User:Elonka/RfA ponderings

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This page was created in Summer 2006, as I was pondering whether or not to request admin access. It contains a list of places where I believe that the access would have helped me in my Wikipedia adventures (or where lack of admin access hindered me).

In October 2006, I was nominated for adminship. A community discussion revealed that though there was a clear majority in support of my nomination, it wasn't quite enough to be deemed consensus. So, I am now reworking this "ponderings" page to compile information while pondering the wisdom of a future nomination.

Contents 1 Areas where adminship would have been helpful 2 Other reasons adminship would be a good idea 3 Reasons that adminship might not be a good idea 4 Draft answers to essay questions 4.1 Other questions to ponder

[edit] Areas where adminship would have been helpful

• WP:CFD - I routinely participate here in combining/merging categories, and being able to delete unneeded categories, or old categories after they have been emptied, would be useful
• WP:RM - I suggest a lot of page moves. Though I wouldn't use admin access to move pages in a controversial way, I do occasionally see proposed moves about pages which I am not involved in editing, where I would be willing to help clear the backlog, if I had admin access.
• WP:CSD - Since I spend a lot of time at Category:Category needed and Special:Uncategorizedpages (see (Wikipedia talk:Special:Uncategorizedpages#Stats/progress), I frequently run into pages for which a speedy deletion has been proposed. With admin access, I could help by deleting those pages.
• Wikipedia:Selected anniversaries/January 20 - My lack of admin access prevented me from disambiguating a link at this page, since it was protected.
• Wikipedia:Checkuser - I know that this is not part of normal adminship, but it is worth mentioning that I normally do these kinds of scans in my dayjob, and wish I had the access here to help with finding/confirming sockpuppets. Someday, I think I could be helpful with that backlog page
• Vandalism investigation. While collating information for Talk:University of Adelaide#Possible hoax, I was prevented from accessing page history because one of the hoaxed pages had been speedy-deleted, so I needed to request admin assistance before I could proceed.
• WP:DRV - I cannot participate in as many discussions as I would like, since I can't see the deleted articles.
• Talk:Knights Templar - The archives got tangled during a copy/paste move, and one version with extensive talk history was deleted. I'd love to help untangle, but don't have the access to get at the deleted archives
• Image deletions: I'm helping out at the Commons by moving some images from EN to the Commons, or untangling duplicate images. But once done, I can't delete duplicates here at EN, since I don't have admin access
• Making minor changes to protected templates, like adding an internal comment to {{welcome}}

[edit] Other reasons adminship would be a good idea

• 17+ years as a professional online community manager at http://www.play.net
• Already have administrator access at multiple other MediaWiki projects:
  • http://www.igda.org/wiki , for the International Game Developers Association
  • http://wiki.elonka.com (under password, but was what I used to coordinate the team that helped put together my book)
  • Multiple in-house MediaWiki documentation projects at Simutronics (under password)

[edit] Reasons that adminship might not be a good idea

• Time requirements. My free time is generally "feast or famine". I'll either be spending time on Wikipedia every day, or I might be gone for days at a time
• I don't spend time hanging out at the #wikipedia IRC channel
• Politics. As a notable Wikipedian (see Elonka Dunin), any controversial actions that I take might garner more attention than if by another "anonymous" admin (note: This reason could also potentially be a plus, as I often speak very positively about Wikipedia when I am being interviewed by the press)
• Decrease in focus. Helping out with admin duties might decrease the amount of time that I spend actually creating/editing articles

[edit] Draft answers to essay questions

1. What sysop chores, if any, would you anticipate helping with? Please check out Category:Wikipedia backlog, and read the page about administrators and the administrators' reading list.

(answer to previous RfA) I find that I get the most satisfaction out of dealing with the administrative behind-the-scenes tasks, so I would probably be spending more time there than vandal-fighting. I have a great deal of familiarity with WP:CFD and WP:RM, and would like to help in clearing out those backlogs. I would also like to help with Speedy deletions.

2. Of your articles or contributions to Wikipedia, are there any about which you are particularly pleased, and why?

(answer to previous RfA) I have created or substantially expanded over 100 articles on Wikipedia, with most of my energy being in the English and Simple English versions, though I have used my language skills to participate in several others. Articles that I am most proud of include SS Kronprinz Wilhelm, Alfred Niezychowski, Saint Raphael Kalinowski, Eric Bloom, Dan Brown, Cesar Millan, Rennes-le-Chateau, Francis X. Cretzmeyer, Henry Lincoln, Henryk Leon Strasburger, August Czartoryski, and Wilmer & the Dukes. I've also done quite a bit of work on the Knights Templar articles, though I definitely can't take full credit for those. And I have helped with many articles about the Lost television series, including rewriting Lost (season 1) and Lost (season 2). It was a main page featured article on October 3, 2006.

3. Have you been in any conflicts over editing in the past or do you feel other users have caused you stress? How have you dealt with it and how will you deal with it in the future?

(compiling collection of links for future use, including places where I have acted as an informal mediator, or attempted to de-escalate a dispute)

• Talk:Antonia Bennett
• Talk:Danah Boyd
• Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Naming Conventions
• Wikipedia talk:Notability (shopping centers)
• Wikipedia talk:Places of local interest
• User talk:VivekVish
• User:Essjay/RFC#Outside view by Elonka

[edit] Other questions to ponder

• You find out that an editor, who's well-known and liked in the community, has been using sockpuppets abusively. What would you do?

If it's a case of clearcut abuse (such as vote-stacking or trying to get around 3RR), my actions would be the same as for any user who wasn't well-liked: Review Wikipedia precedent, ensure that checkuser and WP:SOCK procedures are followed, bring it up on AN/I, place appropriate templates on the sockpuppet user pages, block as necessary, deal with the abusive sockpuppet actions as appropriate (check for inappropriate poll votes, vandalism/personal attacks that might need to be removed, etc.) If the "abuse" is more ambiguous though, I might contact the user via email to ask them to explain their actions. Not all use of sockpuppets is automatically considered inappropriate (see WP:SOCK), so there might be valid reasons for the behavior.

• An editor asks you to mediate in a dispute that has gone from being a content dispute to an edit war (but not necessarily a revert war), with hostile language in edit summaries (that are not personal attacks). One involved party welcomes the involvement of an admin, but the other seems to ignore you. They have both rejected WP:RFC as they do not think it would solve anything. Just as you are about to approach the user ignoring you, another admin blocks them both for edit warring and sends the case to WP:RFAR as a third party. Would you respect the other admin's decisions, or would you continue to engage in conversation (over email or IRC) and submit a comment/statement to the RFAR? Let's say the ArbCom rejects the case. What would you do then?

I would respect the other admin's decision, monitor the situation and RfAr, continue to engage in conversations that had already been begun, and possibly submit a statement to the RfAr depending on what looked appropriate at the time. If ArbCom rejected it, and I wanted to stay involved, I would stay in communication with the other admin to determine the best way to proceed.

• If you could change any one thing about Wikipedia what would it be?

Procedurally, I would review the RfA process, both in terms of how admins are promoted, and in terms of what kind of oversight is available.

Culturally, I would like to see people thanking each other more often. I think that many people do enormous amounts of work on Wikipedia, but get very little feedback on whether or not they're doing "a good job," and that this can be frustrating. An occasional thank you can be a very positive motivating experience, and can help build trust which may help avoid potential future conflicts.

I have also seen many problems caused by users who I believe do not yet have the emotional maturity to be engaging in major policy discussions. Often, because of the size of the community, when an unknown name enters a discussion (especially when they have harsh criticism about a particular matter), it is difficult to tell whether or not they are an experienced and rational user who is just having a bad day (or is genuinely incensed about a particular problem), or whether it's an unstable (or possibly very young) user who is just jumping in to any argument that they can find. As such, I think it would be worth creating another class of user on Wikipedia, somewhere between normal user and admin, with a "trusted user" status. This status would be easy to determine by glancing at someone's user name, perhaps by a color or icon, and would give a quick visual indication that this user was someone of good standing, with a fair amount of edits and community participation. Actions such as personal attacks or vandalism could cause the loss of this good standing status, which would then require time to rebuild trust and be re-established.

• Under what circumstances would you indefinitely block a user without any prior direction from Arb Com?

Per WP:BLOCK, an immediate indefinite block would be appropriate if a user was doing things such as issuing severe threats, compromising another individual's privacy or personal information, choosing a clearly inappropriate username, impersonating another user, posting their own password or in some other way making an account "public", or other reasons (for example, if it is known that the user had died). Barring one of those situations, and assuming you're talking about a user who was being disruptive, I might also consider an indefinite block if there was history that showed that previous recent blocks had been instituted, without any effect on the user's behavior, and that all other good faith efforts to reform the user appeared to be deliberately disregarded. Though I would still review Wikipedia precedent, and/or bring it up on WP:ANI to get other admin opinions.

• Suppose you are closing an AfD where it would be keep if one counted certain comments / discussions that you suspect are sockpuppets/meatpuppets and would be delete otherwise. The RCU returns inconclusive, what do you do? Is your answer any different if the two possibilities are between no consensus and delete?

Depends. AfDs are not strict "count the vote" situations. I would read all opinions, check edit histories to determine who the experienced editors were, and carefully review the related article and associated talk page. In the event of no consensus, the default response would be to keep.

• Do you believe there is a minimum number of people who need to express their opinions in order to reasonably close an AfD? If so, what is that number? What about RfDs and CfDs?

I would first review Wikipedia:Consensus and related talk, to see what the current consensus was on consensus...

• A considerable number of administrators have experienced, or are close to, burnout due to a mixture of stress and vitriol inherent in a collaborative web site of this nature. Do you feel able to justify yourself under pressure, and to not permit stress to become overwhelming and cause undesirable or confused behaviour?

As I have already been an online community manager for several years, I am familiar with the burnout possibilities, but feel that I've amply demonstrated my ability to deal with the problem, and related stressful situations.