Wikipedia:Administrator elections/October 2024/Candidates/AntiDionysius

Nomination

AntiDionysius (talk · contribs · they/them) – Hello, I'm AntiDionysius. I have never edited Wikipedia for pay. This is my only account; I've had it and used it since 2015, but the majority of my activity has been in the past twoish years. I am both a rollback and pending changes reviewer. I contribute in mostly maintenance-focused ways, with a focus on recent changes patrol, welcoming and/or assisting new users, and article cleanup/expansion. In this, I spend a lot of time asking admins to do things like block vandals, protect articles, and speedily delete pages. This means two things: first, that over time I have gained a solid familiarity with Wikipedia policy in the relevant areas; and second, that we could all save some time and trouble if I were to just perform those tasks myself. I consider Wikipedia to be a superlatively valuable resource on an increasingly messy internet; I am proud of what I do already to contribute to it, and I would be grateful to have additional tools with which to amplify that contribution.

Questions for the candidate

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

1. Why are you interested in becoming an administrator?

A: In essense I'd like to be an admin because I like making Wikipedia better and I think I would be able to do so to a much greater degree as an admin. As I said, I contribute to the project in a mostly gnome-y way, including: dealing with vandalism; tagging and/or cleaning up articles with sourcing, POV and tone issues; tagging promotional additions for deletion; and welcoming new users. I think the tools of adminship would enable me to do some of these and other maintenance tasks much more effectively. In particular I have occasionally been in the position of waiting a while for an admin to be online and available to deal with a spree of vandalism/LTA. Part of that may be a time zone issue, since so many admins on English Wikipedia are located in the US whereas I tend to be online during European active hours; this strikes me as a way in which I could be particularly useful as an admin. Just in general, I think my experience doing maintenance work has given me familiarity with the vital areas of Wikipedia policy (V, NOR, NPOV, CSD, BLP etc) and the quotidien work of admins to the point that I think I would be a responsible and useful member of the admin team, given the chance.

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

A: It's mostly the collective worth of a lot of vandalism-fixing. I've also revamped some semi-obscure articles which badly needed rewriting, sourcing, expansion, and/or the removal of POV/promotional content, and there is something special about seeing an entire article which has been brought up to standard by your labour. Having been a journalist in a past life I fancy myself relatively good at source-finding in particular. Also: on more than one occasion I have been able to, with patience, talk down new users who were angry about some or other part of Wiki policies (most often but not always COI) and seemed like they were cruising for an indef block, and convince them to instead engage calmly and constructively in a mutually-beneficial manner. Other times, I have tried and failed to do that. I mention it because I think AGF is one of the most important parts of Wikipedia, and turning what had been a combative interaction into a constructive one where everyone remembered the human being at the other end of the talk page is perhaps a rare thing on the internet of 2024, and probably couldn't happen in many other online spaces.

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 was involved in a content dispute over a small wording issue on a contentious topic in October 2023. It was, because of the subject matter, emotive and stressful for me and I imagine for others too. I dealt with it by doing my utmost to remain calm, civil, and mindful of policy, and by trying to see things from the other side's perspective insofar as I could. When we were unable to solve it through pure discussion, I referred it to the Dispute Resolution Noticeboard. It was difficult and frankly unpleasant but I think I largely did the right thing in how I approached it. Were I in a similar situation again in the future I think that general approach - trying to AGF and seeking outside facilitation when it became clear we weren't getting anywehre on our own - would be a good one to repeat.

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Discussion

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

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