User:Fabrib/Admin coaching

Fabio's Admin coaching

Getting to know you

OK, Fabio, thanks for starting the page. First, the "official" stuff: Admin Coaching is completely voluntary by all parties involved. It's informal and completely unofficial, as you must know by now. Admin coaching doesn't guarantee you'll successfully pass an RFA; it is only designed to give you some hints, ideas, and helpful advice if you decide to pursue a candidacy. If you have questions about Adminship, the process, or anything else you should feel free to ask me. That's why I'm here. :)

Since we'll be working together for a while, I'd like to know a little more about you. From reading your userpage, I know you live in England, and you write a lot of music-related pages. What type of music do you write about? What other areas do you contribute to Wikipedia? From checking your contribs, I see around 2,000 edits, which is a good start for someone who wants to become an administrator. Tell me more about yourself. What has been your proudest achievement on Wikipedia? What do you hope to do with the admin buttons, if you get them? Etc, etc.

Firsfron of Ronchester 21:16, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

A little about me, um... ok. Well im an A-level student living in London, England though i was born in Madeira, Portugal. I started out writing more on music then anything else, but now I'm more focused on other topics at the moment, namely history for the most part (i do history at A-level) but also places, crimes, books, films, etc.

well when it comes to music i'm into mostly Rock some indie, punk and metal and sometimes reggie and grime. A bit of an odd taste if i do say so myself.

Proudest achievement? well i like the work i've done on Russian revolutionaries, writing and expanding allot of articles on the issue. I'm also pretty proud of my articles on the Murder of Tom ap Rhys Pryce , QPCS, Brodie's law and Engerica.

What do i want to do with Admin powers? well this may seem a bit strange but i just want the greater freedom when contributing, and on the issue of clamping down on vandalism and helping with the wikipedia project at a more internal level.

So i've talked about me, lets hear something about you? where are you from? What sort of music are you into, what's your proudest achievement and what did you hope to achieve in becoming an admin?--Fabio 22:46, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

Clamping down on vandalism is a worthwhile goal; it seems to me that vandalism has grown as Wikipedia grows, and it would be great to have one more eye taking a look at reecent changes. Do you use VandalProof or Lupin's Tool, or any of the other vandal-fighting programs, Fabio? If not, I highly recommend them. VandalProof hasn't been working very well for me, revently, but I used to swear by it, and there are still lots of other tools out there.

As far as "greater freedom when contributing", I'm not sure what you mean. Everyone should have equal freedom when it comes to contributing to the encyclopedia, unless s/he is a blocked user. Have you experienced times when you felt you couldn't contribute, or felt restricted?

Your contributions look good. The article on Engerica has some problems; at the bottom it contains a gallery of Fair Use images. Galleries of Fair Use images are technically against the guidelines at WP:FU. Otherwise, I see no real issues.

About me. Hmmm... what to tell you? Perhaps my greatest achievement has been in expanding Wikipedia's coverage on dinosaurs. Back in February, Wikipedia still had fewer than 100 dinosaur articles, and many of them were in bad shape. I've helped improve 6 dinosaur articles and get them up to Featured Article status, the latest being Stegosaurus. I've written around 350 dinosaur articles from scratch, and helped expand the other 800 or so. I do a lot of vandalism reverting on them, as we get a lot of childhood vandals, creationist POV-pushers, and people changing sourced size data. I think my proudest achievement is that, even though much of the source information on dinosaurs is confusing, highly technical, obscure, or even completely contradictory, the Wikipedia:WikiProject Dinosaurs team has been able to work together with relatively few arguments. It's really a great team, and we work well together.

When I became an admin, I just wanted to reduce vandalism and work on the Admin Backlogs that were clogging the encyclopedia. I think I've accomplished that goal, though, obviously, it is a never-ending task. More later... Firsfron of Ronchester 23:34, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

Working toward adminship

So what can i do at these early stages, in working towards adminship. --Fabio 11:16, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

One thing you should definitely do, in my opinion, is start using edit summaries in the edit summary box. They don't have to be huge descriptions, just a very brief summary of what you're doing. Some folks have opposed RFA candidates who didn't use edit summaries; there is actually a bot used at RFA whose main purpose is just to measure edit summary usage. Edit summaries help users on watchlists quickly understand why the edit is being made. I use edit summaries 100% of the time. You're only using them 16% of the time, which is a good start.

Another thing you can do is participate on WP:AFD, WP:CFD, and WP:XFD. Anyone is welcome to participate there, and you very quickly learn the criteria for keeping, deleting, renaming, or merging an article, something every admin must know. Firsfron of Ronchester 23:06, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

Hello? Firsfron of Ronchester 19:00, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

yes?? i'l defiantly take what you've said under advisement and will be trying to follow your advice. --Fabio 01:25, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

OK, sorry, thought I had lost ya there. :) Firsfron of Ronchester 05:47, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

Oh you don't happen to know any tools which i can use which will work for Mac os x??? i wanted to use Vandal-proof, etc, but there isn't a Mac compatible version.--Fabio 20:53, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

One tool you can use on any platform is Navigation pop-ups. This is an awesome tool. It's great for reverting vandalism, but it also has a neat function which displays a quick preview of the article if you just hold your mouse over the link; it even shows the size of the article, which is very useful for me. All you have to do is copy the code as shown into your monobook page. Follow the instructions on the page, and you'll be good to go. Let me know if you need help.

Another useful tool which works on any platform is Lupin's anti-vandal tool. Again, it just requires a quick cut and paste into your monobook. Firsfron of Ronchester 21:20, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

Hey, I'm spying on your coaching. ;) My current coachee has developed WikiGuard for OS X. I'm sure he'd be happy to help you with it if you asked. Cheers, Fang Aili ^talk 16:09, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the that, i'm still trying to work out how to use those tools but there really useful.

Oh i need your opinion, do you think my article on the Murder of Tom ap Rhys Pryce is up to "good article' status? If not please advise on changes. Thanks.--Fabio 19:59, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

OK, Fabio, I took a quick look. I fixed the areas where the footnotes were before the punctuation, as the footnotes are supposed to follow punctuation. I would also like to see more use of the "URL last accessed" in the footnotes section. Otherwise, I think it's a nice article; you may want to send it to WP:GAC soon. :) Firsfron of Ronchester 21:37, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Reverting Policy

Hey, it seems im in the wrong with Wikipedia's policy on revrting, though what am i supposed to do in this situation? The issue is ment to be obvious, though the user Toby Douglass seems not to understand the film in question.--Fabio^Talk 19:35, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

Hi Fabio,

I haven't seen the movie, but it seems pretty obvious from the reference that the comment was meant as a joke. As you correctly point out, it's not very realistic for them to be identical cousins. Still, in a case like this, you have a couple of options:

1) Look for a link which supports your claim. The official movie site, or IMDB.com, or the actresses' publicity page. Even a few minutes of looking can result in confimation on what they actually were. Post the link on the talk page, but do not edit the article; reverting past three times can get anyone, even an admin, blocked.

2) Try to seek consensus by talking to other people who have edited the page. Look in the recent history. See who else has edited the page. Ask them politely on their talk page what they think. Something along the lines of "There's a dispute on the Cruel Intentions 2 article, and since you recently edited it, maybe you can help us come to a consensus; it would be appreciated." (and provide a link to the page) rather than (for example) "This idiot thinks..."

Anything else I can do? :) Firsfron of Ronchester 21:38, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

Thanks, that helped alot, though i did try to find a reference, but as the film isnt really that succesful there isnt any i can find. Even on imdb it isnt stated as only there fist names are shown. I'l ask for a consensus, that should convince the user.--Fabio^Talk 21:47, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

Great, glad I could help. I've been in similar situations, so I know how you feel. Sometimes something seems so obvious to me that I can't believe someone else thinks differently. Just try to remember in these situations that we still have to try to abide by the rules anyway (WP:3RR doesn't apply to true vandalism, but this isn't vandalism, just a little content dispute). Firsfron of Ronchester 21:53, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

GA pass

Well i've reached a wikipedian benchmark, i've brought an article Murder of Tom ap Rhys Pryce to GA status :-) Any advice on what i should concentrate on right now?--Fabio^Talk 14:16, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

Great work, Fabio. That's excellent. Congratulations. :) Have you read WP:ES? Also, have you read the WP:CSD policy, and if so, are you ready for some Category for Speedy Deletion practices? No rush. :) Firsfron of Ronchester 18:12, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

Do you think the article has the possibilty to be a FA? --Fabio^Talk 23:00, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

Only one way to find out: submit it. :) (BTW, I am probably the last person to ask about Featured Article chances; every article I've ever submitted for FAC has been objected to strongly by at least a couple of users, and my last nomination crashed and burned. :/ Firsfron of Ronchester 23:08, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

Well my dream of turning the article into an FA's been given a blow. Someones decided to nominate it for deletion.

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Murder of Tom ap Rhys Pryce

I doubt it will get deleted but if some people think it shouldnt even be on wikipedia it raises doubts on if they will ever allow it to be an FA.--Fabio^Talk 17:08, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

That's true. If it helps any, I did !vote to keep it. Firsfron of Ronchester 21:02, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for voicing your opinion. Im pritty confident now that the aritcle has a good foundation of relivance as shown through the strong support for keeping it.--Fabio^Talk 23:34, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

All I can say is good luck. :) Firsfron of Ronchester 03:30, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

Checking in

Just checking in, Fabio. How are things going? Anything I can do to help? Firsfron of Ronchester 23:01, 11 March 2007 (UTC)