been canvassing for votes... The Rambling Man (talk) 19:15, 18 August 2008 (UTC)
If you want to bring up the fact he emailed me, then blame me, as it was I who requested it. It is hardly canvassing when I asked to be notified. He did not ask me to co-nom, or to vote. He simply told me RfA Razor 9 existed. I didn't realise that it would cause this much hassle. Kennedy (talk) 19:47, 18 August 2008 (UTC)
(unindenting) As I have already stated above, I will not withdraw this request. This request is valid until the end of the week because I have 2 other editors on this site nominating me, so therefore, I have to keep it open because if I were to close it, people would get mad at me. Eptalon said to me that there is a reason that the RfA process is 1 week long and that is to use the whole of the time to its' fullest extent to allow for a maximum of discussion to occur. To tell you the truth, TRM, you, too, have been in breach of a policy/guideline. You have not been acting very civily towards me since this whole issue got brought up. You continue to attack me and beat me down with phrases like: "I suggest you withdraw now instead of using the RFA process to learn how to respect guidelines and policies", "but in my opinion you're deluding yourself - it's another lapse (along with the ownership, biting and instability issues)", and several other instances where you are constantly attacking and prodding me into doing something that you want me to do in order to make me look like a complete fool or a person who does not know any of the rules about being an administrator when the exact opposite is true. I know the policies and guidelines required for an administrator: Wikipedia:Deletion policy, Wikipedia:Protection policy, and Wikipedia:Blocks and bans. Any other guideline, in my opinion, holds no sway over an RfA unless it is a serious breach of policy, in which both the WP:OWN and WP:CANVAS issues were not. I have demonstrated that I know the three main policies that all administrators must know in order to successfully be an administrator, and even though it appears as though I do not know all of the guidelines on a single Wikipedia, that is not true. I know about both CAVNAS and OWN, as well as BITE, and I have known about them for several months now. I am not the person who needs a reality check in this RfA, it appears that it is other editors on this site who do not know what it means to be fair and impartial because frankly, only 3 or 4 of the opposes were actually fair. A few of the opposes, in my opnion, are not very fair and are very biast towards opposition based upon a few simple mistakes that have already been corrected. Cheers, Razorflame 20:04, 18 August 2008 (UTC)
Now I am certain that through both TRM and MTG's replies to this RfA, that they were already personally biast towards me and are now trying to find every little thing that I do wrong to completely undermine all of the good that I have done for this site. Cheers, Razorflame 20:06, 18 August 2008 (UTC)
The problem isn't the potential to misuse the tools per se, it's more of a problem with these numerous "simple mistakes" he keeps making without the tools. The Rambling Man (talk) 20:16, 18 August 2008 (UTC)
(unindenting) (@Kennedy:) Per our criteria all users are welcome to comment; unless they have a named account (and some other conditions apply), a user cannot vote in requests. What this IP editor does however is point out something; this may influence other (named) editors to vote in a certain way; so this action is perfectly legitimate. I would suggest you look at the criteria again if you are uncertain about how an RfA works. --Eptalon (talk) 15:06, 19 August 2008 (UTC)
AmericanEagle has nominated Razorflame because he believes Razorflame would make a good admin:
I have personally protected the discussion page on this last RfA after emotions got out of hand. I would hate to do it again. May I suggest admins do that, nevertheless if they see hostilities flaring up again? - Thanks. --Eptalon (talk) 12:42, 19 August 2008 (UTC)
First of all, let me say this: I believe that this RFA has been the most controversial Request for Adminship that this Wikipedia has ever seen, and with it came heaps upon heaps of drama. I would first and formost like to apologize to this community for unfairly making you witness this amount of drama which could have only been found in an English Wikipedia RfA. I had no intention of this Request for Adminship getting this far out of control, and I deeply regret having to have this community bear the brunt of the drama in this RfA. Now to get down to my thoughts about this request:
There are several key areas of this Request for Adminship that I would like to bring up, and to start things off, I would like to start off with the very first oppose vote that was given in this vote by Giggy. I would first and formost like to apologize to Giggy for my reaction to his oppose vote, but to tell you the truth, the wording of his oppose vote was what made me a bit irritated in the first place, which was why the big firefight erupted when his oppose vote came into the fray. I would also like to say that I did not think that there was anything wrong with those two side notes that I posted on either of those 2 users' talk pages at that time, but as time went on, and several more arguments broke out between both me and The Rambling Man, as well as me and Philosopher, all the while becoming more intense on my part with my vehemently declining that it was a mistake at that point in time, their hard work in trying to make me see that I made a mistake paid off for them and I finally admitted to making a mistake and then owning up to that mistake a day later, as well as apologizing to Giggy for the whole fiasco. However, little did I know that my actions would turn an already toxic RfA environment into a completely noxious and poisonous environment with the introduction of the news from a user on this site, who posted a link to a forum.....this wasn't until after Swatjester, Daniel, and another user who has not edited here since this past February decided to come on and vote oppose after little to no activity on this Wikipedia.
This bring me to my next point: I think that that forum caused an unfair advantage to the opposers because this RfA was unfairly, and unjustly advertised on those forums (which, by the way, I have visited, and think that it shines a very bad light on it when none of the people that go to the forums there edit on this site frequently if at all), I feel as though this RfA was rigged to fail from the beginning of the surfacing of that forum site. To tell you the truth, even though the votes are valid, they should not be because they were unfairly directed towards this RfA from the forums. I am being completely rational here and I am not accusing the site of doing anything wrong. I am merely stating my opinion, and my opinion is shared by several of the other active editors on this site. If this vote was constricted to just the people who actively edit this site, it would be a very different result, because 2 or 3 of the supports and at least 3 of the oppose votes, if not more, were made by users who are not active on this site, and have not been for some time. Even though their accounts are older than my own account, they were largely inactive until a couple of days after my request began. Then, as the days kept on going by, and as more and more oppose votes were being generated by this unfair broadcast, I began to despair, which was why the WP:CANVAS issue happened.
However, while all this was going on, several of the oppose votes again set me off and I angrily replied to several of their oppose votes, even going so far as to accusing Swatjester of being canvassed into voting on this site, which was a big mistake on my part. I sincerely apologize for accusing you, Swatjester, of canvassing because frankly, that just did not seem possible. Also, the surfacing of a possible sockpuppet of either Benniguy or IuseRosary started mimicking my editing and talking style and proceeded to try to completely derail my own Request for Adminship with a possiblility that that might be a sockpuppet of mine trying to influence my Request by multiple voting, which is absolutely false, which a checkuser proved after I consented to being checked. However, I would just like to point out, and I don't like pointing fingers at anyone in particular, but this instance requires me to do just that at this time, but the responses that I got on the talk page of my Request for Adminship by one of our own administrators, The Rambling Man, were completely uncivil from my point of view and close to being insinuating and inciteful towards me by his nonchalant replies of mmhmm and sure (pretty much what I was feeling was your message that you were trying to get across), which again, set me into another angry state, which proceeded to deteriorate as time progressed.
I also have one final note to Eptalon: Without you, Eptalon, and without your help over the IRC and your support (not support in the terms of the request for adminship, but in a kind of coach supporting his or her protege) was greatly helpful and much appreciated. I greatly appreciate your coaching and support over this hard and stressful request, but thanks to your help, I managed to pull through it. Without your help, this Request for Adminship would have already been over by many, many days. Thanks to you, I was able to wait this entire week to see the final results, and while they were disheartening, I will forge on for another 6-12 months and try again then. Thank you all for reading this very long message, and cheers, Razorflame 18:59, 21 August 2008 (UTC)
(unidenting): On a couple of unrelated notes:
If you know about any other records this RfA has broken, please state them here. Cheers, Razorflame 23:57, 21 August 2008 (UTC)