Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2024-08-14/Opinion
HouseBlaster's RfA debriefing
There is a lot I can say about Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/HouseBlaster. If your time is short or you would (wisely) prefer not to read my ramblings, here is a quick summary:
- My RfA was in fact stressful
- The outcome of an RfA is a lot less certain when it is your RfA
- I was expecting "content creation" opposes, and I agree that my content creation is not the best. Additionally, content creation is hard to measure quantitatively (§ Content creation)
- I was not expecting "bureaucratic" opposes, and will strive to improve in that way (§ On being bureaucratic)
- The Doug diff was one of those "why in the world did I say that?" moments (and it gets its own section)
- Good nominators are essential (and thank you, Moneytrees and theleekycauldron)
- If you take away nothing else: Please do not ask superlative questions!
What I have learned
Content creation
Going into the RfA, I knew I was getting these types of opposes and I was okay with it.
I want to create more content in the future, but it isn't something that I usually find as enjoyable as working at CfD. I also need an article to "speak to me" to avoid getting bored.
That being said, I think that arguments about my percentage or raw number of mainspace edits were more than a little silly. One of my nominators, theleekycauldron, had approximately 6,400 mainspace edits representing 16.3% of her edits. I had approximately 8,400 mainspace edits representing 28% of my edits. In other words, both as a percentage and as a raw number I have more mainspace edits than theleekycauldron. I had written one GA and one additional DYK. She had written many, many more than that. Anyone opposing her RfA for a lack of content creation seriously needs to reexamine what they mean by a "lack of content creation".
Opposing for a lack of content creation is a perfectly reasonable position to take, even if I disagree with it. But content creation is not really something that can be measured quantitatively. (And yes, I regret using authorship percentage as an indicator of my contributions to 1934 German head of state referendum.) Opposing for a lack of GAs or FAs? Reasonable, even though I disagree. But don't oppose people because of mainspace percentage or raw edit numbers because they are at best meaningless and more likely actively misleading. (And the flip side is true, too: A high mainspace percentage or raw number might merely indicate a large amount of AWB use.)
On being bureaucratic
I do tend to do things by the book because that is how I learn how to do things: By reading the book. However, going forward I will be more mindful of this and strive to improve. That is not to say I will become an ignore every single rule person, but I will try to be more flexible.
The Doug Weller diff
I am going to make this short, not to minimize what I said but simply because there is not a whole lot to say that has not already been said. It is one of those comments which I cannot really understand why I thought it was appropriate to say to an internet stranger. It was insensitive—to say the least—and I should not have said it. I was very grateful that the comment was on a "live" talk page: it was something that could be <s>struck</s> and my apology could go inline. In the future, I will be more mindful of the impact of my words.
- To provide additional information, a copyeditor for The Signpost has included Doug Weller's response a few weeks after the RfA closed:
@HouseBlaster I'd completely forgotten about this. I'm not sure why I didn't respond to your earlier response. It's an excellent question. I don't have an answer. I do know that if I had a lot of friends living near me, I would want to have a party before I died. I remember seeing a movie where a Shakespearean actress who was dying did this and I thought it was a great idea. But I don't know how to transfer it to Wikipedia. Do you have any suggestions?
The Creative Lizzie saga
My answer to standard question number three (about conflict/stress) was actually originally going to be paragraph one of two. Here was my draft of paragraph two:
As for a specific instance of stress, I will highlight my saga with Creative Lizzie, which you can read at User talk:Creative Lizzie. (She was assigned to me as a mentor through the Growth Team mentorship program.) A bit of context: her great-great-grandfather was Jonathan Baldwin Turner, and she wanted to improve the article about her ancestor. I advised her to draft in her sandbox, but she edited the live article. It went as well as you would imagine for a newbie with a COI, containing lines such as "He [Turner] was the true mover shaker; he lead [sic] with a torrent of value that we cannot begin to comprehend". It was one of the more stressful instances in my time editing Wikipedia; it is much harder to deal with civil, good-faith POV pushing than blatant vandalism. I worked on removing some of the promotional stuff, but also working with others (Drmies deserves a special shout-out) and requesting a copy edit from the GOCE. Comparing the "before" and "after" of the article, I am happy with the article's progress. But I think this experience is a good representation of my approach to conflict: knowing when to stick to my guns ("no, we can't compare letters to determine who came up with an idea first"), when to seek compromises (the images in the article are not my first choices), when to resolve conflict one-on-one (there is plenty of that on her talk page for your reading pleasure), and when to seek outside help (e.g. asking the Guild of Copy Editors to copy edit the article).
Even though it was initially raised by an oppose voter, I think it actually helped my candidacy. See, for instance, this support.
However, there is another small thing which I want to mention: during the RfA, I got this email from Snowmanonahoe, requesting permission to post the following in response to Lightburst's oppose:
Got permission from HouseBlaster to post this. After posting his 'bitey reply', HouseBlaster came onto the Discord and spent around half an hour discussing said reply with me and a few others. He was very worried about having been too aggressive too fast. Given this, and the context—which Teratix explains nicely above—I really don't think the comment demonstrates a pattern of behavior.
I declined to give permission, for two reasons: I did not like the optics of collusion between a candidate and someone else,[a] and there are people who will oppose you for participating in off-wiki things: I did not want to open that can of worms.
And at the end of the day, Creative Lizzie is happy. I still get occasional emails from her about her newest adventures in life, her pride is not damaged beyond repair, she responded okay to the aforementioned flippant reply, and the Jonathan Baldwin Turner article looks much better than it did before she got involved.
Badgering versus responding to opposes
There is a difference between badgering and responding to opposes. Anything which says "that is actually not a reason to oppose because [reason]" is not helpful. That can go in your own !vote rationale.
On the other hand, providing additional context regarding factual matters raised in the oppose can be helpful. I am glad that people brought up the context to the bitey reply
in response to the oppose left by Lightburst (see § The Creative Lizzie saga for more).
Talking to theleekycauldron, she put it better than I could: "questions of fact should be discussed in the oppose section, but not questions of values". There is obviously a gray zone between the two, and I would err on the side of caution and not responding. But the sentiment is absolutely correct.
The "rule" against candidates replying to !votes
We had a tradition in which candidates do not respond to opposes, but it is being reexamined. Currently, responding to opposes does not in itself immediately trigger further opposes (though the content of what you say might). However, there is no expectation that the candidate does so, and not responding to an allegation is not seen as tacit endorsement of it. I think that this is the right balance, and hope we do not move away from it. There are many things wrong with RfA, but our current culture surrounding candidates responding to !votes is not one of them.
Thoughts on further RfA reform
The single best investment I have made in my life was sinking however many hours it took to get RfC: should RfAs be put on hold automatically? over the finish line. It helped, and it helped a lot. Seriously. The 67 minutes between the scheduled closing and when Acalamari put the bow on it was so much easier, because it gave me the gift of certainty. It is not really the extra hour and a bit which would've been stressful; it was the uncertainty which would've been stress-inducing. If you told me ahead of time "your RfA will last 169 hours and 7 minutes", I would be fine (even if I had questioned why we were being that specific). People have been through a week of heck; there to add additional uncertainty because of 'crat (un)availability.
| Things which worked | Things which could be improved |
|---|---|
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Superlative questions
As a very minor point, I would love a ban on superlative questions ("best", "worst", etc.). Please don't ask them; they are almost impossible to answer. Things like standard question 2 (best contributions) are okay, but something like Q15 ("To turn the last couple of questions around, what change, possibly controversial in its time, has been the most beneficial to Wikipedia in the long term?") would have been much easier to answer if it was to "turn the last couple of questions around, what is one change, possibly controversial in its time, that has been beneficial to Wikipedia in the long term?" I haven't studied all changes to Wikipedia, so I could not and cannot answer that question. I essentially pivoted in my answer to the "what is one change" question. Don't make candidates answer impossible questions :)
But what about standard Q2 (about your best contributions)? I can answer about what I have done personally. And nobody is going to oppose you because they think your most valuable contributions were not mentioned in Q2, but they might very well oppose you because you consider a typo a bigger deal than deleting the Main Page. So superlatives are fine if they are positive ("best" etc.) and about the candidates actions, but at that point you are just re-asking Q2. So don't ask superlative questions!
And a thank you to everyone who participated
Thank you—sincerely—to everyone who participated in the discussion. Whether you supported, opposed, remained in the neutral section, asked a question, or left a comment; thank you. You took the time to investigate and vet a random internet stranger, and I am appreciative and grateful for your time. Thank you to those who supported and put their trust in me, and thank you to those who opposed for keeping it civil and leaving me with things to work on.
Notes
- ^ To be very clear, I "colluded" regularly with my nominators, but doing so with a "regular" !voter felt different.
- ^ Though this was not in place, Novem Linguae did a fabulous de facto job making the whole RfA easier.
Discuss this story
I liked reading your debrief @HouseBlaster. It was thorough, organized, and insightful, and I really liked the last section for your thoughts on reform. The Night Watch (talk) 02:50, 15 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
While I agree that admins should not be discussion users only, my leanings are usually the other way. Adminship is stressful enough that I have never seen an admin's content creation not take a massive nosedive. If a user is deeply invested and very productive of content, I'd rather they remain a normal user and productive than an admin that is very liable to burnout eventually and leave wikipedia entirely. Circéus (talk) 16:18, 15 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@HouseBlaster: One of my pet peeves is people (right?) using the <s> element when they mean the <del> element. Congrats on becoming our latest administrator! Aaron Liu (talk) 03:12, 29 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
<del>...</del>is invalid to use in hand-edited text (and should be relegated to use in formatting the automated display of content diffs or change tracking), because if you're wrapping<del>...</del>around some text, clearly it hasn't been deleted — it's still right there! Actually deleting text would involve, you know... deleting it.