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Candidate statement

Questions for the candidate

Dear candidate, thank you for offering to serve Wikipedia as an administrator. It is recommended that you answer these optional questions to provide guidance for participants:

1. What admin work do you intend to take part in?
A: There are a couple of areas I've identified that I'd like to take part in:
First, I think there is a backlog at WP:AFD that I could assist with in closing articles per community consensus.
Second, I'm a grad student and keep odd hours. I've seen situations where a user need the immediate intervention of an admin, such as BLP, Legal threats, SPAM. Having an extra set of eyes around at 3AM EST I think would be a good thing to maintain WP:CSD and protect pages undergoing edit wars, pending community discussion.
Third, some of our noticeboards seem to be underused and/or under-monitored ( COI/N & UPH/HD for example). Rather than wait for a user to get tired of inaction at these boards and drag it over to ANI, I'd try and make myself available to either comment, or more seriously, delete blatantly inappropriate content (more applicable of COIN than UPH/HD).
2. What are your best contributions to Wikipedia, and why?
A: Well my best contributions would be over at Special:Longpages and CAT:DFUI where I try and keep articles and images as user-friendly/compliant as possible. No one wants to read 20 pages of thick content or deal with a 300Kb page loading when alphabetical subpages would work better. And of course, Wikipedia must be compliant with copyright laws, so I've probably fixed ~1,200 images that in some manner were non-compliant with WP:NFC.
As far as new content creation, I've written some short articles, improve others through wikifying, etc. I have 1 DYK so far and hope to work on more. I feel I'm better at content manipulation (arrangement, splitting, re-writing) than I am at creation, so I tend to focus in that area.
Also, I've authored a couple of proposals, the most noteworthy of which to be approved was a change to Wikipedia:Upload (with User:Remember the dot's help) that encourages users to better comply with our copyright policies. Also, I re-designed the top nav-bar used on admin pages to reduce AN/ANI traffic hopefully.
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: Sure, almost everytime I try to save a major noticeboard page me and MediaWiki have it out :) Seriously though, I don't think I've been involved in anything that would be a significant conflict (at least nothing that caused me stress or lack of sleep). Have I and other editors disagreed over material?; yes, have we stopped respecting each other or seeking dialogue?; no. In particular, at Talk:Mitt Romney I brokered a compromise that required me to accept others views as well as improving the page. Another example was at Neopup PAW-20 which involved numerous content and potential COI issues, but was resolved with few, if any, bad feelings. I am a member of WP:MEDCAB and have a couple of cases under my belt, so I think I can handle everyday wiki-admin-conflict.

Statements look good.

Non-admin stuff

I've created some article User:MBisanz/Creations, do a lot of work with AWB on spelling corrections, participate in a number of AfDs. Worked with Special:Longpages to make long articles more user friendly by splitting them. Also I do RCP and with a suggestion I made to NPW will be using that more in the future. I've created a RFC over at Hirohito to try and resolve a long-term naming dispute. I've worked at Talk:Mitt Romney to try to keep the peace and maintain WP:BLP. And I've been a member of WP:MEDCAB where I've handled one uneventful case.

looks good

Admin stuff

Well I have Rollback and have used it maybe half a dozen times. I proposed the most recent change to the top navbar of WP:AN/ WP:AN/I. Done a couple of WP:COIN reports, a WP:3RR and some vandalism/conduct reports to WP:AN/I. Chimed in at a good number of proposals, including Rollback. Also voiced my opinon at some RfAs.

IMHO this fuss over rollback is silly. All it does is let you do in one click what regular users do in 3. Plus some of the wiki addins give users defacto rollback. But for RFA purposes, when should you use rollback? -- (the correct answer is also silly to me but)

Rollback should only be used for clear, undisputable vandalism. It should not be used in a content dispute or for comments that while removalable, aren't clear vandalism (POV, BLP, etc).

that's the politically correct answer, now what do you really think?

I think Rollback can work in certain other situations. I've used it on my own edits when i do something stupid (like re-prodding an already declined article). Also, I think it has the potential to be used in broader contexts, say when an editor keeps reinserting the same BLP issue or if an editor banned from an area decides to start violating that ban. Outside of that, I really don't see a problem with clicking undo and trping "POV-P" or "RVV". I have a nice 3 year old computer and am by no means a "power editor" so the ability to use scripts or pre-load stuff, really doesn't apply. MBisanz talk 04:20, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

Prior coaching

User:Academic Challenger was my first coach and provided a good sounding board when I had questions on how to respond to a user or how to handle a difficult situation. AC was not that experienced with image editing, so as I expanded into corporate logo FURs, he wasn't as able to help there, but was very helpful in reviewing some of my proposals for improvements to the software.

What did he say you still needed to work on?

He didn't say. It was more of a hands-off coaching of asking a question when I had one.

Ask me whenever you need too

Expand

I think you should expand your admin areas a bit. Take a look at WP:SSP, which is backlogged and needs help and you haven't worked in apparently. Select three cases, review them, and write in the comment section what you think the remedy should be. Let me know when you're done and list the case names here.

Cases

See this diff

Always check their block log first, this happens a lot! If they have an RFCU tag showing, check that too

When I got to this, action already taken--2 named accts indef (by other admins), IP one week (by me), but your idea of a RFCU is well within the reasonable here.

Jehochman had closed this saying he blocked and tagged all, but he didn't, I had to finish it, including blocking the master, fixed his sloppy work. Yes, most of this was in deleted contribs, so you couldn't do a full check on this til you are an admin.

These were already blocked and tagged too, but one had two tags, which you can do with only one, so I fixed that. Correct that 217 should be blocked as an admitted sock, but I wouldn't hesitate to block 117 (if he weren't already) as if you look at his confirmed sock cat, it's full of socks, so he's a clear abusive puppeteer. It was also still open so I archived it.


SOMETIMES YOU GET THIS, check it out: Wikipedia:Suspected sock puppets/RobJ1981 what are your thoughts on the outcome of this case? were you surprised the submitter was the bad guy?

Actually I'm not that surprised that the submitter was the bad guy, maybe that he was a sock, but the first giveaway was "I'm a regular editor and need to avoid on-wikipedia harassment from possible socks or proxy editors." Thats what we have OTRS, private emails, etc for. The second flag was 195 diffs. An experienced user should be able to make their point in under 100 diffs (Arbcom's limit). And I know DGG and if he says some of the diffs were wrong, then I'm going to trust his word. Overall a fishy submission to me. Not fishy enough to make the connection to the submitter being a sock (maybe a vandal or real-life adversary), but def not actionable as an SSP report. MBisanz talk 21:58, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

New round

How many edits do you have now? What do you feel you need to work on prior to RFA? Well I owe Keilana these CSD examples:

And here is my Interiot:

Category talk: 5
Category: 7
Help talk: 3
Help: 6
Image talk: 2
Image: 595
Mainspace 4848
MediaWiki talk: 1
Portal talk: 1
Portal: 6
Talk: 274
Template talk: 16
Template: 10
User talk: 758
User: 145
Wikipedia talk: 175
Wikipedia: 744
avg edits per page 1.30
earliest 04:03, 21 July 2005
number of unique pages 5829
total 7596

I'd like to learn a bit more of Wikipedia:Abuse reports (When do I need to worry about this when blocking) and flesh out my knowledge of WP:COIN (When do I block, when shouldn't I block). And I'm sort of targeting 10,000 edits as my lower end before I go up for RfA. MBisanz talk 23:18, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

I'm also sort of "busy" over at User:East718/DFUI/Logos fighting a losing battle to sort and save as many fairuse logos as can be saved. Gaaa! another 5,000 just got tagged. MBisanz talk 23:21, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

You've got plenty of edits for RFA. I suggest you learn a little about COIN and Abuse reports and then go for it. Let me know if you have questions.

Well lets see, read over Abuse Reports and figured out they really don't matter unless there is a blaring notice on a users talk page. And I personally disagree with the COI policy to the point that I'll probably limit myself to commenting on cases and not actually using admin powers in them. Gonna take a stab at updating my candidate statement MBisanz talk 03:30, 27 January 2008 (UTC)
Well I'm about to tackle a large project with Betacommand which should take about a week or so. Maybe a mid-February RFA would be good. Looking at Wikipedia:RFA#Rjd0060's RFA, do you forsee any similar problems, vis-a-vie his four opposes? MBisanz talk 03:37, 27 January 2008 (UTC)
It's hard to say. I think if you stuck your nose into some new admin area, it would not hurt though. How much xFD/BLP experience do you have? Or some other new area for you... RlevseTalk 18:53, 5 February 2008 (UTC)
I could do some BLP work, and getting to know XfDs outside AfD and MfD wouldn't be a bad thing. Thanks for the tip, with BC out of commission for the forseeable future (at least for the side project I had in mind), I'm thinking an RfA mid next week. MBisanz talk 18:58, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

Who/What is BC? RlevseTalk 19:30, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

User:Betacommand was going to code a special run of his bot to output a list of all non-free logos that will eventually be tagged for violating WP:NFC, to give me a headstart on fixing them. But given the events of the last 24 hours, I think he'll not have the free time to code the run, due to the more pressing matters of re-coding his entire bot. MBisanz talk 19:32, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

Ok, I'm ready to go up whenever my coaches all give the ok. MBisanz talk 18:53, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

You're ready, IMHO. I'm sorry I haven't been more active, but I'd be happy to write a conom.