Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 20:31, 16 August 2010

Dabomb87

Voice your opinion on this candidate (talk page) (36/0/0); Scheduled to end 18:22, 23 August 2010 (UTC)

Nomination

Dabomb87 (talk · contribs) – Dabomb87 is an extraordinarily helpful editor who has proven willing to do some of the drudge work that many other editors avoid. He has a solid understanding of WP policy and how it relates to article content. In his work as a featured list director, he has demonstrated an ability to judge consensus as well as the even more important–and challenging–ability to be helpful and polite if his decisions are questioned . His WP:FAC reviews are invaluable and always based in policy and a true wish to help improve the article. These two roles–reviewer and director–are some of the hardest to do successfully on this project, because one often contributes to crushing another editor's dream that an article/list is perfect. Dabomb handles these situations extremely well; his focus is always on constructive actions that can be taken rather than demeaning the existing content/effort. Furthermore, Dabomb recognizes when he doesn't have the knowledge or skills to make a decision and reaches out for futher opinions . This self-awareness is critical in an environment where admins may not be fully exposed to every area where the tools can be used. In short, I have full confidence in Dabomb87's judgement, and I believe he will be an excellent administrator. Karanacs (talk) 17:20, 16 August 2010 (UTC)

Dabomb87 is one of a rare group of quietly knowledgeable and helpful editors who is everywhere all the time doing anything he can to help out, whether on a large or trivial scale, and with careful and thorough consiousness and civility. It is unfortunate that he was tangled into the whole date-delinking issue, but that was well over a year ago and his exemplary work has continued and increased since then. I have no doubt he will be a real asset to the admin corp, and co-nom this RFA with pleasure. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:14, 16 August 2010 (UTC)

Candidate, please indicate acceptance of the nomination here: I accept, and am grateful to Karanacs and SandyGeorgia for their support and trust. Dabomb87 (talk) 17:28, 16 August 2010 (UTC)

Questions for the candidate

Dear candidate, thank you for offering to serve Misplaced Pages as an administrator. Please answer these questions to provide guidance for participants:

1. What administrative work do you intend to take part in?

A: I would start out with the areas with which I am most familiar. For the past two years, I have been active at the Featured lists and Featured articles processes. A lot of what I there do can be described as "dirty work": keeping FAC/FAR and FLC/FLRC running smoothly by taking care of the mundane meta-issues so that other content editors and reviewers can do what they do best. In the past I have encountered numerous "housekeeping" situations where the tools would have been useful; these are usually uncontroversial tasks such as deleting unused pages, moving pages over redirects, and editing protected pages to make minor formatting fixes. More recently, I have had to deal with sockpuppetry at FLC.

In addition, I am an active member of Misplaced Pages:WikiProject National Basketball Association, and have many athlete BLPs on my watchlist. Even in the offseason, I regularly deal with editors who insert unsourced speculation, BLP violations, or plain vandalism into these articles. To this end, the tools could be useful to ensure that these articles remain high-quality. In particular, the ability to protect would come in handy when it is necessary to prevent further disruption. Obviously, I would never use the tools in situations where I am or have been involved.

2. What are your best contributions to Misplaced Pages, and why?

A: I'm proud of any edit that adds to the sum of human knowledge. My rather small list of articles to which I've made substantial contributions is at User:Dabomb87/Contributions. As far as "audited" content goes, I have written or co-written four list articles that have achieved FL status. With regard to normal articles, I am particularly proud of my work on Tim Donaghy. I was by no means the primary contributor to that article, but I made quite a few additions and copy-edits to bring it up to GA status and keep it up to date. I have also created or expanded five articles that have been featured at DYK.

However, even more than my admittedly meager content creation and addition work, I am proud of my reviews at FAC, FLC, peer review, and (on a significantly lower level) GA in the past two years. You can my complete list of reviews here. I like to think I've played a tiny role in polishing our best work on Misplaced Pages.

On the meta side of things, I've been one of the Featured list delegates/directors for a year now, which (hopefully) indicates that I am trusted and experienced enough to be a fair judge of consensus as it relates to policies, guidelines and the FL criteria. In addition to my work at the featured content processes, I have engaged in varied activities such as vandal patrol (although not recently), helping out at Category:Misplaced Pages semi-protected edit requests, and, to a limited extent, new-page patrol.

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: From about October 2008 to June 2009, I was involved in the infamous date-linking drama, considered to be (with good reason) one of the lamest disputes ever. Even though the matter was eventually resolved through an ArbCom case in the first half of 2009, my behavior in the months leading up to the case (October–December 2008) was less than stellar, which is probably an understatement. The links and diffs at Misplaced Pages:ARBDATE#Dabomb87 illustrate my actions well enough. My primary offenses were extensive edit-warring and engaging in cabalism to push through a certain style, which were, without a doubt, the worst way to approach dispute resolution. I dealt with that conflict in the worst way possible, and fully acknowledge it was unbecoming of any experienced editor, let alone an administrator.

Since that nightmare, I have become more diplomatic in my approach to conflict, and am far more level-headed and open to compromise than before. I learned a lot from the dates saga, and think that my experience and missteps there have helped me to avoid subsequent edit wars and long, protracted disputes. One area where I have substantially improved is responding to stressful situations. In a recent situation, a user believed that I had improperly closed his FLC nomination, suggesting that I had a "double-standard", and stating that I did not "deserve to be a director for anything here". I feel that my response there was calm and civil, and my subsequent handling of the case (I requested review of my action by the FL community, which was unanimously endorsed) helped to defuse any possible conflict.

Additional optional question from BigDom

4. Misplaced Pages claims that its goal is to collate all human knowledge into one encyclopaedia. However, through guidelines such as WP:GNG and WP:ATHLETE, its editors have decided that the majority of human knowledge is not "notable" enough for inclusion. What is your view on this apparent hypocrisy?

A: I don't think the notability standards and the ultimate goal of Misplaced Pages conflict quite as much one might think. Instead, I think our notability guidelines (and related policies and guidelines such as WP:NOT) qualify the stated goal. If by "knowledge" you mean all things, ideas, events, facts that exist or have happened, then no, this encylopedia is not completely compatible with that aim. However, I think Misplaced Pages's goal is to contain any information that is likely to help the reader and is worth mention. Our policies and guidelines define what is "worth mention".

General comments

• Links for Dabomb87: Dabomb87 (talk · contribs · deleted · count · AfD · logs · block log · lu · rfar · spi)
• Edit summary usage for Dabomb87 can be found here.

Please keep discussion constructive and civil. If you are unfamiliar with the nominee, please thoroughly review his contributions before commenting.

Discussion

Support

1. Support Been waiting for this one. Good luck! Courcelles 18:23, 16 August 2010 (UTC)
2. Support as nominator. Karanacs (talk) 18:25, 16 August 2010 (UTC)
3. Support I feel truly lucky to have spent so many months working with Dabomb87 (mainly at FLC), he's the most dedicated Wikipedian I've ever had the pleasure of knowing, bar none. Good luck. The Rambling Man (talk) 18:25, 16 August 2010 (UTC)
4. Jujutacular  18:27, 16 August 2010 (UTC)
5. Of course —SpacemanSpiff 18:28, 16 August 2010 (UTC)
6. (too many people supporting this candidate × 3) The Thing // Talk // Contribs 18:29, 16 August 2010 (UTC)
7. iridescent 18:30, 16 August 2010 (UTC)
8. This user should definitely become an administrator. Ruslik_Zero 18:33, 16 August 2010 (UTC)
9. Took you long enough to submit this. Happy to support. NW (Talk) 18:34, 16 August 2010 (UTC)
10. Looks fine to me. Tommy! 18:43, 16 August 2010 (UTC)
11. Have been waiting for this. ɳOCTURNEɳOIR  18:44, 16 August 2010 (UTC)
12. Support. Bit of a no-brainer decision. -- Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 18:47, 16 August 2010 (UTC)
13. Support no-brainer —Chris!_c/t 18:48, 16 August 2010 (UTC)
14. Support - I admire people that can admit they have made mistakes in the past, and learn from them. If the mop will help you in your work, I'm happy to support you. Jusdafax 18:54, 16 August 2010 (UTC)
15. I've made a big deal about X!'s edit counter in the last few days, and look forward to reviewing my neutral !votes tomorrow. That said, I don't need the counter for this one, as I'm very familiar with Dabomb's contributions. His record generally speaks for itself, but what I will add is that he has that rare balance of being forthright about his opinions, while at the same time being one of the most level-headed editors on the site. --WFC-- 18:57, 16 August 2010 (UTC)
16. Malleus Fatuorum 19:01, 16 August 2010 (UTC)
17. Yesyesyes. Extraordinary user and brilliant work in both writing, reviewing, and directing the reviewing of our best content. —fetch·comms 19:04, 16 August 2010 (UTC)
18. So that I don't have to correct all the TFAs anymore. Ucucha 19:04, 16 August 2010 (UTC)
19. Support. MarmadukePercy (talk) 19:05, 16 August 2010 (UTC)
20. (Edit conflict) Support. I've run across Dabomb on several occasions in the WP:FLC process and in every instance I've interacted with him, he has come through as professional and dedicated to his work on Misplaced Pages. That he can admit that the whole date-linking business was a silly mistake is impressive, and I'm glad that he's learned from his past. I'm incredibly happy to support such an outstanding editor and I wish him luck as an administrator. Nomader 19:07, 16 August 2010 (UTC)
21. Support -- Эlcobbola _talk 19:10, 16 August 2010 (UTC)
22. Support without reservation.--Wehwalt (talk) 19:11, 16 August 2010 (UTC)
23. Can have no qualms about supporting such a well-qualified editor. Like the carefully considered answer to my question. BigDom 19:15, 16 August 2010 (UTC)
24. Support. I don't see any reasons not to. Salvio 19:16, 16 August 2010 (UTC)
25. You mean he isn't already? --Dweller (talk) 19:17, 16 August 2010 (UTC)
26. Support Definitely. Wisdom89 _{(T / )} 19:29, 16 August 2010 (UTC)
27. Support 'nuff said. Casliber (talk · contribs) 19:42, 16 August 2010 (UTC)
28. ••Pepper•• 19:43, 16 August 2010 (UTC)
29. Absolutely I thought you already had the mop. - JuneGloom07 Talk? 19:49, 16 August 2010 (UTC)
30. Hell yes! I could never work out why the f*ck you weren't one already, but I'm glad we now have a chance to put that right and, having seen you on several pages I stalk and on my very occasional excursion to FLC, I support without hesitation. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 19:56, 16 August 2010 (UTC)
31. Support Definitely. Kevin Rutherford (talk) 20:02, 16 August 2010 (UTC)
32. Support Well, duh! No concerns whatsoever that he'd abuse the tools. Ealdgyth - Talk 20:16, 16 August 2010 (UTC)
33. Arguably one of the best candidates we've ever had. Dabomb is civil, professional, intelligent, helpful, and diligent at his work, not to mention that he's very humble and works behind the scenes. ceranthor 20:25, 16 August 2010 (UTC)
34. Support - I've only seen good work from you. Airplaneman ✈ 20:27, 16 August 2010 (UTC)
35. Support, solid long time contributor with a need for the buttons. Anything to help with the basketball BLPs come playoff time... :) Kuru (talk) 20:30, 16 August 2010 (UTC)
36. Among the most productive contributors to Misplaced Pages. Shame we had to wait so long for this nomination, but better late than never, I guess. This IP is used by Juliancolton because I'm effectively retired. If you want proof, email my main account, but please don't indent this. I will consider any such action in violation of WP:POINT. 69.121.245.182 (talk) 20:31, 16 August 2010 (UTC)

Oppose

Neutral