User talk:Pseudo-Richard/Adminship self-assessment

The activities that Administrators perform are certainly important to the quality and well-being of Wikipedia. So I sat down to measure my potential as an Administrator and this is what I found:

Why I want to be an Admin

My first reaction when I learned about adminship was "Oh, I probably would like to be one. Wonder what it takes." I will confess that I'm always interested in power and recognition.

However, the more I learned about adminship, the less interested I became being an admin for the power and recognition. I came to understand that the being an admin sounds like quite a chore. I rather enjoy editing much more than I think I would enjoy being an admin. I find Lupin's popups a powerful enough tool for reverting vandalism and I'm not sure whether rollback privileges would make that much difference in my efforts to combat vandalism.

I also came to understand that, if you are an admin, you should not advertise the fact unless your services are needed. Moreover, adminship is not a reward for being a long-time editor or even a good editor.

So, that having been said, why would I want to accept a nomination for adminship? Because I now view it as a civic duty similar to volunteering at the school my kids go to or at my church. I would do it because somebody has to do it and so it might as well be me. Consider Kant's Categorical Imperative. What would Wikipedia be like if no one was willing to do the work of an admin? What a mess that would be.

So the answer is: It's not so much that I want to be an admin as that I am willing to be an admin to help achieve Wikipedia's goals.

Strengths and weaknesses

Sometimes, the RFA process gives the impression that a successful applicant needs to be competent in all areas of adminship. I am not that guy. I have competence in some areas such as WP:3RR,WP:CIV,Wikipedia:Blocking policy,WP:RPP,WP:AFD] and total incompetence in other areas such as images, templates and categories. A man's got to know his limitations. Those are mine.

Strengths

1. I try REALLY HARD to see both sides of an issue and to take a reasonable "middle ground" between the two sides.
2. I try REALLY HARD to find value in articles that are put up for deletion. That doesn't mean that I never vote for deletion but my general approach is to ask "Is this topic encyclopedic? Could a good article be written on this topic if someone put in some effort? Can I help improve this article if I put in some effort right now?" Only, if the answer to all these questions is "No", do I vote for deletion.
3. I can read French and Spanish reasonably well. I have some knowledge of German and Italian. These skills can help in working with editors whose first language is not English. It has already helped me somewhat in working with Spanish-speaking editors. I have also used my knowledge of German a little while working on German-related articles.

Weaknesses

1. I have little interest at this time in images, templates and categories. Accordingly, I don't hang out at any XfD pages except WP:AFD where I have done a fair amount of contribution. Mostly I comment on "society topics" and "science and technology" AFDs that other editors have nominated. I have only nominated a few articles because I don't patrol new pages much and I'm an inclusionist anyway. This means that I try to find encyclopedic value in articles and vote to "Keep" them when I can. If I can save an article by improving it, I will. Unfortunately, I have to say that some articles aren't worth saving so I do wind up voting "Delete" a fair proportion of the time.
2. Although I am generally civil in my interactions with other Wikipedians, I sometimes get a little "hot under the collar". I have gotten really steamed a couple of times especially in my first few months at Wikipedia. It took a bit of self-control to keep a lid on things. I have found that sometimes it is best for me to take a break from that article and watch what happens. In one case where I was at 3RR toe-to-toe with an anon who was pushing a blatant POV, I took a break for a day and found that a third editor did the fourth reversion the next day. The anon lost interest and went away. I have since learned that I can afford to let a conflict go without insisting that I "win the battle" today. It is sufficient to know that I am right and that my view will eventually prevail. Or, if my view doesn't prevail, that maybe I wasn't right or maybe it isn't that important that my view prevails.

Qualifications

• Time in Grade: Since my first recorded edit was 27 March 2006, I have been around long enough to meet the 6 month minimum that some RFA reviewers look for.

• Use of Edit Summaries: You betcha. I turned on the option that reminds me to include an edit summary and I run near 100% wrt including edit summaries on all of my edits.

Here's the proof

• The Diablo "1 Featured Article" test: I have not worked on a featured article and so do not pass the Diablo test of having worked on a featured article. I did work a fair amount on a failed FAC (United States).

Moreover, I believe that an administrator's merit is not measured by participation in editing a featured article. In fact I wonder if the Diablo test is a valid test. I have worked on one good article and my many substantive mainspace edits attest to my understanding of what Wikipedia is and is not. I am not convinced that my knowledge is deep enough to be the primary editor to carry any article to FA status. I prefer to work on improving the contributions of others, sometimes to the point of executing extensive reorganizations of articles when they have gotten horrendously disorganized through edit warring or just the accretion of contributions of multiple editors.

• Civil? – Most of the time. On occasion, I have been "borderline uncivil" but I think I've managed to tone it down after getting some negative feedback about it.

• No personal attacks – I try not to.

• Email enabled? – Yep.

• Userpage? – Very simple. Some Wikipedians appreciate user-friendly pages that have easily accessible links to e-mail, the talk, page, user contrubutions, various logs, etc.

• Any edit warring/blocks? – No blocks but a bit of edit warring. I try hard to stop after the second revert and I try not to even get to that second revert.

Edit count and contributions review

• Edit count -Over 8000 edits

I believe I have a large enough edit count to meet most people's criteria in this regard. But edit count does not indicate the quality of contributions. Nor does quality of contributions indicate whether someone would be a good admin. Quality of contributions indicates whether someone is a good editor. Adminship is not a reward for being a good editor. A careful review of mainspace and article talk contributions tells you whether the admin candidate understands what the philosophy, goals and policies of Wikipedia are. I think a review of my edits in article mainspace, article talk space and Wikipedia space will demonstrate that I do understand these.

I provide here a brief overview of what I’ve actually been doing with my edits

• Article mainspace:

Over 3800 contributions in Main article space

Most of my contributions take the form of copyediting and reorganization of articles to improve the flow. I also like to find articles with resolvable disputes and try to mediate informally between the disputants. I watch Wikipedia:Requests for Comment/History and Geography for articles of interest where I might be able to help. Sometimes, I just express an opinion and move on. Other times, I plunge in and help clean up the article and resolve POV disputes.

276 Expulsion of Germans after World War II

194 Hernán Cortés

144 History of the Papacy

142 History of Christianity

135 Aztec

81 Anti-Catholicism

70 United States

62 Adaptation to global warming

62 Mitigation of global warming

61 Mexico

58 Spanish conquest of Mexico

55 History of Mexico

47 Marvin Heemeyer

47 Siege of Tenochtitlan

45 Nativism (politics)

38 Global warming

36 History of Liberia

33 Greco-Turkish War (1919-1922)

32 Anti-Catholicism

• Article talk:

Over 2200 contributions in Talk space

I talk to users about articles quite a bit. I have over 1300 edits in Talk space compared to over 2100 in article mainspace.

Given that many of my article edits are vandalism reversions and copyediting including fixes to grammar and spelling, it appears that I spend almost as much time talking about article edits as actually editing. I see this as a good thing.

If you look at the Talk Pages that I spend the most time contributing to, they closely parallel the articles that I have contributed to the most. This is evidence that I don't spend time in idle chitchat. My Talk Page entries are usually directly related to the related article. I try to derail discussion threads that are off-topic and irrelevant to editing the related article. --Richard 11:03, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

In the last couple of months, I have made more of an effort to warn vandals in addition to reverting the vandalism. In particular, if no one has edited an anon IP's Talk Page, I leave a welcome suggesting that editors using that anon IP get a Wikipedia username. I realize that it is unlikely that the original vandal will read the warning message so I am also trying to communicate to non-vandalizing editors using that IP address.

I have to admit that I sometimes "edit first and explain on the Talk Page afterward" but I see this as being in the spirit of WP:BOLD. One area that I can improve upon is to "propose on the Talk Page first and edit if no objections are raised".

394 Talk:Expulsion of Germans after World War II

133 Talk:Aztec

117 Talk:United States

55 Talk:Roman Catholic Church

• User:

Over 100 contributions in User space

Most of these edits stem from my sandbox and reverting vandalism on userpages of other Wikipedians. My own Talk Page is very simple.

• User talk:

Over 800 contributions in User Talk space

Some of these edits are vandalism warnings which I have been doing more of although I find them to be a time consuming pain in the neck. I will occasionally have short dialogues with users when there is a topic that is not suitable for article talk space.

• Wikipedia:

Over 750 contributions in Wikipedia space

I have to admit that, about two months ago, my Wikipedia space edit count was kind of low (like 200 or less). Most of these came from editing Wikiproject pages which, in my opinion, didn't really give me the "understanding of policy" that many RFA voters look for. I identified this as an area of deficiency relative to my qualifications as an admin and started looking for ways to improve that count.  : As a result of my deliberate effort to increase my edit count in this space, I have gained some experience in discussing AfD’s, and now vote more frequently at RfA.

I used to hate voting on AfD's because most of them were of little interest to me and in knowledge domains that I knew little or nothing about. Since the introduction of AfD categorization, however, I have been able to focus on the categories which interest me and that I have some knowledge of. I spend most of my AFD time on "Science and technology" and "Society topics". AFD was not my favorite activity, but I have learned to enjoy it more now that I can focus on articles that I know someting about.

• Wikipedia talk:

Over 250 contributions in Wikipedia talk space

As with the Wikipedia space, my edit count in Wikipedia talk was really low about a month ago. In order to increase my edit count and, more importantly, my understanding of policy, I started spending more time voting on RFA's.

I'm not sure if this will be perceived as a good thing but the recent Carnildo RFA led me to make a number of posts regarding the controversy ensuing his readminship. As I often do, I tried to be a voice of moderation between the two opposing camps of "This is how things have been and should be" and "The 'crats are usurping power from the community." I hope I was one of the calmer voices in that debate.

I have also made a number of comments regarding the Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Giano case and the related Workshop. I have become a bit of an RFARB junkie in that I like to read RFARB cases to understand what the "wacky fringe" of Wikipedia looks like. It has given me a better understanding of where policy and admin powers sometimes break down and how ArbCom handles these situations. I'm sorry to say that often times WP:RFARB provides object lessons in what not to do as an admin.

• Category, Portal, Image and Template: (~0 edits)

Sorry, but I have very little interest in images or image-related Wikipedia work at this time. I might eventually build an interest in categories, portals and templates but not at this time.

Disqualifications

• At least one self-confessed violation of WP:3RR
• I do try to follow WP:1RR but admit that sometimes I fail. I generally stop after the first revert but I have been known to get up to 2 Reverts but I almost always stop myself then.

Overview of Interests

The following borrows heavily from a piece written by User:Williamborg for his failed RfA because I think it is a good exposition of what I believe about Wikipedia. I have modified it to match my perspective.

The beauty and strength of the Wikipedia is that there is so much which is of interest and so many willing to do their bit. Wikipedia is a true intellectual community.

The intellectual community that is Wikipedia is an important home for long tail information. Unlike EB, which is constrained by physical size and number of editors to a limited number of broad articles and must focus on big topics, Wikipedia can cover both the big topics and the niches, helping people find their way to that relatively obscure material that they are actually interested in. Wikipedia is, in spite of those who suggest otherwise, a relational database which can link diverse topics in ways that EB and kin can not. There an awful lot of dross in minor articles, but there are diamonds too, and among those diamonds, the future waits.

Such views have logical consequences; I am an inclusionist. I strongly believe in the value of fixing and extending articles rather than pruning them. I strongly believe in the value of the less-popular topics. The obscure should be encouraged, nurtured and linked. Thus, I am inclined to vote "Keep and expand" whenever I can. However, I have voted "Delete" when it was obvious that there was no valid reason to keep the article.

I also agree with Halldór Laxness when he states that, "The difference between a novelist and a historian is this: that the former tells lies deliberately and for the fun of it; the historian tells lies in his simplicity and imagines he is telling the truth." We Wikipedians must ever be open to the possibility that what one has previously read and what one "knows to be true" is simply wrong. We must be open and intellectually honest. We must attempt to use the Wikipedia, not as a pulpit for our world-view, but as a method to develop a more rational and less jingoistic world view.

WP:NPOV is really hard to achieve but it is one of the four pillars of the Wikipedia philosophy. And, it's the one I care about most.

SYSOP Chores

What sysop chores, if any, would you anticipate helping with?

The format for this section is based on a piece written by User:Williamborg for his failed RfA. However, my responses differ from his quite significantly in a number of places.

I recognize that some of my answers will not suit some of those who regularly vote on RfA's. To these people, I can only say... not everybody will be a perfect admin. The question, as I see it, is not whether I will be the ideal admin but whether I will be a bad admin. I may not be an ideal admin but I think I will be a good admin.

• RC Patrolling: I used to really hate RC patrolling because clicking on "Recent changes" on the sidebar navigation menu is a really clunky way to do it. Once I found the Lupin filter of recent changes, I started doing it almost every day. The Lupin filter is really cool and I am now able to find and revert a few cases of vandalism a day using it. However, my preferred way of fighting vandalism is via my watchlist. I will also comment that the Lupin filter is best at finding vandalism. It does not help find articles that are candidates for AFD. Real RC Patrolling by clicking on "Recent changes" is probably the best way to do that. However, I find this really tedious so I don't do it as often as I use the Lupin filter.

• Counter-vandalism: I patrol fairly aggressively for vandalism committed on articles in my watchlist which has over 400 pages on it. I regularly check most anon edits to articles on my watchlist to see if the edit constitutes vandalism and revert whenever I find vandalism. Since some of the pages that I watch are major targets of vandalism, I often wind up reverting several incidents of vandalism in a day. However, I have not run into many serial vandalizers. Most vandals vandalize a handful of articles and then lose interest. I have started to check out the contributions of anon vandals more often to see if they are vandalizing other articles that are not on my watchlist.

Someone has to revert vandalism and warn the offenders appropriately. I revert vandalism when I come across vandalism in my watchlist or the Lupin Filter. Like AfD, I find that Recent Changes usually brings up articles that I know little or nothing about. In addition to my watchlist, I would check AIV periodically and act accordingly when alerted to vandalism by other editors.

• AFD closing/re-listing: I find many AfD discussions really boring in that most articles proposed for deletion are frankly on topics and knowledge domains that I know nothing about. How do I know whether a certain band is notable or not? For example, my knowledge of popular music is so scant that I would not dare to say "I never heard of X so X is not notable." I have participated in some AfD discussions but you could probably count them on your fingers and toes. Nonetheless, I would be willing to review AfD discussions and close them, deleting articles where so indicated by the consensus of other editors who presumably know more about the subject in question than I do.

In the past month or so, I have become much more active in AFD discussions because of the categorization of AFD candidates. I spend most of my time on "Science and technology" and "Society topics".

• CSD: I will delete articles that meet the criteria for speedy deletion.

• Helping newcomers and other editors: Village pump (assistance) is on my watchlist and I have responded to queries there on a number of occasions. I am also a member of WP:ESPERANZA and have helped to encourage at least one Wikipedian to stay when he was thinking of leaving Wikipedia.

• Requests for Page Protection - I understand that page protection is undesirable in most cases and, when a page has to be protected, it should be done so for the minimum amount of time possible. Nonetheless, I have seen occasions when semi-protection was necessary and was glad that an admin provided it when asked by another editor (the article was Carthage). I would be willing to serve in this capacity but with a bias against protecting the page unless the editor(s) in question were absolutely unwilling to listen to the voice of reason and moderation. One article in which I believe I was able to serve as that voice is Expulsion of Germans after World War II.

3RR Noticeboard, the Administrator Noticeboard and Incidents are all useful and I'm willing to execute these functions. I will block users when necessary although I would much prefer reasoning with them and suggesting mediation first before blocking a user or protecting a page.

Contributions

Of your articles or contributions to Wikipedia, are there any about which you are particularly pleased, and why?

The contributions that I am most proud of are the ones where I helped to resolve an ongoing dispute by serving as an informal mediator, often coming in via the RFC process. I have tried the Mediation Cabal but I think I am best at mediating on topics that interest me rather than just mediating any article where there is a dispute. Here are some examples...

Early contributions

I'm proud of work that I've done on the Aztec,Hernan Cortes,Spanish conquest of Mexico and Siege of Tenochtitlan articles. These articles needed a lot of work in copyediting and reorganization and I joined a group of people who have helped to make a substantial improvement on these articles. I have made a number of WikiFriends through my work on these articles as well.

Responses to Requests for Comment

OK, I confess... for a while, I was a bit of an RFC junkie. What I enjoy most is jumping into a controversial edit war and trying to help find an NPOV resolution. This does not necessarily mean joining one side or the other but rather trying to broker a truly NPOV resolution.

Here are a few examples of my successes in this area...

• French Revolution

This was a heated dispute amongst User:Rklawton, User:Meeso and User:Andrew Levine over a fairly small issue. The article had a picture of Delacroix's "Liberty leading the people". The problem is that Delacroix had painted it to memorialize the Revolution of 1830 which was several decades AFTER the French Revolution. One side insisted that it was inappropriately linked to the French Revolution. The other side claimed that, although Delacroix had intended to memorialize the Revolution of ..., the picture had come to be associated with the French Revolution. The difficulty arose in finding sources to support the latter claim. With some research effort via Google, I was able to help find a source and settle the dispute. Here's the diff. I'm proud of this because rather than just pontificating on one side of the debate or the other, I did the research required to actually resolve the dispute.

• Expulsion of Germans after World War II

I think the best example of this has been Expulsion of Germans after World War II. I think this one article is the best example of my work. Once again, I ran across the article when it was posted as an RFC. The article needed help in organization but more importantly in helping to find an NPOV resolution to some conflicts. I think my participation helped push the article closer to being NPOV and I hope I've earned a modicum of respect from the other editors of this article. An understanding of how I think about Wikipedia can be obtained by reading my comments about WP:V,WP:RS and WP:NPOV on Talk:Expulsion of Germans after World War II.

It is hard to find a single diff that would capture my contributions to this article. The best I can do is to provide a link to the revision of the article immediately before my first edit and a link to the revision of the article after my last set of major edits. I cannot claim credit for all the work done on the article. Most of what I did was re-organizing the article and getting rid of blatant POV-pushing. Even more importantly, I focused the edit-warring and POV-pushing editors of the article on finding an NPOV compromise that met the requirements of WP:V and WP:RS. I have stuck around to help improve the article but my contributions now are smaller compared to the big reworking of the article that I did between May 9 and June 7 of 2006.

• Carthage

I ran across the Carthage article on the WP:RFC/History page which I like to watch. Some anon editor (Marduk of Babylon) was insisting that there be no credence given whatsoever of the claim that Carthage practiced child sacrifice. I joined a group of editors (most notably User:Vedexent) in trying to find an NPOV way to suggest that there was evidence to support the claim but that a final determination was impossible. I now count User:Vedexent as a WikiFriend.

Articles saved from AFD

• Adaptation to global warming

I have not created many articles. This was the first article that I created early in my Wikipedia career. I created it based upon a discussion in Talk:Mitigation of global warming that suggested that the "Adaptation to global warming" section be factored out into its own article. The argument made sense to me so I decided to be bold and implement the suggestion which seemed to have consensus (a little bit of support and no objections). The problem is that, within minutes of creating the article, I found that it had been nominated for deletion! I started by arguing my case on the AFD page but when I found that I was making little headway, I decided to work hard to beef up the content beyond what had been in the Mitigation of global warming. I eventually convinced every Delete vote that the new and improved article was worth keeping.

• Crime in Mexico - I found this article on WP:AFD and recognized that the topic was encyclopedic although the actual content at the time was weak and smacked of a POV depicting Mexico as crime-ridden. I changed the tone of the article to be more NPOV and beefed up the article based on information that I found by doing Google searches. I then contacted each of the Delete votes and got them to change their votes based on the new and improved article.

• Poverty in India - I found this article on WP:AFD and recognized that the topic was encyclopedic although the actual content at the time was quite weak. In fact, the nomination for AFD was based on a perception that the content had a POV bias against Indians. I beefed up the article based on information that I found by doing Google searches. I was able to convince enough Delete votes to change to Keep so that the AFD was closed as Keep.

• Kiwi Gaming - My pivotal role in "saving" this article is a bit ironic because I was the one who nominated it for deletion. However, it became obvious that the Kiwi Gaming website was run by a legitimate notable business so I suggested that an article be created on the parent company and the info on Kiwi Gaming be merged into that article. I think my efforts to help save this article give credence to the claim that my interest is more in improving articles than deleting them.

Conflict resolution

Have you been in any conflicts over editing in the past or do you feel other users have caused you stress? How have you dealt with it and how will you deal with it in the future?

During my time here so far, I’ve had a few stressful situations and even a few conflicts. I am proud of my conduct in some cases and not too proud of my conduct in others. I will say that while I have not always acted in the best fashion, I do not think that I have ever acted in a horrible fashion.

For example, I try to avoid edit wars and can only cite one occasion (Criticism of the Catholic Church) where I have been fully engaged in one. I am embarassed to say that I probably violated WP:3RR on this occasion because, in the heat of the moment, I forgot that even expansions of reverted text counted as part of the limit of 3 reversions. Fortunately, the other editor in the edit war did not charge me with the violation so I escaped being blocked. I realized afterward that I probably had violated WP:3RR and resolved to be more careful about edit-warring in the future. I think I have succeeded in this resolution.

I will admit that I have a tendency to be a bit edgy in the way I write on Talk Pages and that this edginess is occasionally perceived as incivility. No one would ever nominate me as the paragon of civility but I do try to avoid gross incivility.

Moreover, I really earnestly believe in WP:NPOV and try to seek an NPOV stance whenever and wherever possible.

a. Adaptation to global warming was nominated for AfD within minutes of my creating it.

I saved this article from deletion by addressing the criticisms that were raised in the AFD debate. I even convinced the nominator to withdraw his nomination. In doing so, he praised me for not "being a jerk" about having my article nominated for AFD.

b. Poverty in India

I saved this article from deletion by addressing the criticisms that were raised in the AFD debate. I even convinced the nominator to withdraw his nomination. The debate got a little heated at times but I kept my cool.

c. Expulsion of Germans after World War II

For more than 8 months, I have acted as an informal, self-appointed mediator between two highly vocal, highly emotional POV camps. I believe the record of my comments on Talk:Expulsion of Germans after World War II attests to my ability to stay calm and effectively mediate between strong POV-pushing sides who ignore Wikipedia principles such as WP:CIVIL and WP:NPA.

d. Anti-Catholicism

I have just recently been involved in a dispute as to whether a certain section ("Anti-Catholic Humor") belongs in this article. Once again, I have tried to keep my cool despite what seemed to me to be an obstinate refusal to see reason (OK, I guess what I mean is the other party refused to see things my way.)