Misplaced Pages

Questions for the candidate

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

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

A: The main areas I'd like to jump right into are CSD and AIV. After that I'd gradually widen the scope of my contributions (probably hitting UAA next) as I get more experience in areas I've used less often. My ultimate goal is to be an admin that is competent and knowledgeable in most areas on Misplaced Pages so I can be "on call" to deal with problems and backlogs as needed.

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

A: I'm proud of the span of my edits, which generally fall into two categories; content protection and content creation. On the content protection side, I've been Twinkling, new page and recent edit patrolling, wikignoming, and reporting vandals and sockpuppets. On the content creation side, I've been creating requested articles (123), adding disambiguation pages, making bold edits, fixing redirects, editing images (123), and taking photos for articles. While lately I've been getting involved in a few projects such as WikiProject Northern Ireland, I see myself as editing for Misplaced Pages as a whole rather than any part specifically.

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: I can't think of a serious conflict I've had with an established editor. I'm fairly low-controversy because my edits tend to arise from either vandalism, obvious article problems, missing information/citations, or requests. This means that my work tends to fall over a wide range of subjects that I'm fairly detached from emotionally. Thus, rather than go into depth on the subtle points of an article's subject, I tend to fix basic article problems and then move on.

As a result, most of my conflicts with users arise when newer editors are upset because an article they created has been marked for deletion. They often feel singled out or insulted if their topic has been marked not notable. In these instances, I aim to AGF and explain Misplaced Pages's policies for notability, NPOV, what WP is not, etc. Often, these early editors are far from vandals, but simply unaware that articles need to meet certain criteria. Plenty of them go on to be valuable editors, so we have every reason to err on the side of not biting.

Optional questions from Dylan620

4. What is the difference between a block and a ban? Your own words, please, no copy-and-pasting.

A: A block is a technical restriction on the editing, which can be applied to a registered account or an anonymous IP. It’s not meant as a punishment, but is an action taken when a problem arises to prevent ongoing damage and address the problem. A ban is a formal, community consensus-driven revocation of editing privileges over all or part of Misplaced Pages. Bans are social constructs, and as such do not technically prevent a user for editing a page.

Since I’m no good a haiku, and I can’t beat Amalthea’s real life analogy, I’ll go for an allegory.

One day, a dragon came to the village of Pedia. None knew from where it came, or for what reason, but they did know that every night it would run around the town and use its fiery breath to singe the village cats. This behavior annoyed the villagers (who preferred their cats unsinged), and they appealed to the good witch Adminnia to cast the creature away from their kingdom. But Adminnia was a wise and good witch, and said the villagers “I understand that the dragon is singeing your cats, but before we cast him away we must talk to him. Perhaps the dragon does not mean harm, but singeing cats is actually an ancient dragon greeting. Let us find out what the dragon’s intentions are. After all, if the dragon means well, perhaps he can put his fire-breath to good use at cookouts and s’more festivals.” With that, Adminnia cast her spell of Block, and took away the dragon’s fire-breath for a fortnight. She visited his cave, where the mighty dragon was hiding in embarrassment of his recent loss of fire. “Mighty dragon,” she said, “I apologize if you are offended by my spell, but you have been singeing our cats and we had to make that stop. I’m here to find out your intentions. We have much use for a mighty dragon, and if you are willing to help, us I will give back your fire and instruct you in its proper use.” But the mighty dragon said “Foolish Adminnia, I singe your cats deliberately because it’s hilarious. Also, King Jimbar is a fool and a knave.” Hearing this, Adminnia was saddened, for the kingdom would not be able to benefit from the dragon’s talents, and she sadly cast the spell of Infinite Block on the dragon’s fire.

Thirty years later, Adminnia developed a drinking problem. On nights when she’d had too much mead, she would stumble around town and turn cats into princes. The Pedian Council of Elders, in response, told Adminnia she was Banned from casting spells on any pets for three months. Adminnia’s pride was a bit wounded that her mead problem had become a public complaint, but she abstained for three months as the council requested and spent that time receiving help through a mead dependency support group.

5. This is normally Xeno's RfA question, but I like it too. As an administrator, you will come across some extremely vulgar language and often come under attack for your actions. You will most likely have to deal with some fairly troublesome users. The users you block will sometimes ask to be unblocked. Please review the very NSFW scenario outlined here and describe how you would respond to the IP's request to be unblocked.

A: What I would do is make sure I had some time free, get comfortable in my favorite chair, and say to the user (in not exactly these words) “Ok, prove it! I challenge you to be a constructive editor.” Then I would unblock, and personally watch him closer than the china shop owner watches the quiet bull in the corner. This may sound fairly gullible on my part, but my reason is cost-benefit analysis. Let’s assume that the user’s intention is simply to vandalize more. What I lose by unblocking is the five minutes of my time that it will take to reblock and revert one or two vandalism edits. However, let’s assume that the user’s unblock request is genuine - that he has gotten it out of his system and now wants to improve articles on ceramics in dentistry. What we gain is a useful contributor that we might have missed had we blocked indefinitely - and that’s worth vastly more than my five minutes.

General comments

• Links for FlyingToaster: FlyingToaster (talk · contribs · deleted · count · AfD · logs · block log · lu · rfar · spi)

Please keep discussion constructive and civil. If you are unfamiliar with the nominee, please thoroughly review Special:Contributions/FlyingToaster before commenting.

Discussion

• My gut feeling is that there's going to be a strong difference of opinion over SoWhy's excellent research. What's the fastest way for all of us to get smarter about this so that we understand how CSD works in practice and whether FlyingToaster's take is out of the mainstream? - Dan Dank55 (push to talk) 14:11, 20 February 2009 (UTC)
  • Possibly a 'percentage of speedy tags rejected' figure? PhilKnight (talk) 15:16, 20 February 2009 (UTC)
    • That sounds good. I'm just trying to anticipate a divisive problem here and head it off; some of the admins who do CSD work are not as careful as SoWhy. I could easily see it happening that someone decides they want to learn CSD, they watch what some of those admins are doing and try to follow their lead, work hard for several months, then show up at RFA and get told that they got it all wrong and they have to start over. I don't know how to fix this, but wouldn't the usual solution be the best? Invite a discussion among all the CSDers, argue about when it's okay to cut corners and when it's not (there's a current ArbCom case on this topic, according to SoWhy), come up with something that passes for consensus, and make it available for all prospective admin candidates interested in CSD ... we don't have to give them the one true way, we can show them the arguments and let them decide for themselves. - Dan Dank55 (push to talk) 15:39, 20 February 2009 (UTC)
    • IMHO, that will drive RFA candidates to only choose "safe" speedies to pad their average, knowing they are subject to a formula and will let pass the closer calls that would have allowed us to see how well they assimilate the CSD guidelines. We all know, that there is considerable leeway in most cases (A7 by its wording doesn't strictly apply to pets, but most admins will delete "Fido was a wonderful dog who is now in doggy heaven blah blah" as an A7). There is also experientially based understanding of how much is enough to overcome A1 or A3; what G11 looks like, etc. Allowing candidates to operate without some target will give us much better insight in to whether they understand the principles - and for those who care, which I don't particularly - where in the spectrum of leeway (deletionist/inclusionist) they fall. Carlossuarez46 (talk) 18:04, 20 February 2009 (UTC)
      • And that would be bad...why? Not speedy deleting does not mean keeping the page, it just means using other means like PROD or XFD which allow more input of the community. As I wrote in my reply on the talk page of this RFA, the problem with FlyingToaster is her shotgun-approach to CSD a.k.a. "Tag them all and let admins sort it out later". For AFD, there is WP:BEFORE to avoid overeager deletion nominations - its spirit is valid for CSD taggings as well. To quote from WP:WIHS: "When it doubt, err on the side of caution". As I'm Spartacus! correctly analyzed in his essay: The damage is unknown and getting it right matters, because every incorrect speedy, even just the tagging, may be BITEy to the creator and scare them off. When I go through CAT:CSD, at least 50% of the pages are incorrectly tagged and need only a few simple fixes to make them acceptable stubs etc. This is why I cannot support any user who contributes to these 50% knowingly. I rather see a 500 pages backlog at CAT:CSD for not having enough admins to take care of it than to lose a single newbie because his article is deleted against policy. Regards SoWhy 18:43, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

Support

1. Support because beating Neuro to an edit is fun. Seriously though: Good contributions, excellent answer to q.3 and I trust the nom (although probably not with my wallet :P). Ironholds (talk) 08:37, 20 February 2009 (UTC)
2. Support - As nom, and occasional Ironholds hater. — neuro 08:38, 20 February 2009 (UTC)
3. Support because beating Neuro is fun (edit-conflicting with him less so), and because she let me sleep in her apartment once. Oh yeah, and trustworthy and all that, too. — Werdna • talk 08:39, 20 February 2009 (UTC)
4. Suppport - clue and trust are there, no reason not to support. Matt (Talk) 09:06, 20 February 2009 (UTC)
5. Support Well qualified candidate, clean block log and a nice mix of defending the wiki and improving it. WereSpielChequers 10:06, 20 February 2009 (UTC)
6. Support Very good editor, knows what they're doing, works hard to put good stuff in, and flag rubbish stuff to be taken out. Good mix as far as I'm concerned. --Ged UK (talk) 11:20, 20 February 2009 (UTC)
7. Support > helpful and pleasant. ╟─TreasuryTag►contribs─╢ 11:40, 20 February 2009 (UTC)
8. yes - //roux   11:51, 20 February 2009 (UTC)
9. Support Opposes are unconvincing, even Homer nodded. Everyone makes mistakes, and given the volume of tagging this editor does, don't see that an occasional slip is a big problem.--Wehwalt (talk) 12:48, 20 February 2009 (UTC)
10. Support No worries everyone makes mistakes so certaintly support.--Giants27 TC 13:58, 20 February 2009 (UTC)
11. Support - iMatthew // talk // 15:11, 20 February 2009 (UTC)
12. Support - trustworthy editor. PhilKnight (talk) 15:16, 20 February 2009 (UTC)
13. Support -Easy choice Simon 15:29, 20 February 2009 (UTC)
14. Support - User is very unlikely to break the encyclopedia and/or delete the mainpage. Trusilver 17:01, 20 February 2009 (UTC)
15. Support But please be a little more careful when tagging stuff for deletion. Good luck! Majorly talk 17:13, 20 February 2009 (UTC)
16. Support I'm not happy about the sloppy tagging but I still believe sysoping would be a net positive. I know this may be a weak excuse but FT does a lot of newpage patrol and mistakes are inevitable. I also trust that he understands that speedy tagging and speedy deleting are different things. Sloppy tagging is basically newbie biting. Sloppy deleting is newbie biting, chewing and spitting out. Pascal.Tesson (talk) 18:33, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

    Hooray, the first gender confusion of this RfA! :) — neuro 18:46, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

Oppose

1. Oppose Good user but I would not trust her with the mop at the moment. She wants to work in speedy deletion but her tagging is less than good. Let me elaborate:
   • Mistaken A1 for an article with clear context
   • A7 on an article that makes claims of notability (owner of multiple newspapers)
   • A3 one minute after creation (another one like that, here an A7)
   • A7 on article with clear claims of notability
   • Good faith attempt at a game report but no test page
   • A7 on an article about someone who has a notable school named in his honor (that should be enough claim of notability to fail A7)
   • Incorrect G11 (how can sth be advertising if the product is not sold anymore?)
   • A1 with clear context (Another one)

   And that is just within the last week (and I left out most of those where she realized her mistake). We have a shortage of admins at CSD, I know that, I cleared CAT:CSD the last days almost alone for several hours. But I cannot support someone to help with it if they make such basic mistakes so frequently. The candidate seems overeager to delete on sight and I fear she will continue with such mistakes when allowed to delete herself. At the moment I advise against this candidate, although it is a pity given the good contributions overall. But this is too grave to overlook. Regards SoWhy 10:35, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

   Comment - SoWhy - Thank you for your feedback. As Neurolysis mentioned, I do a ton of CSD'ing each day, and definitely I make some mistakes along the way. Whenever this happens, I try to as fast as possible fix the mistake, apologize to all involved, and explain what happened if a user is confused. And definitely, if a hangon tag is present, I will investigate the subject again to try and find the notability or content that the article in its first form could not convey.

   That said, while the CSD criteria are reasonably well defined, deciding if something meets the criteria and which one can be open to interpretation. Many of the diffs you provided are edge cases which I think can simply be interpreted differently, so I'd like to address them individually:

   • Mistaken A1 for an article with clear context I do believe this could qualify in sufficient lacking in context, as the only tie that this entry provides to the world is a name with no Misplaced Pages article.
   • A7 on an article that makes claims of notability (owner of multiple newspapers) This one is definitely an edge-case, and certainly it could be argued that owning newspapers is an indication of why the subject is important. For this reason, when the user made an edit to my talk page asking about the tag, I declined my own speedy and instead helped wikify and source the article. I also want to point out that the A7 tag is not exactly a mark of the subject being notable, but rather if there is any indication of why the subject is important. It's a slightly lower standard than notability, which is often more suited to an AfD or Prod.
   • A3 one minute after creation (another one like that, here an A7) The question here is time (this article was marked quickly) rather than the tag (the article indeed had no content). The reason I am willing to mark pages for speedy deletion very shortly after creation is because speedy is just that - a tag for deletion, not deletion itself. It alerts the article creator that something is wrong, and gives them the chance to correct it (via the hangon tag, another edit, using the talk page, using my talk page, etc). This is very different than deleting an article very quickly, which I feel that admins should not do (except in cases of vandalism, attack, nonsense, etc). My personal take is that if a page qualifies for speedy, it should be marked as such without need for much delay. Then the editor should be given time to contest it or to fix it, and if that fails then the article will be deleted. After all, an editor is warned when creating a page that "an article without references will likely be deleted quickly."
   • A7 on article with clear claims of notability I applied the tag here because while the claim itself would indicate notability, I searched for the name of the person and could find absolutely no evidence that they exist. I can see how you could argue that since the article provides a claim to notability and the problem is that the person in question appears not to meet that claim, a PROD or AfD explaining this would have been more appropriate.
   • Good faith attempt at a game report but no test page I agree with my tagging here, but I definitely think this is an edge case that could be interpreted a few ways. I applied the test speedy tag because the content appeared to be some sort of copy/paste from a blog or other article without any indication the author was trying to format the page like an article.
   • A7 on an article about someone who has a notable school named in his honor (that should be enough claim of notability to fail A7) This one is truly my mistake - I did not notice that the name of the school mentioned was the same as the subject of the article.
   • Incorrect G11 (how can sth be advertising if the product is not sold anymore?) My opinion is that advertising is no more appropriate if the item in question is hard or impossible to purchase - it's more a concern of tone and style. The test of the G1 tag is whether an article "exclusively promotes some entity and that would need to be fundamentally rewritten to become encyclopedic" - not whether an attempt is necessarily being made to sell the reader the item. Incidentally, I personally feel that articles written as advertisements should be either deleted or the POV parts removed until they can be substantially rewritten. That's why, after this speedy tag was declined, I came back and removed some of the advertising language and helped to wikify it.
   • A1 with clear context I think the context here is questionable - I read the link that was provided before I applied the speedy tag and could not verify the source to be notable or true in any way. (Another one) I must admit I did not understand the context here and thought the page might be nonsense. That's why I removed my own CSD tag when the editor provided enough information (the subject pharmacology) for me to identify it.

   In summary, the process of patrolling new pages is unfortunately never cut/dry black/white, and the ones above I feel are for the most part edge cases which could be interpreted and marked different ways. I suppose what I'd like to point out are two items. First, in many of the above cases where a speedy deletion tag is declined, you'll see I go back to that article and try to wikify/tag it to meet Misplaced Pages standards. My motivation is not purely deleting bad content on Misplaced Pages, but making sure the content here is good - so if an article about a notable subject is written as an advertisement, I'm happy to fix the article and have it stay rather than delete it. Secondly, I want to point out that, as I mentioned, I feel there's an important difference between marking pages for deletion and actually deleting them. Honestly, I think people should mark pages for deletion more liberally than they would actually delete them, and if I become an admin this will be the tack I take. As an admin, rather than quickly deleting many pages as fast as I mark them for deletion today, I would give the editor time to fix whatever problem was called out in the speedy tagging and err on the side of improving an article to Misplaced Pages standards rather than deleting it. I see marking a page for speedy as the first line of defense to flag a problem, but actually deleting a page is the final say and I think all effort must be given to take each case individually and make a decision fairly. FlyingToaster 11:39, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

   → Response and further discussion moved to talk page to avoid overlong text here. SoWhy 12:10, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

2. Oppose per SoWhy. X MarX the Spot (talk) 11:29, 20 February 2009 (UTC)
3. Oppose per SoWhy. Especially worrying for me is the one minute tag. It demonstrates lack of an attempt to research and/or improve the article first, and comes of as WP:BITEy. Rami R 15:13, 20 February 2009 (UTC)
4. Oppose - SoWhy's diffs are troubling. FlyingToaster's response is doubly so - it convinces me that FT won't improve their practice once they're an admin. Newpage patrolling, especially speedy deletion, is where we drive away new contributors the most. Here we have someone who is already biting the content creators, the new users - and seems to have no intention of, or interest in, stopping. Giving them sharper teeth is a bad idea until the behaviour is fixed. WilyD 16:34, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

   Comment - Wilyd - I just wanted to point out that I actually did mention in my response to SoWhy that as an admin, I would be deleting much slower and more carefully than I apply speedy tags, and erring on the side of keeping if anything. I would not expect you to support based on how I'm telling you I would act versus how I have, but only wanted to mention that I do see a difference between editor teeth and the sharper admin teeth, which should be used more sparingly. FlyingToaster 16:49, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

   Well, fair enough, but ultimately I think I have to predict your future behaviour based on your past behaviour, rather than your stated intentions (I may well catch flak for that, but I'll stand by it). Of course, being a regular at C:CSD might well make me crankier than most about bad nominations ... WilyD 17:15, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

5. Strong Oppose - Per dodgy CSD work. This absolutely cannot be overlooked. The responses are troubling too. The A7 and A1 responses in particular. Wisdom89 _{(T / )} 18:28, 20 February 2009 (UTC)
6. Oppose Sorry, too many recent questionable speedy deletion nominations. The occasional mistake we all make or if these were from a few months ago then I could understand (the learning process). However nominating articles for speedy deletion can drive off editors from contributing further (and especially newcomers) and incorrect actual speedy deletions are even worse in driving off new editors. I accept FlyingToaster says that he would be more careful in deleting but I can only judge from nominations at the moment and I am not convinced by the reponse over these deletions. Come back in a few months with a record of good speedy deletion nominations and I will be happy to support then. Davewild (talk) 18:42, 20 February 2009 (UTC)
7. Oppose per SoWhy and daft answers to Q 4 + 5. It Is Me Here 18:52, 20 February 2009 (UTC)