Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Matt Yeager 2

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The following discussion is preserved as an archive of a request for adminship that did not succeed. Please do not modify it.

[edit] Matt Yeager

Final (14/20/4) ended 00:21, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

Matt Yeager (talk • contribs) – Ever since Matt's failed RfA two months ago, I have been monitoring him on Wikipedia. He now has more than 4000 edits and is a great help to Wikipedia, contributing regularly to project-space pages such as WP:RFA and WP:AFD. He is also very active in reverting vandalism, and he has previously expressed (e.g., in his intro paragraph for his self-nom RfA) that he would like to become a sysop to stop the vandals who "are given seemingly free rein over high-profile, featured articles" - and the rollback and the block tools would help Matt do just that. Most of the opposition over his last RfA dealt over Matt's seeming inability to maturely handle disputes. For example, two months ago, editors were concerned about this discussion. Well, as this newer discussion shows, Matt has improved over the past two months, as he now refers to official policies (WP:NPOV, WP:V, ...). Most importantly, though, Matt has learned when to back off - a skill which, as shown by the pedophilia wheel war, many current admins don't even possess. --M@thwiz2020 19:56, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

Candidate, please indicate acceptance of the nomination here: I gratefully accept. Matt Yeager ♫ (Talk?) 22:54, 8 April 2006 (UTC) While I appreciate everyone who voted one way or the other, I think it's clear that I had some rather serious misconceptions about the adminship process and (more pertinently) about Wikipedia itself. If you voted here, expect to get a note in the near future explaining more. Thank you all for your time and consideration in any regard. Matt Yeager ♫ (Talk?) 00:21, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

Support

1. Support as the nominator and first voter! --M@thwiz2020 23:09, 8 April 2006 (UTC)
2. support, as before. vote early, vote often. Grutness...wha? 00:04, 9 April 2006 (UTC)
3. Support Again. :-D Moe ε 01:06, 9 April 2006 (UTC)
4. Support, great user. --Terence Ong 01:58, 9 April 2006 (UTC)
5. Strong "I-was-going-to-nominate" Support. Absolutely! Again. --TantalumTelluride 02:37, 9 April 2006 (UTC)
6. Support same as the last nom. -- King of Hearts ^talk 02:43, 9 April 2006 (UTC)
7. Support Don't see anything wrong with ya :) Admrb♉ltz (T | C | k) 03:38, 9 April 2006 (UTC)
8. Support I thought he was one already. --Jay(Reply) 03:42, 9 April 2006 (UTC)

   Support, all around great contributor. Royboycrashfan 03:54, 9 April 2006 (UTC) Changing to oppose.

9. Support per all above. Funnybunny 04:31, 9 April 2006 (UTC)

   Support, no problems here. —BorgHunter ^ubx (talk) 04:59, 9 April 2006 (UTC)

10. Support, great user.  Grue  07:57, 9 April 2006 (UTC)
11. Extreme "Not another 'I thought he was one'? Please..." support per cliche. --Celestianpower ^háblame 11:48, 9 April 2006 (UTC)
12. Support It is time to give him the mop. --Siva1979^{Talk to me} 13:59, 9 April 2006 (UTC)
13. Support Meets/surpasses criteria; a friendly user. - Wezzo (talk) (ubx) 07:28, 10 April 2006 (UTC)
14. Support Meets/surpasses criteria.--Jusjih 16:37, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

Oppose

1. Oppose Maybe after another month. --Masssiveego 06:25, 9 April 2006 (UTC)

   Oppose per TigerShark's comments about his edit summaries. I have reviewed his summaries and I have to agree. Royboycrashfan 07:10, 9 April 2006 (UTC)

2. Oppose - This and the others you changed should be reverted back. This is not proper. This is unnecessary. This template you keep using is broken. You get angry too easily, and you assume too easily that you're making improvements when you act unilaterally. - Richardcavell 08:23, 9 April 2006 (UTC)
3. Oppose as per Royboycrashfan, Richardcavell, and TigerShark. --Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 11:58, 9 April 2006 (UTC)
4. Oppose. In many respects Matt is a good editor, unfortunately he falls some way short of the standards of decorum and civility I expect from a potential admin. Rje 13:07, 9 April 2006 (UTC)
5. Oppose. I absolutely hate having to do this, as Matt is a terrific person. Unfortunately, I don't believe that his level of maturity and understanding of the site are sufficient. Less than a month ago, he duplicated the template {{for}} with a new template inexplicably called {{funky}}, created with the edit summary "started template. Jigga what? Yep, it's funky." He never did explain what any of this was supposed to mean, but in this message, he indicated that he "[couldn't] imagine what would be properly named Template:Funky." (So why did he name it that?) He briefly redirected {{funky}} to {{for}}, but soon decided to undo that change. As he explained in this message, he wanted to include the word "please." "Other editors [were] against that," and he felt that forking the template (thereby circumventing the opposition) was a legitimate solution. (He also voted to keep the template, which eventually was deleted.) Frankly, as nice a fellow as Matt is, he isn't up to the task of closing deletion debates. His vandalism cleanup is admirable, but this doesn't require sysop rights. I'm very sorry. However this turns out, I hope that you'll forgive me, Matt. —David Levy 14:03, 9 April 2006 (UTC)
6. Oppose Switched from neutral. I was originally a bit concerned by edit summaries such as [1], [2],[3],[4] and [5] which could rub certain people up the wrong way. However I have grown even more concerned by other instances of questionable civility and maturity raised by other editors and this edit, which occured in the very discussion that the nominator put forward as an example of Matt's incresed maturity. I'd prefer to see a month or two of contributions free from such comments. TigerShark 15:16, 9 April 2006 (UTC)
7. Oppose per ample above evidence of civility concerns. Xoloz 15:49, 9 April 2006 (UTC)
8. Changed to oppose per all above. —BorgHunter ^ubx (talk) 16:16, 9 April 2006 (UTC)
9. Oppose per all above. Steve block talk 16:36, 9 April 2006 (UTC)
10. Oppose as per the civility concerns, and participation in this exercise by SPUI in WP:POINT-making agitation against a wikiproject and deletion process. Alai 19:14, 9 April 2006 (UTC)
11. Oppose, As per all above. Vulcanstar6 17:43, 9 April 2006 (UTC)
12. Oppose. TigerShark's edit summaries make an RfA at the moment absolutely out of the question. The other material presented above is also very unfortunate; my impression of the user in general (before this RfA) is of a little too much anger and quickness. But given the very recent, very obviously bad material, now was a very bad time to nominate. -Splash^talk 02:07, 10 April 2006 (UTC)
13. Oppose JoshuaZ 02:30, 10 April 2006 (UTC)
14. Oppose Some of his contributions already listed above don't make me too comfortable.--Adam ^(talk) 04:15, 10 April 2006 (UTC)
15. Oppose per all the rest, but I encourage him to try again in a few months. Mackensen (talk) 11:15, 10 April 2006 (UTC)
16. Oppose per above, sorry. - Mailer Diablo 11:42, 10 April 2006 (UTC)
17. Sorry, but after reading all of the above and checking the diffs given, I must oppose. Jonathunder 18:05, 10 April 2006 (UTC)
18. Regrettably oppose. Unfortunately, the nominator's link intended to show Matt's improved dispute skills had the opposite impact on me. Derex 21:17, 10 April 2006 (UTC)
19. Weak oppose per RoyBoy and David Levy, with the same sincere regret expressed by David and Massiveego's provisio that support may be more forthcoming upon another nomination in a month or so. Joe 22:23, 10 April 2006 (UTC)
20. Oppose. Stay clean for a few months, and I'll happy to support your RfA. (^'-')^ Covington 23:40, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

Neutral

Neutral I've only had a brief look through the user's recent contributions so I will not vote oppose, but I'd prefer to see Matt err on the side of caution when communicating with other users - including avoiding edit summaries such as [6], [7],[8],[9] and [10] which could rub certain people up the wrong way. TigerShark 04:41, 9 April 2006 (UTC)

Switched to oppose. TigerShark 15:16, 9 April 2006 (UTC)

1. Neutral. This is one of the few rare cases that I vote neutral. He certainly does a lot of useful edits, and is a good vandal fighter, but he isn't civil enough, as indicated by some of his edit summaries, and he tends to engage in edit wars, so I think he might abuse his powers. I really want to give him the rollback button, but he needs to prove he won't use his powers abusively. --Exir Kamalabadi^{Join Esperanza!} 10:17, 9 April 2006 (UTC)

#Neutral pending answers to questions from JoshuaZ below.--Jusjih 13:26, 9 April 2006 (UTC) Changed to support.

1. Neutral, needs a little more time to settle down after the disputes. JIP | Talk 15:56, 9 April 2006 (UTC)
2. Neutral. I appreciate your apology for the rude edit summaries, but after taking notice of your behavior, I'm afraid I cannot change back to support. Royboycrashfan 02:48, 10 April 2006 (UTC)
3. Neutral - I seriously thought he already was one. But seeing the history of incivility being brought up on this page, I cannot in good faith support. I would recommend that this RfA be withdrawn and Matt Yeager try again in a few months, being sure to remain civil at all times in the interim. I believe he has the potential to become an admin one day but he needs to work on the issues that are being brought up in this RfA. --Cyde Weys 06:05, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

Comments

• See Matt Yeager's edit count and contribution tree with Interiot's tool and the edit summary usage with Mathbot's tool.
• Previous request for adminship can be found here.

Questions for the candidate
Dear candidate, thank you for offering to serve Wikipedia in this capacity. Please take the time to answer a few generic questions to provide guidance for voters:

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.

A: Besides simple vandalism rollbacks, blockings, etc., I've noticed that WP:SFD and WP:RM often have a huge backlog, and I would like to help close debates and such. In addition, I would also want to close debates at WP:AFD, WP:MFD, and WP:RFD, especially in cases where a consensus is clear.

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

A: I have a list at User:Matt Yeager/Contributions, but few of them can top Running up the score, which I wrote up from a stub into what I'd like to say is a very nice article. More recently, I ran a lot of "damage control" stuff on the April 1, 2006 article by removing vandalism, copyediting, and putting up an <!-- invisible warning --> atop the page to restrain the flow of unencyclopedic information while keeping the page in the wiki style.

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?

A: At my previous RFA, you can see the result of a couple of edit wars, but I admitted my mistakes, learned from them (really, I did! ) and tried to avoid similar stressful situations. The situation that most comes to mind as far as causing stress goes (besides the heart trauma that I get whenever someone wants to disambiguate Washington :P) is a thoroughly regrettable affair at Calling All Engines--I had placed a tidbit of trivia and it was removed without comment by an anon; after a couple reverts apiece over the course of several days, we were able to start sorting it out on the talk page. There's also a small one with User:Jersey Devil over daughter articles at Rutgers University that's still ongoing, but it seems like that one's getting resolved. I can't think of any other conflicts that I've participated in within the last few months.

Questions from JoshuaZ

1 You have many edits related to sports articles. If you had to make a sports analogy to explain what admins do, what would the analogy be?

I suppose they're like the captains on an American football team. They "lead" a group of players, but really they aren't the ones in charge--there's a head coach and assistants (Jimbo, ArbCom) that really make the rules. Everyone else contributes, but the captains contribute a bit more, a bit better, and there's a few things (coin toss) that only they can do (close debates, undelete, etc.).

2 Are there any admin powers that you would like to give to all users? Why or why not?

Being able to see a deleted page upon request--for whatever reason--would be at the top of the list. I can't think of anything else I'd give to all users, though.

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

(After reading the above votes) The fact that it keeps a history of edit summaries, maybe? ;) Actually, I think Wikipedia's mostly working fine. I wish that Jimbo would start taking a little less credit for the project in the media reports--you always hear about "Jimbo's Wikipedia" and such. It'd be nice if he let others take some credit, too.

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

Except for an offensive/impersonating username, nothing comes to mind. I'm not so sure that there are such things as lost causes as far as users go.

5 How would you respond to concerns that your history shows you to act impulsively to other users, often in a negative fashion?

The "don't pull crap" warning was absolutely unacceptable. I saw vandalism on a page I created and blew it. No excuses. Calling All Engines? That, as I said, was a regrettable experience. I'm sorry. As far as other things go, I often haven't had a very serious attitude toward the project, although I've tried to fix that in recent weeks.

6 What steps have you taken to prevent the sort of rash behavior mentioned in question 5?

I've started taking a lot more care in the use of my edit summaries. I never really realized how seriously people took them. I recognize that to many people, this is "too little, too late", and I can accept that. I do wish that people would consider my apologies, the fact that the edits shown are a miniscule percentage of my overall edits and that my behaviour has changed as of late; however, I definitely do respect that they are too much for some voters to overcome. I will try and improve in any case. Matt Yeager ♫ (Talk?) 02:28, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

The above 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.